Fictional Universes

Readers like to immerse themselves in fictional universes. I need hardly cite examples. An author who immerses himself in such a universe, whether his own or someone else's, can utilize it as a background to create new kinds of stories about new characters. Asked to contribute to a few juvenile anthologies, Poul Anderson took the opportunity to write short stories about the colonization of Avalon, with David Falkayn referred to only as the grandfather of the viewpoint character, Nat.

Anderson also familiarized himself enough with several other sf universes to be able to write stories set in those universes as summarized in the combox here. These included Asimov's Robots series. Anderson's story, "Plato's Cave," features the regular US Robots troubleshooters, Powell and Donovan, and also refers to Stephen Byerley who was running for Mayor somewhere in another story at that time - an excellent use of existing material.

These observations are occasioned by my appreciation of Alan Moore's transformations of multiple DC Comics characters, some universally known, others obscure, in his Swamp Thing series to which I will now return over a second mug of breakfast coffee. A normal Saturday in Lancaster stretches ahead.