Anthology

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

An Anthology is a collection of works by multiple creators gathered together in a single cohesive release. Originally, it only referred to literary works, but the term has migrated to many other fields. However, it usually doesn't mean just any collection. There will usually be a unifying theme, such as a genre, a specific theme, or a time period.

Related to Omnibus. Specifically, an omnibus is usually several novels/issues collected in a single volume, an anthology is short fiction by multiple authors, and a collection is short fiction by one author.

Subtropes:

Examples of Anthology include:

Film

Literature

  • David Weber's Honor Harrington novels currently have five associated anthologies.
  • There are many different Science Fiction and Fantasy anthologies, including Sword and Sorcery and Warriors.
  • Darkover has several anthologies of stories taking place in that 'verse.
  • The Star Wars Expanded Universe has the "Tales of The" anthologies. An example is "Tales of the Cantina", composed of various stories by various authors about individual inhabitants of that cantina on Mos Eisely. One of the Jawas was planning to take revenge on stormtroopers, there was a Wolf Man and a lamprey woman in love, the bartender wanted to prove that you could be human and still mix drinks as well as something with a better sense of smell, that kind of thing. Some were more or less related. A few were mentioned later in bigger novels, most notably an Ithorian with two clones of a man he'd killed having a cameo in the Jedi Academy Trilogy and the Mistryl Shadow Warrior Shada Du'kal having one of the subplots in the Hand of Thrawn duology.
  • In a technical sense, The Bible. It compiles stories written over several centuries.
  • Diane Duane's Rihannsu series in The Bloodwing Voyages:
    • My Enemy, My Ally
    • The Romulan Way
    • Swordhunt
    • Honor Blade
  • The Star Trek Novel Verse has many, including Tales of the Dominion War, Tales From the Captain's Table and a collection for each of the TV series' 10th, 20th or 40th anniversary.
  • The Black Library publishes both anthologies and omnibuses of Warhammer 40,000 literature. The anthologies tend to focus on a specific faction - "Imperial Guard Anthology" or "Space Marine Anthology", etc - while the omnibuses collect novels (most notably the Gaunt's Ghosts and Ciaphas Cain series).
  • Garfield His 9 Lives, which also got an Animated Anthology adaptation.
  • The English translation of Haruki Murakami's 1Q84 compiled what was originally published in Japan as three volumes into one.
  • Hearts in Atlantis
  • Robert Westall wrote a lot of short stories with similar themes, Break of Dark is probably the best known, but The Haunting Of Chas McGill, A Walk On The Wild Side and the two 'Best Of' collections Shades of Darkness and Demons And Shadows also qualify. The latter two collected a lot of his earlier works that featured ghosts or other Horror elements from now out-of-print anthologies.
  • Dragonlance: had its "Tales Of The..." series, too. Published as simply Tales Volume #, they each had a unifying theme - Magic Of Krynn was only about magic users or magical items; Kender, Gully Dwarves and Gnomes were all stories told from the perspective of or solely featuring the listed races and Love And War was about, well, love and war. Frequently the first happening during the second. Of course, Raistlin Majere featured prominently in every volume and on the cover of at least one.

Live-Action TV

Western Animation

  • Heavy Metal[context?]
  • The Animatrix is a series of animations that tell a number of background stories related to The Matrix series. The animations are done in various styles, some computer animated, some pencil drawn some of them even in experimental styles. A part of the stories are made by the Wachowskis and worked out by their respective artists, some of the stories are original, though they do all happen in the Matrix universe.