How did large universes keep track of canon, before the advent of Wikis?

Something pretty unique to Fantasy and Science Fiction is the existence of huge scale universes. Canonical listings of information abound these days. It is very easy to research new books in, say, the Star Wars universe what with things like Wookieepedia to help out. But this begs the question.

How did authors and rights-holders keep track of canon, before these sites existed? Did they keep large databases? Was it all by hand on paper? If there were multiple techniques, please list them all in your answer.

Answer

They hired people to keep track of things. Frequently in the Star Wars EU books I read as a kid the author would thank some of the people in Lucas Licensing's/Lucas Book's continuity group who helped keep things straight. You can read more about the evolution of this group and their work on this Wikipedia page.

Star Trek, another big universe, similarly had people at Paramount who kept track of things. The famous names I recall being the Okudas, who wrote many technical manuals and helped establish the scientific and technological limits of the Star Trek universe. This site mentions a Richard Arnold as working in a similar area of canon maintenance as well. Kellam de Forest also worked as a canon advisor and all-round consultant on Star Trek. Essentially, in an age before Wikis, Star Trek had their own encyclopedias created.

The BBC on the other hand, takes a different tack with regards to Doctor Who. They maintain there's no canon for Doctor Who. They don't keep any sort of track of the continuity of events in the Doctor Who and related shows, and there's no enforcement either of internal consistency. More info can be found here.

Those are the three biggest sci-fi universe dynasties I could think of, which give you a good idea of how others would handle the issue.

Comments

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