A writing challenge for SciFi authors.

[bizzybody]

You all know about shared worlds/universes, may even have written in one, but do you know what was the first in SF, or at least one of the first?

The world of Mesklin and the Mesklinites as they appeared in "Mission of Gravity", "Star Light" and some short stories that include "Under" and "Lecture Demonstration". I haven't found any other stories with the Mesklinites, those two plus the two novels were released in an omnibus titled "Heavy Planet" in 2002.

In "Whirligig World", Hal Clement stated he gave "official permission to anyone who so desires to lay scenes there [in Mesklin]. I ask only that he maintain reasonable scientific standards, and that's certainly an elastic requirement in the field of science fiction."

That was before the publication of "Star Light", but far as I know there have been no 3rd party tales in that universe.

I'd assume the offer could at least be extended to the other known world where Mesklinites went, the planet Drahwn in "Star Light".

Something that would help a lot in this is to locate the "globe" (actually a very oblate spheroid) of Mesklin that Hal Clement made and draw up maps from it.

There's no map or globe of Drahwn, given the nature of its volatile geography that would be pretty much impossible.

The title "Star Light" is a pun based on Drahwn being a planet that was almost but not quite massive enough to light up as a star so the elements collected formed into a huge amount of ice and other stuff. Unfortunately for us Hal Clement fans he never got back there to explain how it happened to have a high oxygen atmosphere and what Barlennan and his crew of Mesklinites were planning for colonizing a world with an atmosphere highly toxic to their species.

Hal Clement wrote other tales set on very strange planets, usually with gravity far too strong for humans to withstand and some very odd environments. Were he alive I bet he'd love all the reports of supermassive "terrestrial" planets that have been discovered.