A fictional universe in which multiple authors set their stories, especially one created for this purpose.
- 1985 J. C. Bunnell Dragon Mag. Nov. № 32/2: The stories do not truly mesh into a single setting in the distinctive way necessary for Ithkar Fair to qualify as a shared world.
- 1988 G. Wolfe Intro. Storeys from Old Hotel № 8: The idea was to make up a fictional city-state (Liavek) with its surrounding geography, technology, religions, laws of magic, and so on and so forth, and to persuade a variety of authors to submit stories laid there; compilations of this rather freakish kind are called shared-world anthologies.
- 1988 T. Windling Summation 1987: Fantasy E. Datlow & T. Windling Year's Best Fantasy: First Annual Coll. № xv: One way of getting around that has been the rise of "shared-world" anthologies, where several writers join together to write stories using a single setting and sharing characters.
- 1992 Locus (Aug.) № 28/2: As a rule, shared worlds are to fiction what theme parks are to reality: prefabricated environments.
- 1993 J. Clute & P. Nicholls Ency. of SF № xii/2: We have excluded very few sf authors who have solely written books tied to shared-world endeavours (like Star Wars or Star Trek).
