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

[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.