AMC TV interviewed Jerry Pournelle about their new book, Escape From Hell (a sequel to Inferno).
The most interesting comment comes at the end of the interview:
Q: What's your next project with Larry going to be?
A: We're negotiating another one now. Probably the most lucrative thing we ever did was hit the Earth with a great big rock, so we may try that again.
I was never able to collect them all but I really got into Pournelle's CoDominium/Empire of Man stories. The Mote In God's Eye and The Gripping Hand are both set in that universe, which also includes the Falkenberg's Legion stories. I stopped buying the books when I realized Pournelle had opened up the universe to other authors.
The shared universe concept became very popular in the 1980s and lasted through the 1990s. Quite a few authors got into the concept but for me it diminished the value of the original author's art. Which is not to say I didn't appreciate all the great stories that other authors contributed to the shared universes -- it's just that each writer brings his or her own perspective to the imaginary timelines, altering social and chronological themes irretrievably.
Some good writers got their breaks in shared worlds. Some writers I feel couldn't put two sentences together with string and superglue managed to get into those universes, too. Pournelle's militaristic fiction was always sharp and compelling for me, even when he was collaborating with other writers. One of the few really well-done transitions in a shared universe, in my opinion, came when Pournelle let S.M. Stirling take over the Falkenberg/Empire of Man series.
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