Poll - are there any good prequels?

[jack]

This came up in the pub last night with the scifi society -- are there any good prequels, preferably scifi/fantasy? We thought of:

Children's books where the prequal is written second out of a series: Magician's Nephew, Charmed Life.
Series written out of order, such as Hornblower, Small Gods in TP.
Retrospective prequels: Asimov's robot stories became prequels to his foundation novels, though weren't at the time.

I decided that it's because prequels generally get written when an author (or their heirs) runs out of ideas, even more so than sequels, but if that's not the case they're by no means inherantly bad.

Can you think of any others?

Comments

[atreic.livejournal.com]

Why is small gods a prequil? Am I missing something?

How are you defining prequils? Your idea of retrospective prequils seems rather flawed, in as much as "book 1 of a series became a prequil to book 2, even though book 2 wasn't written (or planned) at the time of book 1". I mean, this is silly - it lets you call every book with an unplanned sequil a prequil!

[filecoreinuse.livejournal.com]

Prelude to Foundation?

[filecoreinuse.livejournal.com]

Or in fact almost every other book set in the Foundation Universe.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I thought Prelude was ok but not really up to the standard of Foundation.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I thought Small Gods was a prequel because Omnianism seems well established by the time of the other books (which apparently are all relatively contemporary), so I assumed the events in Small Gods, and probably even Brutha's death 100 years later, had already happened. For instance, in Carpe Jugulem Mightily Oats talking about Brutha seemed to me to be after his death, or there'd be less question abotu what he meant, which puts Small Gods 80+ years ago, and everything else happened in Rincewind's lifetime.

I'm nto sure *exactly* how to define a prequel, but "Set earlier in time containing and related in some way" seems to fit. What I meant about retroactive prequels was that Books 1, 2, 3 are written set in 3000AD, then Books A, B, C are written set in 2000AD, and assumed to be in separate universes, and then book 4/D is a sequal to all of them tying them into the same universe. If book 4/D had been planned from the start, A would fairly clearly be a sequal but if 4/D is made up later then A isn't really a prequel as it has nothing in common with 1.

[atreic.livejournal.com]

I can't think of an example from any book before small gods where the Omnians are described as being anything but the nasty old fashioned types. And in all the books afterwards they've become happy clappy pamphlet weilding types. But I think the change happens at exactly the point in the series of small gods.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I couldn't remember any reference to Omnianism before small Gods, if there was one you must be right. But I did get the impression that it didn't immediately turn pamphlet wielding when Om manifested, but that evolved there over time; if everyone still remembered seeing that would they be so confused now?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, I take it back. I thought the case was fairly convincing (though hadn't considered it either way before last night) but this: http://www.ie.lspace.org/books/timeline/dw-timeline-smallgods.html seems a fairly considered opinion, and says there are some characters in common with the rest of the book. Oops.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

PS. Happy belated birthday :)

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

There's a footnote in Small Gods which makes reference to the Librarian, somewhere. OTOH, it's possible that L-space allows for time travel, too.

Let me look it up...

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

OK, Small Gods, pages 215-216. http://www.rot13.com

Gurer'f pyrne rivqrapr bs gur Yvoenevna farnxvat va guebhtu Y-Fcnpr, naq erfphvat obbxf. Ohg vg'f gvzr geniry:

"Orpnhfr vg nzbhagf gb gvzr geniry [...] Ohg vs n yvoenel vf ba sver, naq qbja va gur uvfgbel obbxf nf univat orra ba sver..."

BGBU, VFGE gur Oehgun/Bz "pbafgvghgvbany eryvtvba" onetnva jnf bayl zrnag gb ynfg n uhaqerq lrnef, urapr gur raq. Ohg gura ntnva, gur raq vf nzovthbhf.

[atreic.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. But I still don't feel it's a *prequil* as such. It doesn't explain something that has already been written about, which is what I think the essance of a prequil is... it just happens to be set in the same world at a slightly earlier time.

[edith-the-hutt.livejournal.com]

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Good point. I'd completely forgotten that that was a prequel.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Intervention wasn't bad as prequels go. It's chronologically after the stories it's a prequel to, but there's time travel involved...

...

[delph-bunny.livejournal.com]

Remind me who that was acutally by... I remember reading it at some time, liking it, then forgetting about it.

Re: ...

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Julian May

[edith-the-hutt.livejournal.com]

A thought:

Does the whole Babylon 4 saga count as a prequel?

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

In the Beginning probably counts as a retroactive prequel.

[edith-the-hutt.livejournal.com]

Yes, but that wasn't particularly good. Don't get me wrong, it was fine in itself, but it really didn't add anything to the B5 story. The Babylon 4 thing OTOH was just plain cool.

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

Quicksilver and the rest of the Baroque Trilogy are a prequel of sorts to Cryptonomicon.

I'm sure some people like the Star Wars prequels.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh, of course, Cryptonomicon is my most favorite book, I can't believe I forgot to include it! I brought those up last night, but forgot when I was typing this.

But I'm not sure it quite counts because the themes are very related, and all the people are related, but so distantly that it doesn't really matter. The one common thread is Enoch the Red, who I *believe* is the same, but could just have the same name.

[(Anonymous)]

I think it's a bit like Small Gods, a book set in the same universe that happens to take place at a different time. Enoch makes it slightly more complicated though. He's also the only thing really making it SF and not just a geek-relevant historical novel.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

The thing about Enoch is that I wouldn't put it past Neal Stephenson to use the same character in two books just because he liked him, which is fair enough, but not normal; I would think this was the case except for the strange ressurection business in Cryptonomicon.

Well, even cryptonomicon wasn't quite sci-fi, more technothriller. If the genre is real-world except for one thing that might be sci-fi or might be fantasy, what does it count as? *shrug* :)

Or if you count all the anacronisms, it's Xth century sci-fi :)

[tienelle.livejournal.com]

Bujold's "Barrayar" books don't seem to be written in chronological order, so you could say that some of them were retrospective prequels to others. They seem pretty good.

Magic's {Pawn Promise Price} (Mercedes Lackey) were also prequels, and (I think) bloody good. The {Black White Silver} Gryphon, also prequels by the same author and in the same universe, were less good.