Help for the Wanta Be Scifi or Fantasy Writer
Discover essential guides for aspiring sci-fi and fantasy writers, from Orson Scott Card’s craft advice to world-building and publishing tips. Explore a curated list of must-read books on imagination, myth, and storytelling to launch your career in speculative fiction.
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The Fantasy Writer's Companion
by Tee Morris
Tee Morris and Valerie Griswold team up as editors for the title that picks up where "Alchemy With Words" leaves off. The Opus Magus takes on the advanced topics of writing, such as incorporating horror, mystery, herbalism and advanced worldbuilding.
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World Building
by Stephen Gillett
With Stephen Gillett's help, you'll be on solid ground, no matter what kinds of worlds you create for your science fiction. World-Building explains science to help you make your fiction plausible. You'll give your worlds the pull of gravity, aware of the effects on inhabitants and the planets themselves. Mix elements and build planets with chemically credible, geologically accurate characteristics - and anomalies - that affect those who live there. Create planetary "engines," convincing atmospheres and fact-based weather patterns. Colonize a truly weird world: ancient Earth. Explore our neighboring planets and their satellites for SF possibilities. Light and heat your landscapes with the right types of stars. See how things might be on a "chloroxygen" world and other hypothetical places.
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Giants Monsters and Dragons
by Carol Rose
Contains alphabetically arranged entries that describe the imaginary creatures found in legends, religions, folklore, oral history, and theologies around the world.
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The Dictionary of Imaginary Places
by Alberto Manguel
Describes and visualizes over 1,200 magical lands found in literature and film, discussing such exotic realms as Atlantis, Tolkien's Middle Earth, and Oz.
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The Science of Science-fiction Writing
by James E. Gunn
A fiction-writing text by a well-known sci-fi author, editor and professor.
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The Writer's Journey
by Christopher Vogler
Shows how writers can use mythic structure to give coherence and weight to both narrative fiction and nonfiction.
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Time Travel
by Paul J. Nahin
Time Travel explains science to help you make your fiction plausible. You'll leave for the future from a solid theoretical launching pad - and you'll see why the idea of traveling to the past violates no known laws of physics. Time Travel explores the theories of relativity, shows you the equations, probes the marvelous possibilities. It's filled with facts you can use in your fiction to cross the filmy borders and take readers along the corridors of time.
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The Writer's Guide to Creating a Science Fiction Universe
by George Ochoa
To hold the interest of knowledgeable sci-fi readers, a writer the genre must stay within certain fuzzy boundaries of scientific belief. This volume provides some of the scientific detail that will make a writer's adventures compelling and consistent with current views of the universe. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
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How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy
by Orson Scott Card
Defines both genres, tells how to write a successful story, and where to find markets to get published.