I have a long series that I have planned that all takes place in the same fantasy-based place. I want to have different characters for each book, different conflicts, way different time periods, etc. Right now I have the whole history of the world I set up, from creation to the latest time period of a book in the series. There are a few books that I have planned for the series that all take place in different time periods. For example, one explains how magic came to being, and another takes place before magic was discovered. The biggest thing I'm worried about is making the evolution from one book to another that takes place in the future realistic. Any tips, or book series that does this successfully?
What would tie the books together over the timeline? Just the setting? How big are the gaps of time between each storyline? IMO, there should be something, even if it is subtle, that kinda ties each book together. Even if there is a whole generational gap between your two stories. To go with your example, lets say once magic is discovered, you can show them teaching it to "Generic Young Boy". When the second book starts, years/decades later, "Generic Young Boy" has become "Generic Old Mage" and thus ties the stories just a little bit together. This entirely depends on what you're going for, though.
Maybe the Silmarillion of Tolkien? He made a very detailed setting for his LOTR saga and from what I hear gave a huge backstory fo the universe complete with a cosmology and ancient history. I never read it though, and even the hardcore fans warned me it's hard to get through. I think Tolkien wrote it in a hurry, it is all narration, and has almost no breaks in it.
Anne McCaffrey's Pern books span several generations, from the first colonists' discovery of thread to the ages where the Dragonriders are a long established defense force against threadfall. Larry Niven's Known Space series of novels and short stories portray human society over hundreds of years, from sometime in the twenty-first century to hundreds of years hence. Isaac Asimov's classic Foundation series and Robot series are set in a universe that extends from our near future to hundreds of millenia in the future, so far in the future that Earth has been long forgotten. The original Foundation trilogy itself spans the better part of a millenium from the first settling of Terminus to its dominance as the seed of the Second Galactic Empire.
As long as you have common themes, than it should work out. One good thing is that you can really build up a sense of the importance of the country. Think about Narnia - the place is one of the most important characters, because it's a different set of kids each time.
To add to the list of examples you may also read Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover novels. They are quite broad in their scope, technically spanning an approximate two thousand year period of time from Darkover Landfall which tells the story of the first humans to set foot on Darkover through to the last novels that bring these humans back into contact with the rest of human expansion of the galaxy. The breadth of creation on the part of Bradley allowed for a very wide range of storytelling and experimentation within the same literary universe, from pure, grand Fantasy, up through and including hard Science Fiction. All in the same universe.
Not true. The character of Aslan is present in all seven books, even if only as a cameo in some of them. It is "his" world, and the various sets of kids only visitors. It's also pertinent to remember that the different sets of kids are all related in some way. There are cousins, nephews and best friends of the original few characters in Book 1. I didn't post this just to nit-pick, it's an example of how a series of books can be linked. Aslan is portrayed as a God-like creature in the books, so it's fine for him to live forever and be ever-present in the stories.
That's what I meant - he's one of the themes. *doesn't really see him as a character and was not too impressed with the Narnia books*
In the same vein, George Lucas' plan for the full nine-part Star Wars saga spanned multiple generations, with no biological characters persisting throughout, But the droids C3PO and R2D2 were to be the unifying character element. Their roles are always peripheral to the story, but they do act as a common element tying all nine stories together,
