Fiction Deep Dive: Love, Death, and Anthologies
Written by Daniel MacGregor
Thumbnail and Banner Photo by Nong V on Unsplash
In the world of cinema, novels, and stories, the lion's share of attention is given to the main monolithic stories, think Breaking Bad, Lord of the Rings, and the never-ending Marvel Cinematic Universe. These stories cover hours of screen time and hundreds of pages. At first, this article was only focused on Netflix's Love, Death, and Robots. This anthology series is a Netflix series composed of a wide diversity of animated science fiction short stories with a few stand out stories and other notable features. However, upon reflection it became clear that anthologies overall do not receive the recognition they deserve in reflections on fiction. Overall, short bite-size stories in all their forms are usually treated as secondary to the grand, long form stories. This indifference is a tragedy since while powerful full-course stories are nice, every once in a while having a whole bag of snack-sized stories allows for a wide range of tastes that is quick to digest. It also won't be around for too many more pages if one’s taste isn’t to your liking.
Meriam-Webster defines an anthology as any collection of artistic pieces; however, anthologies are commonly a collection of short stories. They can be connected by anything from a common theme, common characters, or common setting. This article introduces the strength of anthologies and why sometimes short and punchy is better than one overarching story. As for medium, they can be in the form of short stories and animated shorts, and because poems are so short, almost all published poetry books are technically anthologies. A strength of anthologies is that the stories' smallness allows creators to dive into strange and exciting ideas without as much risk as a larger project.
The most prominent animated anthology series is Netflix's Love, Death, and Robots, which just released its third season. As per the name, this series is a string of animated science fiction (and some fantastical animated stories) short films, with each episode being a different story in a "different" animation style lasting anywhere from six to twenty minutes. The second "different" is in quotation marks because out of the first season's nineteen episodes, nine are debatably done in ultra-realistic 3-D animation, a trend that continues into later seasons. Moreover, fair warning, the first season has a lot of violence and nudity. Though being connected by a broad theme, episodes can vary from farmers in mechs (giant piloted robot suits) fighting alien swarms in the episode "Suits," an intense 3-D space survival story in "Helping Hand," or stylistic 2-D animated "Zima Blue," which is the outlier of the series where there is no nudity or violence, just philosophic waxing about art and the meaning of life.
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While the first two seasons of Love, Death, and Robots had a creative lineup of original stories, the third season has a lot of episodes that are "spiritual" successors. Instead of relying on creative new stories, many season three episodes seem to be continuations of season one episodes in both animation style and general plot points. This trend is relevant as it raises the question of whether anthologies should always try something new or if they can expand upon the foundations of what came before. These spiritual successors are not actual sequels (except one) but seem to try to build upon the success of season one. Season one's "Sucker of Souls" was a 2-D horror/thriller following mercenaries fighting a vampire monster. Still, it had practical jokes, only one death (gruesome as it was), and has a decent villain that makes sense in the story (i.e. Dracula). However, its season three successor, "Kill Team Kill," follows US special forces that are incredibly crude and over the top who all die, with dozens of deaths and over the top gore, and the main villain is a random cyborg bear (?), and in essence tries to vamp up the violence and crude humour of the first season without any of the tension or quality. Granted, this is not a direct sequel, but it is in the same animation style, with the same general overall plot of a ragtag team fighting an overpowered monster with a comedic tone.
Aside from Netflix's flagship anthology series, there are dozens of smaller series, though these are often associated with large franchises. For example, the Halo video game franchise had the anthology series, Halo Legends. In anthologies such as these, episodes can have different animation styles, but the plot usually takes residence in small segments of the established universe that are covered by mainline stories, in this case the main Halo games. Star Wars: Visions is a more famous example, a bunch of independent stories based in the larger Star Wars Universe but that has nothing to do with Death Stars and Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Anthologies are not just in the visual form but are more prevalent in the written form (more people can write than animate, and it's easier to publish). Also, like their visual cousins, they can be connected by a shared universe or common theme. As for the former, there is Memory's Legion, a collection of eight short stories sparkled around the main nine-book of the science-fiction series The Expanse. These short stories are like DLC in the video game context, as they provide optional context into interesting tangents based around the larger plot, such as the story "The Butcher of Anderson Station," which explains a key event in a secondary character's life before the action of the first book.
As for thematic anthologies, in keeping with the science fiction and fantasy theme this article has taken, there is Undercurrents: A Cape Breton Anthology of Speculative Fiction, an anthology of speculative fiction by Cape Breton authors. The main positive of thematic anthologies is that there is no learning curve. These stories are not associated with a larger narrative but are independent, stand-alone universes. Moreover, as with visual anthologies, these stories can have richer world-building and characters, as they cannot rely on the scaffolding of a pre-existing universe. For instance, while a Star Wars anthology will always be a Star Wars story, no matter how original, thematic anthologies can travel light years between stories. The Cape Breton example transitions from a classic Cape Breton ghost story to a high-fantasy account resolved with words and wit instead of swords and grit to a magic-infused Victorian England.
Anthologies take the place of one whole story and, in its place, offer dozens of small stories that can explore the small spaces overlooked by larger narratives. What this means is that often experimental ideas can be put into action as a short story is usually less risky and time consuming than a full length novel. Moreover, since anthologies release a wide collection of stories instead of just one, it means that lesser known authors have a high chance of becoming published authors. Anthologies also provides readers with a roller coaster of different stories to launch themselves into, so go explore the world of short stories!