One Way Authors Think

The publisher got around to sending me my contributor’s copy of The Book of Swords, nearly four months after the rest of you had probably got yours. I’ve been reading it, and after  I noticed how damn good an anthology it was, with a double helping of very talented authors like Ken Liu and CJ Cherryh and Scott Lynch and Elizabeth Bear and Daniel Abraham and George RR Martin, I noticed something else, which was that many of the stories had certain commonalities.  Which tells you a certain way...