The Rule of Three

The number three is pretty special. In the Bible it is a symbol of completeness; God's attributes are three-fold; omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence. Chinese tradition considers three a lucky number, and in 2004 a man in Beijing paid $215,000 for the lucky mobile phone number 133-3333-3333, and in Latin "omne trium perfectum"  means everything that comes in threes is perfect. The idea that good things (or bad things for that matter) come in threes is perhaps a fallacy. Our minds recognise triplets easily, and after two similar events we are on the lookout for a third; when it doesn't, we forget, but we remember when it does, reinforcing our belief.

For writers, there is the Rule of Three, which can refer to a collection of three words, phrases, chapters, or even books. Just think of the power of three-fold expressions like "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness,"  from the American Declaration of Independence, or "Liberté, égalité, fraternité", the slogan of the old French Republic, and "Veni, vidi, vici" -I came, I saw, I conquered - attributed to Julius Caesar. And in law, witnesses are asked, on oath, to tell "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth," or more prosaically there is, " A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play."

In films, the trilogy is common, popular, ubiquitous almost. Think of The Godfather, Back To The Future, Star Wars (a trilogy of trilogies there). Similarly, in books we have The Lord Of The Rings, The Foundation Trilogy, and Gormenghast to name but three. Like the Three Bears' chairs, their porridge, and their beds, some trilogies are too long, some too short, and some just right - and it is all matter of personal taste as to which fits in which pigeonhole. Take Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings; I know that it is highly regarded, I know that for some people it is sacrilege to criticise it, but for my money it is about two-and-a-half books too long. Then there are Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast books. Books one and two - Titus Groan, and Gormenghast - are among my favourites, and I revisit them from time to time (I'm a bit overdue, it must be at least ten years), but the third, Titus Alone, I struggled with and have never re-read.

Currently I'm on a bit of a nostalgia kick (musically I've been reacquiring some old 1980's albums, with varying degrees of delight and disappointment), and am re-reading Michael Moorcock's trio of novels, The Warlord Of The Air, The Land Leviathan, and The Steel Tsar (collectively, The Nomad of The Time Streams). Comparisons with HG Wells are inevitable as the stories - the first two at least - inhabit similar eras and ideas, and the writing is stylistically not dissimilar to that of Herbert George, while the use of technology out of its timeline was an early example of steampunk, a genre that to all intents and purposes was kick-started by these books.[1]  Moorcock managed to condense his whole trilogy into a concise 442 pages, or about the same length as most single novels today. Which is where many novels being written and published today, and especially trilogies, weary me. Too often I pick up a weighty paperback - running to perhaps 600 pages or more - catch sight of a phrase on the cover that goes tells me that this doorstop is just the first in a trilogy - or worse a quartet, or even a quintet - and I return it to its place on the shelf, disheartened by the prospect of feeling obliged to wade through nearly two thousand pages, at least half of which will be filler, padding, and general dross.

I don't know when the trend for such long novels began;  I suspect that Arthur Hailey had something to do with it, although his books tended to be largely plot driven with less padding than most. The so-called airport novels (and one of  Hailey's novels is called Airport, which spawned a film of the same name and three sequels), are generally fast-paced, considered to be of little literary merit, and usually very long. Nowadays it seems that you will be hard pushed to find a novel that comes in at less than five hundred pages.

Despite my aversion to trilogies, and especially trilogies that run to thousands of pages, there are exceptions. Take Robert Jackson Bennett's trilogy, The Divine Cities.[2] In some ways they are the antithesis of the sort of books I usually read, fantasies in which man battles with divinities, and running to over 450 pages in each volume. But the ideas piqued my interest, there is minimal padding, the writing style is fluid and rewarding, and the characters - especially the female ones - are interesting, engaging and realistic. The three books are sufficiently different to avoid boredom through repetition, and although I confess to flagging a tad towards the end of book three, I was glad that I persevered.

I cannot leave the subject of trilogies without mentioning - and recommending - Paul M Calvert's trio of Imperium novels.[3] I have to declare an interest here, as I've known Paul since we first worked together back in the 1980's, and we've been friends ever since (I trust nothing I write here jeopardises that!) I was privileged to be one of the proof-readers of the first part of the saga, and even contributed to the description you'll read of the first novel on Amazon. The Imperium trilogy (Betrayal, Revelation, and Coda) are the author's first novels, and a more sure-footed debut you couldn't wish to read. With science fiction, there is a fine line to be drawn between bewildering the reader with unexplained technology, civilisations and peoples, and boring them rigid with long-winded descriptions. Fortunately, Paul avoids these pitfalls, including such explanations as are necessary without compromising the momentum of the story, but with appendices for readers keen to immerse themselves further in the universe, civilisation and technologies that he has imagined.

Even if science fiction isn't normally your thing, or trilogies for that matter, I'd still recommend that you read Imperium: Revelation, the second in the set, which moves seamlessly between England in both the 1940's and the present day, and distant universes. It is far from your normal science fiction story, and the development of the character of Adam as he matures from the hedonistic and callow youth we are introduced to in the first novel, towards the statesman we can see he will become by the end of the third, is outstanding. I'm fairly confident that having read it, you'll want to read the other two books. It might be a cliché to say of a book that one couldn't put it down, but there's no book I've read recently of which that description could be more apt.

[1] Mervyn Peake's third novel in the Gormenghast trilogy, Titus Alone, is regarded by some as perhaps the first novel of the genre.

[2] City of Stairs, City of Blades, and City of Miracles.

[3] Available on Amazon, see https://www.amazon.co.uk/Imperium-Betrayal-Book-One-Trilogy/dp/1521575754/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8