Quote:
Originally Posted by theducks
 to TW
MZB shared portions of her Darkover (both Published and Fandom)
Would Man Kzin count as shared? |
I'd say it does--Niven referred to the wars repeatedly but he only had a couple of stories in that period of his timeline before opening it up. Most of what we know from that period is from the contributors and it can stand alone from the rest of the Known Space stories. (Ditto for WAR WORLD and Pournelle's co-dominium.)
Darkover, on the other hand, reads fine and complete if you just stick to the MZB material so I find it hard to argue that the anthologies are essential.
My personal take is that to count as a shared universe, a series needs to depend extensively on contributors other than the creator. For example, the Grantville Saga is clearly a shared universe but the Honorverse isn't (yet).
Sound reasonable?