Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Trace Elements: Conversations on the Project of Science Fiction and Fantasy

Trace Elements: Conversations on the Project of Science Fiction and Fantasy

Walton, Jo
Palmer, Ada

Paperback

Literary Criticism

Publisher Price: $21.99

PREORDER - Expected ship date March 16, 2027

ISBN10: 1250323088
ISBN13: 9781250323088
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: Mar 16 2027
Pages: 368
Language: English

From two of the most acclaimed writers in the field today, a groundbreaking look at how science fiction and fantasy writing--and reading!--work.

Jo Walton and Ada Palmer are two of the most innovative and insightful writers to emerge in the science fiction and fantasy genres in this century. As writers of fiction they've each won multiple awards. As commenters on science fiction and fantasy in print and in visual media, they've both sparked new conversations that expanded our imaginations and understanding of how science fiction and fantasy work, and what more it could be doing.

Now, in Trace Elements, Walton and Palmer have come together to write a book-length and supremely entertaining look at modern science fiction and fantasy, at how our genre is written and how it is read, that will join nonfiction works like Ursula K. Le Guin's The Language of the Night, Samuel R. Delany's The Jewel-Hinged Jaw, and Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud on the short shelf of titles essential to all readers of our genre.

Subjects covered include the nature of genre itself, the history of science fiction publishing, the implicit contract between author and reader, the ways science fiction and fantasy disguise themselves as one another, what SF&F can learn from outside influences ranging from Shakespeare to Diderot to anime, the role of complicity in reading, the need to expand our sphere of empathy, and finally the need for optimism, the importance of rejecting purity culture, and the fact that the human story for centuries to come will be composed of hard work.

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