Girl Genius Short Stories are short stories set in the Girl Genius universe that feature, have cameo appearances by, or at least mention, prominent characters in the main Girl Genius story line.
Girl Genius–Related Short Stories aren't Girl Genius short stories as defined above, but do have something in common with them: a common author, illustrator, story element, etc.
Story breaks[]
Girl Genius short stories have been, for the most part, interludes that interrupt the normal schedule of page updates for the main Girl Genius story line and can be considered to be breaks from it.[1] Lately, however, some Girl Genius short stories have appeared elsewhere on the web or in other publications entirely. Girl Genius short stories exhibit a wide range of canonicalness, from stories that are deliberately ridiculous and humor intensive to the exclusion of logic or continuity (such as the adaptations of the Girl Genius Radio Theatre plays), to stories that can be considered to be set in a direct continuation of the main story line extended into the future.
The Foglios have claimed that they think of these interludes as "vacations" from the main story line, but they have also referred to them as "fake vacations," since they are still doing as much work as they would be if they were posting pages of the main story.[2] Or almost as much work; since these stories are often either outside of the normal continuity of the Girl Genius story line or set in the future, after the events of the main story line have been resolved, the Foglios don't have to worry about continuity and can do whatever they want or get as silly as they like.
The official Girl Genius site has a page listing links to some of the short stories, including a listing for "The Heterodyne Boys and the Dragon from Mars," which is part of the main story, although it is a fictional story within the story.
Story Lists[]
The Girl Genius short stories have been broken up into five lists:
- Possible past or present: sometimes rather silly stories that don't violate continuity and could be part of the main story line
- Possible future: stories that could take place in the future of the main story line
- Just for fun: stories that are completely silly and outside the continuity of the main story line
- Radio Theater breaks: stories that are just as silly as the "just for fun" stories but that were originally Girl Genius Radio Theatre plays
- Non-break short stories
In each list, the title of the story links to the article about that story, if there is one. Then comes a link to the first page of the story, if it is available online. If the story was posted as an interruption to the main Girl Genius story line, the date on which the first page of the story was posted is given; otherwise, no date is shown. This is followed by the number of pages in the story.
Possible past or present[]
- "The Crown of the Sleeping King"
- "Fan Fiction": first page posted December 12, 2005 ✣ (7 pages)
- "Personal Trainer": first page posted May 15, 2006 ✣ (4 pages)
- "Maxim's Exciting Hat Story!": first page posted December 11, 2009 ✣ (1 page)
- "Maxim Buys a Hat"[3]: first page posted May 19, 2010 ✣ (12 pages)
- "Doink": first page posted ✣ (2 pages)
Possible future[]
- "Agatha Heterodyne and the Electric Coffin": first page (8 pages)
- "Homecoming King": first page posted Wednesday, August 13, 2014 ✣ (6 pages)
- "Ivo Sharktooth PJ": first page posted August 9, 2017 ✣ (36 pages)
- "A Mechanicsburg Solstice Story": first page posted November 30, 2020 ✣ (33 pages)
- "The Mechanicsburg Guild of Monsters": first page posted October 4, 2021 ✣ (13 pages)
- The Quest for Gold and Sequels: first page posted August 26, 2022 ✣ (144 pages)[4]
Just for fun[]
- "An Agatha Heterodyne 1 Minute Mystery": first page (1 page)
- "Cinderella": first page posted November 21, 2008 ✣ (22 pages)
- "Absolute Nonsense": first page posted March 5, 2018 ✣ (4 pages)
Radio Theater breaks[]
- Revenge of the Weasel Queen (45 pages, total)
- Part One starts here ✣ (15 pages)
- Part Two starts here ✣ (17 pages)
- Part Three starts here ✣ (13 pages)
- Small Problems starts here ✣ (26 pages)
Non-break short stories[]
Girl Genius short stories appearing elsewhere[]
- The Thing with the Monocles starts here
- Mayhem ex Machina! can be found in the Girl Genius Sourcebook and Roleplaying Game book
Non-Girl Genius short stories[]
- The Original Heterodyne Boys is introduced here and starts here
- The Cat on the Dovrefjell starts here
- Fan Art for Neil Gaiman & Terry Prachett's Good Omens: first page (2 pages)
See also[]
- Girl Genius Radio Theatre
- Girl Genius:Nuts and Bolts, which collects many of these stories
- Girl Genius Sourcebook and Roleplaying Game, which contains Mayhem ex Machina!
- List of Published Volumes
- List of known Heterodyne stories
References
- ↑ An earlier title for this article was "A List of Short Stories and Radio Theater breaks".
- ↑ Even "Small Problems," the break between the end of volume 13 (the final volume of The First Journey of Agatha Heterodyne) and volume 14 (the first volume of The Second Journey of Agatha Heterodyne), drawn by guest artist Christopher Baldwin, was not a complete vacation (although the Foglios were actually on a vacation trip during part of it) because Kaja still had to add the dialog, text, and sound effects to the illustrations, as well as post the completed pages, and Cheyenne was still coloring them.
- ↑ The story "Maxim Buys a Hat" is unusual in that it is firmly set within the continuity of the main story line and provides information that would otherwise be unknown. See the story description for more details.
- ↑ Given the length of this work, an argument could be made that it is not a short story, but it is listed here because the Foglios originally intended it to be one.