Brandon Sanderson might be even better at sci-fi than Cosmere fantasy

The prolific author offers some clever spins on time travel and simulation theory in Tailored Realities

At the tail end of 2025, Brandon Sanderson left his massive Cosmere fantasy universe behind for his new short story collection Tailored Realities. But more surprisingly, the book largely leaves the fantasy genre behind as well. There’s a single tiny story about dragons, but most of the book focuses on big science fiction concepts like simulation theory, time travel, and humanity’s place in the universe. Remarkably, Sanderson’s science fiction work is less mechanically driven than his fantasy, putting aside the complex world-building he’s famous for in favor of twisty, character-driven mysteries. Sanderson is always writing something, and while I’m excited to see what’s next in the Cosmere, Tailored Realities makes me hope that he’ll keep experimenting with science fiction.

Sanderson’s work has always felt like a blend of science fiction and fantasy. While many fantasy authors just use magic to create vibes, Sanderson always lays out clear rules for how his magic works — a habit he told Polygon comes from his love of tabletop role-playing games. He’s effectively invented his own form of physics, with magic functioning differently across the Cosmere. The rules are based on which of Sanderson’s godlike beings, Shardholders, are active on a planet, rather than on universal forces like gravity or electromagnetism.

The Wheel of Time author Robert Jordan also set clear rules for his magic system, and Sanderson inherited his world when he was invited to complete the epic fantasy series after Jordan’s 2007 death. Both Jordan and Sanderson are fascinated by the ideas of magical artifice and lost knowledge. The cycle of Desolations — periods of fierce conflict that lead to civilizational collapse for the people of Roshar in Sanderson’s epic fantasy series the Stormlight Archive — mirrors the clashes between the Dragon and the Dark One in the Wheel of Time. Both the Stormlight Archive and the Wheel of Time bring a post-apocalyptic quality to their high fantasy, as characters seek to meet the current crisis by rediscovering lost magical-technological wonders.

Fantasy can often be a very static genre, with little changing over the course of thousands of years, but Sanderson makes his worlds feel far more dynamic by showing how technology and society evolve. While his first Mistborn trilogy is medieval fantasy, the second has more in common with a Western. He’s currently working on a third Mistborn series that will be set in a time analogous to the 1980s, and will deal with the emergence of early computers.

Sanderson is known for his elaborate world-building, but he takes a far lighter touch in the short stories and novellas of Tailored Realities. He even makes fun of his own tropes in the book’s best story, Perfect State, which uses simulation theory to explore the nature of heroism and resistance. The book demonstrates what Sanderson can do when he just leans on real science and established genre tropes rather than building mechanics from scratch.

“Moment Zero,” a post-apocalyptic time-travel mystery reminiscent of Netflix’s Bodies, was written just for Tailored Realities. In the postscript, Sanderson mentions that his notes contained detailed rules for the novella’s spin on quantum physics, but that most of them never made it into the book. “I didn’t want the focus to be on the mechanics, but on the flow through time of the characters and their interactions,” he writes.

Just by acknowledging that most readers will accept wormholes and quantum entanglement as an excuse for weird stuff, Sanderson is able to focus more on the relationship between the characters and the sacrifices they make to protect the world. The story is evocative precisely because it’s so vague about what’s happening and why. Early in the story, it’s revealed that voices from beyond the wormhole were instructing the scientist who sets the whole crisis in motion. Sanderson probably has elaborate notes on where these voices are coming from and what they want, but here, he just coasts on creepy vibes to write a rich mystery with huge stakes.

The same is true for “Snapshot,” the first story in Tailored Realities. It’s a sci-fi serial-killer thriller following partners who investigate crimes using a simulation of a day in the recent past. Sanderson explains that the simulation is powered by some sort of trapped creature being kept unconscious, with electricity buzzing through it. But aside from the detectives musing about how unsettling that is, there’s no further explanation. Before he sold the rights to his Cosmere universe to Apple TV, Sanderson said “Snapshot” was the closest any of his writing had come to being adapted. It would still make a great movie, because it’s so tight and character-driven while hinting at a bigger, weirder world.

Sanderson’s biggest foray into science fiction is the Cytoverse, his young adult series focused on a pilot at flight school. The series is too bogged down by YA tropes — exacerbated by Sanderson’s tendency to make up curse words — for me to recommend to anyone. Sanderson has since passed the franchise to his co-writer Janci Patterson.

But Tailored Realities includes the origin of the Cytoverse, “Defending Elysium,” a short story Sanderson wrote in 2001, four years before Elantris became his first published novel. Instead of YA, it’s closer to a noir, following an investigator looking for a missing scientist whose case is entangled with the death of an alien ambassador. The genre is more compelling, as is the setting — a near-future where humanity is still grappling with how to deal with aliens and the potential of faster-than-light travel. The strength of one of Sanderson’s earliest stories makes me wish he’d try his hand at space opera again, this time as a more mature writer.

While any other author would probably be satisfied with just writing one enormously bestselling series, Sanderson loves to jump around and explore new settings and worlds. He’s working on a script for Apple TV’s Mistborn adaptation and his next Mistborn book trilogy, and later this year he's releasing a contemporary fantasy novel co-written with Peter Orullian and the standalone Cosmere novel The Fires of December. Sanderson doesn’t plan on returning to his Stormlight Archive series until 2030. That leaves him plenty of time to experiment — and hopefully to write some more science fiction.