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Looking for fantasy/sci-fi universes written by multiple authors
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MorteTorment(Unofficial World's Fastest Reader) wrote: "I'm looking for fantasy series where there's a TON of books written in the same universe by multiple authors. Stuff like Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance Shadowrun, and Pathfinder.Please suggest bot..."
Hmmm perhaps checking out Brandon Sanderson's work. He writes a lot of his books in what is called the Cosmere which iirc is something like within the same universe. Either way, even if he doesn't end up fitting exactly what you seek, he's a great writer and worth a read. =)
As to where to start, I wish I could say. I'm not 100% sure honestly. My brother and I both started with The Stormlight Archives books(The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance) of which the third isn't out yet. However, my brother was still able to move onto the Mistborn trilogy without needing to wait for like the 3rd Stormlight Archives novel. And I'll be moving on to read them myself soon.
Thanks for Sanderson isn't for me.h, and here's a sneak peak of what I've got planned.
Decided to start off a fun little project, where I skim several chapters of books in series like Forgoten Realms, a fun series for so many people...who don't know any better, and talk about how much I appeciate...that I don't try to enjoy it unironically anymore.
As always with any series I don't like, if you enjoy it, then I'm happy that you can enjoy something i can't. Me, I feel like there's a lot better stuff out there.
Also, please don't take this too seriously, I'm mostly just attempting to riff some nostalgia of mine.
...
The forgotten Realms series is something that I've read so much of...and by so much I mean I read like 5 Drizz't books and a little bit of. I started off with the where Drizz'ts story began, wih the most original name in the history of trilogies: The Dark Elf Trilogy, and idea that I imagine took a whole 5 seconds for god ol' Bob to come up with, which according to Bob himself was about the time he came up with name Drizz't. Lovely...
Anyways, gonna read the book now, I'll edit this post later.
Alright, lets do this:
So we start off with an essay from Drizz't which is actually quite good. Within just 10 or so sentences we larn that that the Drow society that Drizz't gows up in runs by people literally backstabbing each other. It's very similar to how the sith in star wars are, only they do it to gain favor with their Chaotic Evil spider god LLoth, who actually lives underground with them from what I remember.
It's also mostly run by the females there. Ah Fantasy novels, so that's where the matriarchy is. Hey angry manchildren playing video games every waking second, I found it!
Oh, and almost all, if all females are clerics for their goddess. It's true, the church really is evil!
First chatper mstly consists of Drizz'ts father arriving home to stop him from being scaraficed to the spider god, and its pretty exciting. Because of Dinin, Drizz'ts brothers actions, it's stopped in the next chapter. Yeah, that's not easyo to get confused with another wierd sounding name, now is it?
Chapter 3 and 4 probably could have been combined into one chapter and cut by half. Padding, yay! Gotta make that book nice and thick!
We continue into chapter 5 by reminding angry manchildren to hate women. His caretaker forced him to kill things he doesn't want to.
In all seriousness, this is a really fucked up sociiety that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy, and it's pretty damn engaging too depite a little bit of padding Drizz't grief actually makes a lot of sense, and the first quarter of this book is actually quite good. Where does Drizz't fall apart? I honestly don't remember, so we'll have to find out together.
Have a look at the SHADOW CONSPIRACY series, several collections of short fiction set in a steampunky universe where George Gordon, Lord Byron, has figured out how to transfer souls and thus make himself immortal. And now he's going to Conquer the World!
Oooh boy! Streampunk? I really wanna read some good stuff there. Tell me, are there lots of airship battles?Edit: Wrote a second part. Gonna try being more serious with this one.
to the mods: if you don't want me to make any more of these, let me know and I'll edit these parts out.
As always with any series I don't like, if you enjoy it, then I'm happy that you can enjoy something i can't. In fact if you love the forgotten realm series, I envy you, because you're constantly given a ton of it a year, and I wish I could still be satisfied by it. Me, I feel like there's a lot better stuff out there that I'd rather read.
That said, I'm actually enjoying this book so far, and I'm gonna keep this part more serious and somewhat informative.
Homeland is set in 5 parts, each of which open with an essay from Drizzt, and from what I can remember, they're the best part of the trilogy. I admire how Salvatore delivers so much from half a page. I've taken influence from this with my P&P character sheet in games like D&D.
Anyways, this one talks about how Drizzt's childhood is as you'd expect, and how he had to deal with severe reverse-sexism. The poor guy.
Chapter 6 has probably my favorite part in the the Homeland. We learn why Drizzt uses two swords. He's extremely ambidexterous. He's asked to catch several tossed coins in in a specific hand, showing off his talent, and he catches them all, several times a row like it's nothing! I know you might say "Gary Stu!" To that I say "it's still pretty damn engaging!"
Chapter 7 this this fight with this drow Alton versus spiders, where a minor character almost ends up kamikazi-ing himself by dropping a fireball at his feet. How does he survive?
Chapter 8 is Zak training Drizzt and...it's not boring. I'm impressed. The most boring part of origin stories and it works! I remember dropping Red Sister because 10 chapters of training and it and showed no sign of stopping anytime. This time it was dare I say...fun!
Chapter 9 has Alton again getting assigned to spy on Drizzt, and be prepared to fight him when the time is right.
Chapter 10 we learn that Drizzt is Malice's final child, along with a few other interesting things that I can't recall.
Chapter 11: Final Chapter for part 2. Drizzt is reminded By Zak that he cannot ever lose a battle, for if he does, it is truly the end of him.
Well this was fun writing up. Hope someone got some joy out of this.
I would highly recommend the Kurtherian Gambit series by Michael Anderle. The main series is up to 19 books I believe with about 16 split off series, with a few single books thrown in here and there, I think there are around 90 books either released or soon to be.The first series starts off slow and you think it's going to be another vampire and werewolf series. Trust me, its not. Aliens, AI, Sci-Fi and intergalactic warfare will soon come. But first the main character has to build an army along with advanced weaponry (starts on modern day earth, but explaining how she builds highly advanced tech this will be a spoiler).
Eventually the split of series will include more options than purely Sci-Fi books, such as a more classical fantasy magic-spells books and post-apocalyptic books.
**Warning that all of these series include extensive swearing, some of the main characters often compete to see who can swear the most creatively. It gets a little old but the frequency dies off and is easy to skim over.
Another great universe to read (only by one author though) is the Blood Destiny series by Connie Suttle. Again, starts off with vampire and werewolves, but just like the Kurtherian Gambit series splits off to a Sci-fi series after a few books. Connie Suttle is honestly one of my favorite authors and I highly recomend her books. Where the Kurtherian Gambit series turns into a more classical Sci-Fi series, with lots of space battles and technology focus, the Blood Destiny series follows more specific characters and their magic/abilities/powers rather than technology based.
Connie's writing is beautiful, plenty of comedy, while maintaining a seriousness that lets you feel for the characters and experience their emotions. The only downside that some people don't like (which I don't mind) is that at some point all the men seriously fuck up, often out of overprotective masculinity/sexism, and hurt the main character at some point. Then the main character relies on herself, gets shit done, and does the right thing, regardless of how others treat her. So I guess its kinda sexist towards men at times, but its never obvious in any specific books, just the repeating trend of male mistakes.
Here are some classics: Although Larry Niven "created" the Man-Kzin Universe, there are many short fiction contributors to stories about the Man-Kzin wars. In one of my own books, a mutant cat praises these stories. :-)Anyway, lots of good reading here. I saw 14 books listed on Amazon!
r/Steve
You might want to look into George R. R. Martin's Wild Cards books. It's a shared universe series of anthologies and novels set in a world where an alien virus has mutated people into Aces (superhuman) Duces (people with minor or useless powers) or Jokers (people left deformed). It's boon going for years now.
Hi Michael,Thank you for resurrecting this thread.
I neglected to mention the Pournelle/Niven team and the Preston/Child team. The first has some tales that border on fantasy; the second has Relic in the Pendergast series (arguably the best in the series) that's also close to fantasy.
The border between fantasy and sci-fi is quite fuzzy. One I can recommend (not multiple authors, except for the son's contribution to making his father's series better known) is the Under the Stairs series by John Stockmyer--more of a Game of Thrones series.
I'll look into Wild Cards.
So many books...so little time to read them!
r/Steve
Orion's Arm has a lot of material from many different contributors. Hard sci-fi set thousands of years in the future with many imaginative technological and cultural developments involving megascale engineering, AI, genetic engineering, intelligence augmentation, etc.
Oldie but goodie would be the "Thieves' World" series created by Robert Lynn Aspirin. 12 short story anthologies in total I think for original series plus lots of spin offs by contributing authors. Aspirin created the shared world and had stories written by Poul Anderson, Lynn Abbey, Marion Zimmer Bradley, C.J. Cherryh, Joe Haldeman, David Drake, Raymond Feist and many others. Loved these books.
Please suggest both the series, and where to start within them.