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>>24948206
>Two Weeks Left Edition
until what anon??

I need hot dominant muscular barbarian mommies (preferably futa)

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>>24948215
Malazan has one who goes around harassing soldiers for sex

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I just learned about Samuel Delany's support for NAMBLA after being a massive fan of his work, particularly Dhalgren, for years. He made statements from the 1990s where he described their bulletin as promoting "sane thinking" on the age of consent and positioned them as a dissenting voice in the gay rights movement. I'm so disappointed.

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>look for fantasy book with a 'wintery' vibe
>get nothing but woman shit

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>>24948309
Maybe if you described what you wanted in non feminine terms, anon. Wintery vibe, he says.

>>24948309
Icewind Dale.

>>24948319
What better way is there to put it? Something that conveys the cold and contrast of warmth?

What are the best Heinlein books?
Just added starship troopers to my queue.

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love it when fantasy characters come across an ancient ruin but it is not really an ancient ruin but an extremely advanced futuristic mechanism

I fucking hate science fiction and fantasy.

>>24948431
You’re in good company in this thread then

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>>24948397
Same
Read Broken Empire
The setting is interesting and unique but you have to deal with the edge which is fun

Need a recommendation for a gift for my father in law. He's exhausted my list and is still chugging through books. Military and post apocalyptic science fiction is what he's into. Preferably looking for older often overlooked stuff

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Any novels set in coastal gloomy setting, like The Shadow over Innsmouth or Sunless Sea (any epoch and any setting, not only the Earth)?

>>24948579
It's got some iffy twists and a "it's still going?" final act to it, but I enjoyed S.A Tholin's Iron Truth. I've only just recently(as in a few hours ago) got my hands on the sequel and I'm hoping the series as a whole is a good one but it may be a good choice for your dad.

>>24948711
also I clearly can't read and glazed over the "in law part".

>>24948221
I thought he was black?

>>24948391
His 1970s and 1980s books are absolute masterworks.

>>24948206
it's an observation many have made but it seems like people who don't read much have a limited idea of what is good writing or seem to latch onto one writer or style or genre
this goes for all sorts of readers, but i see it most in "serious literary" types who only read to have read important works, or sci fi people who just don't like to read outside their preferred genre because of autism

>>24948759
problem is you can't read JUST the greats because it you don't really develop standards if you don't read some bad books as well

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>>24948206
The Affinities - Robert Charles Wilson (2016)

The Affinities is a social science fiction novel in the sense that it was inspired by the author reading a book on teleodynamics and wildly extrapolating from its insights. An Affinity is sort of like if the admission process to joining a co-ed Greek letter organization was a battery of psychometric and biometric tests. There's no way to know whether someone has the same Affinity as you unless they've undergone testing. That means a person's assignation isn't in any way decided by them. It also means there's no way to be certain that someone has the same affinity, at least until a mobile testing device is developed. The whole thing is basically a shared group delusion where once a person has been determined to be part of the ingroup, their empathy instantly reaches a maximum level for others in their ingroup and near zero for those in the outgroup. This requires almost as much of a suspension of disbelief for the reader as it does for the characters. These sort of groups exist, but nowhere to the extent described in this book. Some examples are: sports teams; ideological groups; website fans; corporate supporters; entertainment fans; stan culture; parasocial members; religious institutions. Basically any grouping where a shared identity makes the people predisposed to liking you more. The Affinities take it to the extreme where they're meant to be a replacement for literally everything and everyone else in your life. This may superficially seem like the found family trope, but it'd be more accurate to call it an arranged family.

Unfortunately, its premise is also its greatest failing. Because it relies so much on the suspension of disbelief, the narrative tries to minimize the strain on credulity by mostly only having situations where ingroup members are involved. The first person protagonist is very passive. He's very happy to have somewhere to belong and just goes with the flow. He's not a true believer, but he can get caught up in the fervor at times in wanting to believe he's one. Ultimately this is more his story than anything else, especially as it comes to an end. I'm conflicted about that because while I would've like to Affinities to be used in a far greater way, it also probably would've been too ridiculous to do any serious way. Too Like The Lightning, which came out the next year, is somewhat similar with its Hives, though it sidesteps these problems by being in a far future setting where society has been entirely rearranged already.

Despite all these problems and limitations, I liked it. This is the first book that I've been interested enough to finish by the author since Spin, which I rated 5 stars. I tried reading a lot of Wilson's other novels, but none of them drew me in. The sympathy I felt for the protagonist and my agreement with the resolution went a long way with me. Those who prefer the opposite will probably feel the opposite.

Rating: 3.5/5 (4)

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>>24948206
Version Control - Dexter Palmer (2016)

Version Control is a literary alternate history hard science fiction novel. By that I mean it's a meandering exploration of the contemporary human condition that occasionally remembers that it has a science fiction plot. The alternate history is that the book's title is literal. For hard science fiction there are many monologues about whatever and digressions into science. The most frequent mode is criticism. There's so much of it on so many topics. A very limited selection includes: race; gender; dating; science; academia; politics; religion; nostalgia; conspiracy; and philosophy.

In the beginning, there are seemingly endless possibilities. As progress is made, the possibilities dwindle, until eventually only the singular outcome remains. So it was with my reading. I was very pleased with all the possibilities I imagined that the story could go. For a brief moment there was a chance that this could be my book of the year. Any possibility of that was eliminated over time as the wrong decisions for my enjoyment were made. I feel like I was misdirected. Of all the possible ways this book could have been written, Palmer chose No Fun Allowed Morose Realism. This novel could also be described as Anti-Escapist Science Fiction or The Deconstruction of Wonder. Maybe I'm being uncharitable. If nothing else, the story does follow through on the theoretical idea on which everything is based. Saying which one it is though would spoil the ending.

In terms of its overall content this is a nonlinear story about a failing marriage. The protagonist, the wife of the scientist who has invented a Causality Violation Device, is usually the viewpoint character. The reader sees her go through a nonlinear life from her post-college years to being almost 40. All of the characters are dysfunctional in their own ways, and at least one is actively dislikeable. The speculative elements are mostly in the background or incidental. They aren't given focus, because they aren't of interest. They're mundane. This is How The World Has Always Been. As with much, how radically different this world is from our own is played down and minimized.

If you're reading this for science fiction, then unless you're greatly interested in being teased, neglected, and denied, you're going to feel greatly frustrated. If you're reading this for literary fiction, then you're going to be even more annoyed by all the lecturing probably. The ideal reader is someone who wants their book to be literary and scientifically-oriented but anything science fictional should decorative and nothing more.

I wish this had gone differently. The versions I imagined were so much better. This isn't a book about time travel, as you might believe from its synopsis. It's a deconstruction of time travel and it's all the worse for it. It'd be admirable if it weren't such a killjoy. The ending is eminently reasonable and utterly miserable.

Rating: 3.5/5 (3)

>>24948786
>>24948781
your """reviews""" are SHIT
FUCK OFF

>>24948759
>latch onto one writer or style or genre
welcome to /sffg/. this gets reinforced by the boring normalfags here in every fucking thread.

Reminder to report and ignore newfags like >>24948799 who have been spamming off-topic for literal years.
>https://warosu.org/lit/thread/21311319#p21323327

>>24948881
You missed your calling as a janny

>>24948309
The Anvil of Ice?

Just learned the news that R.A. Lafferty was recently outed as a holocausts denier. Saying in 1990 "I myself never did accept the idea of the Holocaust in the context of the Six Million".
I just burned my Lafferty collection. Now maybe he will have some idea as to the pain that the Jewish people faced during the Shoah™.

>>24948397
don't japanese do tthis kind of thing a lot, do they?

It's a shame that most fantasy discussion is limited to the gen thread. Outside of it most users screech about being contained to the general. I feel like fantasy is broad enough to allow for substantial enough discussion to justify subgenre generals, like sword and sorcery, or grimdark/dark fantasy.

>>24948881
It's all in good humor, anon.

>>24949073
aside from very few thread most of /lit is pretentious garbage full of thirsty wannabe philosopher.

>>24949073
you have the right to make a thread about a book being either fantasy, scifi or not. you didn't break any rules

>>24949073
There are horror generals that pop up but there is little activity in here that splitting it up into sub genres would be pointless.

>>24949076
It's evident in this general where the most praised books are by pretentious fucks who can't write

>>24949073
Even in here, the "discussion" is endless repetition of the same books.

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>>24949076
>aside from very few thread most of /lit is pretentious garbage full of thirsty wannabe philosopher.

>>24949110
All those are pretty good or great

>>24949121
For genre fiction.
Not for literary fiction.

>>24949110
watts feels out of place but i guess it's contemporary with bakkerfag's favorite books?
people jerking off wolfe and vance every thread and injecting tolkein into everything aren't reading watts (or much else)
bakkerfag sure as shit ain't reading anything else considering he hasn't talked about a single other book in 6+ years

This is the sffg I read in 2025
>Slang, Vogt (**)
>To Your Scattered Bodies Go, José Farmer (*)
>The Nail and the Oracle (Complete Stories No. 11), Sturgeon (***)
>Severance, Ling Ma (**)
>The Island of Dr. Moreau, Wells (***)
>Titanium Noir, Harkaway (***)
>Day Zero, Cargill (*)
>Ball Lightning, Liu (*)
>The Anomaly, Tellier (****)
>Empire of Silence, Ruocchio (****)
>Howling Dark, Ruocchio (****)
>Demon in White, Ruocchio (*)
>Recursion, Crouch (***)
>Red Rising, Brown (*)
>Glasshouse, Stross (***)
>Dungeon Crawler Carl, Dinniman (****)
>Carl's Doomsday Scenario, Dinniman (***)
>The Dungeon Anarchists's..., Dinniman (***)
>The Gate of the Feral Gods, Dinniman (**)
>The Butcher's Masquerade, Dinniman (**)
>The Bedlam Bride, Dinniman (***)
>The Dreaming Void, Hamilton (**)
>The Tainted Cup, Bennett (****)
>Rose House, Martine (**)
>This Inevitable Ruin, Dinniman (**)
>Penric's Demon, Bujold (***)
>Tower of Glass, Silverberg (****)
>Sodom and Gomorrah... (Collection), Lafferty (***)
>Farewell, Earth's Bliss, Compton (**)
>Between Two Fires, Buehlman (***)
>The Dream Master, Zelazny (currently reading)

What should I read to kick off 2026?
>Radix, Attanasio
>The Moon Pool, Merrit
>The Iron Dragon's Daughter, Swanwick
>The Lathe of Heaven, Le Guin
>In Watermelon Sugar, Brautigan
>Dreamsnake, McIntyre
>Davy, Pangborn
>Shadrach in the Furnace, Silverberg
>Sheltered Lives, Oberndorf
>Titan, Varley
>The Demolished Man, Bester
>Cinnabar, Bryant
>The Drought, Ballard

>>24949140
The Iron Dragon's Daughter, The Demolished Man, and Radix are good picks.

As far as generals go on 4chan, this is one of the most normal and level headed. Yeah there are a few resident spergs but if this on /v/ or /vg/ the list schizocockgobbling posters would arrive and stay. In three months there’ll be a transvestite who folder dumps images of Lara Croft being fucked by a horse and posts smug anime girl pictures from Azur Lane when you call him out, a third worlder who shits up the threads constantly because a company he doesn’t like is doing well is literally white genocide etc.

I enjoy these threads because there are helpful anons in here, some good discussion at times and even if the same books are talked about at least it’s ok topic discussion.

>>24949140
>red rising *
kek. As a RRfag it’s the weakest book and I will say it improved massively but it seems you enjoy slop like dungeon crawler carl so I would recommend you try the other books in the series.

>>24949140
What didn't you like about Demon in White?

>>24949150
Not him but RR is probably the book I've dropped the fastest in my entire life. Lasted two sentences before cringing out from the "I'm the vilain, ahah"

>>24949127
Then what's good literary fiction by your estimation?

>>24949029
>>24948397
yeh, it's how I got into the dying earth genre

>>24949165
Proust

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>Sanderson legit thinks his works are postmodern fantasy
this is shitpost-tier material

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>>24948945
>Just learned the news that R.A. Lafferty was recently outed as a holocausts denier.
link??! I love him even more now

>>24949150
>RRfag
>calling anything else slop
Your kind is obnoxious.

>>24949158
It took the series in a direction I didn't care for and destroyed all sense of scale and intrigue. I don't enjoy the poorly wrought political stuff, the massive time jumps, the fact that he's suddenly the messiah and emperor's right hand man, the weird cripple character, among other things.
>>24949150
Extremely cheesy, juvenile slop. No unique ideas, poorly written and conceived.

>>24949171
I inferred RR was also slop hence why I recommended it after recognising other slop, retard.

>>24949170
peak manchild core shelf

>>24949174
>I read trash and can only describe trash books with one identifier
Your lexicon is non-existent and I do not view your kind as human.

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>>24949110

>>24948723
He is black, just light skinned

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Any good but overlooked classical fantasy from the 1960s-80s? Something cozy like DragonLance, but with lower stakes.

>>24949170
Insane collection, anon.
I think the guy who runs the Lafferty blog, arriveateasterwine, went through some of his archived correspondences that are kept at the University of Tulsa and in one letter Lafferty mentions his views on the Holocausts and how he began this mistrust of the accepted historical narrative.
Here is the post, but this blogger is pretty hard to stomach desu:
https://www.arriveateasterwine.com/about-4-1

He also loses his mind here as well:
https://www.arriveateasterwine.com/post/belloc-and-current-thoughts

Also, this guy trying to cope with the news is funny:
https://youtu.be/VoUgoCaKIjs?si=HwJROAeWXMBuZwl-&t=58

>>24948221
>>24949335
Why people can't separate the art from artist?
Like, if you like something just enjoy and ignore the author and if you are worried about giving them money or supporting thrm just pirate it or don't promote it.
>but what if his politics bleed into the work
My dude, if their politics bleed into their work and don't agree with them you wouldn't like the work itself into the first place.

>>24949138
I read Vance and Watts and like them both. I seldom bring up either of them though because they just don't have enough readers on here to sustain organic discussion.

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I only got 11 pages in before I had to call myself filtered

sf is for progressives, fantasy is for chuds

>>24949515
Completely understandable.

>>24949515
I've read the summary and I didn't get it at all lol

>>24949335
Awesome. Thank you, I'll be going through all this soon.

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Continuing a thought from the last thread, I finished Port of Shadows from Glen Cook. Legitimately the worst book I've finished - I should have DNF'd halfway through. I hate saying that because the Black Company he wrote 40 odd years ago was just so fucking good and this felt like a teenage ghostwriter taking over the reins. A story of no consequence without character growth, action, good prose or generally anything interesting happening at all. To any and all people hoping to read this book series, just skip Port of Shadows. Your time is worth more than what this book has to offer.

Has anyone read Lies Weeping? Is it closer to the Black Company we all know and love or is it closer to this mess? Should we all just stick to the old stuff from here on out?

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the more I think about these books the more I realise they're perfect...

What are my thoughts on Le Guin and Abercrombie?

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>fuck Liesander
No, fuck Alexander

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wtf am I reading

catholic /sffg/ booktubers making UNDERRATED BOOKS vids and it's just mirian zimmer bradley

>>24948945
A white, radical Christian from Oklahoma denied the existence of the Holocaust? Colour me surprised, what!

>>24950045
Who was a child molester.

>>24950045
I wonder why she isn't rated today?

>>24950080
>>24950045
what are this pedo's best books? I normally don't read women but this sounds like an exception.

>>24950082
I am a Lesbian is pretty good. You should read all her butch lesbian books because being a pedophile is all about the LGBTQIA+!

>>24950082
wish we had flags on this board sometimes

>William S Burroughs
>Mirian Zimmer Bradley
>Allen Ginsburg
>Michel Foucault
>Simone de Beauvoir
>Jean-Paul Sartre
>Oscar Wilde
>Germaine Greer
>Jean Cocteau
>Gabriel Matzneff
>Donald Friend
Stop noticing things, goy!

>>24950045
isamwise is that u?

>>24949110
>>24949121
This nigger is posting this in the sffg thread

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I'm sorry, anon, I gave it the old college try, but this was just not good. It felt like some dude's homebrew D&D campaign or "lore" from some terrible MMO. Every other paragraph is something like
>The Dark Sky Church has been contacted, but they can't find another Moonlight Apostle out here. As such, you'll be taking the Water Ley straight to the Bay of Storms and Papanuy to get to Merdz
And I don't care about any of this stuff because I don't care about the characters. I have no idea what their motivations are or what their personalities are like. The story lacks goals, stakes, or urgency--if your story has this, you can get away with some poor writing or plot holes because the reader is engaged. But as it is, I had no reason to get engaged with the characters or plot and thus no reason to keep reading.
I'm not saying to stop writing. I'm saying that this is what you need to work on if you want people to recommend your work to others.
The cover was badass.

>>24950080
ohh that’s why catholics like her

>>24949745
You will love her. You will not love him.

>>24950170
Why didn't you post this in /wng/? That's where the author usually is.

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Fantasy or scifi books pre-2010 (before hypersexual indy wave) with Eriksonian female protagonists? pic related. I picture Masan Ghilani from the Bonehunters looking like this. Or Brawne Lamia from Hyperion

>>24949824
Lysander is at least delusional enough to be compelling. I'll never forgive him for Alexandar AND Cassius, but he has his moments. Alexander calling best girl Selene a whore as well as being a Chantry tool is just aggravating.

>>24948206
Arent all modern science fiction just propaganda for leftist propaganda?

>>24950362
You need to have a modicum of intelligence to write science fiction so the genre has historically leaned left, yes.

>>24950362
chud writers don't get published

>>24950378
Well yeah, the publishers have to pay allegiance to blackrock and others that control their company pocket. But thats irrelevant, the outcome is that its just a political propaganda with no value in quality of story

>>24950376
Brainlessly repeating progressive dogma so you don't get cancelled and can keep making money publishing intellectually bankrupt propaganda wowwww so smart. Good thing leftists are just coincidentally correct about everything as well as having massive institutional power in academia and media while being censorship prone or we might have a problem.

Ah look at the time, it’s the chud self pity hour.

>>24950325
daru wench vs unta trad wife?

>>24950395
>hee hee we know your criticisms are valid but we (currently) have enough social power to just mock and censor them implicitly challenging you to a contest of force.
>wait why are you growing more fascist and politically unstable chud wait no-

>>24950376
I know this is b8 but it's so embarrassing how many science fiction stories have climate change as a plot point.

>>24950313
I found out about the book from this thread. I'm not going to willingly go into any place as retarded as /wng.

Guys I can't read this shit anymore. Please I need a good middle ground between 500 pages of meandering nonsense and teenage girl assassin. I try 100 books and get bored or roll my eyes and throw it at a wall for 99 of them. I need slopkino.

>>24950394
Leftists don’t have power. Liberals (which are center-right by most countries’ standards) have a foothold in academia, but entertainment is just run by staunch capitalists which have no ideology other than making money. Meanwhile look who is running the government.
>>24950413
Yeah, it’s so cringe to tackle the biggest issue of our time in fiction, it’s a good thing science fiction never addressed real-world issues in the past.

>>24950409
>your criticisms are valid
They are not so please go back to your containment board, /pol/

>>24950452
Leftists do have power. Academia is highly sympathetic to communism and downright servile to all forms of progressive identity politics. Modern progressive ideology is just applying the seething envy inherent in Marxism to every hierarchy in society instead of just class. Well, in reality it's just a bunch of separate emotional reactions and vying for social status, but you could frame it my way too.
>>24950455
No, you go back to your containment board, /lgbt/.

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>no u!

Chuds please order books from Baen and stfu.

Just finished Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, and I have no clue why it isn't more popular. What an amazing series

>>24950505
It's long, slow-paced and old. That's why.

>>24950505
It was popular when it first came out. Not many series remain in the public consciousness for long, even great ones.