Shared Universes: What are They and Why They Capture Our Hearts

When I was starting my indie author journey, one of the first pieces of advice I read said to write a series. Writing a standalone novel or two is a huge no-no, at least in genre fiction. Why? Well, readers, especially of the speculative fiction variety, love to get lost in a world. And while you can manage to do that over the course of a single novel, depending on how engrossing it is, it’s much easier to get sucked in over the course of several novels. Who doesn’t love finding an author they adore and then spending months catching up on all their various works? Better still, if those works are related.

Simple enough advice to be sure, but it wasn’t something I was willing to do. This wasn’t me just being a contrarian, although I can be. See, I have a grand plan that consists of 16 novels, and many more short stories, but these are by no means a typical series. They are something else, something called a shared universe.

What are Shared Universes?

Shared universes are everywhere in fiction. They were the OG franchise. To give a proper definition, shared universes are a fictional world or universe that encompasses multiple separate works of fiction. These works can be created by one or more people and even be represented in multiple media (e.g., novels, movies, video games). The possibilities are endless.

Shared universes were first popularized in comics. Think DC and Marvel and all the interconnectedness of their various stories and arcs. Still, shared universes aren’t specific to science fiction, although they are most commonly used in that genre. The sitcoms Cheers and Frasier are excellent examples of the format being used in non-speculative settings. The main requirement for a shared universe is that the stories that make it up are set in the same general world.

Differences From a Standard Series

You might be starting to scratch your head and wonder how this differs from a series. In my mind, the main difference tends to come down to the characters. Stories in a series tend to follow the same cast. Maybe the lead is slightly different, but the narrative tends to track a specific set of characters with an overall arc both in terms of the plot itself and the characters’ personal developments. In contrast, stories in a shared universe don’t even have to have any character crossover at all. On the other side, although the characters don’t have to be the same, there is no rule that they can’t be. Cameos are a common feature in shared universes. Often, major characters in one story become minor ones in another and vice versa.

Examples of Shared Universes

Sometimes, it helps to explain by example, so let’s pull three different shared universes in three different media. For movies and TV, we have the well-known (but overdone) Marvel Cinematic Universe. The MCU has been around since 2007 and has spawned 38 movies. We get crossover galore and instances of stories building directly off previous ones. For video games, we have the Remedy Connected Universe which consists of the Alan Wake games and Control, one of my own personal favorites. These are a better example of more loosely connected stories. The link between Control and Alan Wake is tenuous and only really confirmed in an optional DLC of Control. To me, its subtlety somehow makes it all the more satisfying.

Now, let’s talk about novels because that’s where my heart really lies, for obvious reasons. One of my absolute favorite shared universes is the Hainish Cycle by Ursula Le Guin. I haven’t read all of the novels involved in it, but I’ve read five to date, some multiple times. Without going too much into spoiler territory, all of Le Guin’s Hainish novels essentially deal with highly intelligent lifeforms (HILFs) on various planets. These HILFs are either members of technologically advanced societies or members of less advanced peoples. Most of her stories read like Dying Earth tales with flavors of what feel like fantasy but is actually just technology that people no longer understand. The beauty of Le Guin’s Hainish novels is that they, like the Remedy Connected Universe, are only loosely connected, so that when you read multiple of her works and start to see the links forming, you feel as though you earned a pat on the back for being oh-so-clever. What reader doesn’t love that feeling?

When Shared Universes Work

My previous sentiment hints a bit at the value of shared universes, but let’s dig a bit into the strengths of this storytelling technique. One of the major benefits of using a shared universe is that it allows a creator to enrich the world-building without having to reinvent the wheel each and every time. For science fiction, the technology and history of the world can be used yet again. For fantasy, a magic system can be recycled. This goes a long way towards saving the creator time and effort in shaping their story.

But the world-building isn’t the only thing that benefits from a shared universe. As I mentioned, characters can be reused, and when a minor character is later given major-character treatment, it does something subtle but powerful. It makes the world feel more lived in. A throw-away guard in one story could come back to be the hero of another. Relatedly, if an author is writing in a shared universe, they can respond in real time to their readers. Fan favorites often catch authors by surprise. What better way to reward loyal readers than by listening to their preferences and giving more page-time to a character they’ve fallen in love with? The shared universe format is especially amenable to this kind of interactive storytelling.

When Shared Universes Fail

Unfortunately, every technique has its drawbacks, and the shared universe format is no exception. To make an exceptional shared universe, the creator has to be a stellar note-taker or else have an eerie recall ability. Plot holes and inconsistencies are hard enough to avoid in one standalone story. Now, imagine doing the same for a sweeping series of stories that aren’t directly related but share the same setting and histories. Even Le Guin lamented this pitfall of shared universes. She told her readers not to dig too deeply into the lore of her stories because they were bound to be confused by what they found. She admitted to not having planned the Hainish Cycle out ahead of time, but even for authors who do go into creating a shared universe with a plan, mistakes are bound to happen.

Avoiding inconsistencies is one thing, but what about when a shared universe just flops? Let’s return to my current punching bag, the MCU. We all loved it at first. How cool to have cameos of big-name actors showing up in other movies? Even better to have a whole cast of them together in the culmination of many movies. But then the novelty fades, and yet the movies keep coming and coming. So what happened with the MCU? Why has it seemingly overstayed its welcome when the source material is so vast and rich? My guess would be the intent. Why is the shared universe still going, and, more importantly, where is it going? There’s seemingly no end in sight because it isn’t just about telling a story anymore. It’s about money, pure and simple, and nothing causes creative works to go stale faster than a cash grab.

My Stab at a Shared Universe

You can probably understand now why I was so drawn to making a shared universe of my own, but in all honesty, this wasn’t a conscious decision. It just kind of happened. At first, I saw a way to write a couple of novels. Then, I pictured ways in which disparate stories could be linked. I don’t want to say too much to avoid any potential spoilers of current novels or those to come, but the name of my shared universe provides clues in and of itself—the Alfom Shared Universe.

I introduce the alfom in my debut novel, Nytho. Alfom is short for the “alpha and the omega” and is the name a group of AI activists-turned-cultists give to the sentient AI that they worship. The alfom are the nine(ish) artificial general intelligences at the heart of Nytho. I won’t go into what happens to them, but I will state some of their names and other stories they appear in. You’ll just have to read them to uncover the connections for yourself!