Science Fiction Weaponry

If you just call it a death ray, you don't have to go into the details. Don't worry, the audience will believe that weapons kill people.

Addendum

But then when you try to claim your coupon, you have to answer some questions about the book. The answers are changed regularly for security reasons. This process may sound like a hassle, but do you want people to read more or not? What do you mean, "not particularly?" Well, yeah, I guess, when you put it that way.

Encouraging More People to Read

Coupons! For eggs! Inserted right in the book.

Addendum

Phoenikes also say "phoenix," but a lot else is different. For instance, they say "pop" and "bubbler."

Fantasy Dialects

When you think about it, sphinxes probably ended all their sentences in "sphinx," right? Same with phoenices, nagas, rocs, and on and on, mutatis mutandis.

Pseudo-Post-Apocalypse

When people are running around dealing out death with sword and spell while in the background there's what we recognize as advanced technology, the legacy of the civilization of old, we must consider the possibility there wasn't an apocalypse. Everybody just decided the world would be cooler that way.

The Strange Sources of Xenopaleontological Knowledge

I chased the space pirate all the way to Heraclius, one of those worlds that's nothing but grains and farm drones. I expected him to have some goons, a hideout, or at least a cache with a few guns there, but when I tracked him down, he was doing nothing but staring at a rock stuck on a couple other rocks.
"I remember," he said without turning around. "They argue whether a member of one species can be reborn as another, but it has to be true because I remember. I was a great magus once (for by that name we called those with the strongest psychic talents) and kings bowed to me even in their own palaces of brown-purple marble. They put before me the rich flesh of the uyilla, the delicate hobtgui roots, and I undid their difficulties. But even my wisdom failed when . . . Oh, I see the towers, how they crumble! The dead fill the streets and the wails of the living form inescapable clouds! Iauvne, where have you gone? Plellol ecsa, plellol monsa!"
"Fine, but I'm still going to arrest you."
"Yeah. Yeah, I suppose I should have waited for a convenient time to come here, but you sort of get these ideas in your head, you know?"
I wasn't interested in conversation with scum, so I didn't answer, but I knew all right.
Finis

Dragon Incentives

It's probably Pern's fault that riding dragons and their dragon riders so often have some kind of magic/psychic/empathic bond, but let's be honest: Both parties probably just liking wrecking stuff and pillaging what's left. The will to evil is sufficient without such contrivances.

A Matter of Maturity

The promising child studies bunny magic, the apprentice rabbit magic, and the master bunny magic.

Addendum

A few of those entries will need to be altered in certain settings. For instance, in a far-future interplanetary milieu, the judge may have invented the space piano.