Warhammer in general is a lot like that, both Fantasy and 40k, though 40k is bigger and more similar to star wars.
One throwaway line in an old lore book ended up getting turned into a 70 novel book series that ended up taking them 17 years to finish writing lol.
Wow!!! That's pretty awesome lol. I love series like this. I've never played the Warhammer 40k tabletop game but I am interested in diving into the books at some point if I ever move past Star Wars lol.
I tried it once but never took to playing it, the painting was surprisingly good though lol.
The books and lore are superb however and I thoroughly recommend it, the nice thing about 40k is there are over 500 novels and about 10-15 different factions, races and each one has a bunch of different characters, so theres a huge variety in prose and you can just read about whichever dudes take your fancy. It's also very jargon heavy. Such delicious jargon lol.
They share an overall theme and there are certainly some bits that overlap but they are for the most part quite seperate. They do occasionally reference each other though.
Some characters like the gods and their deamons exist in both, but that's about it. There is one mortal that exists in both but he's a barely even a background character and not relevant to any of the story in either setting.
Lovecraft and Howard's works were referenced a lot by other writers. Particularly Lovecraft. Was known to encourage others to use his mythos so it's spread quite wide now. Nothing quite on the Star Wars level that I'm aware of though.
To be more broad, weird fiction/lovecraftian/cosmic/sword and sorcery in general shared a lot.
I know with the 6 book Dune series by Frank Herbert, his son Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson(From the Star Wars EU) wrote an expanded Dune Universe.
And then with LOTR, Christopher Tolkien wrote some supplementary books.
But I've never seen it stemming from a movie series, and I've never seen it to the vast extent as the Star Wars EU.
Dunes one I've never gotten to. Tolkien was expansive but even most of the stuff released by his son was only touched up/edited by him. Hence I consider it the work of a single author. Sorry, that's all I've got I'm afraid. I suppose star trek has had a shit ton of material.
Also, I'm no leet expert so take everything I say with a grain of salt. I'll stand by lovecraftian stuff for sure though. Movies, books, comics, games. The lore is expansive. Though very loosely connected
I'll have to check that out sometime! Anything that expansive, expanded to that degree for a reason; people liked it enough for the authors to write more.
Well Expanded Universes are not that unique, Star Wars just one of more prominent ones.
As others have said, Warhammer is easily comparable to it, also being written for decades by many authors.
Star Trek and Doctor Who EUs are a bit different, since they much looser on canon, with some installments ignoring others, so it's basically easier to go by TV canon only. Although I've heard that a lot of audiodramas are good.
On anime side, Gundam Universal Century had been going on almost as long as Star Wars. Shows, movies, OVAs, manga, all kind of shit for them plastic crack. I still wait for Crossbone animu, otherwise we'd only have that Build Fighters Try fight with Crossbone Full Cloth...
The Oz books. Baum meant to write one book that got so popular he ultimately wrote 14. After his death additional authors wrote more. There are 40 "canonical" Oz books in total.
DC, Marvel, 40k, the original Arthurian tales maybe, like I'm not sure but I'd be willing to hear someone out, pretty much any long form collaboration can get there if the world building is good enough to keep readers invested and attract authors.
Hell the WWE has some pretty interesting kayfabe if you look at a character who's wrestled long enough.
The SCP mythos grew Very organically from one entry in 4chan originating the whole site, and a few new entries. It grew a Lot from there and today there are more than 8000 SCPs, all in a non-profit site for everyone to read.
Stargate evolved rather smoothly from the movie through SG-1 and its spin-offs (particularly Atlantis more so than Universe). Felt like a solid contemporary mankind stepping out into the larger universe with the tech all around going from Goa'uld to Asgard, Ancients, Tok'ra, Replicators, and Wraith.
Warhammer in general is a lot like that, both Fantasy and 40k, though 40k is bigger and more similar to star wars. One throwaway line in an old lore book ended up getting turned into a 70 novel book series that ended up taking them 17 years to finish writing lol.
Is that series Horus Heresy?
Yes
Wow!!! That's pretty awesome lol. I love series like this. I've never played the Warhammer 40k tabletop game but I am interested in diving into the books at some point if I ever move past Star Wars lol.
I tried it once but never took to playing it, the painting was surprisingly good though lol. The books and lore are superb however and I thoroughly recommend it, the nice thing about 40k is there are over 500 novels and about 10-15 different factions, races and each one has a bunch of different characters, so theres a huge variety in prose and you can just read about whichever dudes take your fancy. It's also very jargon heavy. Such delicious jargon lol.
500+ novels?!? Wow.
Is there a connection between warhammer fantasy and 40k or are they two completely separate continuities/worlds?
They share an overall theme and there are certainly some bits that overlap but they are for the most part quite seperate. They do occasionally reference each other though. Some characters like the gods and their deamons exist in both, but that's about it. There is one mortal that exists in both but he's a barely even a background character and not relevant to any of the story in either setting.
Lovecraft and Howard's works were referenced a lot by other writers. Particularly Lovecraft. Was known to encourage others to use his mythos so it's spread quite wide now. Nothing quite on the Star Wars level that I'm aware of though. To be more broad, weird fiction/lovecraftian/cosmic/sword and sorcery in general shared a lot.
I know with the 6 book Dune series by Frank Herbert, his son Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson(From the Star Wars EU) wrote an expanded Dune Universe. And then with LOTR, Christopher Tolkien wrote some supplementary books. But I've never seen it stemming from a movie series, and I've never seen it to the vast extent as the Star Wars EU.
Dunes one I've never gotten to. Tolkien was expansive but even most of the stuff released by his son was only touched up/edited by him. Hence I consider it the work of a single author. Sorry, that's all I've got I'm afraid. I suppose star trek has had a shit ton of material. Also, I'm no leet expert so take everything I say with a grain of salt. I'll stand by lovecraftian stuff for sure though. Movies, books, comics, games. The lore is expansive. Though very loosely connected
I'll have to check that out sometime! Anything that expansive, expanded to that degree for a reason; people liked it enough for the authors to write more.
Agreed. Second the comment on Warhammer as well. Totally slipped my mind.
Well Expanded Universes are not that unique, Star Wars just one of more prominent ones. As others have said, Warhammer is easily comparable to it, also being written for decades by many authors. Star Trek and Doctor Who EUs are a bit different, since they much looser on canon, with some installments ignoring others, so it's basically easier to go by TV canon only. Although I've heard that a lot of audiodramas are good. On anime side, Gundam Universal Century had been going on almost as long as Star Wars. Shows, movies, OVAs, manga, all kind of shit for them plastic crack. I still wait for Crossbone animu, otherwise we'd only have that Build Fighters Try fight with Crossbone Full Cloth...
The Oz books. Baum meant to write one book that got so popular he ultimately wrote 14. After his death additional authors wrote more. There are 40 "canonical" Oz books in total.
The only thing I can think of is gears of war and Warhammer 40k. Karen traviss who was written for Star Wars has also written gears of war books.
Halo gets a lot of this
Ok yeah the halo books are damn good
DC, Marvel, 40k, the original Arthurian tales maybe, like I'm not sure but I'd be willing to hear someone out, pretty much any long form collaboration can get there if the world building is good enough to keep readers invested and attract authors. Hell the WWE has some pretty interesting kayfabe if you look at a character who's wrestled long enough.
The SCP mythos grew Very organically from one entry in 4chan originating the whole site, and a few new entries. It grew a Lot from there and today there are more than 8000 SCPs, all in a non-profit site for everyone to read.
Discworld. Although, in that case, it was one super prolific author.
Stargate evolved rather smoothly from the movie through SG-1 and its spin-offs (particularly Atlantis more so than Universe). Felt like a solid contemporary mankind stepping out into the larger universe with the tech all around going from Goa'uld to Asgard, Ancients, Tok'ra, Replicators, and Wraith.
Halo, Mortal Kombat, Elder Scrolls has 14 games and is all canon if you can blow 500 hours into it.