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

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.

Author: Jo Walton,Ada Palmer
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 03/24/2026
Pages: 368
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.20lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.10w x 1.50d
ISBN: 9781250372604


Review Citation(s):
Booklist 01/01/2026
Library Journal 02/01/2026 pg. 59

About the Author

JO WALTON won the Best Novel Hugo and Nebula Awards for Among Others (2011) and the World Fantasy Award for Tooth and Claw (2003). She is the only writer other than Ursula K. Le Guin to win Best Novel in all three awards. Aside from her many other acclaimed novels, she has written extensively about SF and fantasy for Tor.com and other venues for over two decades. She lives in Montreal.

ADA PALMER won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (now retitled the Astounding Award) in 2017 following the publication of her debut novel Too Like the Lightning. She has written extensively about storytelling on sites like Tor.com, her own Exurbe.com, and elsewhere. She is a professor at the University of Chicago specializing in the Renaissance and the history of ideas.