Shared Worlds

Howdy you Terrific All-Stars!

I trust that you are all striving against calamity, overcoming odds, battling the hum-drummery  and ho-hummery of mundane life, and possibly even yanking defeat from the very jaws of victory!  ...Wait, that last one doesn't sound quite right.  *shrug*  Well, you know what I mean!

Today I'm going babble incoherently about my general appreciation for the concept of Shared Worlds in various forms of fiction.  So down your Tankards of Ale or Stout because here we go!

First of all, you know what a Shared Worlds is, right?  Of course you do!  That's when multiple books, movies, TV shows, etc all take place in the same world.  Comics is a great example of this, as both Marvel and DC do this.  And things that happen in one comic book series could have some effect on the others.  So, theoretically, if somebody knocked over the Statue of Liberty in a Spider-Man comic book, it would also be knocked over in Daredevil or Fantastic Four.  Or, when Gotham City gets quarantined and declared a massive disaster area/war zone, they hear about it in Metropolis, Star City, and Bludhaven.  This Shared World is what makes all those Infinite Crises and Secret Wars crossovers possible.

This happens on TV, too, though not always to such an esoteric extent.  I remember a night back in the 90's when all four sitcoms that took place in New York suffered from a blackout.  It started off in Mad About You, ran through Friends...and went into the other two shows, whatever they were.  Which suggests they all exist in the same version of New York.

Perhaps a better example would be the various Star Trek series.  Of course, they started off with The Next Generation, but then they started Deep Space Nine, and the two shows ran concurrently.  Various major and minor characters crossed over between the shows, and they shared a mythology that included encountering the (some of) the same alien races and mentioning events and worlds.  And then they started Voyager, but they were harder to connect to the other series, as they had inadvertently ended up in some unknown part of the galaxy, but connections were made anyway.

It feels somehow wrong to admit that my first discovery of the Shared World concept did not actually come from comic books.  I mean, I was vaguely aware that all the comics were connected to one another, but I wasn't really into comics until my mid-teens.  
In my early teens I had discovered Dungeons and Dragons, and the fantasy genre in general consumed me.  I'd read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings and the Dragonlance Chronicles.  I'd seen the two Conan movies and Red Sonja.  But then, I had discovered Thieves' World...

The book was titled Santuary, it was the first three Thieves' World books gathered together into one convenient volume and it came from the Science Fiction Book Club.  Either the Foreword or the Afterword explained the concept:  What if Conan, Fafhrd and Mouser, Elric, and other fantasy heroes all lived in the same world, so they could meet and interact with one another?

Of course, they couldn't use such copyrighted characters, but they invited several writers to invent a bunch of great characters who did live in the same world, and could interact together.  Forming alliances and rivalries, and generally affecting one another's lives.

And although anthology books at the time were generally unsuccessful, Thieves' World enjoyed an unprecedented popularity that allowed the series to continue for several volumes, a spinoff, and an attempted reboot.

I think it was due to this success, that a similar series project was launched, this time a science fiction series known as The Fleet.  I must admit I only ever found one volume of this series, and I don't even remember if I ever read it.  But I understand there are six books in the series, so they must have enjoyed some success, too!

This is especially prevalent in IPs that have an "expanded universe".  Properties like Star Wars, every campaign world published for Dungeons and Dragons, World of Warcraft, and several others feature adventures of various characters who seem to be connected only by the fact that they live in the same world, and theoretically have some affect on the world they live in, and consequently on one another's lives.

Some more visual examples include the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where all the characters have their own individual adventures and become aware of one another as they meet up and become friends, enemies, or reluctant allies.  There is a lot of crossover on the the TV shows based on DC comics like Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, and Legends of Tomorrow.  

Perhaps my own, personal favorite, Star Wars:  The Clone Wars.  Sure, there are a regular and recurring cast of characters, but they splinter off into different groups and have their own adventures.  I totally dig the way they handled their Shared World! 

Anyway, the short version is that works such as these have make some impact upon me, and some of the series I'm currently developing.  What Shared Worlds do you like?  Leave a comment and let me know!  And don't forget to tune in Saturday for the latest installment of Serial Saturdays!

Until then, I wish you all...

Good Adventuring!
Timothy A. Sayell

Getting Down With It! Part Two

Greetings Fellow Explorers!

So, no doubt you've tuned in this week to find out who the other character is that died and upset me.  Well, I won't prolong the torture any more than I already have.  Here we go!

It was a Star Wars book, a collection of short stories called Tales From the Mos Eisley Cantina and it was edited by Kevin J. Anderson.  Now in case you don't know, this story is a collection of stories, each story is about a different person who happened to be in the cantina during the famous scene in the first Star Wars movie, the one nowadays called Episode Four:  A New Hope.


So There's A Story about the bartender.  There's A Story about the two thugs who bother Luke and Ben cuts them up with the lightsaber.   There's A Story about Greedo, the bounty hunter that gets shot by Han Solo. 

In the movie, when Han shoots Greedo they cut to various patrons to see their reaction.  In one of these reaction shots there is a Jawa (like the ones that sold the droids to Luke and his Uncle) sitting at a table with a little rat-alien thing.  This Jawa has a story in the book, and his name is Het N'Kik.

So apparently all the Jawas were supposed to get together and have a convention, see...I think they were calling it a swap meet.  Anyway, Het N'Kik's girlfriend was among the group that sold the droids to Luke and his Uncle, and was also killed by the Imperial Stormtroopers.  Het N'Kik found this out and declared war on the Empire single-handed!  Omg, he was like the Bruce Willis of Jawas!

So he gets a BFG (the "B" stands for "big", the "G" stands for "gun", I leave the "F" to your imagination) and goes off looking for Stormtroopers to kill.  He stops in at the cantina, gets stuck sitting with the little rat-guy.  So after Obi-Wan slices up the thugs with his lightsaber, the cops, I mean, Stormtroopers show up to look around and do absolutely nothing.  Het N'Kik follows them when they leave.  He jumps out at them from around a corner...AND THAT'S THE END OF HIS STORY!!!  Like what heck!? 

But wait there's more!
The next story is about the little rat-alien that was sitting with Het N'Kik.  He is a Ranat and his name is something like Reegesk.  While sitting with Het N'Kik, he dupes the trusting and distracted little Jawa into letting him look at the gun.  When he does, he takes the batteries out!  

At this point, you're like "What the Hell?!?!  At the end of his story, Het N'Kik jumps out of the alley and starts shooting at the Stormtroopers!  Now the book says his gun had no battery!" 

And it's true, the end of Het N'Kik's story said he kept pulling the trigger, it never said that he fired a shot.  So what the heck happened?

But wait, there's still more!
The next story is about one of the Stormtroopers who came into the cantina.  He was a disgraced AT-AT driver who dropped his AT-AT onto its front knees so somebody couldn't wrap a cable around the legs.  This was against regs so he got busted and sent to Tatooine to look for droids carrying Death Star plans.

He and his Captain (the trooper with the fancy orange pauldron) reported to the disturbance at the cantina, did nothing, and left.  They didn't realize they were followed by Het N'Kik.  Suddenly and without warning this "crazy Jawa" jumped out of an alley and started shooting at them!  Except...he didn't!  The Jawa's gun didn't fire!

So the Captain sneered, says something that basically equated Jawas to rats, and killed Het N'Kik dead with one shot!  It's, like, the only time a Stormtrooper hit what he was aiming for in all of Star Wars history!  Holy crap!  Just like that Het N'Kik was dead!  He was the coolest Jawa in the galaxy, the very Bruce Willis of Jawas and this dipstick Stormtrooper killed him like that!

This was a Thoroughly Antagonizing Situation!  Boy, was I ticked off!  In fact, I'm getting ticked off just thinking about it!

You know what?  I don't really know WHY Het N'Kik's death or Goldmoon's death got under my skin like that.  I guess that says something about the writing...but I'm not sure what.  

What about you?  Did you get mad when some character in the story you were reading got killed?  If so, who was the character and what story were they in?  Please, leave a comment down below, I think it would be interesting to hear about it!

Well, I guess that's all for now, my fine friends!  Until next time I bid you:

Good Adventuring!
Timothy A. Sayell