Sharing a Universe?

[Floyd Looney]

What do you think of shared universe type stories? Where multiple writers set their stories in the same story universe?

[Floyd Looney]

Like maybe a universe like this: Just for example.
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The 50 story building was actually 6 towers, one central tower and 5 others around it. All five of the outer towers were primarily residential but all had their own gym. The central tower contained schools, religious halls, shops and restaurants of all kinds and other things. Each of the residential towers contained 500 units, bringing the number to 2,500 units.

The towers were surrounded by farmland for as far as the eye could see from the top of the towers except for a 6 lane private road that reached a highway more than 30 miles away. This private road was straight for miles and also served as a runway for some private aircraft.
The population of the towers was about 7,000 and was fed with a major water system and had its own power system, keeping it off the grid. What grid still existed any longer.

This was called Nebraska City; there were dozens of other similar installations around the country that was once called the United States. The whole world had seen its population decline by 75% through a cataclysm. The world plunged into poverty and much of the world starved, cities became warzones even in the most “prosperous” countries. Governments failed; there was no longer anything to tax. Those who worked for government and those who depended on it were out of luck.

The 48 self-contained Tower Cities had small armies and air forces to defend them as the world collapsed. Each now had total control of 500 square miles of territory and somewhat control over 2,000 square miles. The rest of the country was really a wasteland and there were raiders and bandits aplenty and even some attempts to reassert civilization.

In Texas there were three Tower Cities a few hundred miles away from each, almost a triangle on its side looking at a map. They occasionally sent convoys to each other protected by armored vehicles and helicopters or jets.

The southernmost Tower City in Texas was called Texaco City and it had taken full control of an oil refinery in the vicinity and enough oil wells to keep all the cities supplied. Nebraska City had corn, wheat and beef to trade. All of the cities had things they could trade with each other. Major highways were still dangerous but their convoys almost always got through unscathed.

The plan was to re-establish a Republic on the basis of freedom and liberty, free exchange and hard work. The hardest part was to help the outer lands become civilized again; this was usually accomplished by killing those who did not cooperate in this endeavor. It would take forever at the rate things were going.

How long before the people of the towers could again live outside of the towers? It had been so long, people were getting restless. They longed to live as free as they dreamed, the towers had become claustrophobic to many.

[Attero Dominatus]

Well I cannot think of a story taking place in your example, but some of these types of universes are made for the sake of being universes. Orion's Arm is the best known of these. I will give it a shot by adding some extra background:

Some people in Nebraska and Texaco city built their own aircraft and helicopters from parts destined for the recyclers and whatever they could purchase and powered them from fuel from the refinery and from bio-fuels that normally went to power the ground vehicles.

Many of them got shot down by surface-to-air missiles and heavy machineguns that the brigands scavenged from the abandoned military armories, but people simply armed their aircraft -- people had the right to own any weapon they could afford -- and continued taking the risks, for flight was considered to be the ultimate form of freedom and every once in awhile treasures could be found in the wastelands that made people rich. A mystique developed around those who dared to fly outside the confines and comforts of the cities and risk their lives.

An entire subculture of explorers believed that the killing of so many of the world's population was deliberate. The reasons for mass murder were as diverse as the theorists -- everything from crazed environmentalists who believed that the human population had to be reduced to save the planet to a pandemic unleashed by the islamists in an effort to kill those they called 'infedels' -- but they all searched the ruins of what were once the halls of power for proof.

Rumors of an secret facility in Antarctica spread wildly through the sea traders in recent years. Sailors who sailed down there vanished without a trace, though this was usually assumed to be because of the extreme cold and iceberg hazards and the severe storms in the area.

Like the explorers, the sea traders gained a reputation as a daring and adventurous lot for keeping what little remained of the trade between a handful of similar cities around the world going despite near universal pirate activity.

The pirates themselves mostly came from Africa and the middle east, where numerous and mostly Islamic states sustained themselves through stealing from others and each other. Most sailors arm themselves and their ships but privateers and mercenaries make a substantial part of their living combating pirates.

A few daring souls with a lot of money or a lot of friends in high places were said to be building rockets in hopes of making enough money from mining resources from the moon to build the ships and facilities needed for humanity to leave its all too vulnerable home in case a second cataclysm strikes.

[Floyd Looney]

That is very interesting. I can only imagine how hard it would be to keep a space program running that way, but of course, it will get harder and harder later on as the technology level falls to that sustainable by the new low population levels. In my opinion.