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I wrote two novels as a novice, and I'm on the third right now. As I began writing it, I noticed my stories tend to revolve around two things (my genre being sci-fi):

  1. An AI. Not the typical evil AI you'd see, not even a consistent type of AI (it can be all-powerful or quite mediocre, sentient or not), but there's always an AI lurking somewhere.

  2. Death. Because it is a very complex and interesting subject, I like to tell about it in my stories.

Is it an issue? I fear that eventually, people that read my work will start being bothered by the fact these two points often come back. Is that actually the case? Is it bad to focus on very specific topics?

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    One potential down-side of sticking to what you know is opportunity cost: it might prevent you discovering a real interest in and/or talent for a different theme/idea/style/sub-genre.  (Some authors write several different types of book before they find what really works for them.  But others hit it dead-on with their first, so there's no clear rule.)
    – gidds
    Commented Aug 3 at 23:18
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    If you bingewatch some series, you notice after a while each episode is often very similar, and the "structure" of the story is almost identical.
    – willeM_ Van Onsem
    Commented Aug 4 at 21:45
  • Sally Rooney would be the first example off the top of my hat, with several novels set in the Dublin literary/artistic scene. In short, nothing fundamentally wrong with it.
    – Marc Vaisband
    Commented Aug 5 at 6:24

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Not a major issue, write what you know, you'll find that most successful writers have a rather narrow range when it comes to their themes;

I could keep going but hopefully you get the point, writing a number of novels around similar themes is not an issue as long as the stories are not all the same. If we take the world of Salvation and compare and contrast the Commonwealth, we see two vastly different stories in societies that both rely on and revolve around wormhole technologies. Both stories also include issues with aliens, yet the societies are very different, so are the aliens, and the stories follow very different paths to totally different ends.

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  • Though some authors do take it too far. For example, I love Neal Asher's work, but the last few books in his Polity universe have felt like he's run out of new ideas when it comes to the themes of that particular universe. Having a lot of books based on the same themes is fine, but you do need to know when to stop and move on.
    – Simon Geard
    Commented Aug 4 at 22:26
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If I liked one of your books and I'm buying another to have a similar experience, I'll be disappointed if that other book is completely different.

Most bestselling authors write variations of the same basic idea over and over again, because that is how branding works.

Of course, what stays the same can be different aspects of an author's works. In one author it is the kinds of relationships, in another it is the type of protagonist, in the next it is the type of setting, or certain socio-political ideas.

The skill you need is to keep your novels both similar enough to build a consistent readership as well as different enough not to bore them.

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  • The important thing is to have enough twists during the story- not just on the final page- to keep the reader's attention.
    – Mark Morgan Lloyd
    Commented Aug 4 at 8:21
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Not necessarily bad. Many successful authors have recurring themes. The key is variation. Different AI roles, death explored in unique ways, and fresh plots can keep readers engaged. Focus on making each story unique, even with similar elements.

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