With Extremes and The Disappeared under my belt, I wanted to read the short story that started the series. Rusch published "The Retrieval Artist" in Analog Magazine three years ago. Fellow writers and editors urged her to expand the story into a novel, which became The Disappeared. It, in turn, begat Extremes. There will likely be more books in the series. I tracked down "The Retrieval Artist" at an ebook publisher and purchased a download. The short story proved useful to me as both a reader and a writer. Writers don't always know where their work product is headed. Rusch considered "The Retrieval Artist" self-contained when she wrote it. So, she was faced with reconciling subsequent works derived from it with it and each other. For example, in the short story, Miles Flint is an experienced retrieval artist and independently wealthy. She explains how he became a retrieval artist and acquired his wealth in The Disappeared. Perhaps because she wanted to delve more into the isolated Flint's personality, he and De Ricci, his former partner when he was a police detective, appear to have a much closer relationship in Extremes than they do in The Disappeared. Rusch does not try to reconcile everything among the works, which I believe is a wise decision. It is better to leave loose ends than to resolve them in an awkward way. I hope I recall this lesson if I ever try to turn one of my published short stories into a novella or novel.

A qualm I had as a reader of Extremes is addressed in "The Retrieval Artist" and The Disappeared. The book seemed to imply that aliens were more likely to be evil than humans. That is a misconception I was corrected in regard to when I read the earlier works. The villains in both are human.

This series raises important issues in what some would dismiss as an inferior form of writing. As I've said before, genre fiction can sometimes rise above the paltry expectations people have of it. Rusch's works often do. I recommend the retrieval artist series as both good reading and a window into how writers develop their works.

Note: My blog is Mac-a-ro-nies. So far, I haven't written anything about pasta, but I'm keeping the option open.