""To be continued... "" Whether these words fall at a season-ending episode of Star Trek or a TV commercial flirtation between coffee-loving neighbors, true fans find them impossible to resist. Ever since the 1830's, when Charles Dickens's Pickwick Papers enticed a mass market for fiction, the serial has been a popular means of snaring avid audiences. Jennifer Hayward establishes serial fiction as a distinct genre -- one defined by the activities of its audience rather than by the formal qualities of the text. Ranging from installment novels, mysteries, and detective fiction of the 1800's.