or a period of 10 years, from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, the sci-fi prose world was flooded with books called "shared world anthologies." Thieves' World, Wild Cards, Liavek, The Fleet, Robot City, Witch World, etc. Typically, each shared world began with a concept by a single writer or team which was circulated to a dozen or more different writers, who would then write short stories or novelettes.
(An anthology, for those of you who are asking, is a book of short stories by different writers, as opposed to a collection, which is a book of stories by the same writer. Clear?)
Some of these series were very successful, running to 20 volumes, and spinning off stand-alone novels, games and whatnot.
Much like television series. (In fact, I said at the time, writing for a shared world anthology is like writing for television, but for much less money.)
And while the boom in shared world anthologies—like the boom in sci-fi books in general—has faded, the idea of several writers with different skills and sensibilities teaming up to populate and furnish a futuristic or fantastic world is not only valid, it is the best way to create sci-fi.
Look at Star Trek.
Roddenberry's writing recruits
When Gene Roddenberry sold the original Star Trek series to NBC, he immediately sent out a call for other writers, especially those with experience writing sci-fi, preferably, but not exclusively, those who had some familiarity with film or television, among them Harlan Ellison (Outer Limits), Richard Matheson (Twilight Zone), Robert Bloch (Alfred Hitchcock) and Jerome Bixby (Fantastic Voyage).
Roddenberry also opened the doors to sci-fi writers whose work in television was limited, such as Theodore Sturgeon, or essentially nonexistent, like Philip Jose Farmer and A.E. van Vogt.
Working with Roddenberry himself, and his talented staff (which included Gene Coon, John D.F. Black and D.C. Fontana), this diverse group of talents mined their own obsessions and interests to energize what has become the most successful shared future world in entertainment history. Look at the bazillions of television series sequels, the feature films, the spinoff novels.
Not all of these writer experiments were successful, of course. But to give you one tiny example of what one contributed to Roddenberry's original vision: the idea that Vulcans mate once every seven years.
That concept first appeared in a Theodore Sturgeon script, and reverberated throughout the entire Trek universe, rearranging character histories and relationships.
Of course, in the mid-1960s, a television season was 39 episodes, and a writing staff consisted of perhaps three people: the executive producer (what would now be called the "show runner"), another producer who had writing duties and a story editor—a member of the staff whose job it was to listen to pitches from freelance writers and shepherd them through the writing process.
Nowadays, a writing staff is twice the size, the orders are a dozen scripts, with a possible "back nine," and story editor is a title given to a staff writer. There is less time to write prior to production, and production itself is substantially more challenging.
I'm not complaining about the system, which evolved for very sound practical and economic reasons. Even in these circumstances, a series benefits from a variety of viewpoints. Another case in point: While X-Files was largely the creation of Chris Carter, it was the contributions of the teams of Glen Morgan and James Wong, and Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon—all strong-willed, experienced writers with their own ideas—that helped make X-Files the second most successful shared world in television.
I've seen it myself, as a member of the writing staff for several sci-fi or fantasy series, and a freelancer for several others.
Better a CEO than an emperor
It is challenging enough for a single writer to successfully envision and populate a "mundane" setting, whether we're talking about a coroner's office in Philadelphia or a hospital emergency room in Chicago.
I'd say it's impossible for a single writer to fully envision a future world.
I can already hear the objections. If these shared world anthologies are so rich and vibrant, why haven't any of them made the transition to the screen? I'm thinking of Wild Cards in particular, and not just because I contributed to it. It's an alternate history of the United States in which an alien virus struck in 1946, creating a generation of "aces" and "jokers," humans with super powers and super deformities. In a feature film world that includes X-Men and Spider-Man, this should be a slam dunk.
Alas, according to a precise mathematical formula I just developed, it generally takes a concept at least 40 years to make the transition from other media to screen. So we can't expect to see Liavek or Thieves' World or, yes, Wild Cards on our plasma direct-neural input screens until around 2025.
A better counterexample is J. Michael Straczynski, who conceived and largely wrote the acclaimed Babylon 5. But Joe spent years developing Babylon 5, its background, its characters and their relationships, and its multi-year story arc, long before the first frame of film was exposed. He was able to rethink and revisit his own world—essentially becoming his own occasional "outside voice." And Joe has acknowledged the important contributions of Harlan Ellison, who served as a creative consultant throughout the run of the series.
If you want to see what happens when you go it alone, look at Star Wars. This is another shared world, of course, with the feature films giving birth to dozens of novels, a couple of animated series and other spinoffs. But, unlike Star Trek, the work of other writers—other minds—never seems to affect George Lucas' core product.
To its detriment, I think. For all its technical virtuosity, Phantom Menace was boring and sterile; Attack of the Clones is an improvement, but only barely. Suppose Lucas had allowed some other talents to help with this "prequel" trilogy? And what about the trilogy that logically follows Return of the Jedi: Lucas is one man, and he admits he won't have the time and energy to do the project at all.
Writers are strange, and sci-fi writers are stranger than most writers. Why create a whole world if you can't control it? Who wants to be chief operating officer when he can be emperor?
Well, empires rise and fall. Corporations—creative worlds that are truly shared—seem to go on forever. It's a lesson I'll try to keep in mind, if I ever launch my own series.
Michael Cassutt is currently writing scripts for 20th Television and for Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, as well as a new novel for Forge Books. His sci-fi novelette, "More Adventures on Other Planets," has just been reprinted in The Year's Best Science Fiction: 19th Annual Collection (St. Martin's Press, 2002).
