Alternative Reading Orders

Sometimes a prequel is not only written later but also meant to be read later. Rider Haggard's She Trilogy comprises:

the novel, She, ending with She's death;

Allan Quatermain's account of his earlier encounter with She, mailed to Haggard after Quatermain had read She;

the sequel, about She's resurrection.

CS Lewis' The Magician's Nephew begins by stating that it will explain how the previously described visits to Narnia began.

As a collection, Poul Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate was meant to fill in some of the gaps in previously published accounts of the history of the Polesotechnic League on a "now it can be told" basis. When the entire Technic History was for the first time published in chronological order of fictitious events, stories set earlier were now to be read earlier together with their later-written introductions assuming knowledge of later events, producing a different effect.

Novels written in successive decades of the twentieth century refer to "the war," whether WWI or WWII, on the safe assumption that readers understand this reference. Future historians can generate a sense of historical authenticity by referring in a similar way to an event with which the reader is not yet familiar and might or might not become familiar:

Heinlein's strike of '66;
Julian May's Metapsychic Rebellion;
the Terran War mentioned in Hloch's Introduction to The Earth Book.

Hloch's Introduction is reproduced near the beginning of Volume I of The Technic Civilization Saga whereas the Terran War is described at the end of Volume III.