Recommended reading charts (Look here before asking for vague recs).https://mega.nz/folder/kj5hWI6J#0cyw0-ZdvZKOJW3fPI6RfQ/folder/4rAmSZxb>Archive:https://warosu.org/lit/?task=search2&search_subject=sffg>Goodreads:https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1029811-sffg>Previous:>>24823223>Thread Question: What's your favourite decade of sci-fi?
Dunsany is KING
>>24835665The most important scifi/fantasy writer you've never heard of is Edwin Lester Arnold, whose writings set the stage for the later work of Edgar Rice Burroughs. The Wonderful Adventures of Phra the Phoenician and Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation are two of the most influential works to the two genres, but are nearly completely forgotten by time.
*filters you*
>>24829278Yes.And Soulcatcher is my waifu, so don't even think about it.
Chuds can read Red Rising now, apparently the author reposted pro-Charlie Kirk content.
>>24835790>Needs political affirmations to read literature.The difference between educated and propaganda pig is the willingness to consider both sides equally, before taking a stance.
Is this book any good?
>>24835845Why don't you read it and find out.
>>24835855Reading? in my il/lit/erate board? No we only bait each other about religion and politics here.
>>24835718Your """taste""" in books is SHIT.Fuck off and kill yourself, newfag nigger.This is the same anti-intellectual nigger, who posts like Bakkerfag, and has been spamming and trying to stop discussion because of Yev's reviews for 3 years now. Any time Dunsany is mentioned, it's usually by this 14-25 year old newfag.
>>24836019>low IQ filtered by DunsanyCOPE>In a wood older than record, a foster brother of the hills, stood the village of Allathurion; and there was peace between the people of that village and all the folk who walked in the dark ways of the wood, whether they were human or of the tribes of the beasts or of the race of the fairies and the elves and the little sacred spirits of trees and streams. Moreover, the village people had peace among themselves and between them and their lord, Lorendiac. In front of the village was a wide and grassy space, and beyond this the great wood again, but at the back the trees came right up to the houses, which, with their great beams and wooden framework and thatched roofs, green with moss, seemed almost to be a part of the forest.I am 38 and far more well read than you will ever be.
>>24835845it's good but quite derivative of gormenghast (i mean look at the cover)
go back schizo
this book is GOD
Picked up two Ted Chiang collections today I got Exhalation and Stories of Your Life. What's the consensus of his works around here?
>>24836246https://www.goodreads.com/group/show_book/1029811-sffg?book_id=41160292https://www.goodreads.com/group/show_book/1029811-sffg?book_id=223380
>>24836179Do I need to read the first one?
>>>/vg/544421563
I just read three novellas by this guy.>Elder Race>Made Things>Hungry GodsThe first two were really good, the last one was meh.The weird part though is that they all follow the exact same format.>level-headed young girl has to deal with some weird magic old guymethinks this warrants some freudian analysis
>>24836246he is unironically the best scifi short story author ever
>>24836392Nah
>>24836179Is this book about being so ugly that you become based?
What are the best books for escapism, sense of purpose, feeling like you have friends, everything has a meaning, etc? You know what I mean
>>24836505LOTR or Terry Pratchet books or something even better - human contact. Chin up anon
>>24836369Youre lucky you missed the one about the British Indian tranny and his lesbian girlfriend that save the world from an evil alien.
>>24836350yes absolutely, the first one is even better, but this one feels more mature but stillthey are absolutely glorious if you like raw psychopathic grim dark
>>24836369I've only read children of time, which I really enjoyed, but it seems he releases a new book every few months. Is he a ghostwriter, some AI machine or something else? Not even Sanderson pumps shit out that quickl
>>24836505well I'm not one for recommending any YA but maybe you can go for something light like Mistborn by B. Sanderson?
>>24836400the merchant & the alchemist's gate trounces every other work of short fiction not written by Ted Chiang and it's not even his best
It's so good
>>24836626Starts to get pretty bad around book 5. Reads like he just lost the passion he had for it.
>>24835790>reposted pro-Charlie Kirk content.holy... the ned flanders of moderate conservatism... I think I'm going insane... help me niggerman!
>>24835665Am I the only one who finds Dune a bit painful to read because of the way in which the Fremen just kill everyone they fight effortlessly? It's really hard to take the Sardaukar seriously when every time we actually see them do anything, the Fremen kill 300 of them and then say "oh but two of our illiterate sandnigger people died in this giant knife fight against the eugenic supersoldier space marines" and at one point they suggest that when the Sardaukar went on a deliberate pogrom against the Fremen as hard as they could, they were going 1:5 with them even though they have the best of literally every kind of equipment, air power, and the best trained troops in the galaxy.This is just silly shit, completely takes me out of the story. I find myself having to make excuses for how it's possible. I like the writing, but the constant stroking off of these retarded desert savages makes my eyebrows bounce off my brain stem every time I read it.
>>24836697>Can't into suspension of disbelief.Why are you even reading fiction nigger?
>>24836702It's not even really a suspension of disbelief thing, it's thematic. By this point in the story I'm inclined to believe that the Fremen, without Paul's assistance at all, were perfectly capable of raiding the Imperials indefinitely and nothing was ever going to stop them. The Sardaukar went negative against them in the scene where they rescue Paul ffs, he hasn't taught them the space jiujitsu yet. The Harkonnen can't possibly be a serious threat to them.I was pissed at the film for doing this, now I see it's actually just as absurd in the book.
I decided im gonna jump into sanderslop, but only feel like reading stormlight archives. Do i miss out a lot by not reading the other books?>>24836626The Ace books are dogshit design wise, but yeah, great books.
>>24836752Other stuff doesn't really start leaking in until the most recent 2 books, and even then no you're not missing anything.Going forward Stormlight is essentially the required reading for the rest of the cosmere, not vice-versa.
>>24836735>Yeah bro it's just impossible to believe that anyone could galvanize disorganized groups of fanatics into a well-organized popular insurgencyyou might actually be retarded
>>24836752No. Stormlight is a self contained story but references from mistborn and other stuff do bleed through. Stormlight was the first Sanderson books I read and there were references to things I didn’t know but it doesn’t really mean much besides Easter eggs. I’ll do a reread once the new one comes out after reading all the cosmere books and then understand the references.
>>24836756You're missing my point intentionally. The Fremen at no point appear to NEED organization. They're already better than their enemies, even when they are being subjected to "Pogroms" they kill more of their oppressors than are killed. Fenring draws even more egregious attention to this when talking to the Baron. Just in case you might have been mistakenly thinking that there were some kind of stakes for the Fremen after being told repeatedly that they're better than everyone else, they are also better than the Sardaukar before Paul even joins them. The story is framed in such a way that whoever the Fremen are fighting feel like the underdog even though that is clearly not the intended framing. This is abysmally clumsy writing.
>>24836753>>24836758Thanks anons. I might give other books a try if i like stormlight, but for now i want to read something without the feeling like im missing out
>>24836778Enjoy. He gets shit but the way of kings is one of the best fantasy books released in a long time.
>>24836778You'll be fine, enjoy it. Way of Kings is a great book, I like to think of it like an inspirational sports movie in fantasy book form.
>>24836772well they DO go from killing a few assholes when convenient to conquering the universe
>>24836400name someone better
>>24836246He's very good. He's one of the few authors still writing golden-age-style sf short stories (at least one of the few actually managing to get published).>>24836392Clarke, Bradbury, and Sturgeon were better.
finna read some gene wolf kino
>>24835734I disagree with the way the author sees the world, but I enjoyed the books. Incredible series.
>>24835734Currently reading the first book and I'm not sure what the fuck is going on at this point but I'm getting bored
>>24836697You're forgetting the only time when the Fremen are allowed to take a 'loss', where a bunch of unarmed Fremen women and children fight off a Saudarkar armed raid while all of the Fremen warriors are away BUT the last surviving two or three Saudarker managed to kidnap a single child. Yes it's completely slapstick retarded
My only issue with Dune (but it is a big one) is I never really liked Paul. As a plot device, he’s fine. I like the idea of someone so charismatic he inspires fanaticism. Everyone in the book is in love with him. I'm told how charming he is, but i never feel that he is. He just seems like any talented teenager
>>24835665I’m finishing up my first novel. I’m at about 105k words and have a couple chapters left. I don’t know how to explain it, but there’s a kind of malaise I’m dealing with. The creative part is over, and now I’m just engineering all the plot threads together to close it out and land with a sufficient emotional beat. But there’s a sense of imposter syndrome and anxiety about completing it.Spending the last year writing and rewriting each chapter, feeling isolated, feeling exposed and inadequate, has been torture. Writing a book, like really trying to make something great, is incredibly difficult. I understand why so few people do it, and why even published books don’t always feel satisfying. Writing a book is hard.
>>24837059>The creative part is over, and now I’m just engineering all the plot threads together to close it out and land with a sufficient emotional beat.good books do this thing where all of the threads are flowcharted and storyboarded so that they run smoothly to conclusion before before you ever start writingif you're feeling a sense of imposter syndrome it may be because you are an imposter. the good news is that most writers aren't even self-aware enough to know that they are imposters. you know that meme that's been going around, "you make it perfect later uwu :3"? it's horseshit.
>>24837336You’re confusing books with cartoons again.
>>24837391ngmi
I finished Perdido Street Station. Ending was a little rushed and spotty (the big revelation coming from some brand new character who only appears in the last chapter, ehh) but overall it was a good book, I think.
>>24836369Could not fucking stand Made Things and I think he's a pretty decent novelist.
Gonna read Neuromancer for the first time. Hopefully it's good but I hear people consider it overrated.
>>24836520it's a collective, like honor da ballsac
>>24837569sci fi is a coherent lineage. there's no reason to read it if you don't want to participate and there's definitely to reason to read it if you care about what "people" think.
>>24836697Just stop reading sci-fi, its not for you mate.
>>24837681>sci fi is a coherent lineage. there's no reason to read it if you don't want to participateI don't even know what you mean by this, I'm reading the book because I want to read the book.>and there's definitely to reason to read it if you care about what "people" think.I'm just saying that it's considered a landmark work of Sci-Fi and I hope it lives up to that.
A household humanoid robot that will do anything you want, orders ship next year. $20,000, $500/month subscription. https://youtu.be/LTYMWadOW7c If you want it to do anything complicated, it will be remote controlled by a human.
Are there any decent fantasy/sci-fi books that focus more on trade/economics?
>>24837882There are surely web novels that do that. You could ask in /wng/. Other than that, I only a few personally and if you've asked before, it won't be much that's new. My most recent read is about a fantasy government, which has some overlap, though not all that much.
>>24837889Never read a web novel before, and this is my first time asking. Which government novel did you read?
>>24837847that's one step closer to my android wife
>>24836638I just started book 5, it does seem to take a notable shift. I've yet to decide if it has become "pretty bad"
>>24837847won't be buying this until it can get on my roof and replace the shingles
>>24837896Legalist, 5th book in The Grand Illusion series.
>>24835734>>24836998Malazan's characters have no depth. What's the point of a story with over one hundred characters when not a single one is actually interesting?
>>24837882Neptune's Brood by Stross focused pretty heavily on (interstellar/no-FTL) economics if I remember right.
>>24837936*4th
Hey can you fags reclaim your Reverend Insanity dipshit and the statsfag who apparently leaves reviews here? We (/wng/) really don't want them.
>>24838021Their infamy grows...
>>24836772>The story is framed in such a way that whoever the Fremen are fighting feel like the underdog even though that is clearly not the intended framing. This is abysmally clumsy writing.uuuhh anon you do know that the fremen and Paul are the bad guys right? just because they are fighting against a fat gay pedophile doesn't mean that paul and the pro-genocide fremen are the heroes
>>24838050The protagonist is always who the reader must side with regardless.
>>24837847I've read that one.
>>24835790finally... Dune for Chuds
What are books with a similar vibe + setting with Votoms/Mellowlink? Do I just read Battletech stuff?
>>24835734Does that omnibus actually exist?
>>24838195I downloaded it and it nearly broke my old tablet, so it does exist in some form.
>>24837012I was the same. I pushed through to the second book and then things clicked and I enjoyed the series going forward.>24838195>Does that omnibus actually exist?Only for e-readers and even then I would not recommend it. A key part of reading Malazan for me was going through the glossary and dramatise personae and it would be incredibly unwieldy doing that in a document that covers around 12,000 pages. Imagine trying to search for something in there, your e-reader would explode or would be pulling results from all 10 books.
>>24838402>>24838195
thoughts on this?
>>24837012I honestly can't see what's great about Malazan, same here
>>24836752Starting with third book SA gradually incorporates other cosmere books' elements, characters, concepts and even plots. One of the 3 main characters basically linked to other cosmere stuff starting with Book 2/3.To the point that Book 5 has too much other Cosmere shit that you are expected to know about to care or your enjoyment would be actively undermined. I personally hated Book 5 because of that. That being said - other Cosmere books are mostly 7/10 books so I don't know if anyone respecting their time would bother reading them. Sanderson has fucked up with SA. First two books were pretty good.
Recommend me something pulpy
>>24838750https://warosu.org/lit/?task=search2&search_subject=pg+pulp
>>24836998What about Erikson’s viewpoint don’t you agree with?>>24837938Brutally filtered … Trull, Karsa, Felisin, Kallor, Mappo … where did you stop?
>>24837940>>24837936Thanks, I've added both of these to my reading list.
>>24837847https://youtu.be/f3c4mQty_soWall Street Journal review of it. I expected it to be effusive, since they're so pro-business/corporate/tech, but it really wasn't. The reviewer noted that nothing was done without a human and it had many problems. When it's working better, I wonder if it will mostly be for those who can afford it and want it, to be a relatively cheap way to have people from undeveloped countries working for them as servants at far less wages than would have to be paid in a developed country. If you got someone for 5/hours a day for all 30 days, that's 150 hours. $500/150 hours is only $3.5/hour. Even if it's only 50 hours per month, that's only $10/hour. They didn't specify how much humans can be used. Next up in culture wars, are human-piloted robots taking all the jobs from illegal immigrants? (I don't know how much of a joke this is).
Read Reverend Insanity.
>>24838979>>>/lit/wng
>>24838979I did, its ass.
>>24836752Stormlight is so ass. Just read mistborn og trilogy, maybe the sequel if you like it THAT much. Yes, you miss a lot of stuff, because the gay ass marvel verse is referenced every goddamn time, and you'll feel like an idiot.
>>24838021Why wouldn't people who want to discuss webnovels congregate in the webnovel general? It's hardly our fault that web novel readers are often dangerously mentally ill
>>24838552pozzed. read something else.
>>24839124THE WAY OF KINGS was based, but I dropped the series by the end of WORDS OF RADIANCE when I realized the rest was going to be Marvel bullshit, which explains why so many normies love it.
>>24839146Ok, I admit it was pretty good, but the series gets progressively worse which made it retroactively shit for me.
>>24839152How far did you get?
>>248391594th book. I've read the reviews for 5th out of curiosity, and it was almost unanimously agreed that it does pretty much everything even worse, so I gave up on both, the series and the author.
>>24839138what do you mean? is it not good?
>>24839146it's Sanderson my dude, it's doomed to become a pile of shit
>>24839166>I gave up on both, the series and the author.Don't rule Sanderson out entirely. The original MISTBORN trilogy and ELANTRIS are good reads.
>>24839193It's. Pozzed. What's not to understand?
>>24839193he means there's a gay character or some shit, /pol/ rotted brain
>>24835734ngl , got filtered by the slop that is the first book
>>24839209I know, I've read the OG mistborn and i think the first 2 books of the following trilogy, also the Legion novella, and I admit I like them quite a bit. But they had the same issue, they got progressively worse with every entry. I think I liked Legion the most of all the Sanderson stuff I've read, flawed as it was.
>>24836697Herbert believed the whole "hard times make hard men" theory of history, which is why the scrappy desert savages are better than everyone else. It's exaggerated because he wasn't big on subtlety or nuance, but he was making a point when he wrote them that way, he wasn't just making them Mary Sues for the hell of it.
>>24837563I really liked the idea of it but it felt like a book with half the fucking chapters missing. The homunculi backstory is given in an honest-to-god exposition dump, there's a buttload of named characters who are either immediately killed or play no long-term relevance, massive emotional scenes are just skipped.Seriously, this could've been a best-selling 600-page novel cum movie. It should've been. It's like he phoned in his own book.The most egregious sin he committed, however, was not finishing the main damn emotional arc. 1. The main character lies to the homunculi about her true affection for them. 2. The homunculi risk their own lives to save her.3. T̶h̶e̶r̶e̶'̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶t̶o̶u̶c̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶e̶m̶o̶t̶i̶o̶n̶a̶l̶ ̶s̶c̶e̶n̶e̶ whoops I mean fucking nothing, there's no character development at all. It literally just ends as soon as they defeat the big bad.
>>24837549I read two books inside of a week. The first was Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. The second was Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynn Jones.1. PSS was a technical marvel. Extreme amounts of skill, creativity, and worldbuilding. Well-wrought characters, fascinating plotlines, and a mysterious and engaging world.2. HMC was a bit of a whirlwind. Strange concept, few characters, not a lot of plot. The story wanders this way and that, there isn't really any escalation of any kind, and at the end of the book all the characters literally bustle into the same house and tell the protagonist the story's over.And yet. The first book felt like a bit of a slog, to be honest. I wanted to read it, sure, but I was also making myself read it. Whereas the second book was actually difficult to put down. I stayed up late to finish it.There is some undefinable quality to writing that cannot be learned, I think. The author must find it in themselves. It was sort of like the difference between a realistic painting and a symbolic painting. Technical skill is not enough.
>>24839166I actually enjoyed Rhythm of War because it was slow, character focused and dialogue heavy which I like. I can see how people think it would be boring, especially because of pacing issues but I think Wind and Truth did it much worse.
Reading the dying earth. I am so mixed on Cugel. The guy swings from absolute piece of shit moron to barely capable a lot and I still find myself cheering for him. What a funny guy.
>>24836664Ned Flanders was a parody of Christian fundamentalism, he wasn't supposed to be a moderate at all. And not even Ned has takes on MLK as spicy as Charlie.
>>24839433If there was any substance to it that would be great. Instead it's just back and forth characterization that goes nowhere, because the status quo has to be maintained for whatever reason. Sanderson's writing process:What, someone's figured something out about themselves? Nah, let's go through that process 2 more times, one wasn't enough, let's bash the reader over the head with "the message", whatever it could be.Oh, and remember that thing that happend in the past? I'll remind you another 3 times, because you're a fucking reatard that can't retain the simplest information for more than 300 pages. I need to be overly explicit in explaining my and my character's reasoning because my audience is literally a bunch of mental toddlers, I must extend that expo dump by another 20 pages.Hmm, I should spice this pretty decent so far scene with some quips, that'll improve it without fail. I don't know who directed Avengers but I want to suck his dick so much.Probably something like this.Rant over.
>>24839382I was getting fantasy heist and revolution fatigue at the time I read it. Found the whole setup of a pretty interesting world just to do a heist silly and the revolution focus odd because it ended with basically only token reforms. >Seriously, this could've been a best-selling 600-page novel cum movie. It should've been. It's like he phoned in his own book.I do wonder if his novellas are just ideas that he either couldn't develop into series or couldn't sell to publishers as a series.
>>24837940>>24837882Merchant Princes also by Stross is also really focused on economics. If you want to give it a glib summary it's a story about an import/export business.It's not fantasy but I highly recommend you read The House of Niccolò. It's historical fiction and exactly what you're after.
>>24837336>hasn't heard of discovery writingGood authors have the flowchart but leave wiggle room. The ratio between flow chart and wiggle room may vary per author.>>24837059Just keep putting one word after another.
>shit starts happening in malazan>changes perspectivesick of it
>>24839498Ned Flanders was a parody of a decent neighbor at a time in American history when that was understood by the mainstream to be a good Christian.
>>24835665The Coming Dark, #1 - D.J. Molles (2025)The Coming Dark is set 5,000 years after the Godbreaker series, which I didn't read and didn't know it was, though it seems to have minimal connection. In that, humanity is in miserable enslavement by alien species. In this, humanity is in enthusiastic servitude to an alien species. The story keeps faking out the reader into thinking it's going to be about one thing, then pivots to another idea, then another, then another and so on, until it finally reveals what it's really about. All of this is undercut by the title, the synopsis, the Goodreads description, the promotional material, and everything else. So, I don't really know what the point of it all was. Is it better to be go in blind and be surprised by being jerked around or know what to expect and go along with it? The unfortunate part is that once it got to the main part, it wasn't what I cared about.Humanity has been designated as the galactic police by the most advanced species, who claim to be literally unable to engage in violence. Thus, humanity is sent wherever they're needed to protect the weak and pacifistic against the aggressive. The advanced societies of the galactic civilization only admit species that have completely forsworn violence, so humanity doesn't get to be part of that. There are only around a million humans remaining, because if there were too many, they may become a threat.This isn't a book where humanity realizes that living in servitude is bad and they overthrow their masters. Instead, there's various metaphors regarding the military and its relationship to the rest of society. All thematic material and anything of depth is pushed aside when the aliens arrive. When you're fighting for survival, should anything else matter other than survival? That's about the only question that remains.There were a lot of good combat scenes, death everywhere, and all sorts of exciting things happening, but I came to realize that in this context I didn't care. War against aliens who won't or can't communicate and only want to destroy, destroy, destroy isn't enjoyable. I find it boring and don't feel emotionally involved or engaged in any way. I enjoyed all the lead up much more than the main event, which isn't how it's supposed to be, or at least not how I want it to be.The next book seems to be much more of the same, and I assume third book would be as well, so I'm stopping here rather than continuing on. If an author only has a single series I like from them, then that's how it is.Rating: 2.5/5
I'm starting to think there's no way Malazan is worth reading
