Briar Moss News Today

The magazine of the science fiction, fantasy, and horror field with news, reviews, and author interviews

Woodcut by unknown artist, 1720. Credit: Wellcome Collection (CC BY 4.0) I like the small things in fantasy, by which I mean I like germs and figuring out if the characters know about them. People in the real world didn’t know about germs for a long time, either (though many people put forth theories about spores, contagions, and small bodies and how to prevent their spread). Our previous theories and treatments made sense given what we could observe, and many fantasies draw from the centurie...