shared world n.

The stories do not truly mesh into a single setting in the distinctive way necessary for Ithkar Fair to qualify as a shared world.

One way of getting around that has been the rise of ‘shared-world’ anthologies, where several writers join together to write stories using a single setting and sharing characters, which readers seem more inclined to pick up than other collections.

The idea was to make up a fictional city-state (Liavek) with its surrounding geography, technology, religions, laws of magic, and so on and so forth, and to persuade a variety of authors to submit stories laid there; compilations of this rather freakish kind are called shared-world anthologies.

Deal mortal blows to the brain by sending ‘shared world anthologies’ in which many writers set stories in the same fictional ‘universe’.

There you are: the first shared-world anthology conceived and written entirely by Nebula Award winners.

We have excluded very few sf authors who have solely written books tied to shared-world endeavours (like Star Wars or Star Trek).

He [sc. George R. R. Martin] also cites RPG as a collaborative creative experience which directly led to the anthology series Wild Cards (1987), in which different authors contributed stories set within a shared world.