Need book recommendation: short stories or serials

[Vance]

Hello all!

I am looking for some recommendations for collections of short stories series or serials. Not anthologies or collections of random short stories, but ones set in the same world, same characters, etc. Either in a serial format or entirely unconnected plots. I think I remember there being a Thieves World collection of stories, but I may be mistaken. Maybe the Grey Mouser(sp?) stuff? Or something akin to the Star Trek books, but in short story format. Something that evokes a familiarity of place and people, but doing new things each time. I think there may have also been a series of Earthsea short stories, but I am not sure they followed the same characters. More like Sherlock Holmes . . .

Does that rambling make any sense?

Thanks for any thoughts!

 

[HardScienceFan]

jack Vance Tschai planet of adventure,the Star Kings series,the Magnus Ridolph series
Poul Anderson's
Wing Alak series
Trader team series
Nicholas van Rijn Series
Asimov's Powell and Donovan series
Hal Clement's Mesklin cycle

Mark Phillips
Randall Garrett
Heinlein's Past through Tomorrow
Brin's Uplift serieset many cetera

 

[iansales]

Wild Cards series, edited by George RR Martin - 17 books at the last count. Merovingen Nights, created by CJ Cherryh - 7 books. There was indeed a Thieves' World series- see here. Also, not exactly short story collections but a series of short novels (typically around 45k words each), there's EC Tubb's Dumarest series. More recently, there's the Worlds of Honor series, set in the Honorverse.

 

[Quokka]

Thanks for the tip HSF, I quite enjoyed Clement's Mission of Gravity and didnt realise there was a sequel and related short stories/ essays. Will have to see if I can get a hold of Heavy Planet: The Classic Mesklin Stories

 

[GOLLUM]

Well several of the Masterwork series have stories set in the same world. Fritz Leiber's Fahrd and the Grey Mouser and the 2 volumes of Howard's Conan in addition to M John Harrison's brilliant Viriconium being cases in point.

Plenty more I could recommend but these would be a good start.

 

[Who's Wee Dug]

Also M.Moorcock's Elric series White Wolf was the publisher.

 

[iansales]

Also M.Moorcock's Elric series White Wolf was the publisher.

Not originally. Many of the stories were first published in magazines, and the books were published by a variety of publishers - although the 1970s DAW paperbacks are generally considered the first systematic attempt to order them chronologically.

Moorcock also wrote many other series, both fantasy - Hawkmoon, Corum, for example - and sf - Warriors of Mars, Oswald Bastable, Dancers at the End of Time...

 

[owl]

Niel Gaiman does good short stories, look at smoke and mirrors.
Also the Newford collections by Charles de Lint are fantastic

 

[Vance]

Thanks guys, those are some great recommendations! Now I will have to sift through them all and crank up my Amazon ordering skills!

 

[sassy1]

I like Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series - and the books are all quite short and I can finish one in a day hehe

 

[Who's Wee Dug]

Not originally. Many of the stories were first published in magazines, and the books were published by a variety of publishers - although the 1970s DAW paperbacks are generally considered the first systematic attempt to order them chronologically.

Moorcock also wrote many other series, both fantasy - Hawkmoon, Corum, for example - and sf - Warriors of Mars, Oswald Bastable, Dancers at the End of Time...

I know,I have more books in my collection by MM than any other single author, I think you have missed the point there,the book I am referring to was originally published by White Wolf as they were all new shorts, Title was Pawn of Chaos:Tales of the Eternal Champion, Edt.by Edward E.Kramer in 1996, intro and one short story by Moorcock the rest is a mixture of UK and USA authors and to my knowledge it has not been published by a anyone else,but I stand to be corrected if it has.

It was listed as the 2nd.original Eternal Champion anthology the first being ELRIC:Tales of the White Wolf Published in 1994.

 

[iansales]

I know,I have more books in my collection by MM than any other single author, I think you have missed the point there,the book I am referring to was originally published by White Wolf as they were all new shorts, Title was Pawn of Chaos:Tales of the Eternal Champion, Edt.by Edward E.Kramer in 1996...

Well, perhaps a little more information would have prevented misunderstanding

Your mention of the share-cropped Elric book reminds me of The New Nature of the Catastrophe, all-new stories of Jerry Cornelius by other hands, edited by Michael Moorcock and Langdon Jones.

 

[Who's Wee Dug]

Well, perhaps a little more information would have prevented misunderstanding

Your mention of the share-cropped Elric book reminds me of The New Nature of the Catastrophe, all-new stories of Jerry Cornelius by other hands, edited by Michael Moorcock and Langdon Jones.

I was posting in my lunch break and did not have the info to hand and webmail is not permitted due to they can't track you so well and virus fears.

 

[j d worthington]

Another by Moorcock that is related and is a book of shorter tales is Fabulous Harbours, the middle volume of the "Second Ether" trilogy, the first being Blood and the final volume being The War Amongst the Angels.

I would be tempted to name the Pusadian tales by L. Sprague de Camp, but I'm not sure when they were last all gathered together; the first collection was The Tritonian Ring and Other Pusadian Tales:

The Tritonian Ring and Other Pusadian Tales - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

but there were other stories added later.... There's also The Complete Compleat Enchanter, by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt, which has been added to by two other volumes of stories by de Camp and other writers:

Harold Shea (fictional series) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And some of Andre Norton's Witch World books are collections, notably Lore of the Witch World and Spell of the Witch World. There were also 4 volumes of Witch World stories by other writers (including a story by Norton): Tales of the Witch World 1-3 and Four from the Witch World.

Several of Lord Dunsany's collections are closely allied, especially the first three: The Gods of Pegāna, Time and the Gods, and The Sword of Welleran, have a lot of links -- and all the Pegāna stories have been gathered together into The Complete Pegāna.

C. L. Moore's Jirel of Joiry stories and her Northwest Smith tales were all collected into an omnibus collection in the Fantasy Masterworks series: Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams.

For sf, there's The Complete Venus Equilateral, by George O. Smith. Heinlein's Future History has been mentioned above, as have Asimov's Powell & Donovan stories; the majority of his robot tales (including these and the ones with Susan Calvin -- with, I think, one exception) can be found in The Complete Robot. (This does not, of course, include the Lije Bailey & R. Daneel Olivaw novels.)

If you don't mind quite early sf, there's Neil R. Jones' 5-volume series of books about Professor Jameson and the Zoromes: The Planet of the Double Sun, The Sunless World, Space War, Twin Worlds, and Doomsday on Ajiat, and Laurence Manning's The Man Who Awoke, a series of short stories later published as a novel. (Speaking of which: does anyone know if they ever collected together all the Tumithak stories by Charles R. Tanner?)

And there's Cordwainer Smith's The Instrumentality of Mankind, comprised of The Rediscovery of Man and the novel Norstrilia, as well as Larry Niven's "Known Space" series, comprised of several collections and a handful of novels: Tales of Known Space, Neutron Star, The Long ARM of Gil Hamilton, The Shape of Space (one story in the collection from this series), Crashlander, Flatlander, The World of Ptavvs, Protector, A Gift from Earth, Ringworld, The Ringworld Engineers, The Ringworld Throne, and Ringworld's Children, as well as the various Man-Kzin Wars volumes by Niven and others. (Flatlander collects The Long ARM plus one extra story of Gil Hamilton.)

 

[iansales]

If you don't mind quite early sf, there's Neil R. Jones' 5-volume series of books about Professor Jameson and the Zoromes: The Planet of the Double Sun, The Sunless World, Space War, Twin Worlds, and Doomsday on Ajiat...

But they're complete turkeys!

 

[The_Dragon]

I recomend that you read "Eragon". I liked it very much, and it is easy to read

 

[Vance]

JD, thanks for those wonderful recommendations, as well as all the others from you guys. I have a lot to work with now! I especially like Moorcock, so that may be where I look first, but there are a number of other very interesting suggestions!

 

[j d worthington]

But they're complete turkeys!

LOL! I won't argue with that one, Ian... though I quite enjoyed them because of their very wonkiness... they're like very primitive, early film, and have a weird sort of charm completely devoid of literary excellence. Hence my qualification, as that is true of a lot of very early sf. I offer them, however, as meeting the poster's criteria and, frankly, because I've been surprised at the number of people who have read and enjoyed the things, so that I keep running into references to them by people who have a great affection for them. So.....