Ryk E. Spoor is an American science fiction and fantasy writer.
His major universes are:
- A multiverse in which Earth has a magical sister-world called Zarathan. Connections are visible between the works, but the individual sets of stories can be read separately. Works in this multiverse include:
- Jason Wood series, set in present-day Earth;
- The Balanced Sword trilogy, set in present-day Zarathan;
- Godswar trilogy (in progress), set in Zarathan and overlapping with The Balanced Sword;
- The Spirit Warriors trilogy (in progress), set in Earth and Zarathan and overlapping with The Balanced Sword and Godswar;
- Demons of the Past trilogy, a space opera set in the deep past of the multiverse;
- Legend, a superhero novel set about 15-20 years after the Jason Wood stories.
- The Boundary series, co-written with Eric Flint: Boundary, Threshold, and Portal. Discovery of alien archaeological artifacts drives a mission to Mars.
- The Castaway series, also co-written with Eric Flint and set in the same universe. The first two books are Castaway Planet and Castaway Odyssey.
- Grand Central Arena. The good news: FTL travel is possible. The bad news: You don't get to travel through interstellar space, you get to enter the Arena and play by the Precursors' rules. A sequel, Spheres of Influence, was released in 2013, and third book, Challenges of the Deeps was released in March, 2017.
- Princess Holy Aura. It is Spoor's take on the Magical Girl Warrior.
Spoor is also well-known on Usenet groups such as rec.arts.sf.written and rec.arts.anime.misc as "Sea Wasp".
His web site
, his LiveJournal. Some of his stories are freely available at the Baen Free Library or serialized on his blog.
In March and April 2014 he ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to publish his Oz novel Polychrome. In June-July 2019, he successfully ran another Kickstarter campaign to write the next book in his Grand Central Arena universe.
Works by Ryk E. Spoor with their own trope pages include:
- Jason Wood series
- Boundary series
- Grand Central Arena series
- The Balanced Sword trilogy
- Princess Holy Aura
Tropes in other works:
- Covers Always Lie: Attempted aversion that failed. One scene in "Diamonds Are Forever" was specifically written so that Baen books, notorious for their covers, would have a legitimate reason to have a cover showing an attractive woman in her underwear fighting a dragon. They didn't fall for it.
- Our Monsters Are Different: "Diamonds Are Forever", which has some stylistic and thematic similarities to the Jason Wood stories (although there's no character overlap and officially it's not part of the same world), has Our Dragons Are Different and thoroughly averts Our Dwarves Are All the Same.
