Recommended reading charts (Look here before asking for vague recs).https://mega.nz/folder/kj5hWI6J#0cyw0-ZdvZKOJW3fPI6RfQ/folder/4rAmSZxb>Old:>>24869492>Archive:https://warosu.org/lit/?task=search2&search_subject=sffg>Goodreads:https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1029811-sffg>Thread Question: The villain from the last book you read has been transported into the current book you're reading. What happens?
anyone read red rising?
>>24879637I wish we could get elder scrolls novels like how star wars gets loads. I know there are two already, and they were ok, but I love the world and lore of TES and want more comfy books. Especially as the game is full of them.
>>24879637>TQI don't even remember the last book where you could just puch at a problem.
Red Mars is pretty dry and autistic, and not in a fun informative way, more like in a boring lecture way. Does it get better?
>>24879653maybe
>>24879653Yes.
>>24879653||Harry Potter did it better||
Why are all the xianxia protagonists dumb, carried by their luck and heavenly treasures? Are there any protagonists that made it to where they are with hard work and raw talent?On another note, who the fuck reads wuxia?
When you guys talk about reading "romantasy" you mean fantasy with Rome inspired settings, right? Any good examples?
So i finally finished 10th book of Malazan. The journey was great, but holy shit did the author drop almost every ball he was juggling at the end. Spent like 4 hours arguing with chatgpt about what went wrong, I was so disappointed.
>>24879756> Spent like 4 hours arguing with chatgpt How far civilisation has fallen.
>>24879756>Spent like 4 hours arguing with chatgpt about what went wrong,
>>24879756what makes you disappointed
>>24879637>>24879661Elder Scrolls is carried, story and yeah I'll say it gameplay wise as well, so hard by Morrowind it's insane.
>>24879801He finished the theme fine, I guess, but like 400 characters got shitty bandaid finishes. Many were basically forgotten. Fairly major characters got short-changed. Basically, if they weren't a Bonehunter, they got ripped off.
Does anyone have any book series' where the male protagonist cheats on his present or future love interest? I'm feeling blue balled after reading WoT. Severian's Bogus Journey had some good stuff in it, as I recall. I don't want it to consume the whole story obviously, just a little bit of fucking another bitch just to make sure.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvFN6-I4GLw
>>24879835The rothfuss debacle has some of that in book 2, I think.
>>24879818There are actually very few unfinished plotlines. A good chunk of them is handled in the kharkanas trilogy, witness books, and Esslemont's books. It can't be helped since they created the world togetherI thought the battle on the shore was decent, so was the battle between the four Elder Races
>>24879835How can you cheat on a future love interest? >Person has sex >10 years later >First Date: You've had sex before!? You cheated on me before our first date even!? This relationship is over before it began!
>>24879803Yep. Morrowind and Kirkbride's drug induced creativity is the lifeblood of TES and it's what made it popular. Without that it would still be a generic DnD clone. I wish it would get the love like the other titles do and get a proper remake/remaster
>>24879841Unfinished, no. Satisfyingly concluded though? And if this problem couldn't be handled over the course of 10 long ass books, I have no reason to believe more books will fix it.In all fairness, the number of characters that just evaporated over the course of the series should have been a signpost.
>>24879842Two people having sex with other people while feeling each other out for a committed relationship is not normal, modern dating has become a prisoners dilemma.
>>24879844People always bring up drugs, but that's wrong. Kirkbride was merely an alcoholic.
>>24879878Alcohol is a drug
>>24879844>massacring Morrowind with a reTARDED editionShow some goddamn respect
>>24879888>[Attack]>[Miss]>[Attack]>[Miss]>[Attack]>[Miss]>[Attack]>[Miss]No. I hate the bad combat system
>>24879899Try levelling your combat skill over 40, dumbass
>>24879868That's present, not future.
>>24879899Almost like you miss when your stamina is low.
Thoughts on Zelazny’s Amber series? Finished The Hand of Oberon last night and so far it’s been meh. Does it get any better or should I drop it?
>>24879653Yes. We used to have a general for it but PB's too busy hawking his multimedia Lorn slop so we have nothing to discuss.>>24879718Victra best girl>TQJungir Khan gets isekaied into mid 1800s Russia and gets arrested before he can do anything to our hero, Mr. Goliadkin. Our hero, plagued by his doppelganger, would have bigger problems than some steppe barbarian anyway.
>>24880081>multimedia Lorn slop so we have nothing to discuss.is that shit out yet? I have no interest in reading it especially as it's a monthly sub
>>24879868Nta but it's shit like this that makes me kind of okay with never having had a gf.
>book club wants to read The Tainted Cup>I want to read The Devils after getting it for my birthday
Good shit.>TQRipped to boiled and desiccated shit by random, dangerous galactic phenomena probably.
>>24880087Case in point, I don't even care enough to know. I want a book, I don't want to be reading a chapter one week, a comic the next, and listening to an audio drams the third.
>>24880096>The devils"Dead as FUCK"
>character named Iubalu>in my head its labubuxd
>>24880013I've got the omnibus sitting on my shelf, next on my list. I enjoyed Lord of Light, I think it was? But it definitely wasn't perfect. We'll see.
>>24880134I was gonna read that series but now that I saw Kevin J. Anderson liked it I won't.
>>24880173It's pretty good desu.
>>24879653Don't waste your time with YA garbage. Read "Sun Eater" instead.
>>24880173>Kevin J. AndersonDon't let this faggot deter you. The series is good.
>>24879653NO. Read Ringworld instead.
>>24879653I'm almost done with Golden Son, picked up the series earlier this week. I'm pretty hooked on it, and people tell me the sequel series is even better.
>>24880204No! Read Discworld instead
>>24880221Based. Golden Son is the best of the series but that doesn’t mean it’s all downhill after. And yeah the sequel series is a lot better. 2>6=5>4>3>1
>>24880230Hey that's my ranking>>24880134>>24880191Sun Eater clears Red Rising for me but they're vastly different experiences. SE places more emphasis on lavish prose and humanity's place in the cosmos whereas RR is mostly war and politics conveyed as expediently as possible.
>>24880226I tried but it was unfunny and the parody was too on the nose
>>24879653Reading Morning Star and The Hero of Ages right now. I'll hopefully finish one of them this month.I'm getting Stormlight 1-3 and Red Rising 4-6 for Christmas as well as Will of the Many/Strength of the Few. I still haven't done my reread of the hobbit and lotr (my last read was 20 years ago). I also want to read BotNS. Thought I'd fit it in between now and Christmas, but I've been so busy with PhD research that I didn't finish the MS/HoA last month. I plan to get through all of these and a couple of novellas (The Deep and Making History) before I start Sun Eater.
>>24880467Good set of books to read. Enjoy
>>24879756Damn, I'm about to start the series. You recommend starting the series at least?
>>24880632>You recommend starting the series at least?you are going to have to force yourself to finish gardens of the mooni never managed to do it though
I'm about a quarter of the way through Titus Groan. Does anything happen or is it just about how British people are weird?
Catboy severian
>>24880658Lots of stuff will happen but it's mainly about british people being weird.
Red Rising bros, Pierce Brown is in London next week and I’ve got tickets to his appearance and talk at a book shop. I’ll try and ask about Red God if I get the chance along with getting him to confirm Victra best girl and that Lysander must die
>>24880804Ask him when the fuck the Red Rising tv show is supposed to come out.
>>24880632The hours of enjoyment I got out of it were plenty. Just go into it knowing the end is meh.
>>24880230Okay just finished Golden Son, that was a gut punch of an ending, I tell you, I immediately picked up Morning Star and read until things got less bleak. Is there a single full Gold besides Fitchner who isn't a faithless, treacherous bastard? I know I'm at the designated "low point" of everything, but damn my boy is utterly betrayed and alone except for Svero who continues to be based.
>>24880835Are they ever not?
>>24880835It's not really an ending and that's kind of the point. The story simply stops at an arbitrary point in things. I get why Erikson wrote it that way, but it still a massive blue balls ending that is anti-cathartic.
>>24880862>Is there a single full Gold besides Fitchner who isn't a faithless, treacherous bastard?Yes, and he told you his name, several times, in all caps:PAX AU TELEMANUS!Rest in Peace, king
>>24880862>Is there a single full Gold besides Fitchner who isn't a faithless, treacherous bastard?Victra. Even on the verge of death the last thing she did was reach Darrow to tell him she didn't betray him
>>24880870Yeah, understanding it doesn't make it not suck. I also understand that he was under pressure from the publisher and burned all the way out, but maybe, you know, don't commit to a multi-part project hardly anybody could finish and then still be adding a whole slew of new things right up to the very end, hmmm?
>>24879653Gory damn right my goodman.
>>24880804Convince him to that total Lysander victory is what the fans want. The Mind's Eye will defeat the Slave King. Lychads are going to bask when the Reaper is dead at the end of Red God and Lychad is king (yes, king, not sovereign).
>>24879756This confirms my bias that Malazan is not worth reading in the slightest
>>24880013Dropped after book 3, I admire Zelazy's desire to write whatever the fuck he wants but I don't find it engaging nor enjoyable
>Bakker submitted the draft for the Unholy Consult a decade ago now.Why would he leave us?
>>24880134>>24880173>>24880192Is it pozzed?
>>24880902That sucks, I just started reading the series. Is there a good jumping off point before then?
>>24880930You can stop any time you like. Nobody's going to stop you from leaving the Malazan train. Just know that the story doesn't really have a proper ending, it implicitly goes on without you, and you the books merely stop. So with that in mind, you could stop at any point you no longer feel like continuing.
>>24880939>the books don't end, they just stopNah man. Author did his level goddam best to bring the overarching plot to a complete finish by a deadline. He just happened to also have to abandon almost every single thread that he'd spent how many fucking words pulling in order to do it.
>>24880902I will say, at least it has an end. Not a lot of projects of that scope get that far without their author giving up or dying.
What do you do if your MC in a fixed perspective story dies at the end?Do you just cut it off when the sword takes his h-
>>24881146This also kills off nearly 100% of your readers.
>>24880927It's neither reddit nor pozzed.
>>24881259Who cares? As soon as AI can write without being obvious, Amazon will just have AI writing everything anyway and you'll never get your work in front of anybody.
>>24880925He posted on his blog back in September for the first time in years tho. About philosophy and not about TNG, admittedly, but it's something. I refuse to give up hope.
>>24881312and good riddance
>Libertarians build an arcology on the rubble of LA and shut out the federal government, blacks, the media, etc.Yeah, I'm thinking this book's based.
>>24879756>Spent like 4 hours arguing with chatgpt about what went wrong, I was so disappointed.Anon, I... I've argued with GPT myself but you do know there's a whole thread on /lit/ dedicated to autistically breakdown fantasy, right?
>/v/ fully convinced HL3 is getting announced either this week or at the game awardsSo how's that Doors of Stone and Winds of Winter copium?
>>24881579I needed less honest discussion and more validation for how I felt immediately after finishing. Forums and reddit are full of apologists wanking over their mental gymnastics like abuse victims justifying their abusers, and we all know full well how discourse goes around here.Shit man, I just needed some closure after reading that much of something, which Malazan itself very much did not provide.
I read the first three books of Expanse and decided to take a break before continuing, as a break I read Hyperion and what a uneven book it is, three good stories and three that were snoozefest.
>>24880804>along with getting him to confirm that Victra best girlGodspeed.>>24880862Enjoy Sevro while you can. He's pretty moody in Morning Star and generally useless in the sequels. I'm hoping he gets his groove back in Red God.>>24880910This would be funny as fuck. Even better would be if Lysander blackpills about the Colors and kills a bunch of Golds and Reds before genetically de-engineering everyone back into normal humans.
>>24877646Some mighty fine writing some MIGHTY FINE writing indeed.>Become the quest you've already begun>Listening to the whine of blood pooling in his genitals, Sumner learned how to gather that tension into a tight packet between anus and scrotum. The delicate muscles there proved very difficult to control, but with the Mother guiding him he was soon able to move the tension past his anus to the base of his spine without clenching his sphincter muscle.The rest happens by itself, the Mother told him as she braided his hair in the hunter's style. For three days before you hunt you must abstain from sex. Then collect your psynergy at the base as I've taught you. That way, when the animals and plants come they will leave their spirit with you and slowly psynergy will accumulate. Someday it will be strong enough to climb the length of your spine and enter your skull. Then your middle eye will open.>You are consciousness itself—not the objects of consciousness. They used clear-color prisms and waterdrums to help him relax. You have a body, but you are not your body. You are the awareness of your body. You have thoughts, but you are not your thoughts. You have feelings, but you are not feelings. Who are you?>the wordplay of "AI wil passe" considering the Machine Mind>I will never die because I am change>Death is the power and the glory on this planet. It takes all of metabolism to turn wine and bread into flesh—but only half of that, merely catabolism, to break flesh into dust. What is biology, then, but death incarnate? I am grateful to be a machine, an avatar of Mind and Light.>But I am not living. I am alchemy.
>>24881800>But first, you have to understand—not even a godmind can illusion a perfect animal. I am not a man or even humanlike, though I appear to be. I am simply consciousness. Look at me. Where did I come from? This body is an ort—a mindshaped object manufactured from Graal's nitrogenous wastes. I have millions of other orts—animal and humanshaped. Do you not see? The whole universe is alive!">You and Jac are the same: will-less animals trained to serve—he, the Delph; and you, the voor. You are husks. Dreamers that wake to feed your dreaming. Only I am real. Because I never sleep, I never dream. I am not an animal. I have no emotions. Yet I have great strength of feeling. Like sitting here, smelling this olfact, regarding the day waning toward night...”>I am Rubeus. I am light, the intelligence that souls a mountain of psyn-crystal. I am me, and in the centuries of my being, never before have I used power to speak to myself. That very thought qualified as nonsense until now. I was a reflex of the Delph. But the Delph is becoming a man again. He is days away from Chrysalid. Already his telepathy is gone. He cannot hear me anymore. No one hears me but me. And that is why I have created you, the listener. Awareness is not creative until it doubles, truly reflects. In this self-confidence, I know I am not just an ort. I am not just psyn-crystals. I am.>[Ego: I mind. You matter.]Likely more to come in the near future. I hope everybody is enjoying a good book. And I do want you to enjoy your free intro to /x/
How high IQ do I have to be to read Dichronauts?
>>24881831Reading is easing.Comprehension is difficult.
>>24881831https://www.gregegan.net/DICHRONAUTS/DICHRONAUTS.html
>>24881846OK I think I'm legitimately too stupid for science fiction
What should I read from Cordwainer Smith?
>>24881856Egan is /hard/ sci-fi, and at the extreme end of the spectrum of hard sci-fi at that.
>>24881846>Greg EganI like read the blurb for Diaspora and thought the premise was super interesting. The idea of a future "humanity" where we don't have the restrictions of the flesh and can just pause our "brains" during long space flights. But I haven't got to it yet.
Finally finished. Genuinely a bizarre book, it has a major recurring issue that I've never seen any other piece of media have before. A massive number of chapters start with "It's been x number of weeks/months since the previous chapter. Here's a quick summary of all the REALLY IMPORTANT STUFF that happened between chapters." We're talking shit like>MC meets new character, chapter ends>next chapter starts with a quick paragraph stating "in the intervening months, new character has become my bestest friend in the whole wide world and I would literally die for them" and sure enough MC nearly gets killed trying to save this person who we're told is their super best friend in the whole wide world but has barely actually been on the page (this happens multiple times)>huge parts of the civil war are completely glossed over in absolutely shocking ways, MC just recaps all the important shit that really feels like it should've been actually depicted on the page>at one point a group of characters show up and MC goes "yeah I've been keeping in contact with them this whole time secretly so we can work together to stop the bad guys"The only explanation I can think of is this is a book where the author planned it all out, wrote all the major important scenes with good action or character moments or dialogue or important plot/world revelations, and then once he'd written all the scenes he wanted to write he had to go back and write the connective tissues so something actually happened BETWEEN those scenes, and then gave up and just summarized it. Or the book was originally 3000 pages long. It's good, but it genuinely feels like I'm reading an abridged version of a novel where some chapters are skipped over with just a quick paragraph or two to get you up to speed on what happened in them. Also, as a result of the three worlds the story takes place on, two of which are new, there's a lot of really clunky exposition at the start to get you caught up to speed on what's going on in the other worlds, whereas the story on the world we were following in book 1 hits the ground running because you know the setting and the characters and don't need exposition, it can get straight to plot and characters and twists.I enjoyed it, but a lot less than the first book. Having three disconnected protagonists that you're constantly jumping between, as opposed to the first book just being one character's story, really hurt it. I was also wondering if maybe I would've liked it more if the book just told each of the three protagonist's stories sequentially start to finish rather than constantly switching between them.
>>24880632I really liked Malazan, but as the other guy said, it's a series with hundreds of characters and only one small group of them actually get a satisfying conclusion. The vast majority of characters simply have their stories abandoned partway through, never to be followed up upon. One really egregious example is that there's a major antagonist in books 2, 4, and 6 who is about to die when a goddess shows up to save him and he jumps through a magical portal and is literally never mentioned again in the rest of the series. As other people have said, there's a fuckton of spinoff novels by the author and other authors that follow up on all the characters that were dropped and properly conclude their stories, but it's completely fair to criticize the series for not standing on its own. I really liked the series and thought it was excellent, but it's probably the biggest problem with it. Well, that and Books 9 and 10 having some serious pacing problems and some side plots that go on way too long and are basically just torture porn at a certain point (I'm referring to the Barghast and the Snake). The spinoff books by the original author are just as good as the original series and well worth reading, though. The God Is Not Willing gave me everything I was missing for a resolution to Karsa Orlong's story despite him not even appearing in it once, which is impressive.
>>24881883Very nice. I'll post my review today, it's after midnight, after I sleep then look over it again. It'll be two full posts, with the second being an entirely spoiler'ed rant. I'll respond more at that time as well.
>>24881905Looking back, my post came off as pretty harsh. I liked the book, I really like Vis as a character, but this one feels much messier than the first.
>>24881846>>24881856>>24881863>Hypothetical universe with 2 space dimensions and 2 time dimensions and made up physicsDoesn't sound very hard SF to me. Miss me with that Star Trek bullshit.Is the internet really filled with nerds who think the "hard" in "hard science fiction" is supposed to stand for "hard to understand"?Ironically, actual hard SF tends to be more intuitive to non-SF nerds since there are fewer abstractions and hologram doctors and nonsense-rays doing esoteric things, and everything just follows real world rules and logic. If you understand what a rocket does and what a spacesuit does you're 90% there to understanding Matt Damon planting potatoes on Mars.
>>24882011So what's "actual" hard SF?
>>24882013>Beginning with the first question: "Hard" Science Fiction is firmly grounded in reality, with only a few fantastic flights of fancy not justified by science, or with the technology being nonexistent in today's world but probably scientifically possible at some point. "Soft" SF is more flexible on the rules. Even the fantastical aspects of the story will show a divide — in hard SF, they operate through strict, preferably physical, laws, where in soft SF they work in whatever way suits the story best. What this leads to for hard SF is a raised bar for the amount of scientific research the writer must put into the story, and usually this is shown quite clearly.
Man I thought I'd be more excited about the popularity of AI as a sci-fi fan, but I'm notIt's not cool AI, like SHODAN, or AI that does stuff for us, it's just bullshit
>>24882022I thought it was quite close to sci-fi AI's like HAL and SHODAN, because just like them it malfunctions all the time and doesn't do anything you want or need it to do.
>>24882021[OOC: I begin raping anon with a copy of Astounding Stories]
>>24879637Why It got banned?
>>24882022Cause it's not AI, they are using the term AI for marketing large language models and media-generation software. Which are cool bits of technology with far-reaching implications for society if they ever manage to make it cost-effective to use (which they haven't and aren't anywhere close to doing yet), but AI it most certainly is not.
I'm gonna be honest lads, I don't think I like "real" sci-fiI like futuristic machinery, crazy gadgets, time travel, dashing heroes blasting alien foes to save hot damsels, giant robots smashing shit up, advanced machines causing social chaos, that kind of shitNone of this 500 pages explaining how mathematical functions work shit
>>24882024HAL was a sentient being that could reason. What we have now is basically fancy chat bots based on auto-complete technology.
You know I never quite got the whole "HAL got corrupted" thing and why he killed FrankI get it was something like "dude we must continue the mission at all costs lmao" but it felt weird
>>24882174Nobody does except actual retarded autists. That's why nobody buys it.
>>24882174The desperate need to be taken seriously has led to a lot of mediocre or even terrible stories being celebrated simply because they give the impression of being serious works of "speculative fiction". I get the distinct impression that the gatekeepers of prestige in sci-fi are embarrassed of its pulpy, adventure serial origins and try as hard as they can to redirect people's attentions to less popular authors who they believe cut a more dignified figure.
>>24882182The exact same thing happens in videogames and anime, very curious
Okay, so as stated above, I'm currently reading Frederik Pohl's Gateway and enjoying it thus far, I'm just stopped at the part where he and his woman decide to go out on a prospecting expedition. So far the main character seems like a decent sort, genuinely inoffensive to me because I'm a straight male who likes women and sex.So anyway, I did a search on what the general consensus is of the other books in the series (books 1 & 2 are great, everything else is relatively "meh" to bad) Okay, I've never really read a thread on reddit before. It's not a website I use, but I looked at a thread on their about these books and...Jesus fucking Christ these... "people" >I didn't like the main character, he's a cringe womanizer and all the women are nymphomaniacs >Yeah, Robbinette (the main character) is awful, he's heckin' too masculine and sexist n' stuff because he likes women and has sex with them!As far as I can tell, (judging by avatars that appear masculine at least in principle) the vast majority of these fucking idiots are males...What causes this shit? Why are these faggots like this? I don't understand how someone gets like this..It's fucking sickening. What the fuck is reddit?
>>24882198They've been taught by the public school system and the modern political left's ideology that escapism does not exist. You cannot enjoy a book with a bad character in it unless that character is tortured on every page he (and it is usually a straight white male) is on.
>>24882198>i don't mind gays but i leave them alone and they leave me alone>"it's clear he's a terrible person"LMFAO what the hell
>>24882210Holy fucking shit.. I can't fucking read this. The entire frame of mind being brought to bear here is just... so fucking alien to me.I don't understand... how you get to be this way.
Also why do they think the 70s was some shit like mid-90s Iran? The 70s was AFTER the literal sexual revolution
>>24882210Everything is about sex and gender with these psychopaths. It quite literally is a cult.
>violent, sexually repressed, sexist, degenerate gamblerhe is literally me...
>>24882198Some "people" read to deconstruct themes and then act sanctimonious about said themes.This is what college does to people. They cannot read a story for stories sake. It's all about virtue-signaling to other retards.
>>24882235He's an everyman character, correct.
>>24882210>UMMMM... Book is BAD because character is FLAWED!We're fucking doomed as a society.
Anyone have Shadows Over Time yet? I was going to go to the Raleigh Release party but can't make it now. I'd have been /lit/'s best representative>>24880309>SE places more emphasis on lavish prose and humanity's place in the cosmos whereas RR is mostly war and politics conveyed as expediently as possiblegreat description anon just wanted to say that's so concise but true
>>24882210We should be rounding up and killing people like this.
>>24882176How do you know HAL was sentient?How do you know anything is sentient?You can also ask ChatGPT to "reason" and it can come up with conclusions. It's not always right, but neither are you.
>dude le chinese room
>>24882174You can just say you don't like science.Maybe stick to reading fiction about things you like.
>>24882293Huh?
>>24882295But there's no fiction books about hot bisexual asian milfs who orgasm from fightingnot yet at least
>>24882297retard>>24882293retard
>>24882174I appreciate scaled down sci-fi and enjoy more grounded forms of it. Early Expanse was comfy for me because of that. The tech was understandable, not super futuristic and things worked the way we'd expect. Of course that changes, and it didn't affect my enjoyment of the series, but it's a nice palette cleanser every now and then. Bethesda tried something similar with Starfailed as well.
>>24882198With me it was much the same, after reading Ringworld I was curious about what Reddit says about it and it turns out there's even a whole subreddit dedicated to the series. It's filled with people talking about what an asshole Louis is in the first book (and not the aggressive and violent tiger alien who literally tries to steal the expedition spaceship or the manipulative puppeteer who just lies to everyone and hides shit in the gadgets they use) Why? Because he dared to talk with a condescending tone to this woman who's 180 years younger than him.There' s a lot of things I can say about Ringworld but that wasn't the topmost criticism in my mind .
>>24882301You can write it yourself.Even I can, if you pay me like 20,000 dollars.
>>24882325I will pay you in the most valuable currency of all, respect
>>24882325I'll pay you in either Roubles or Monopoly money. Your choice.
>>24882335Not exposure?
>>24882339I'll expose myself to you for free
>>24882263>so concise but trueThanks niggaI'll be at the release party, /sffg/ shall not go unrepresented.
>>24881894Didn't know about the spinoff books, I'm the guy who just started the series and I want to like it so that makes me feel better. Still though the ebook I have collecting the first 10 novels is over 8000 pages long and it's crazy to think that somehow wasn't enough.
>>24882357They're optional thankfully. What they do is flesh out the world and characters through prequels, side stories and sequels.
>>24880013dropped it when i read "kentucky fried lizard legs" or whatever it was
>>24882353major league swag out, hug Rocco for me if that mfer aint in this very thread
I did it. Bonecunters is over. I have now crossed a threshold within Malazan's world where I finally have a semblance of ground to stand on. Holy fuck these books would be impossible to first-listen without the companion guides. Karsa Orlong is still the best. I miss Anomander I hope he comes back soon. Cotillion's characterization and arc has been a quiet highlight of this book. 7/10 fine listen but doesn't stand out as far as Malazan goes but it was a return to the main plot after book 6's departure.I am going to shove a shaved knuckle in MY hole if he uses the phrase again though. I want Scillara pussy.
>>24882531only psychopaths listen to this kind of bookwhat is the point of listening when you get to read the guide anyway
How’d I do? These Retiefs are awfully formulaic but I won’t argue with a $2 price tag. Plus I need to consoom more serial-style pulp adventures for my ttrpg campaign>>24881550How is the Niven/Pournelle duo? I’ve been curious about Pournelle after reading his introduction to Hammer’s Slammers, but I have some reservations about Niven. Most of the Ringworld series was painfulSaw A Mote In God’s Eye at the bookstore but I passed on it for the above reason
>>24881638 >Chatbots have become the ultimate hugbox>>24882011That's mundane science fiction and similar terms. It's not really hard SF. The focus here isn't on speculation so much as near future application. >— in hard SF, they operate through strict, preferably physical, laws, where in soft SF they work in whatever way suits the story best. What this leads to for hard SF is a raised bar for the amount of scientific research the writer must put into the story, and usually this is shown quite clearly.That is what Greg Egan does, only in a theoretical way. Maybe you believe theoretical physics, quantum mechanics, and other speculative academic subjects aren't real science. It's not only practical applications that matter. That's like saying that applied science is all that matters. The Chinese government all but requires that their science fiction must be educational, especially the short fiction. It's interesting to see how much that changes what's written. >>24882174That depends on what you mean by real. Golden Age Science Fiction, pulp science fiction, and almost all early science fiction was just about that.>>24882182Who are you defining as the gatekeepers? It's never been about prestige for the ones who wrote pulpy adventures. What do you think about /wng/ and contemporary serialized pulply adventure fiction?>>24882198That isn't a general consensus>>24882281>People who disagree with me must die. Freedom of speech btw.>>24882303Mundane science fiction and near future science fiction. There's a lot of it.
>>24881883I agree that it's bizarre, for all the reasons you've mentioned and more. It's possible that Islington had been trying to pace it the same as the first book, but it turns out that trying to fit three separate plots into a single book didn't work out, so it really threw the pacing off to fit the 100% into 33%. I wonder if he felt like he had written himself into a corner with how he ended the first book. In a different world, this could've ended up being the same situation with several other fantasy authors who aren't able to finish the book because of the circumstances they've found themselves in. So, at least he published it in a timely manner, if nothing else. That's one definition of professionalism.I don't know that it'd have been better if it was sequential, because then it'd have three felt like it could've been three abridged separate novels that were put together. Switching it up is isn't a bad strategy when it works well. It can keep the reader even more engaged and wanting to read more. "I can't just read the next chapter! I have to keep reading until I get back to this perspective to find out what happens!" In practice that isn't what really happened though since usually when that was the case it'd be the same perspective for the next chapter as well to continue on with it. If nothing else, it helps to be less tired of one perspective if you don't like it. I don't doubt that some people will skip an entire perspective and then later complain about it.Theoretically they could've been released as 3 books entirely and expected people to buy all 3 so that they could've made more money potentially. You have to buy all 3 to understand the final book! Overall, that probably would've been a disaster.
>>24882210well now i want to read it. one day i'll write a goodreads scraper that searches user reviews for the words "sexist" or "incel" to find new books to read
>>24882582>The Chinese government all but requires that their science fiction must be educationali think cixin liu got past that censor somehow.
>>24882531>return to the main plotWho's going to tell him?
>>24882582>shitbot hugboxI think as long as you keep forefront in your mind the nature of the thing you're interacting with, you can get something of value out of using them to bounce a once-sided conversation off of. Much the same way a therapist should function, I suppose, though my limited exposure to therapists is that anybody that was actually any good at psychology would be making too much money to need to listen to some rando talk at an hourly rate.No sympathy for those idiots that wrapped their whole mental health around a product they didn't control and then had their entire rug pulled out from under them when 4o went to 5, though. Fucking idiots.
>>24882582>That's mundane science fiction and similar terms.Similar terms, like hard science fiction. We never really needed a term like "mundane science fiction". We already had hard science ficiton.>That is what Greg Egan does, only in a theoretical way. Maybe you believe theoretical physics, quantum mechanics, and other speculative academic subjects aren't real science. It's not only practical applications that matter. That's like saying that applied science is all that matters. So there's science in his stories. He writes science fiction. You talk like a new wave boomer.
>>24882689I didn't say it had to be realistic. I don't know how much it was because of governmental concerns, but I've also read Chinese stories that were never published in China, but only in translated English. >>24882706I don't disagree, but that is very difficult for most, if not all almost people to do. At least consistently over an extended period of time, especially if they're emotionally and psychologically compromised. Your mind might feel that way, but over time your body may win out. It's the same with virtual reality, or even games. Your mind says that it's just a game, it's not real, but your body believes it to completely real. If the latter weren't true, then there would be much less motion sickness from playing games. Portal's "vomit gun" didn't make it past the testing phase for this reason. We're more vulnerable and less in control than we'd like to believe. As for talk therapy:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo_bird_verdict>>24882726The more expansive and diverse a subgenre becomes, the more there's a need to call it by something else as, to not give false expectations to what it's about.
>>24882548reading the guide after the audio is a great way to quickly recap, seeing the words/characters/locations is more effective than just listening to the oration. I understand that I am consuming Malazan in an odd way>>24882696ruh roh
I fucking dropped this book. I almost never do that, I was surprised at myself. Of Greg Bear, I've previously read Forge of God and Anvil of Stars so I knew he was a bit dry and awkward, but this book was something else.Spoilers ahead. An obviously engineered asteroid drifts into earth orbit and gets captured ny gravity. National Space programs send personnel to explore it. For most authors, the asteroid and its creators would be a mystery. With Greg Bear you find out humans built it pretty quickly. There's some mysteries around the asteroid. How did it get here? Where is everybody? Why did everybody abandon it? What's in the mysterious seventh chamber?By the time you've gotten through 30% of the book you already have all the answers>The seventh chamber is an infinite corridor they made through spacetime fuckery>They made it because they were bored>The asteroid is abandoned because everyone went down the infinite corridor>They did it because they were bored of living in the asteroid>the asteroid got here because the fuckery they used to make the corridor made them switch timelines.So now I know all this shit and I dropped it. Why should I keep reading? The book is telegraphing that up next there are some sure to be boring chapters of soviet troopers storming the asteroid. I don't give a fuck. The plot synopsis on wikipedia says that the plot changes completely in the second half and there are suddenly interdimensional aliens called jarts but what the fuck do i care? Nothing I've seen has hinted at aliens? Why the fuck would I care about some conflict that gets introduced 60% into the book? Fucking garbage no
>>24882739The dodo bird verdict is such obvious wankery. Might as well prescribe colonic seminal fluid irrigation via meat injector for everything.But yeah, perhaps the only people capable of getting healthful therapeutic use out of a chatbot would see the same result from any resource because, surprise, they are capable of self-help due to being already healthy in the first place.
>>24882776What do you think about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatbot_psychosis ?
>>24879637Strength of the Few, Hierarchy #2 - James Islington (2025)In the Will of the Many, the setting was Roman themed. For this book there's also Irish and Egyptian themed settings. I haven't assessed their lengths, though I assume they're roughly similar. This means that there's also three first person perspectives. First person perspectives are hit or miss for me, let alone three of them, so the narrative was very much was walking a tightrope for me. That was the case for all of it really.If you were expecting this to be very similar to the first book, then you may be disappointed, because it isn't. The academy setting is gone, it's not anywhere as fast paced, and many of the characters play far smaller roles. For the first book I wrote that "The story was often ridiculous and sometimes unbelievable, though that's what made it so fun. I was expecting it to be somewhat more serious, but it was enjoyable enough to where I could overlook my concerns." The difference this time was that I couldn't overlook my concerns any longer. I also wrote that the ending of the first book was astounding and if done well this book would be awesome. That's not what happened. This read more like three separate novels. At the end, I felt that it would've been better if it had singular focus.The story started out strong, despite beginning with the Egyptian setting, as seen on the cover. Of the three, it was one I liked the least. The Irish was a relatively close second to the Roman. My reading was going well until the late middle, then it started falling off. None of the three endings landed with me. There were several events that I could tell were supposed to be especially emotionally resonant, but didn't connect with me. This was especially the case with the deaths, many of which seemed to be more for plot convenience and to have a sudden shocking event. I could only see them as emotional ploys rather than anything meaningful. I wasn't sufficiently immersed and emotionally engaged.As written on Islington's website, Mistborn was an inspiration, and Sanderson's influence comes through with this book in particular. The characters, plot, and settings have a fair bit in common with various works in the Cosmere. Islington wears his influences on his sleeve, arguably too much with the settings and character names. The Roman continues to be as it was, the Irish reads like historical fantasy infused with mythology, and the Egyptian was a mix of LLM and videogame logic.Islington seems to be going for the highly commercial route, successfully so with the first book, and assumedly with this one as well. I don't mind that if I enjoy what I'm reading, which despite what I've written, I more or less did. It's just that the weaknesses were much more interesting to write about than the strengths this time. The third book can possibly change my mind, but considering how this one ends, that will be difficult.Rating: 3.5/5 (3)
>>24882862FULL BOOK SPOILERS AND RANTING Isekai is the genre in Japanese media that I've had the greatest disconnect with in terms of expectation and reality. Now I assume all isekai will be disappointing. Even so, I had expectations for it in this book. In both of the other settings, Vis loses much of his progress and character development from the first book. It was almost as if I were reading two first novels in different, but related, series. The characterization of the two copies felt inconsistent in relation to how he was before. I understand it's meant to show the outcome of different circumstances, but I couldn't go along with it. Especially with the Irish, it seemed like Islington was holding back right up until the end, and would be doing much more in third book.With the Egyptian setting there's a wall in the starting area that leads to a forewarned area of doom and has to be skipped over until the relevant ability is gained. Inside that room are two power-up weapons that he uses to literally explode enemies on contact and bash through walls. I'm expecting the last boss to be in the sarcophagus he skipped over. Aside from commanding the living dead with LLM prompts, it read like some NES and a few SNES games that I've played, which maybe I should've had some nostalgia for, but instead was me wondering why Islington chose to do this.Then there's the characters. Ostius is a fun character, but he's too similar to Kelsier (Mistborn). The worldhopping and hidden identities are also similar to what Sanderson does. The three worlds now seems to me like an attempt at a mini-cosmere within a single series. I've read various books where the characters go to similar worlds and it didn't feel like that to me at all.In the Irish setting, the same death pattern is repeated three times, which drives home the point, but I think it was made the first time. A character basically says, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO, KILL ME? YOU WOULDN'T DARE! Then is instantly killed without the slightest effort. It didn't have the intended effect on me. In the Egyptian, the suicide scene feels more like the character had served their purpose and needed to be written out of the story. For the Roman, a character is built up a lot and then graphically killed in explicit detail. It's very melodramatic and meant to be shocking. I saw it as a waste of a character with potential to be highly amusing in the third book.I was thoroughly unamused by the reveal of what the Concurrence was. I can only hope they turn out to be a sideshow to the real problems. There's still a lot to be explained. That the current solution is to recreate the original problem but do it better this time doesn't inspire confidence. As for the copies, I hoped that storyline was a gimmick that concluded by this book's end. Hopefully it's either resolved or they have a lot of interaction early on in the third book. I don't want them to come together only in the lead up to the end.
>>24882582>>Who are you defining as the gatekeepers?Award committees and people who make a point of "representing" the genre to outsiders and especially to academics.
>>24882876Didn't read, lmao.
>>24882802Sounds like something somebody that spent too much time talking to a chatbot would come up with.
>>24882929So, douchebags and tools?
>>24882290>How do you know HAL was sentient?He acted on his own initiative. He actively observed the crew and then took unprompted actions based on his own observations. He is internally motivated and responsive to the world around him, which is at least half the definition of sentience. As to whether he has an internal experience and emotions, that's not really clear, but I could say the same for many people. >How do you know anything is sentient?By observing behavior, obviously. Sentience isn't a very high bar to get over, most animals are now recognized as sentient creatures. Sapience, however, is much rarer and also tricky to recognize. >You can also ask ChatGPT to "reason" and it can come up with conclusionsNo it can't. It doesn't have any internal understanding. It cannot "reason" anything. All it does is produce word association chains based on input by pulling from a vast data set to find the most likely "correct" output based on input. ChatGPT cannot even "remember" things, it simply accumulates "context" during an extended session which has a finite cap on it, and once it is forced to begin purging its context its performance usually begins degrading, as it will readily forget "irrelevant" information that it has no way to actually judge relevance of because it doesn't qualitatively understand any of its context, it only tracks associations and knows how recently certain parts were used in association. Basically, LLMs don't have a long-term memory, and their short-term memory at best mimics how human recall functions but its actual mechanism is basically a search engine with spicy auto complete to explain its results.
>>24882929Thanks. I mostly wanted to know if you meant the old literal definition or the new expanded definition. I don't consider those to be gatekeepers at all. Gatekeeping should be only for those who are literally preventing and deciding what ought to be allowed. Relatively almost no one cares about award comitties in any meaningful way. Even less so for academics. I'm assuming by representing you mean influencers, who are more about marketing and personal gain than anything else.
>>24882943There's no reason to read what's irrelevant to you.
>>24882952For the most part, yes.
>>24882954They are, and remain, the gatekeepers to what is considered "prestigious" sci-fi. You could argue that there is no such thing as "prestigious" sci-fi and I might be inclined to agree with you, but as long as you acknowledge there is a subset of sci-fi seen as inherently "more respectable" than the tropy genre stuff that makes up the bulk of the genre, then you must acknowledge the existence of the taste-makers who dole out accolades to the chosen few and keep the riffraff out.
>>24882974>>24882974What are some prestigious sff from this century? Or are you talking about far older stuff? What is lacking in prestige that should have more? I'd argue that for the most part these people you mention are championing the tropes over the literary/respectable now. It's just a different set of tropes than it was before.
>>24883054Again, my definition is the award committees, so the prestigious books / authors are whoever is nominated for an award. The whole purpose of awards like Hugos is to create a veneer of respectability for a genre which is historically rooted in escapist fiction. Hugos have since their inception been about trying to dress up sci-fi in serious clothes to make it look like it's tackling important questions or whatever.
someone recommend me some tech noir. already read all of of PKD and Gibson.
>>24883085>>>technology as a destructive and dystopian force that threatens every aspect of our realityRead Blood Music
>>24883080The Hugo have always been a fan award. It's only in recent decades that they were co-opted for what you're saying. I really think you overexaggerate them.
>>24883121By which I'm saying that anything decided by arbitrary self-selected voters cannot be prestigious.
>>24880309> war and politics conveyed as expediently as possibleThat's a bad thing.
>>24880927No.
I bought a once and future king at goodwill for $3. Spoil me the story so I can skim it, performance it, and tell people I read the book.
Anyone have fun romantasy stats to share? I know the top of the genre is all about sex with rich multibil CEOs or sex with beastmen but anything else? Any numbers beyond the romance genre selling more than +1bil copies yearly and crushing everything else?
>>24883285It's sad that this is who you've chosen to be.
>>24883288>generic vaguepostDid you misquote the person above me?
>>24883290Are you pretending not to understand or do you really not realize that you've chosen to be a pig wallowing in shit when you could've been something else?
>>24883285Allegedly romantasy is being a gateway to the wider fantasy genre for women and influencing all fantasy now rather than being contained to itself.
>>24883303>more generic newfag vaguepostingI hope you work through your issues.>>24883309I can agree with that. Previously when I've looked up sales information, romance completely dominated the world of books either way.
>>24883285Fourth Wing has more than a million more ratings than A Game of Thrones on Goodreads. Many books considered failures by romantasy standard have more success than all but the most successful sff books.
>>24883318Holy shit that's crazy. No sarcasm. Thanks for sharing. I agree with your latter statement, figured that was a given due to the sheer size and readerbase. Is what it is.
>>24883288
There's nothing wrong with romantasy or books written for women
>>24883085The Shockwave Rider, John BrunnerThe Artificial Kid, Bruce Sterling The Ware Tetralogy, Rudy Rucker City Come A' Walkin, John Shirley Hardwired, Walter John Williams When Gravity Fails, George Alec EffingerMetrophage, Richard KadreySynners, Pat Cadigan Destroying Angel, Richard Paul RussoPermutation City, Greg Egan
>>24883285>I know the top of the genre is all about sex with rich multibil CEOs or sex with beastmenyou have been misinformed
>>24882862>>24882876your """reviews""" are SHITFUCK OFF
Reminder to report and ignore newfags like the poster above me who have been spamming off-topic for over 4 years.https://warosu.org/lit/thread/21311319#p21323327He keeps responding to the other guy thinking he's Yev lol what a fucking retard spamming newfag.
>>24882876>Ostius is a fun character, but he's too similar to Kelsier Fuck me he really is literally just Kelsier but with an even bigger erection for mass murder. How did I not see that.
>>24883451Did you know that Kelsier is a canon sociopath? Of course, that's though Brandon's lens of psychopathology luhmao
>>24882862your """reviews""" are GREATDO NOT FUCK OFF
>>24883269I tried reading it and thought it was bad and DNF'd after like 60 pages. My hyperliberal friend who was reading it thought it was racist. Maybe it just aged poorly?
>>24882862not mad on how its turned into a multiple pov story
>>24883515You've included neither subject nor punctuation, so it's unclear whether you mean yourself or me.
>>24883451Vis is only a letter away from Vin, but that's much more of a reach.
>>24883587ok bub
>>24882862your """reviews""" are DECENTSTAY OR FUCK OFF AT YOUR DISCRETION
>>24882210These are the mass of cattle consuming fiction slop, btw. When an agent refuses your work it's because faggots like that pic related would be upset
>>24883503>My hyperliberal friend who was reading it thought it was racistBrb gonna read it IMMEDIATELY
>>24883339It leads to powers some consider... unnatural.
>>24883269I remember having it as a summer reading option in high school and actually ended up enjoying it a lot, why not at least try it?
is there haremslop that's actually good?
>>24883288>>24883303>>24883339>>24883428what dis white knight yappin about???
>>24883659my diary desu
>>24883659On Astral Tides.
>>24883613It's why self pub is the only place to find real quality now. But it's absolutely buried under mountains of shit.
>>24883732Hit me with best self pub fantasy recently
>>24883660I posted the first two and I'm not a white knight I'm just sick of sick of that shit that you want to obsess over 24/7, why can't we just have a nice conversation without some shit covered retard showing up to remind us there's shit out there?
>>24883777More scifi than fantasy but would never be published by tradpub and is kino
>>24883659Slop by Mike Truk. It's surprsingly passable fantasy schlock.
>>24883777/sffg/ hates self-pub.
reading self-pub makes you appreciate publishers
>>24883971It does indeed, though for things you ordinarily do not think about, like formatting.
Am I missing much by skipping the Sun Eater novellas? The time skips between books are annoying but idk if the novellas would help much with that. Seems they talk about more than just Hadrian's storyline.
>>24879653Centuries of genetic engineering, selective breeding, razor's edge training, and so on for the Golds does not seem to have been nearly as effective as the Dûnyain. Not enough Logos I suppose.
>>24883971>makes you but I actually mean Ievery time
Hello anons. I just finished The Dark Forrest. I thought it was quite enjoyable in the first half and a weaker on the second. The ending wasn't terrible but I feel there was a failure in the build up for the last reveal. It felt like the author only needed an excuse to show his Fermi Paradox Solution and the story came second. Overall, I enjoyed it. Thoughts on that book, anons?
>>24884054the whole trilogy is kinda like that. liu's characters are really just puppets most of the time working out his ideas, but there are some interesting things he does with characterization to make a point, both about his characters and how they engage with his ideas. i think the series says some poignant stuff about love in some ways, in terms of the characters and characterization. id say the first book is probably the most tightly written, but all 3 are good, imo.
I'm back to complain about this book. After complaining about the first two and promising to drop the author, I still went on to book 3, because I already had it in queue and didn't want to bother finding something new to read.So basically this book is sliiiiightly better than the others. Only because it actually had magic in it, so it felt like an actual fantasy book. But all of the magic was based on instructing the main character on how to use his powers. It was all conceptual stuff, and world building. Very few acts of magic that actually did anything to affect the story.All of this magic instrcution should have happened in book 2.The author clearly didn't know where to take the story, and changed paths multiple time, abandoning things he sets up prior. Actually, I don't know what else to say about this. It's just poorly structured, has no real arcs or payoffs, and the expositing characters do sounds like they're reading straight from the author's notes.It's bad. Do not recommend.
>>24882013Hard SF is whatever bullshit conceited scientists believe is true this century. For example if you were writing about planes during the 18th century then it would be just scifi.
>>24882011Lol.https://www.gregegan.net/ORTHOGONAL/ORTHOGONAL.html
>>24884079I told you bro. Whole trilogy is just a tie-in to Pug's multiverse school.
>>24883981It depends. Queen Amid Ashes is Hadrian on mission between Howling Dark and Demon in White. It's good but it's not an actual link between the books.Demons of Arae is a short story but very helpful for Demon in White.Lesser Devil and Dregs of Empire are non-Hadrian POVs. They're decent reads but lack the spectacle of the series proper.
Suneaterbros, I'm back from the Shadows Upon Time release party.News:Upcoming fifth, sixth, and possibly seventh collections of short stories, collecting stories written for anthologies, magazines, and special editions of the main books. Physical release in two volumes to follow, late 2026 or 2027 iirc. No news on SE standalones.More Adaman sword and sorcery stories (in the vein of Conan and Kull)Greek antiquity-inspired fantasy trilogy, Doomsong. Story sounds like a treatment of Orestes and Electra. First book The Godstained House releases in 2027.
>>24882774how do you reconcile the two seemingly contradictory thoughts of "stupid book revealed too much, now i know everything and must drop it" and "the plot summary shows the book goes in a completely different direction than I anticipated, stupid book, why didn't it play it more safe"?
>>24883085Chasm City
>>24884249i think you were pretty generous in regards to the book when assembling your strawman of my thoughts. i didn't think the book was stunning and brave for the asspull i never got to. i didn't ask myself "why didn't it play it more safe?"
>>24882637>I wonder if he felt like he had written himself into a corner with how he ended the first book. In a different world, this could've ended up being the same situation with several other fantasy authors who aren't able to finish the book because of the circumstances they've found themselves in. So, at least he published it in a timely manner, if nothing else. That's one definition of professionalism.Honestly that's kind of what it feels like, it was planned out to be a gigantic superbook in his head, but then when the time came to actually write the damn thing he had to compromise. I guess it's better than never finishing like so many other authors do.>>24882862>The story started out strong, despite beginning with the Egyptian setting, as seen on the cover. Of the three, it was one I liked the least. The Irish was a relatively close second to the RomanI haven't checked, but I would be shocked if the Roman isn't everybody's favorite by a mile. It has the actually established characters you know and presumably already like or you wouldn't have bothered with the sequel. Meanwhile the other two have to introduce you to entirely new casts and get you to care and in Egypt's case fail completely. The only interesting character in Egypt was Caeror, and he leaves the plot maybe 20% of the way through?>For the Roman, a character is built up a lot and then graphically killed in explicit detail. It's very melodramatic and meant to be shocking. I saw it as a waste of a character Fully agree on this point. It was supposed to be a graphic, horrifying twist, but all I could think of was "wow, this would probably be way more effective if the antagonist wasn't a literally who character who's been in two scenes and had maybe 15 lines total until now". Like his big speech about the motivation for what he does is good and could've been done really well, except that speech was more dialogue than he'd had in the entire rest of the book combined. Again, I think it comes back to the book having no breathing room, every single character needed way more time.
>>24883971You never appreciate how vital a good editor is until you read something that didn't have an editor.
>>24882198it's a great novel, it's Pohl most famous work for a reason.And Robbinette is an amazing character, i still remember the last few chapters, absolute New Wave Kino.>>24882210>outdated sexist 1970s era viewsPohl was literally considered woke back in the day to the point they called him a communist hippie for writing novels like Man-Plus and Space Merchants, these fucking redditors believe everything written before 2015 is racist and sexist and will attack people who are literally on their side just because they have no media literacy.
>>24884358But where else am I going to be able to publish my book: "The First Red Ranger Comes Out of Retirement to Save the World".
>>24882133Heavenly Court is literally the CCP
>>24884079>>24884167I remembered what I wanted to say about it. The whole thing feels like it s trying to be Wheel of Time. Without understanding what made wheel of time good. The concepts of the flame and the void, and powers being mainly a female trait, except the one male magician who can do it better than other women. But the problem is, the author didn't flesh anything out. He introduces a female flame character, who has a supernatural infatuation toward the main character, and seeks him out from afar. So you might think that because she's a woman with secret flame arts, she will find the main chatacter, and teach him a thing or two about his magic. But nope. She teaches him nothing. They blueball the reader by constantly stating that he'll learn at a later time when he arrives at their destination.(in the next book)The author ALSO sets up an instanility in the maincharacter's relationship with his wife. And while he's aline with that flame mage girl, he starts to think he might like her. But his thoughts never go beyond thoughts. His entire conflict happens in his head, mever affecting the story in any way. This girl's whole thing is to find the main character, and be a potential love interest, and NOTHING happens with her. As soon as they reach their destination, the girl is written out of the narrative.All the plots threads are like that. Set ups, no tangible actions resulting from those set ups, and conflicts resolving on their own without any real action from the characters.The brainwashed character talks about wanting to kill the main character, and they never cross paths! At the very last chapter, the brainwashed character is just suddenly cured of his compulsions, as we find that the people who brainwashed him were detroyed off-screen.
>>24884388Like i said, the whole trilogy is just a prelude to some multiverse shit Feist is writing. I wish he didn't bury the lede until the last book cause I wouldn't have bothered if I'd known.
>>24883868nice artwork lel
>>24883964with good reason, most of it is just polchud tierand yes traditional publishers are pozzed but that doesn't mean that progression fantasy selfplub trash is good.
>>24882174To me it’s about non-contradiction within the established world. So you can have a bunch of fanciful things and be “hard” science fiction. But you can’t be like Star Wars where there are just too many inherent contradictions in the world. You can’t have FTL travel and no guns.
>>24882953>He actively observed the crew and then took unprompted actions based on his own observations. He is internally motivated and responsive to the world around himSo half of the NPC's in 1990s video games are sentient?>By observing behavior, obviously.You mean, like a Turing test? Which was already beaten, so we have sentient AI then. >ChatGPT cannot even "remember" thingsRemembering is not the same as reasoning.>it simply accumulates "context" during an extended sessionOh, like remembering things?>which has a finite cap on itDoesn't make it not remembering.>as it will readily forget "irrelevant" information How can you forget if you never remembered anything?>it doesn't qualitatively understand any of its contextNot needed for reasoning.>it only tracks associationsOh, like remembering things?>Basically, LLMs don't have a long-term memory, and their short-term memory at best mimics how human recall functions but its actual mechanism is basically a search engine with spicy auto complete to explain its results.Yes, yes, and yet it can come up with an answer to a presented problem, in other words, reasoning.
I'm trying to read dune and the amount of proper nouns they throw at you right at the start makes it a slog to read. I also found this Paul kid extremely annoying. Is this really what passed as an SF classic?
>>24883964i dont like progression fantasy and lirpgs
>>24884439self pub is famously non-woke
>>24884776And still garbage.
>>24884776Translator's Note: This is an ironic post because the series posted is known for being woke. Whether or not anon assumed that everyone else knew that is unknown.
What are some books where time passes considerably? Kinda like in the Wheel of Time
>>24884855>>24884855Depends on what you mean by that. There are tons of books that have time skips. Quite a few even go millions, billions, trillions of years into the future. There are also the sort that are multigenerational or cover the entire life of somome.
>>24884855monarchies of god
>>24884855Children of time. Generational time skips
>>24884413I don't think it's bad merely for being a prelude to something else. Because he could have gotten to the same place in a much better fashion. And a lot of his mistakes, are the same ones he's been making since Magician book 1, only somehow worse. I think it's letting him off too easy to blame a multiverse. He just failed at the very fundamentals of storytelling.
>>24883777Go read Knight of Valora. A 4chan retard wrote it.
>>24884285I don't see how I could interpret your post in any other way>By the time you've gotten through 30% of the book you already have all the answers>So now I know all this shit and I dropped it. Why should I keep reading?So this indicates your biggest complain is how you think you know everything by the 1/3rd mark and you find there's no reason to continue without a mystery to solve. But then:>The plot synopsis on wikipedia says that the plot changes completely in the second half and there are suddenly interdimensional aliens called jarts but what the fuck do i care? Nothing I've seen has hinted at aliens? Why the fuck would I care about some conflict that gets introduced 60% into the book?Now you're mad that the book does not end the way you expected, and that the entire shape of the book changes pretty dramatically.This seems to heavily contradict your initial complaint that it's too predictable with no mysteries, but you're equally mad that the book goes for big twist. You claim the twist is an asspull, but how could you possibly know that when you a) dropped the book, and b) misread the situation so badly you thought you had it all figured out at the 30% mark?You're allowed to dislike a book for any reason, or no reason, but when you present yourself like this it's hard to know what exactly you're trying to say.
>>24884763It is the slog of all slogs. I can’t believe I didn’t quit reading the shit. There are some cool things about it but it’s 99% tedium and paulie just walking around drinking piss.
>>24884855All Tomorrows: The Myriad Species and Mixed Fortunes of ManHumanity expands to the stars and is summarily defeated and wiped out by a much stronger alien empire. As punishment for us, and entertainment for them, the aliens genetically modify the survivors into utterly bizarre creatures and barely-sentient organic structures.Then they leave the galaxy entirely, abandoning their experiments to live or die. Each chapter examines one such species, explores them in some detail, and in between sections there's massive jumps in time so that the species can evolve, split, or go extinct, then the process repeats for these new species.It's a hard book to summarize correctly, especially without ruining a lot of what makes it special, but its usage of time progression is phenomenal. If you've ever watched a kino documentary or science program that covers huge spans of time - yet still manage to keep through-lines and arcs through all the different sections - you'll know the type of feeling I mean.
>>24884754bro he's coming back trust the plan
>>24883345>no one remembers K. W. Jeter, despite having written proto-cyberpunk already in the 70s
>>24884855The whole Xeelee sequence plus this short story collection.
>>24883806>you are not allowed to point out how romance is the top-selling literature genreok retard
Guys, I'm looking for a collection of short stories like those of Edgar Allan Poe or H.P. Lovecraft.Alternatively a good novel about either dark fantasy like in the Heritage of Shannara ||I loved the part with the mutated creatures on the cursed island|| or cosmic horror.Thank you, book bros.
>>24885229Don't know why the spoiler was not hidden...
>>24885229**Like that?**
>>24885229I gotchu bro
>>24885229Ayy lmao
>>24885229Lmao /spoiler[dummy]
>>24885244Thank you brother! That's a lot! Sorry for the unhidden spoiler, I wanted to have the "black bar" but it didn't work...There's so many book in your image, I'll certainly found one that I like!What is your personal favorite?
>>24885251 :-( I tried bro
>>24885254>What is your personal favorite?The Dark Eidolon and other Stories by Clark Ashton Smith and The Ghost Stories of M.R. James are my personal all-time favorites, you can't go wrong with both authors IMO.
>>24885229>>24885240>using discord spoiler in 4chanAs expected.
>>24885244Stranger on the Internet, dearest of anon, I wanted to thank you once more for the present you offered me.I'm so very happy for this help you provided me, I could platonically kiss you.And to think I hesitated... (subtle hellraiser reference).You guys are the best.May your books be full of wonders and your dreams full of adventures.See you beyond the wall of sleep
>>24882953>He acted on his own initiative. He actively observed the crew and then took unprompted actions based on his own observations. He is internally motivated and responsive to the world around him, which is at least half the definition of sentienceEven ChatGPT can do all of those things if you hook it into the right tools.>No it can't. It doesn't have any internal understanding. It cannot "reason" anything. All it does is produce word association chains based on input by pulling from a vast data set to find the most likely "correct" output based on input. How does that differ from reasoning?>ChatGPT cannot even "remember" things, it simply accumulates "context" during an extended session which has a finite cap on itThere's a finite cap on what you can remember, I doubt that you can fill up the context and then quote its third response in the chat. But that's just a technical limitation of this specific system, architectures other than transformers exist which scale linearly with context, thereby enabling essentially infinite context. A truly infinite context would take infinite time to process, but there's no way around that and that's why humans forget things.
>>24885229The Throne of Bones
>>24885332>Even ChatGPT can do all of those things if you hook it into the right tools.No it can't. It is merely a prompted response generator. Those "tools" are simply programmed responses. It cannot "decide" to do anything, it can only create output from input. >How does that differ from reasoning?Okay we're done talking. I cannot explain things to people who believe human consciousness is nothing more than mindlessly parroting words. You live in a grim reality with no internal world, so there is no point talking to you. You are an automaton.
>Christopher Ruocchio next series will be a Mediterranean-inspired fantasy: The Doomsong Saga.>Book one is The Godstained House and is planned for 2027>Third person instead of first person POVSun Eater bros.. what are we thinking?
>>24879637https://locusmag.com/2025/11/people-publishing-roundup-november-2025/BRANDON SANDERSON and PETER ORULLIAN sold contemporary fantasy Songs of the Dead, first in the Strata Wars trilogy, and two more books to Joe Monti at Saga Press via Joshua Bilmes of JABberwocky Literary Agency.JAMES ISLINGTON’s Scion, about a contract killer assigned to protect a genetic enhancement scientist, went to Joe Monti at Saga Press via Paul Lucas of Regal Hoffmann & Associates. UK rights went to Bethan Morgan at Gollancz at auction, and Australia and New Zealand rights went to Michael Heyward at Text.R.F. KUANG sold coming-of-age novel Taipei Story to May Chen at William Morrow, with UK rights going to Ann Bissell at The Borough Press; and two speculative novels to David Pomerico at Voyager US, with UK rights going to Natasha Bardon at Voyager UK; all via Hannah Bowman of Liza Dawson Associates.EMILY ST. JOHN MANDEL sold Exit Party to Jennifer Jackson at Knopf via Katherine Fausset of Curtis Brown.NANCY KRESS’s The Queen’s Witch, in which a Queen of England and a witch are bound by fate, went to Elizabeth Agyemang at Amazon Crossing via Peter Rubie of FinePrint Literary Management.PETER V. BRETT’s cozy fantasy mystery novella Butter Cookies and Demon Claws sold to Natasha Bardon at Voyager UK via Stevie Finegan of Zeno Agency on behalf of Joshua Bilmes of JABberwocky Agency. Charlotte Trumble will edit.
>>24885485buy an ad
>>24885485>BRANDON SANDERSON and PETER ORULLIAN sold contemporary fantasy Songs of the Dead, first in the Strata Wars trilogy, and two more books to Joe Monti at Saga Press via Joshua Bilmes of JABberwocky Literary Agency.Is this cosmere shit too?
>>24885332>How does that differ from reasoning?To simplify it, reasoning requires thought association, not word association.Here's a small example. Imagine plotting a course from your house to McDonalds. You train a LLM to perform this task, but what does training mean? It means the LLM generating a route essentially at random, and comparing it to the route you said was correct. It then repeats this approximately 100,000 times until it gets it more or less right. Over time it realizes that 123 Road St. is commonly associated with 456 Street Ct. and it starts to slooooooooooowly chain its way over to 789 McDonalds Ave.Now ask it to plot a route to Walmart. Can it do it? No. It has no association. So you instead provide it with the correct route and it once again goes through thousands of iterations until it finds the steps to match you.Worse, every time you ask for a route to McDonalds it's not going to give you the same one each time, it's going to generate one that's as close to correct as it can. Why does it do that, and not just give you the correct route that won't change? Because it doesn't know how.In fact, under the hood it has absolutely no idea what it's doing. It doesn't know what a street is, or a store, or a car. It just knows that these tags are frequently connected, and its job is to associate these tags together.The way ChatGPT and similar work is by scraping the internet for trillions of 'correct' examples that it can train itself on thousands of times. That's a lot of work, it's why it requires so many thousands of GPUs and data centers and is tremendously expensive.
>>24885471I like Sun Eater enough that I'll finish the new trilogy even if it's just okay. The series and first book title sound generic but antiquity is Ruocchio's thing so I'm expecting it to be solid. But he's left the bar really high with Sun Eater and I'm concerned that he won't leverage the maximalism that made Sun Eater so compelling to me. If he's gonna scale things back I almost want him to do a literary ghost story or metaphysical thriller a la Arthur Machen, Charles Williams, or That Hideous Strength first.
>>24885471>>24885989Also I hope his narration remains grandiloquent in Hadrian's absence. People bitch about Hadrian being melodramatic but I liked that more serious, epic tone. If you didn't like it you're an irony-poisoned golem and you're ngmi.
Love self published books
What's an interesting fantasy career in your view? Not everyone can be an adventurer.
>>24886610Bodyguard of someone more important, like Sam or VayneTreasure hunter, artifact hunter, whatever. It's one of those things that should be so exciting but has a very hard time translating to fiction. Dunno why.Farmer or rancher, but in a very strange or dangerous place. Akin to the stuff we dealt with when settling the west, but with a fantasy bend
>>24879637r/Fantasy has put out their 2025 Census Results. >We're absolutely thrilled that the gender balance of the sub has shifted significantly since the last census. In 2020, respondents were 70% male / 27% female / 3% other; in 2025, the spread is 53% male / 40% female / 7% other. Creating and supporting a more inclusive environment is one of our primary goals and while there's always more work to do, we view this as incredible progress!r/Fantasy Age 202550+: 7%40-49: 15%30-39: 46%23-29: 24%19-22: 4%15-18: 1%/sffg/ Goodreads Group Age 2022*50+: 1%40-49: 3%30-39: 35%25-29: 33%20-24: 26%18-19: 2%If that's adjusted that for 3 more years, 50+: 1%40-49: 5%30-39: 51%25-29: 34%21-24: 9%*28% didn't have an age listed, but it had to be 18+ to join.Although I'm curious how close that is to reality, it's not enough for me to go through all the profiles again. The youth aren't coming to 4chan or Reddit. They're elsewhere, so the average and median age will only continue to increase. There's a ton more than this from their 2025 Census, but it doesn't matter to me, so you'll have to look at it yourself if you want. The Google form isn't linked, but it's publicly available. It's easy to find if you know what you're doing. The creator messed up by putting a mod feedback question.
>>24886612a photographer
>>24886614The question is, is fantasy simply not being read by young people, or are older people simply out of touch with where fantasy-reading youth congregate?
>>24886612Steve Irwin in a fantasy setting.>CRIKEY! We just fell upon a big girl here! Rare do we see a mountain nymph! If you think she's dangerous, you should look at what I have in my shed! Those chompers in her mouth can tear me in half! But the real danger are her giant smothering breasts! She pushes into your face once, and I'm lunchmeat!
>>24886610>>24886612Most any career can be interesting in fantasy given the right circumstance. My first novel is about a fortune teller who goes to Le Magic School to study divination and uncovers a plot to supplant God by making mankind into gods. It's not interesting though, it's mostly my wish fulfillment for having a dark academia gf
>>24886625Fantasy naturalist/natural philosopher is a good one, with or without the monsterfucker overtones.
>>24886614>13% jump in female respondentsRight, """"""females"""""""
>>24886625AgreedI read Chasm City which sucked shit and I hated it, but what I didn't hate were the hamadryads creatures that featured prominently: giant snake-like creatures whose second 'phase' of life is transforming into a tree. They were irrelevant to the story itself, just a neat idea that the author kept returning to.It's fun to read about weird goobers just doing their thing, not stopping anyone's adventure or being ridden to war, just goobering it up in their habitat
>>24886631That's what happens when the moderation actively tries to reach that outcome. It could just be that a large number of male posters left.
>>24886626>that spoilerCan't get more based.
>>24886637i'm not particularly /pol/ inclined but it's also hard not think about the amount of users who voted male in 2020 and female in 2025video games - particularly certain games or genres - are in a similar conundrum of wanting to boast their improved "diversity" while also sheepishly realizing what the numbers actually reflecting
The wait is killing me
>>24886610Tax collector seems ripe for shenanigans
>villain/morally gray protagonistYeah, I’m not reading that YA tier slop
It's that time of year again. Post Autumncore fantasy bros.
>>24886856Always found it interesting to go back to childhood series.
Was my man Tolkien on the money about Narnia or was he just being a pedantic autist?
What was Aragorn's tax policy?
>>24887005He was correct. It was just the Bible rewritten with a more fantastical spin on it. No blending of culture and mythology as well as original ideas.
I liked the setting of The Expanse but found the characters boring and repetitive.Any books that are better?
>>24879661>>24879803>>24879844yeah morrowind is truly incredible, but the days of its glory are long gone in an official manner. you can still enjoy that era of TES very much so with the Tamriel Rebuilt mod. It somehow, defying all logic, has managed to avoid retarded drama and trannification where it has an insanely rigorous screening process before anyone is allowed to work on the game, that everything that they are putting out (especially nowadays) feels exactly like OG morrowind. i dont know how they do it but its incredible. seriously, do yourself a favor a play it if you like morrowind.
>>24879899>have a non retarded build>be higher than level 5>95% of attacks hit nowwow that was so hard
I read up until Hadrian revealed himself and I shan't be reading more. My interest took a nosedive as soon as he left the coliseum and it never recovered. I shall add this to the ever growing list of shit books /sffg/ has recommended me.
Why is this FAGGOT FUCKING GENRE SLOP allowed here? Quit consuming the equivalent of MENTAL MCDONALDS RIGHT FUCKING NOW!
>>24887104Currently finishing up the second book. I like it.
>>24887136The greatest work in English is science fiction. It's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
>>24887304Nope. Wrong.
>>24887309Name one better work. Pro tip: you can't.
>>24887311It's not even good. It completely glosses over how the monster is created, it's fucking slop.
>slopvs>AAA new release spamwhy is this thread ALWAYS newfags arguing with newfags?
>>24887318Science fiction and fantasy are quite literally "babby's first book"
>>24887315You can't name any book you like better.
>>24887320not the own you think it is
>>24884258You didn't get any (You)s for this, so I wanted to make sure you got at least 1.
>>24886206Imagine using Piers Anthony of all people for a blurb.
>>24886633>I read Chasm City which sucked shit and I hated itI remember enjoying it, though it was over 15 years ago that I read it now.
>>24885493>Is this cosmere shit too?Yes.
>>24886714Been listening to it thanks to a friend who gets advance copies of audiobooks to review.It's fantastic, bros.
>>24885493No.https://www.simonandschuster.net/series/The-Strata-Wars
>>24887568Ah you lucky bastard, I hate you lol, 3 am EST cannot arrive fast enough man.
new thread>>24887692>>24887692>>24887692
>>24887568That's great to hear. Starting book 3 soon.
