Alternate universes are a pretty popular trope in sci-fi and fantasy—as are secret histories, and strange texts that alter your perception of reality....

There was a time in the fantasy genre when magic was simply, er, magical, and didn’t require a whole lot of explanation. But time has a habit of making...

To the untrained eye, science fiction and fantasy might look like very different genres, but once you apply Clarke’s law about sufficiently advanced...

For two decades, Jim Killen has served as the science fiction and fantasy book buyer for Barnes & Noble. Every month on Tor.com and the B&N...

Once in a while, a writer loves someone else’s work so much, they decide to honor it by slipping a subtle cameo into their own books as both a tribute...

Puppies be damned—the hottest topic during this year’s Hugo Award (which will be handed out tomorrow night at WorldCon 75 in Helsinki, Finland) is...

The Black Elfstone, by Terry Brooks Technically this book opens a new series set in the Shannara universe, but since it’s also the start of a four-book...

As most readers of sci-fi and fantasy are probably aware, there are these things called tropes—bits of storytelling shorthand that convey something about...

If asked to list common tropes of epic fantasy, the obvious choices come readily to mind: robed wizards, elven archers, dark armies of engineered orcs....