How would you feel if someone revealed the ending of a story before you’d read it? Most of us say we’d be angry. We have even established protocols to prevent having a story “spoiled,” and the term “spoiler alert” has entered common parlance. So recent research like the study at the University of California at [...]

Little excites our sense of adventure more than an attractive ruin: a castle on a hill, a vine-clutched pyramid, a masonry wall sheltered in a natural cave. Ruins appear in a variety of roles in the fantasy tale—and it’s rare indeed to find a fantasy without them. Some are indelible settings for pivotal scenes, like [...]