3 Sci-Fi Book Series That Should’ve Quit While They Were Ahead

In theory, a series is one of the best things to have if you’re a reader. There is something deeply satisfying about a continuing story that allows you to fully immerse yourself into the plot, the characters, and the overall world as spread across multiple volumes. It means you don’t have to say goodbye to favorites right away and the wait for the next book is its own kind of delicious anticipation. This is especially true when it’s a sci-fi series. With stories that often feature extensive world building and unique concepts, a good sci-fi series is literary gift that keeps on giving,

Every so often, however, there’s a series that just doesn’t hold up. These are the series that, while the first few books may be great later installments just aren’t. Sometimes it is a case of a story just going on well past its stopping point while in other cases, later books just deviate very far from the initial ones that made the story so great and interesting to start with. Here are three such series, sci-fi sagas that started out strong and then just… didn’t. They should have quit while they were ahead.

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3) Dune

This is a series on our list that might be the least controversial choice when it comes to “series that should have quit while they’re ahead”. Frank Herbert’s Dune is considered by many to be a sci-fi masterpiece and while the first book—the titular Dune—is for some considered the best, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune are all strong entries. However, it’s the books beyond Children of Dune where things start to go a little off the rails. God Emperor of Dune sees the overall Dune narrative to start leaning heavily into philosophy, something that only intensifies with Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse: Dune. Additionally, even among those who make it through all six of Frank Herbert’s books, his son, Brian’s contributions in the expanded universe also fall a bit short.

2) Ender’s Game

Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game is an absolute classic of sci-fi, with that first book following Andrew “Ender” Wiggin, a child recruited by Earth’s international military force to prepare for an alien invasion. The book’s following of the children’s training with war games, the revelation of Ender’s genius, and the stunning twist about exactly what the “games” Ender has been playing really is an engaging, original, and fascinating one. The story could have stopped there and been great. However, the direct sequels to the first book (Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide) take the series far away from being a military sci-fi and instead get weirdly metaphysical and philosophical. The series also keeps going on well beyond that, bloating to a current 16 novels that covers different aspects of the overall Ender’s Game universe, functionally spreading a good concept way too thin.

1) The Bobiverse

The first book in Dennis E. Taylor’s Bobiverse series, We are Legion (We Are Bob) is a really interesting book. The story follows software millionaire Bob Johansson who is unexpectedly killed but has his consciousness preserved only for it to be uploaded into a self-replicating space probe far in the future where he’s sent to look for a new home for humanity. It’s a fun story of Bob and the many, many AI copies he makes of himself and their exploration adventures. The first three books in the series are fairly solid and actually wrap up the story the first book kicked off in a very tidy and satisfying fashion. If the series had ended there, it would have been great. However, the series stretches on and that’s where things start to come apart. What makes the Bobiverse a series that really should have stopped while its ahead is that everything that was interesting and unique about the first three books simply overstays its welcome. The hierarchy of Bobs that develops is sort of cliche, the additional books don’t feel like the first series at all, and later books get too in the weeds about things like alien culture, language and more. The books quickly become a slog and should have stopped with the first three.

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