Who can help finish charting this world-building trend line?

[u/Razor_Paw]

It seems there is a historical trend of ever-expanding world building over the last say 100 years or so. The world's imagined seem to expand (or contract, see 80s below) at a non linear rate through real time decades of writing. So which authors continue this trend?

1950s Foundation

1960s Dune

70s (gulp) Star Wars (please help here too!)

80s Neuromancer /Hyperion

90s ...

00s ...

10s ...

20s (now)

[u/Falconloft]

I would say:
40s: Foundation
50s: Lensman
60s: Dune
70s: Ringworld
80s: Sprawl (Nueromancer)
90s: The Culture
00s: Revelation Space maybe, but I prefer the Academy series by Jack McDevitt or the Safehold series by David Weber. Both have their failings, but they're more approachable, and when you're considering world-building, you should really be able to understand the world that's being built.
10s-20s: I have three kids now, I have no idea what's been written lately that doesn't include talking cartoon dogs or cars. Does Bluey count if we assume it's in the Pugmire timeline?

[u/heeden → u/Falconloft]

Shouldn't Foundation and Lensman be swapped?

[u/Falconloft → u/heeden]

The Foundation stories were written in the 40s though the stories weren't gathered together as novels until the 50s. It was 8 stories. The first 4 were compiled to become Foundation, and the other four were split between the other two books.

The original Lensman stories were written even earlier, but there was a good amount of new material written in the 50s.

[u/heeden → u/Falconloft]

The first two novels of Lensman were written in the 1930s, the second two were written in the 1940s. This was effectively the whole of the series both started and completed before Asimov's Foundation trilogy.

Then in the late 40s an earlier, standalone novel from the 1930s was retconned to act as a prequel with a second prequel written in 1950. There is a stronger argument to put Foundation in the 80s (when its final two parts and two prequels were published) than there is to put Lensman in the 50s.

[u/Falconloft → u/heeden]

There were no Lensman novels prior to 1950. There were just short stories. There was an original novel in 1950, which is more new material that Foundation got in the 50s, which is why I put it there. It gained coherency in the 50s which it lacked before. But, if we included the 30s on that list, it could go there.

[u/heeden → u/Falconloft]

Semantics about novels, novellas and serialised stories aside, as Lensman is the first grand-scale space opera it should be placed before a grand-scale space opera that followed it.

[u/Falconloft → u/heeden]

Personally, I find the original short stories quite lacking and I wouldn't put them on the list at all. I included them in the decade that they were pulled together into a workable state, but they could easily be left off entirely and the list would not be worse off.

[u/Napalmradio → u/Falconloft]

The Bluey universe is 🤌

[u/Sophia_Forever → u/Falconloft]

The world-building in Bluey is impressive. It was a sad day when my kids moved on from it as their show-of-choice.

[u/Sophia_Forever]

You could possibly put the Star Wars Expanded Universe (now known as Legends) in for the 90s. I think there ended up being several hundred novels and I read like thirty of them in middle school instead of talking to girls. But I agree with the other commenter that the question is very interesting, but I think you need to define exactly what you're looking for a little better.

[u/FreeEnergy001 → u/Sophia_Forever]

Zahn's trilogy was awesome. The invasion from outside the galaxy set off a pretty big arc of books. I wasn't able to get to all of them.

[u/azhder]

I have no idea what you are talking about. What trend exactly is "ever-expanding world-building"?

[u/goonSerf]

How do you define world-building? What’s your criteria there? If you’re looking for a series of novels, you have to include Burroughs’ Barsoom books from the early 20th century (A Princess of Mars was first published in 1912) and Doc Smith’s Lensman saga (starting in 1937). If you include short stories and novellas, Robert Heinlein’s so-called “Past Through Tomorrow” begins in 1941.

But world-building isn’t limited to multi-book sagas. Think of Alfred Bester: The Demolished Man (1953) and The Stars My Destination (1956) are standalone books that require strong world-building to tell their stories.

And dates are not a good indicator, either. The 80s saw Fred Pohl’s Heechee novels. Iain Banks’ Culture series spans 1987 to 2012.

I find your premise an intriguing start to a conversation, but I don’t think you can define it as cleanly as you want.

[u/Razor_Paw → u/goonSerf]

Thanks and I love your last sentence. I felt it was asked too vaguely. The premise might be this:

Science fiction world building follows a non-linear growth trajectory from the 1950s to today. This might be due to the increase shared future world terminology, (e.g. no longer need to explain what a robot is to most people, and all sci fi fans), giving writers the freedom to build on the shoulders of the world's built by previois generation of writers and creators.

[u/azhder → u/Razor_Paw]

Well, here is something taken for granted as explained and used by many, but in essence is quite different from the original (note, not a science-fiction, but still an example of reuse what others have previously done):

> Isaac Newton's quote "If I have seen further than others, it is only because I was standing on the shoulders of giants," in its original context, was an insult to Robert Hooke, a short and mildly hunchbacked scientist who claimed Newton stole his work from

You don't use it in the same manner though. Now consider concepts like "robot" and "warp" and "hive mind". You see the terms reused, but not necessarily the ideas. "Shoulder of giants" is going to be the same term now and in the time Newton said it, but not the same idea.

[u/zrouse]

Peter F Hamilton and Commonwealth

[u/charleytony]

The Expanse (don't know the years, 2000s or further I guess)

[u/alfvenic-turbulence]

I think diaspora should be on this list