Experimenting with the “voice” telling a story is a fundamental tool of the fiction-writing trade. Narrators come in a wide variety of styles, from first-person intimate, to unreliably distanced, to godlike in knowledge and perception. The way a story is told is just as important—sometimes more so—than the story itself. Still, most narrators are more or less conventional. They […]

This weekend, the adaptation of Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon arrives on Netflix, bringing to life a gritty, violent world of cheap death and enforced immortality by way of consciousness-downloading. But once you’ve binged your way through every episode, there’s a high chance that its vibrant, dark world will be hard to leave behind. Luckily, there […]

Some authors’ fiercest competition is their own bibliography. When you produce a bestselling masterpiece read the world over, everything else you wrote (or will write) is doomed to live in the shadows. Fortunately, many of our favorite authors happen to be very good at what they do. Glance past the glamorous “most popular” section and you’ll find overlooked […]