在一行中查询多个表？

$query = "SELECT name,rant,rating FROM rants ORDER by Id DESC ";

This is a query for one table, I need to pull information from two tables within the same database but I don't want to keep creating new queries eg. $query1, $query2, $query3...

Is it possible to write it all in one line eg. between the quotations or do I have to create separate queries per table?

UPDATE

require_once(dirname(__FILE__) . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.'dbconnect.php');

$link = new mysqli("$servername", "$username", "$password", "$dbname");

$query = "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM rants";

if ($result = $link->query($query)) {


    /* fetch object array */
    while ($row = $result->fetch_row()) {
        if($row[0]==0){
        echo "There are no entries.";
        }else {
        $query2 = "SELECT name,rant,rating FROM rants ORDER by Id DESC ";

if (($result = $link->query($query2))) {
    /* fetch object array */
    while ($row = $result->fetch_row()) {
}
}