Big Science Fiction OR Fantasy Worlds in Literature

Hey folks,

I have recently “discovered” fantasy fiction, of which I was not familiar with nor a fan.

However, once you find a good work, almost any genre can be quite good. In any case, I would like to get straight to the point of this thread:

Aside from classic works (Dune, Lord of the Rings, etc.), which more-or-less, contemporary fantasy OR science fiction work would you say is the biggest in terms of the world that is being described?

I would be interested in any suggestion, that is, even if the novels mentioned are not science fiction or fantasy per se, that is based on a large, elaborate world, featuring many cities and characters, etc.

I purposefully leave the question somewhat ambiguous, so as to get a few suggestions, or tips.

Thanks!

I’m not sure what you mean by “biggest,” but the Ringworld has the most habitable surface area.

Iain BanksShell Worlds are pretty damn big. Totally different habitats and species between levels.

How about Marvel and DC? Their worlds are so big they’ve had to expand to the multiverse.

Not true. Dyson Spheres typically have a larger area – they just need magical physics (beyond the super-strong scrith needed for Ringworld) in order to keep everyone on the ground.

The problem is, habitable Dyson spheres (as opposed to those that simply collect all the solar output) are too damned big. as Bob Shaw observed at the end of his Dyson Sphere novel, Orbitsville, they’re civilization-killers. Scarcity doesn’t exist, and it takes forever to fully populate one. It didn’t stop him from writing a sequel, though (Orbitsville Departure). Dyson spheres show up occasionally in SF (there’s a Dyson Sphere Star Trek novel, and one showed up in the Next Generation Tv series. James P. Hogan’s “Giants” emigrated to another star and buylt a Dyson sphere around it), but they’re rarely the vfocus of the story (as the Ringworld, for instance, is) – people just don’t seem to know what to do with them.

I hate to be Captain Obvious, but if you want a ton of cities and characters*, there is always “A Song of Ice and Fire”, the books that HBO’s “Game of Thrones” is based on.

The universe in which the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series takes place is pretty darned big, at least according to the Guide itself:

Am I really the first to mention Pratchett’s Discworld?

If you mean (as I think you do) extremely detailed and conceptualized worlds originally imagined and described by one author (unlike, say, George Lucas’ Star Wars universe, which always did have an army of artists workin g on aspects of it), then the big players have already been mentioned.

I’m awed by the detail that has gone into J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth. I’m possibly more awed by George R. R., Martin’s world for Song of Ice and Fire, because he didn’t work on it for as long. You can get lost for days in his appendices to those books. Frank Herberts Dune series has quite a bit of detail (now added to by others), as noted. A few others:

Larry Niven’s “Known Universe”. It grew up through the decades, with more details added. For the past quarter of a century, other authors have been adding to it viua the “Man-Kzin Wars” series

Cordwainer Smith’s “Rediscovery of Man” future – awesomely weird.

Robert Heinlein’s “Future History” series

Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian Age, along with his various other fictional milieus

Clark Ashton Smith’s various wsorlds – Poseidonis, Hyperborea, Xothiqie, Xiccarph, and Averoigne

Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom/Mars, Pellucidar, Venus, and the Africa of Tarzan

The connected universe of H. P. Lovecraft

Most of these latter, while extensive, were gradually revealed through stories, and you get the sense that the details were chosen simply for interesting story points. Tolkien’s and Martin’s worlds (and Herbert’s Dune, for the most part)seem to have been imagined as cohesive, working, whole units from the get-go, with many aspects conceived in detail with an eye to imagining a fully functioning world.

The world of the Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson (and the companion series Malazan Empire by Ian Esslemont) is pretty damn big. Fifteen GIANT volumes, with hundreds of characters and plots and subplots and subsubplots and gods and almost-gods and regular people all mixed up together.

I’m not sure what the individual books are but the one collection was “Tales from the Vulgar Unicorn” - Thieves World series? Since different authors contributed you get a real sense of reality on a totally made up world/society.

The Xanth series by Piers Anthony is pretty good as well and it seems to be up to like 40 books.

Unfortunately, 30 of those are either chock full of horrible puns or chock full of creepiness or both. If you do check out Xanth, I would suggest going no farther than Dragon On A Pedestal (which is the last book that Anthony didn’t completely just give over to his juvenile (a physical description, not an insult) fans and their mailed-in puns). The real pedophilical creepiness doesn’t come in until another couple of books later. Dragon On A Pedestal was what really drew me into fantasy fiction, and it kept me going on Xanth until far later than the place I should have stopped. I think at least four Xanth books have come out now that I just never cared to go find. It just finally got that bad.

Besides, Xanth (the place) isn’t really BIG in the physical sense of the word. It’s really no bigger than Florida.

You might like Lord Valentine’s Castle by Robert Silverberg which takes place on a planet significantly larger than Earth, and features a large population of humans, several species of nonhuman intelligences, and an unusual governmental structure. There are several sequels.

In terms of a large number of characters, I’d recommend Julian May’s Saga of Pliocene Exile, beginning with The Many-Colored Land.

In a kinda way it is Florida; just different.

I haven’t gone much past about book 25 so I can’t say for sure but I didn’t get the same kind of creepiness you did. Clearly a couple of the books were written for/to the one actual real girl but I never caught what I would consider a bad vibe. I think what you caught was more that whole “Adult Conspiracy” plot just feeling its limits.

The puns did get a bit much and forced through say books 7 to 14 or so but they struck me more as funny in a “groan-er” sense.

Quite good, too! They’re remarkably thoughtful (okay, yes, that sometimes means a bit slow-moving) and the world-building concepts are quite deep. (Literally, where the Pontifex lives in an underground city.) The first book, Lord Valentine’s Castle, is a “travelogue” of the world, a novel of exploration, and quite inspiring.

I’ve heard it said that Silverberg was inspired by Jack Vance’s “Big World,” which is definitely a lesser work (lesser than Silverberg’s, and lesser than most Vance.)

David Eddison’s Belgariad
Robert Jordan Wheel of Time series
There is a whole ton of books about the ‘Forgotten Realms’, plus Dragonlance etc. (These are books based on D&D roleplaying system.)

I think this is the standard way to write fantasy, ever since Tolkien did it.

Yeah, I liked Lord Valentine’s Castle very much (read it back in 1980 when it first came out) and read a few of the sequels too. It may be part of the reason that I learned to juggle in the 1990s…

Asimov’s Robots and Empire and Foundation novels have a lot of habitable worlds.

Olaf Stapledon’s Starmaker is a brief history of life in the universe, jumping between hundreds of very different world’s, species, and even galaxies. It’s detailed in terms of biology/history, but the characters and plot are basically there as a framework for a description of the universe. First and Last Men is similar, but about humans (we actually end up on 3 or 4 worlds in that one, I think).

It’s not big in the way the other series are, mainly because I think it was too big; he could write normal novels about forever and not really scratch the surface.