Yup. In the early books it was basically:

Group jumps to new redoubt, often with jump nightmares.

Group spends time exploring new redoubt.

Group finally (25-50 pages later) exits redoubt to explore surrounding area.

Later authors have gotten away from this in favor of going straight to the action. I can only speculate as to the reasons, but I'd guess it's because a) there are too many redoubts (it's hard to keep coming up with new places) and/or b) going through the whole process listed above is boring (We've read it all before, dozens of times. Who cares about yet another redoubt? We want to get to the part where Ryan and co. kick ass and take names.)

I think it's an okay gimmick, the Mat-Trans. It gets the characters to different places, and I think James Lawrence used it because he had a story about Alaska, one about Louisiana, one about Virginia (that starts in my home town of Utica NY!) one about Crater Lake, and so on. 

Posted By Chezzo on 09 Dec 2010 08:18 PM
I think James Lawrence...

His name was Laurence James, James is his surname and Laurence his given.

Posted By )3az )3aziah on 11 Dec 2010 04:48 PM

Posted By Chezzo on 09 Dec 2010 08:18 PM
I think James Lawrence...

His name was Laurence James, James is his surname and Laurence his given.

My son was born in January 2009.  We named him after my grandfather.  Only later did I realize the similarity James Lawrence...  LoL.  Thanks for that nostalgic moment.

Posted By DLFan_352 on 03 Jun 2011 03:27 AM

Posted By )3az )3aziah on 11 Dec 2010 04:48 PM

Posted By Chezzo on 09 Dec 2010 08:18 PM
I think James Lawrence...

His name was Laurence James, James is his surname and Laurence his given.

My son was born in January 2009.  We named him after my grandfather.  Only later did I realize the similarity James Lawrence...  LoL.  Thanks for that nostalgic moment.

The pleasure is all yours...

Interesting, as Im just starting out with the books, all I know of is the mat-trans, I assume that in latter books they just start walking everywhere rather then jumping, I kinda like the idea of the mat-trans but will be interested to see how they change that when I get that far in the series.

I just thought the mat-trans was a way to start each book off fresh and assumed all the books did that.

Nah. Later books often start off in the middle of the action, or with the characters simply walking along. Sometimes they make mention of the companions having arrived via mat-trans, but that's all we get.

Posted By Kerrick on 30 Aug 2011 08:22 AM
Nah. Later books often start off in the middle of the action, or with the characters simply walking along. Sometimes they make mention of the companions having arrived via mat-trans, but that's all we get.

And thank the good lord for that!

Yeah I can see how you feel that way, currently I like the long mat-trans start, but after 100 books... yeah I can see how that can get repetitive. currently its cool like in book 2 where they are in Alaska and find a whole indoor mall, or like in book 11 where there screwed and cant get out (when Ryan gets food poisoned and has the Trader flashback) I guess I like it (at least for the first 33 books) is because you never miss a moment of there lives (as those books are all connected) and see fully day by day what there dealing with, but as the later books don't have any continuation from the previous book, I can see why the point of the mat-trans would get redundant.

i would like to see the books go back to the mattrans start and end of each book. not having them like this is the only reason we dont have the books follow on anymore.

The reason the books don't follow each other like they used to is because we have a whole slew of writers producing the books. Well, in part... the other part being that the chief editor thinks it's better to keep everything in a vacuum instead of letting the characters grow and develop.

They need to just use one writer like they used to do a long time ago, the books would be a lot better if they did that. The other books of Outlanders series have gone bad as well, have more writers started working on that one to?

Since Mark Ellis stopped writing for Outlanders the series has been handled by one primary author and one secondary author, and they work very closely with each other to keep their stories in sync.

As I've posted ad nauseum here and elsewhere, I didn't "stop" writing OL...I was stopped from writing OL.

Secondarily, none of the books pusblished after Dark Goddess are part of the official continuity...including a couple of mine.

All the characters and concepts of my creation that appear in OL remain my intellectual property.

Posted By Harry Whittleberry 2 on 06 Sep 2011 05:13 AM
They need to just use one writer like they used to do a long time ago, the books would be a lot better if they did that. The other books of Outlanders series have gone bad as well, have more writers started working on that one to?

Yeah I agree, much better that way, its very cool to have a book end in suspense and have the next one pick up after the last.

Posted By ShadowTek on 16 Sep 2011 06:40 PM

Posted By Harry Whittleberry 2 on 06 Sep 2011 05:13 AM
They need to just use one writer like they used to do a long time ago, the books would be a lot better if they did that. The other books of Outlanders series have gone bad as well, have more writers started working on that one to?

Yeah I agree, much better that way, its very cool to have a book end in suspense and have the next one pick up after the last.

  It would bring back some continunity to the series and some new plot devices could be added bit by bit.But what author would you go for? Nick Pollota or Alan Philipson would be my choice.

Yeah, and exactly how many functioning Mat Trans booths could there be anyway?

Posted By <span class='af-profile-name'>Randarchist</span> on 9/24/2014 2:55 PM
Yeah, and exactly how many functioning Mat Trans booths could there be anyway?

163.5 as of last Tuesday


Jim

Well, ok. Wait..... .5? I don't even want to see .5 of a companion...

The 0.5 unit only works a 3 day week...

Jim

Posted By <span class='af-profile-name'>3az )3aziah</span> on 9/25/2014 1:55 AM
The 0.5 unit only works a 3 day week...

Jim

The rest of the time he's working on his advanced degree at Phoenix University.