Trace Elements: Conversations on the Project of Science Fiction and Fantasy
Language: English
Published by St Martin's Press, 2026
- Hardcover
- New
Seller: THE SAINT BOOKSTORE, Southport, United KingdomTHE SAINT BOOKSTORE
AbeBooks seller since June 14, 2006
Condition: New
£ 26.84
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Seller Inventory # B9781250372604
- Title
- Trace Elements: Conversations on the Project of Science Fiction and Fantasy
- Author
- Jo Walton
- Publisher
- St Martin's Press
- Publication year
- 2026
- Condition
- New
- Binding
- Hardback
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 1250372607
- ISBN 13
- 9781250372604
- Item weight
- 586 grams
From two of the most acclaimed writers in the field today, a groundbreaking look at how SF and fantasy writing-and reading!-work.
Jo Walton and Ada Palmer are two of the most innovative and insightful writers to emerge in the SF and fantasy genres in this century. As writers of fiction they've each won multiple awards. As commenters on SF and fantasy in print and in visual media, they've both sparked new conversations that expanded our imaginations and understanding of how SF 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 SF publishing, the implicit contract between author and reader, the ways SF 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.
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
Ada Palmer (she/her) is a professor in the history department of the University of Chicago, specializing in Renaissance history and the history of ideas. Her first nonfiction book, Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance, was published in 2014 by Harvard University Press. She is also a composer of folk and Renaissance-tinged a cappella vocal music on historical themes, most of which she performs with the group Sassafrass. She writes about history for a popular audience at exurbe.com and about SF and fantasy-related matters at Tor.com. Too Like the Lightning was her debut fiction book.
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
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