I like short stories, and I like big plots. So, writing several short stories with an overarching meta-plot is always tempting, if somewhat indulgent. Fortunately, I’ve been allowed to indulge myself, and Downside Girls is the result. Most of the stories in this little collection tie into each other and they all link into Principles of Angels, the first Hidden Empire novel.
This weekend sees the release of the electronic version of Downside Girls (the print edition will be out in November, launching at Novacon where – did I mention this already? I think I might have – I’m the Guest of Honour) so I’m doing a giveaway of an electronic copy (or, if you’re UK based and prefer, an advance print copy) of Downside Girls.
For a chance to win, please use the comments below to tell me something about your favourite set of linked stories, or examples of an apparently stand-alone tale feeding into another. I’m not looking for recommendations of straightforward series here, but for examples of stealth plotting, of seeing tne story from a new perspective thanks to reading another.
Tell me all about it between now and 5pm GMT on Sunday the 23rd, at which point I’ll pick the recommendation that most tickles my fancy. If you prefer not to have to think hard then rely on my sense of whimsy just watch my Twitter feed over the next couple of days for a less taxing way to win the ebook of Downside Girls.
Well, the obvious choice is Accelerando by Charles Stross, 9 stories that whose characters are different generations of the same family as they experience the singularity. They can be read independently, but the experience is much better if you read them all.
I also read recently Looking for Jake and other stories, by China Miéville. There is no explicit connection among the stories, but the same themes show once and again and it is a clear case of a book that is much more than the sum of its parts.
And if you read Spanish, you definitely need to get a copy of El círculo de Jericó by César Mallorquí a wonderful fix-up of stories about such disparate topics as a writer and his deal with the devil or a house with doors to other dimensions.
Oh yes, the Accelerando set, I’d forgotten them. That’s one of those cases where the writer started playing and added to the story in bits. Good example.
I’ve not come across the other two; I have a Spanish friend who is a scholar of Spanish Gothic writing, so I’ll have to ask her about El círculo de Jericó
My pick would be From the Dust Returned by Ray Bradbury – these were stories published at different times, about the same spooky family, later collected in one volume – as with Accelerando, they’ve been arranged to be like novel chapters, but were originally all separate stories.
Ray Bradbury’s yet another writer I’ve not read enough of.
I loved reading Al Reynolds’ short story collection ‘Galactic North’, which collects together all his short stories set in the ‘Revelation Space’ universe. Reading those stories one after another made me recognise or understand lots of aspects of that universe that I hadn’t appreciated from the novels, and the different short stories illustrated each other as well as the longer works too. And they’re great fun!
I’ve read (and enjoyed) ‘Zima Blue’ but not ‘Galactic North’. I love that Al can write equally well in the long or short form (and I was well chuffed when he agreed to write me an intro).
I’m going to be totally unfair… but I gat this robo-cat that drives me nuts… it started out as a bit part in a novel I was writing, and C.A.T. being C.A.T. decided it would take over the novel. So we had to come to this agreement. It could have its own stories, if it would leave my novel alone.
Of C.A.T. liked the idea. So I started with a background story to it called Agents of Repair, which was published in Jupiter – which ended up with the destruction of Callisto…
But C.A.T. being C.A.T. developed further and now has a series of two e-books out courtesy on TWB Press. yes, there’s a third on the way, where it will develop further.
But then what else do you expect of a an illegal self-learner?
Not unfair at all. I totally understand how some characters escape from novels to do their own thing. Happens to me all the time.
I’m a sucker for shared world series where you have a whole bunch of different writers doing their own take on a central theme or in someone elses sand box. Probably comes from all the Dr Who I read as a kid. I’ve just read one anthology where a bunch of modern writers were let loose on Jack Vance’s Dying Earth and most of them slotted right in to the universe.
If I had to pick a single author series OTOH it would probably either be a Bradbury or a Simak but oh which one?
It hadn’t occurred to me before now, but perhaps Dr Who is where I originally got my love of shared world stuff, as the novelisations were my ‘gateway drug’ into the world of SF.
For me? Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos series – I know you said you weren’t looking for a straight series, but given the non-linear story, the revisions that later books show to earlier ones, the way that Brust changes his writing style each book dependent on the story? One of my absolute favourites.