Skip to content
Answering Your Questions About Reactor: Right here.
Sign up for our weekly newsletter. Everything in one handy email.
When one looks in the box, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the cat.

Reactor

On Friday, July 20, 2018, Tor.com will turn 10 years old.

In that span of time we have published, along with over 700 pieces of award-winning original fiction, more than 30,000 articles. To commemorate this exceptional, intense, unicorn-dappled run of non-fiction, we have assembled Rocket Fuel, a free collection of some of the best feature articles from Tor.com’s 10-year history as an online sci-fi/fantasy literature magazine!

Experience:

  • An intimate moment under the covers that bloomed into a lifetime lived through sci-fi/fantasy.
  • A fierce defense of fanfiction.
  • The history of Wheel of Time author Robert Jordan, and the story of the reader who had her future rewritten in turn.
  • A deeply unwise thought experiment that explains how centaurs eat.
  • The story of one writer’s amazing day, starting out on her last dime and ending with her somehow hugging her idol, Terry Pratchett.
  • And so much more!

Rocket Fuel: Some of the Best From Tor.com Non-Fiction

Rocket Fuel is free to download at your preferred ebook outlet.

Buy the Book

Rocket Fuel

Rocket Fuel

Selecting articles that represented the myriad authors, writers, and voices that have graced our shores was a months-long task. We are an odd rocket, veering our way through a universe full of epic fantasy rereads, lists featuring our favorite musical horse videos, deep dives into the history of military fantasy, nakedly open personal essays, Game of Thrones recaps, rankings of the kloo horn players in Star Wars, and more How do you contain that into a singular voice?

We needn’t have worried. When everything was arrayed before us, one article brought to mind another, which immediately brought to mind another, and another… Soon, Tor.com was telling its own story in its own voice.

You’ll find that, too, as you flip through the collection. Rocket Fuel is full of miniature journeys; writers informing each other without ever having met; fiction informing life informing new fiction informing…you.

We’re excited to be able to share it all.

 

Table of Contents

  • Preface – Bridget McGovern
  1. Under the Covers with a Flashlight: Our Lives as Readers – Emmet Asher-Perrin
  2. Sometimes, Horror is the Only Fiction That Understands You – Leah Schnelbach
  3. The Bodies of the Girls Who Made Me: Fanfic and the Modern World – Seanan McGuire
  4. Writing Women Characters as Human Beings – Kate Elliott
  5. Meet My Alien Family: Writing Across Cultures in Science Fiction – Becky Chambers
  6. So How Does a Centaur Eat, Anyway? – Judith Tarr
  7. Fantasy, Reading, and Escapism – Jo Walton
  8. The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan (and Why You Should Read It) – Leigh Butler
  9. Robert Jordan: The American Tolkien – Michael Livingston
  10. The Trial of Galadriel – Jeff LaSala
  11. Good Idols: Terry Pratchett & the Appropriate Hug – Lish McBride
  12. Orwell and the Librarian, a Love Story – Alex Brown
  13. Beloved: The Best Horror Novel the Horror Genre Has Never Claimed – Grady Hendrix
  14. The Peril of Being Disbelieved: Horror and the Intuition of Women – Emmet Asher-Perrin
  15. What Rape Apologists Need to Learn From Jessica Jones – Natalie Zutter
  16. In Defense of Villainesses – Sarah Gailey
  17. Queering SFF: Writing Queer—Languages of Power – Lee Mandelo
  18. Sleeps With Monsters: There’s A Counter In My Head – Liz Bourke
  19. Apologize to No One: V for Vendetta is More Important Today Than it Ever Was – Emmet Asher-Perrin
  20. Five Books about Loving Everybody – Nisi Shawl
  21. Safe as Life: A Four-Part Essay on Maggie Stiefvater’s Raven Cycle – Lee Mandelo
  22. The Complete American Gods Mix Tape – Bridget McGovern
  23. Rewatching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: “Far Beyond the Stars” – Keith R.A. DeCandido
  24. The POC Guide to Writing Dialect In Fiction – Kai Ashante Wilson
  25. Homecoming: How Afrofuturism Bridges the Past and the Present – Tochi Onyebuchi
  26. Nobody Gets Mad About Hamlet Remakes: Why Superheroes Are the New Cultural Mythology – Ryan Britt
  27. Sowing History: A Gardener’s Tale – Ursula Vernon
  28. Not Saving the World? How Does That Even Work? – Jo Walton
  29. Ursula Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” Defies Genre – Gabrielle Bellot
  30. Soon I Won’t Know What the Future Looks Like – Chris Lough
  31. Bouncy Prose and Distant Threats: An Appreciation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s (or Sorcerer’s) Stone – Mari Ness
  32. Joy, Sorrow, Regret, and Reassurance: The Singular Beauty of The Last Unicorn – Bridget McGovern
  33. One Day You Wake Up and You Are Grown: Fairyland and the Secrets of Growing Up – Molly Templeton
  34. Preparing Myself for Death with Joe Versus the Volcano – Leah Schnelbach

Rocket Fuel is free to download at your preferred ebook outlet.

Buy the Book

Rocket Fuel

Rocket Fuel

About the Author

About Author Mobile

Bridget McGovern

Author

Learn More About Bridget

About the Author

About Author Mobile

Chris Lough

Author

An amalgamation of errant code, Doctor Who deleted scenes, and black tea.
Learn More About Chris
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
22 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments