Leading Edge Fall 2023 Meet the Staff!

by the Staff of Leading Edge Magazine Welcome back to our next cycle of posting for six months before disappearing into the abyss of summer! I’m Merlin, your humble social media director, and today we have a special blog post for you:Staff introductions. For those of you who have already […]


The Good, the Bad, and the Wild: Pretentious Sci-fi

by Phoebe English, Editor in Chief Hello everyone, and welcome back to my study. You will find it covered in floor to ceiling mahogany bookshelves filled with only the finest books Libby has to offer. Of course, this week, we’re only doing the most cerebral, the most hard hitting, the […]


The Good, the Bad, the Wild: Fairytales and Fantasy

Phoebe English, Editor in Chief Welcome back to the Good, the Bad, and the Wild, where I sit down with you in my totally not-creepy cottage in the woods and tell you all about the books I’ve read on my journeys through the dark forest that is Libby’s catalog. Some […]


The Good, the Bad, the Wild: Nautical Nonsense

by Phoebe English, Editor in Chief Welcome back to the Good, the Bad, and the Wild, where I, your beloved pirate captain, search the high seas for the best fantasy and science fiction the library has to offer. Each week, I present you with a treasure, a trial, and an […]


The Good, The Bad, and The Wild: Time’s a-Tickin’

by Phoebe English, Editor in Chief Introduction Welcome back to the good, the bad, and the wild, where I doomscroll through Libby like it’s Netflix and explore the variety speculative fiction has to offer. Some of these books are good, some are bad, and some make choices reminiscent of a […]


The Good, the Bad, and The Wild: Cyborgs and Video Games

by Phoebe English, Editor in Chief Welcome back to the good, the bad, and the wild! If you’re new here, which is pretty likely considering we’ve done this once, I make questionable reading choices which leads to lots of rants to my roommates. But because they have homework, and I […]


New Series: The Good, the Bad, The Wild

By Phoebe English, Editor in Chief Hello everyone and welcome to our new weekly post, the good, the bad, and the wild! I’m Phoebe English and as the new editor-in-chief, I am officially—don’t fact check that—the foremost expert on all things fantasy and sci-fi and as such, I have graciously […]


Growing New Ideas

by Merlin Blanchard, Social Media Director Someone recently told me that they thought the new year was an arbitrary time to set new goals, so they refused to set New Year’s resolutions. While I agree that it is fairly arbitrary, I personally happen to think that having a culturally endorsed […]


Wednesday: A Review

By Alaina Higbee, Art Director I am not someone who regularly watches TV shows. As a college student, I rarely have the time to devote to bingeing something without my grades taking a hit. And come on, who wants to watch hours of a conflict that never gets resolved, right? […]


NaNo Medkit: Finishing a Project

by Lenae Rubey, Fiction Director You’re about four weeks into your project… and, if you’re like me, you’re struggling to find the motivation to keep writing when you’ve missed too many days and are far enough behind that reaching 50,000 words is impossible this year. Life managed to get in […]


NaNo Medkit: Our “Save the World” Prescription

By Megan Dietrich, Acquisitions Editor Everyone wants to be the hero. There’s something in their ability to see a broken world and leap into action that inspires us. We write about them, recreating ourselves in our characters, scribbling in the attributes we admire, sculpting them to save their world. In […]


NaNo Medkit: Prescribing Imperfection

by Merlin Blanchard, Social Media Director There’s an old rule I learned in improv acting that goes something like, “Never say no.” Or, put in principle-format, don’t negate the choices another person makes. For a while, that sat poorly with me. What if they do something that’s not okay? What […]


NaNo Medkit: Treating Writer’s Block

By Erin Thorley, Managing Editor When I first heard about NaNoWriMo, I thought it was a computer virus. I thought it was something that would break spell check, freeze my screen, and suspiciously open YouTube or Pinterest every 5 minutes. Unfortunately, for many authors, my initial impression wasn’t that far […]


Tropes: The Haunt in the Sky

By Erin Thorley 10 p.m. Tree corpses bleed crimson leaves onto the pavement. Children scurry. The kids are warmed by adrenaline and an overload of Twix bars. Somewhere, someone cackles. A yellow moon, the pulsing heart of Halloween, haunts the stars into submission. Without its scythe-like sneer, this scene wouldn’t […]


Tropes: A Brief Intro to Lovecraftian Horror 3

By Merlin Blanchard If you’re like me, you might feel a very visceral kind of frustration when watching characters in horror stories making obviously stupid decisions.  “Why are you going into the dark basement without turning on the lights? At least bring a knife with you!” “Just run away already!” […]


An evil green knight.

Tropes: The Evil Overlord

By Lauren Johansen The evil overlord is a popular trope in speculative fiction. This is the “big bad” looming in the background as his armies/minions/underlings do all the work. The evil overlord is often either trying to rule or conquer the world or already has. Think Sauron from The Lord […]


Clichés vs. Tropes

by Merlin Blanchard I’ve heard a lot of people use the words ‘cliché’ and ‘trope’ interchangeably. Granted, there’s not a lot to separate them in our minds. Heck, for a while, I thought that tropes were just as bad, if not worse, than clichés. “Avoid them at all costs!” was […]


Haunting of Hill House Review

By Merlin Blanchard “A ghost cannot hurt anyone; only the fear of ghosts can be dangerous.” Frankly, with all the memories of Ghostbusters ringing in my ears, I was surprised to read a line like this in a ghost story. I came across The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley […]


5 Translated Fantasy and Sci-fi Reads

By Mollyanne Burgoyne The world is even more vast than a map would have us think. If you cannot afford to travel at the rate they pay college students, I invite you on a trip around the world – though I do admit we spend a long dalliance in Japan. […]


This, That, and the Other: A Conversation with Dan Wells (Part One)

A week ago, we chatted over Zoom with Dan Wells, a BYU grad and Leading Edge alum who has gone on to write the bestselling John Wayne Cleaver series, the Partials sequence, the Mirador series, and a number of standalone novels, including The Hollow City and Extreme Makeover: Apocalypse Edition.


SF/F K-Drama Watchlist

Spend the dreary late winter months by escaping with these sci-fi/fantasy Korean dramas! A couple of our staff members have some recommendations for you. The King: Eternal Monarch In an alternate world where the Korean War never happened—and the peninsula was never split apart—Lee Gon (Lee Min-ho; 이민호) is King […]


Writing Star Wars: A Conversation with Claudia Gray

Back in December, we had the opportunity of a lifetime for a couple of Star Wars fans: an interview with Claudia Gray, author of six Star Wars novels, as well as the Spellcaster and Evernight series. We talked about her journey to becoming a New York Times bestselling author, her hit novel Star Wars: Bloodline, and her new releases.


Movie Review: Dune

Unsure if Hollywood’s latest sci-fi blockbuster, Dune, is worth your time? Read these two reviews of the movie by our two contributors, Mollyanne Burgoyne and Laura Alvarenga, who had high hopes for the film.


Aspiring Writer Highlight: Kate Eliason

Leading Edge is on a mission to pluck the prolific Science Fiction and Fantasy authors of the future from today’s crowd of BYU students—a pretty impressive pool to choose from, if we do say so ourselves. (1) How did you first get into writing? I attempted to write my first […]


Review: The Bad Batch

By Christian Cabrera As we continue our journey through the many and amazing Star Wars series offered on Disney+, we have found ourselves enjoying the first season of The Bad Batch. Is it what we hoped for? No! Actually, it’s more than we could’ve hoped for. In sixteen episodes, this […]


Black History Month Booklist: 3 Must-Read Sci-fi Novels by Black Authors 1

SF/F fans can celebrate Black History Month by reading these three Sci-fi books by Black authors! Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler In this brilliant Young Adult novel by renowned author Octavia Butler, 18-year-old Lauren Olamina must navigate the treacherous landscape of 2025 California while grappling with a unique mental […]


Flash Fiction Contest 1

We are excited to announce the winners of our Issue #78 Flash Fiction Contest! First Place: “Until the Last Will I Bury” by Aaron Hoskins Honorable Mentions: “Your Turn” by Kierra Sauder“Will of a Wisp” by Jenna Eatough“Berekvam” by Natasha Watts Issue #78 of Leading Edge will be published in […]


Top Ten Redheads in SciFi/Fantasy (Happy St. Patrick’s Day!) 1

By C. H. Watson Happy Saint Patrick’s Day, everyone! In celebration of this year’s luck o’ the Irish, I’m honoring redheads everywhere by discussing some of my favorites in Science Fiction and Fantasy. March 17th is a day of remembering our heritage, keeping track of where we came from to […]


Poorly Summarized Pixar Movies!

By S. B. Watson Pixar: it’s definitely one of the biggest film companies of our time. From their early days as some of the first people to successfully use computer animation to their current status as an entire fandom in their own right, Pixar has made a lot of interesting […]


SFF’s Top Ten Dynamic Duos

By Melissa Lyons Sometimes when you’re lonely, you immerse yourself in the happiness of others. To stay ethical and avoid stalking real people, you obsess over fictional characters—  What? That’s just me? Oh. Well. . .In honor of Valentine’s Day 2020, I’m compiling a list of people who have better […]


The Mandalorian–Reflection and Review

By Heather Bergeson Lucasfilm’s first attempt at a live-action Star Wars series has come and gone, leaving behind hundreds of Baby Yoda memes and Boba Fett theories.  The Mandalorian gives Star Wars fans a deeper look into what was going on a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far […]


Shadoplay, Part III

“Sister?” I asked, hesitantly.  Slowly at first, then quicker and quicker, memories crowded my mind: memories of chasing each other as children, of the bloodshed we’d inflicted, of the days when I could kill with a touch. When I could command legions of shadow with barely a thought. I remembered […]


Shadoplay, Part 2

by Malcom Lamb, Acquisitions editor Read Part I Here The shadows danced on strings made of absence, only now, I wasn’t the one pulling the strings. They whirled, spinning and contorting, limbs writhing like worms dropped onto hot asphalt. Crescent slits of light formed mocking grins, taunting my sudden loss […]


Shadoplay, Part 1

by Lenicka Lee, Acquisitions Editor Sosurro the Puppet Master had many ways to wow a crowd, but of them all, I was his favorite. He had large marionettes, puppets with long strings and complicated paddles, and simple ones made of socks, but the most exquisite were the shadow puppets made […]