Ryk E. Spoor

Ryk E. Spoor is an American science fiction and fantasy writer.

His major universes are:
 * A multiverse that includes the Jason Wood series (set in present-day Earth) and Phoenix Rising (set in the magical universe-equivalent of Earth, due for release in November 2012). There are also several more unpublished novels in this multiverse; some can be found in serialized form in his Paradigms Lost forum on Baen's Bar.
 * The Boundary series, co-written with Eric Flint: Boundary, Threshold, and Portal (upcoming, early 2013). Discovery of alien archaeological artifacts drives a mission to Mars.
 * 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, is under contract and likely to be published somewhere in 2013.

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.


 * Jason Wood series
 * Boundary series
 * Grand Central Arena


 * 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.
 * Meaningful Rename: One of the main characters in Phoenix Reborn comes from a culture where a person is given one name when they are born, and chooses a second name that has some personal significance when they become an adult.
 * 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.