Dragonriders of Pern: Dragonflight, Dragonquest, The White Dragon

If there’s one thing that seems to bind every fantasy universe together, it’s gold. Gold coins are a simple, flexible, generally ill-defined unit of exchange, often found whenever convenient and obeying no known rules of economics. Dragons amass huge piles of them without impacting the wider economy (never mind what would happen if a band of dwarves liberated the horde and the amount […]

In the modern world, race influences everything—whether we’re aware of (or want to admit it) it or not. While we might dream of a “post-racial” world, where skin color and cultural traits simply don’t matter, reality is a bit more, well, real. All you have to do is pay attention to the current political climate to […]

[ean6]Dealing with Dragons, by Patricia C. Wrede A bored princess goes off to live with a dragon and they have adventures. One, there’s there’s a dragon and that’s always a good thing in a graphic adaptation and, two, there’s the bunny rabbit who keeps changing into something different, and, three, it’s just a great story […]

Speculative fiction often employs a deliberate vagueness when it comes to the economics of fictional universes. In fantasy novels, gold coins may serve as simple, flexible, generally ill-defined units of exchange, often found whenever convenient and obeying no known rules of economics. In science fiction, money is often handwaved or completely ignored (because building and […]