Death's End edition>Recommended reading charts (Look here before asking for vague recommendations):https://mega.nz/folder/kj5hWI6J#0cyw0-ZdvZKOJW3fPI6RfQ/folder/4rAmSZxb>Banned Authors:Joe AbercrombieA.A. AttanasioR. Scott BakkerC.J. CherryhGlen CookSteven EriksonR.A. LaffertyMark LawrenceGeorge R.R. MartinPatrick RothfussGene Wolfe>Archive:https://warosu.org/lit/?task=search2&search_subject=sffg>Goodreads:https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1029811-sffgPrevious:>>25511257
the banned authors thing wasnnt a joke...
>Banned authors
Who let this beggar make the thread?
>>25517565Asking again: Anyone read Children of Strife?Is it better than Children of Memory? Does it return to a high-tech setting?
The Blade Itself is ass and Joe Abercrombie is easily on the same level as Brandon Sanderson, how can people read this shit?
>>25517606Abercrombie is completely different from Sanderson. Both men are hacks, but for totally different reasons. I think I hate Abercrombie a little bit more than Sanderson. The one regard in which they are the same is that they are both pretty prolific authors, which I guess shows there is such a thing as going for quantity over quality as a writer. But then, we already knew this because of Terry Goodkind, also, who is king of all hacks.
does this count as sci-fi?i feel like the first half has strong scifi fantasy elements to it but the second half goes back to, i guess more like the mythical tales of the time the author was aiming to parody.
>>25517634Their writing styles are only superficially different. In substance, both are mind numbingly juvenile and pretentious. I will not give them the credit of calling them hacks. Hacks are aware of what they doing, and I do not believe they possess that self awareness.
>>25517645Speculative fiction, for sure. Is it any good?
>>25517664>>25517606>>25517634Women and modern "men" are easily shilled slop by their artificial consesus apps.
>>25517606>The Blade Itself is assI'm reading it myself. Where Im at, its gotten kind if better, we'll see if it ends that way, unfortunately reddit has fairly bad taste because they have zero critical thinking
So. Take Event Horizon and True Detective S1. Add a dash of Minority Report. A sprinkle of 12 Monkeys. Mix it all together, and here's what you get: The Gone World.1997. Gruesome murders. Space travel. A missing ship. Time travel to hypothetical futures.The end of everything is coming, and it is coming in fast, backward through time. They call it the Terminus.It's hard to describe without getting into spoilers, but I liked it. Maybe a bit too dense for some people, based on reviews I've read.I thought the time travel mechanics used here were unique, but I might be wrong (I haven't read EVERY time travel story in existence).For the sake of the story, the initial investigation was honestly half-assed. And the MC will miss rather obvious clues sometimes (but she's a she, so).Includes a special guest appearance by Garry Kasparov (sort of).4.5/5
>>25517565The Passing of the Dragon and Other Stories - Ken Liu (2026)Three Views of a Parking Lot (2024)At first glance this story's title may seem like a writing exercise in presenting a parking lot as interesting. Which, yes, that's what it is in part, but far more so its about the relationship between the parking lot and its inhabitants. This is a sentimental story that follows the evolution of a specific non-human cognition. It's very hopeful and wondrous, utopian even in its own way.OkThe Passing of the Dragon (2023)The story title is the title of the protagonist's painting. This is one of Liu's stories that's a torrent of raw emotionality. Liu has a few stories that strike me at my core. This is one of them. That's good and bad for me. Bad, because it hurts so much. If evoking strong emotion, regardless of its valence, is a criterion for meaningful art, then Liu has certainly succeeded. I had to close my eyes for a bit multiple times before I could continue. Good, because it's also very satisfying to read and is more than entertainment while remaining entertaining. It connects with me on a deep emotional level and is the best sort of self-indulgence. I can imagine several different ways to view this story, which would greatly affect the reader's opinion, some of them entirely negative. I'm sympathetic, but I choose not to see it that way. I definitely don't agree with everything presented in here, and would provide extensive pushback to some of the ideas, but that would be counterproductive.This story affirms JOY and LIFE amid a culture of APATHY and DEATH of the author.Highly EnjoyableThe Moon Carver (2019)Life told from the perspective of a scorpion who muses about existence.EnjoyableGood Spells (2023)Mag is a witch who provides her clients with charms and curses. Her techno-witchcraft cajoles the AI that neither she or anyone else understands into performing magic. She's a freelance vibe coder that sometimes uses analog hardware and has adopted a specific aesthetic. That's not unusual because the resurgence of analog computing has led to feral AI animism becoming a common belief among the youth. Understanding of the world has reverted to ancient times where anything not understood was ascribed to the gods, who have been replaced by AI.EnjoyableIdols (2020)A man's obsession with his father who died without knowing he existed commissions an idol of him, a digital replication of his personality based on everything that be can be found. A woman interrogates idols for her law firm to gain an advantage in court. The government is suspected of using idols for everything and anything. Another woman creates an idol exhibit for people to look at their idol as if it were a mirror.The year after this was published character.ai and other sites would be selling a basic and simple version of this as a service. The story is more about the nature of identity than literal implementation.Enjoyable
>>25517745Ice Wraith (2023)Helena mines space icebergs for heavy oxygen. As a modborn, a person genetically modified before birth and physically modified afterwards, this is all she knows. The core worlds are light years away and all she has for company is an AI, her crew, and her imagination. Together they elaborate upon the mythology they've created of the ice wraiths, an ancient alien civilization.OkA Whisper of Blue (2020)Literal dragons supply the world's energy, but what fuels their energy generation remains a matter of speculation. There's a lot of discussion about it, but I couldn't connect to any of it. My dissonance about how these are literal dragons but the entire story is metaphors and allegory was too much to overcome. The plot itself is a family drama that just went past me. There's also a good bit about the nature of memory. In theory this should be a story that I really liked, but in practice I didn't. This is probably a personal problem.MehThe Cleaners (2020)Memories leave physical residue upon objects. When a person touches an object they can feel how others who have touched it felt. Many people try to minimize depositing and absorbing memories by wearing gloves and coats.Gui is a specialist cleaner who is insensitive to the residue and as such can scour away any and all memories despite their intensity. This also means there's no way that he can report anything about what's being cleaned. Clara is a cleaner for a corporation. Corporations employ many to wipe away the residue from those who made the product. Beatrice is extremely sensitive to the residue and can visually see the memories contained within objects, but also feels what happened that much more strongly.I found this to be a rather interesting usage of the paranormal in that it's presented as entirely natural and routine.EnjoyableThe Armies of Those I Love (2021)The few remaining cities and the surrounding region have become mobile and travel around the world. The remaining people are only able to live in the Holy Groves where electricity remains. Those without light are culled by the Guardians, beasts of flesh and metal. Franny, a young woman exiled from the Holy Grove, wants to go the Beacon to see if the Pilots who control Boss (Boston) actually exist. She also has a far more personal reason. When the opportunity to do so presents itself, she doesn't look back.I absolutely love the setting and everything about it. I have no complaints about anything, except that I want more. Although the ending isn't what I personally prefer, it's exactly what it should be, what the story called for, and I wouldn't have it otherwise.Highly Enjoyable
>>25517746Arc (2012)Lena Auzenne had her first child at 16. Her final child was at 116. This story chronicles the arc of her life. As with many of Liu's works, poignancy abounds. Plastination plays a central role and is used to examine the interplay of life, death, and grief. Motherhood, obligation to others, immortality, whether death gives meaning to life, and several other ideas are considered.EnjoyableCosmic Spring (2018)Several trillions of years have passed and now the universe is coming to an end. The island-ships tell their final stories before it all comes to a close.OkTimekeepers' Symphony (2022)This is a wide-ranging and discursive consideration of time. Its history, meaning, usage, definition, reification, relation to consciousness and much else. There are no characters or plot. There are only ideas and their explanation. This is science fiction in the sense of being an educational work conveyed through fictional settings. Calling it creative nonfiction written in prose wouldn't be that far off. A brief bibliography is provided at the end.Ok50 Things Every AI Working with Humans Should Know (2020)The story of WHEEP-3, the premier AI critic of AI and all things related to its existence, from beginning to end.Ken Liu states that ~10% of the final draft, mostly the list of 50 things, was generated by a neural network he constructed using Google's TensorFlow framework. It was trained exclusively on his writings. He states that COVID was wrecking his creativity and he thought that maybe doing so would help.You can read the interview regarding this story here:https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/interview-ken-liu/Ok
>>25517664>>Their writing styles are only superficially different.No, they are quite different in content. Sanderson cannot write dialog, only accidentally creates compelling characters, and has a supremely autistic method of world building which is based on elementary symmetry. He's not half bad at world building when he gets away from "magic systems", which tend to poison everything in the story with their corrosive autism. By contrast, Abercrombie actually does pretty good dialogue, and is too consistent at writing interesting characters for it to be an accident. But that's about all the good he does. He's bad at writing fantasy. He should've written a different genre that does not depend so much upon the imagination, because he clearly does not have one. In a way they are almost opposites in style. Sanderson desperately needs somebody to rein in his over-indulgent magic systems, and to write his characters and their interactions for him. I dunno if it's him being a Mormon or what, but he writes human behavior like an outside observer. He gets less uncanny over time but there's always this inexplicable stiffness, like you're watching a badly acted movie. Abercrombie feels more like a soap opera sometimes, but soap operas can be engaging. As long as you're zeroed in on the drama, and don't notice how cheaply put together it is.
>>25517726>>25517745>>25517746>>25517749your """reviews""" are SHITFUCK OFF
>>25517606Epic funny redditman "humor"
>>25517751>>>25517726 (You)I'm not Yev you faggot.
to those who read new sf books (that were published not too long ago) can you describe me what do they talk about in these books, please?
>>25517854Depends on the author.
>>25517870do they all integrate a cyberpunk city like? (with neon and hologram ads)?
>>25517854>those who read new sf booksThey're cucks.
>>25517881No, no at all. No strain of cyberpunk is dominant, especially not the 1980s version.
>>25517854>>25517881
>>25517892You too know the truth about Yev.
Decided to read some of the classics, and man, this book was really good. Glad I followed one of the charts in the op. I kinda thought it would be mostly about HAL, so I was pretty surprised that he’s only in like a quarter of the book. I really liked the beginning with the apes, Bowman’s brief time on Earth, the space station, and even the ending, although it was kinda vague, but in a good way.HAL is definitely the most interesting part, though, and I can kinda understand why he became almost the main focus of the movie. That being said, I found out there are apparently three more books in the series? I’ve basically never heard anybody talk about them. What’s up with that?
Worst general on 4chan
>>25517915You haven't been to many generals on popular boards have you?
>>25517918Shut up, tranny.
>>25517919I hope you realize that putting an insult at the end is for yourself and nothing more.
>>25517928Bitch
>>25517899what did I say?
>>25517948He disliked how ignorant your post was.
/sffg/ meetup
>>25517915>>>/vg/osg>>>/x/nobody (/NG/)
I am going to read The Blade Itself today.
>>25517958Fletcher Pratt I guess, and who are the rest?
>>25517972>Fletcher Pratt (left) with fellow Baker Street Irregulars Christopher Morley and Rex Stout (1944)Don't know much about Morley but Stout wrote the Nero Wolfe stories
>>25517953I wish I could be spoonfed
>>25517979>Rex StoutNice.
>>25517983You have been.
>>25517979>Baker Street Irregulars > Rex Stout (1944)>Stout wrote the Nero Wolfe stories>aka "what if Mycroft had been the detective"It's all coming together now
>>25517993I think it was William S Baring Gould who speculated that Wolfe was the son of Holmes and Irene Adler
Post misogynistic sci-fi and fantasy please.
>>25518013Ellison would gut you alive for calling him misogynistic, even if he was.
>>25517928You sound resentful.
>>25518023You are repetitive.
>>255179122010 is pretty OK and the movie wasn't bad either
The cover reminds me of Lonesome October's
Would help if I had posted what the hell I was referring to
>>25518023I neither need, nor want you defending my posts, bakkerpagerspammernigger
>>25517645That cover is beautiful. It makes me want to read it just based on that alone.
>>25517645The title is retarded. It makes me not want to read it.
>>25518114Hehehe, you fool! You fell for my trick! You thought I was spambitch but it was I, Anonymous!
>>25518126Reddit
>>25518131You always say that.
I read Bakker back in May because of the furor about him in this thread, and honestly I can't stop thinking about it. I had tons of fun reading it.
>>25518139Gay
>>25518117It's 1900 years old
>>25518139what was so fun about it?
I've read about 50 pages of The Blade Itself. I'd say the Bayaz stuff is somewhat interesting.
>>25518146The cuckoldry, BDSM, cannibalism and necrophilic rape
>>25517915>>25517919>Every general sucks BTW I came here after 2016What does this have to do with science-fiction and fantasy, or literature?
>I came here after 2016!>I came here after 2016!>I came here after 2016!>I came here after 2016!Just because you repeat it like a bot with Tourettes doesn't make it true.
baynefag melty
>>25518148Bayaz is the closest thing to a decent character in the series. Like a Jack Vance side character in a leading role.
Reading Arthur C Clarke and the story's good, but I can't get it out of my head that this guy was almost definitely a child fucking turbo nonce, Gary Glitter-tier if not worse.
>>25518187Dipshit
>>25518176>Like a Jack Vance side character in a leading role.I'm guessing he never gets a POV
The Sartan and the Patryn are the only beings able to use rune-magic, and they consider the lesser races (men, elves, dwarves) as mensch. To win against their foes and rule reality, the Sartan Sundered the world into four pieces: Air, Fire, Stone, Water, all built to sustain each other sharing resources; imprisoning their ancient enemy the Patryn into the Labyrinth, a self-aware nightmare maze hellscape where few found escape. We later learn that Sartan who opposed the Sundering were also exiled into the Labyrinth. The Patryn Haplo (and the dog) make it out of the Labyrinth and end up serving Lord Xar, first of the escaped Patryn, scouting out the four lands in search of their ancient enemy and intending to bring mayhem in order to help Xar conquer each world. Much of the story involves Haplo learning things are not at all what they seem, after meeting the Sartan Alfred, discovering the poor state of the worlds with the seemingly vanished Sartan, and the worlds not working as intended sharing resources (heat/light, food, water).By book 4, we meet the dragon-snakes which are egregore entities that feed off fear, strife, terror, etc., etc.; shapeshifters who pit everyone against everyone else, turning the plot around. Of course, much of the story is within as without, that is coping with changes to the status quo (what if we had to work with those we hate to fight a greater evil? what if there were a higher-order deity and we (Sartan/Patryn) were NOT the most powerful beings?).The book does have a recurring god character but he doesn't exactly do God-like things, mostly providing real-world references and comedic relief. Considering this series was written by Hickman and Weis of Dragonlance fame, I of course refer to Zifnab, the original character who is totally NOT Paladine, the God-turned-'mortal' at the end of the DL books.
>>25518231The books feature appendices going into detail about that world's history, or theories on rune-magic, all written in-character (usually through Alfred) AND each book has a unique musical score at the end, which I thought was totally fucking cool.
>>25518230Nah everyone gets a PoV. He does constant PoV, time frame, and setting changes to keep you from thinking about how bland and derivative the actual story is.
>Dune Book 3: The Prophet>Oh shit I'm running out of paper and still need to wrap up like 6 different plotlines, uhhhhh "And then we skip into the future and Paul is Muhammad-Jesus-Buddha-Hitler and then all of his enemies come down onto Arrakis at the same time and he defeats them with facts and logic and worms The End."Kind of feels anti-climactic after all that buildup in all honesty.
Visit one of the first /sffg/ threads, find a fun post, and bring it back.https://warosu.org/lit/?task=search2&ghost=false&search_text=&search_subject=sffg&search_username=&search_tripcode=&search_email=&search_filename=&search_datefrom=&search_dateto=&search_media_hash=&search_op=all&search_del=dontcare&search_int=dontcare&search_ord=old&search_capcode=all&search_res=post
>>25518201I didn't want to believe it either
Trying to read Brave New World and I’m having a hard time taking it seriously because it keeps talking about Alpha and Beta males, and every single time it makes me laugh. I’m blaming all of you guys for ruining those words for me.
>>25518187Clarke moved to Sri Lanka so he could fuck twinks (boys). This isn't even a secret.
>>25518297Why are bongs like this?
>>25518297>This isn't even a secret.Exactly, yet there are still people coping about it.
>>25518313People always going to defend their favorite megapopular e-celeb on the internet. Same shit with Asimov raping his kid and groping people at conventions but but but it's Asimov! So it's okay.
Ferro chapters alone are almost enough to not continue reading The Blade Itself.
Why don't you quit flooding the thread with your faggot fucking bitching and just drop it already? You fucking FAGGOT.
>>25518422Oh ho, someone's in their rebellious age.
>>25518486Quit bitching like a goddamned woman on the rag. Either do something about it or shut up. you prattling, estrogenated, bebitch-titted ninny.
>>25518422I'm enjoying it enough besides the Ferro chapters. Will probably not continue to tue sequel if the character has any prominence whatsoever. I'm tired of the righteous victim trope who gets bailed out for all their retarded bad actions because we arbitrarily rationalize the source of the bad behavior while conveniently shining zero light the the source of the bad behaviour of those who made them a victim. It's part of what I criticized classically early around reading Prince of Nothing regarding the concept of "Grey Morality" It doesnt actually get rid of black and white binaries, just reframes them, so that something you thought was white...is white, except its adopting the aesthetic of black, and its a trick of marrying two perceptions, without actually addressing any of the substance, and you can prove this, by virtue of the fact that they will still depict evil cartoonishly and simply, there will always be an eviler "thing" that is vague and disconnected enough to never have to warrant justification the same way the "antihero" who is always just a hero, wearing the aesthetic of black.We'll see if the book surprises me at the end. I am enjoying it, but 90% of that reason is Bayaz, and almost Bayaz alone. A bit of Logen too, because I am not seriously wondering wtf pushed him off the brutal sadistic barbarian path he was on in the past. Glokta is still not interesting yet.
>>25518244Dune's awful characterization of the main and supporting cast convinced me not to bother with the later novels. Hubert's talent was world building and that's it.
>>25518503Please kindly dox yourself to make this possible.
>POV: You are Bakkerfag, maintaining your hold on the "samefagged again" heavyweight title
>>25518593
>POV: You are Bakkerfag, maintaining your hold on the "told them again I came here in 2016" heavyweight belt
>>25518576It feels like there are supposed to be 10 more chapters, there is so much shit that amounts to nothing.I wonder how much was intended to just be inferred but written with shroom trip logic that makes no sense to anyone but Herbert. The pacing past Jessica's induction as a Reverend Mother is downright bizarre.
So i just read John Ringo's latest missive, "Troy Rising". He didn't write enough words to make a full book so they turned it into an opened-up "universe" with a bunch of short stories written by other authors plus Ringo's new "novella".The rest of this is nothing but spoilers, so if you don't want the stories spoiled for you, stop reading this.If you read past this point, you've been warned there are spoilers ahead.I'm feeling extremely disappointed for a couple of reasons.1) one of the short stories makes zero fucking sense whatsoever. The story is basically "girl loses her family in the attacks, becomes a stripper, gets into a fight with customers, and some random ex-mil guy is so impressed that she shot a drunken attacker that he asks her to help him blow shit up." The problem is, exactly what shit is she going to blow up? She's on Earth, the enemies are giant space lizards, and the ex-mil is like "yeah we're going to go kick some ass!" Whose ass are they gonna kick, other humans? Humans aren't the enemy in this series, the enemy are space squids and giant space lizards (and soon apparently space caterpillars too). Are they going to steal a spaceship and go around blowing up planets in other systems? How are they going to afford the literally multiple billions of "galactic credits" it will take to finance this operation? The short story cuts off with the guy asking her to join him and her saying ok, so it's not like the author has to come up with anything "plausible" to fulfill it, but even so, it's like, "what the fuck is she (the author is a femoid of course) even thinking?" Is the stripper going to be Mata Hari, fucking the giant space lizards to get them to spill their secrets? Will the stripper engage in tentacle sex with the space squids to contact their French Resistance style opposition cells? It's just plain one of the stupidest endings to a short story I can think of.And then there's2) Ringo's story has some promising stuff with the giant space lizards, but ends with a totally Reddit "humanity fuck yeah!" ending where humanity totally defeats two of the most powerful interstellar empires in just the last two chapters. It's like he found out he's dying of cancer and wants to wrap up the entire series Right Fucking Now so he can die knowing he's finished one.I'll add that one of the short story authors is one whom I've downloaded a series he wrote but haven't read it yet. I'm glad I didn't waste the time because his writing is at around a seventh-grade level at best. Simple sentences, simple vocabulary, simple plot, no real conflicts, just drivel.
Hoo boy, pagespammer is currently in the Camus thread shitting his pants because "the whole Sisyphus thought experiment doesn't make sense because its not realistic and thus retarded"
>>25517565>>25517572Just curious, why were those authors banned? Two of them I can understand, because they've fucked over their fans by not releasing concluding books in a decade or so now. Three others are really old but were decent in their day. IDK the rest.
>>25518747Is anyone surprised? He's so fucking autistic, I swear.
>>25518750They're not banned. You can talk about them all you like ITT. Faggot wannabe janny OP can't enforce shit.
>>25518750Accusations of sexual negligence
>>25518750It's the latest Bakkerfag attempt to sow discord in the thread. Ignore it.
>>25518750>>25518755>>25518761Please refrain from talking about banned authors. Thank you.
>>25518763Make me, CUNT.
>>25518750It's Baynefag, a schizo obessed with pushing shitty self published amazon authors onto this general who hates people talking about good books and not self pub slopBaynefag also thinks Brandon Sanderson is a based underground self published authorHe likes pretending bakkerfag, his mortal enemy is behind it as well for some reason
>>25518763You know what the most banned book in the world is? THE BIBLE. That's right. Jesus died for your sins and you probably haven't even read His whole book from cover to cover and integrated His teachings into your pathetic meaningless life.
>>25518777>777DEUS VULT
>>25518777Jesus didn't write SHIT.
>>25518772Ah. Thanks, makes sense.Most of the good stuff I've read in the last ten years has been self-published, though. The big NYC publishing houses only allow pro-LGBTQ+ estrogenated slop through their gates. I'd pretty much given up on SF even 20 years ago because it was all becoming feminist literature, but the indie authors doing self-publishing through Amazon broke through that barrier.E. William Brown's stuff was great, wish he'd quit dicking around and finish "Merciful Troubleshooter" and maybe another Daniel Black book (he's supposedly put MT on hold to write a new DB one, but that was mentioned two years ago and nothing has happened).Travis Corcoran's "Aristillus" series was great, and it looks like he's finally putting out a new book in it, with two more that he's plotting out. He's way beyond merely a douchebag in real life, though.Robert Kroese's Erasmus Keane series and "Dis" series were fun, as were the first three books of his Iron Dragon series, but the rest of his oeuvre is kinda crap.
>>25517565>A.A. Attanasio>wrote The Last Legends of Earth>dimensional entity from the center of the galaxy pops out into normal space>creates a solar system populated with humans in order to lure out and genocide the zōtl>intelligent sapient flying spiders who pith your brain, releasing chemicals that keep you in constant lucid agony and pain while they feed and control your bodyThe only people who would hate this are Jews.
>>25518777holy trips
>>25518772He's a mere distraction. A decoy to draw attention away.
>>25518747One must imagine pagespammer happy
What are we, some finna ritual posting squad?
>>25518912*smacks lips*Now get over here, big boy.
>>25517678It's good. It was written in the second century so if counted as sci fi this story would be at least 1000 years ahead of the curve. my Kindle copy was only 93 pages long so honestly it was a quick and fun read.>>25518116Agreed - it depicts the climax of the second act of the story.>>25518117The title is meant to be a joke regarding ancient Greek and Roman tales that presented mythical events as if they were reality. Basically lampshading of the genre it was parodying.
>>25518946Reminds me of Batrachomyomachia
>>25517606Abercrombie is slightly higher quality slop, but yes still slopI read his "half a whatever" trilogy, and there were various high and low points, averaging out to like a solid 2.5 to 3/5His prose is serviceable, the dialogue mostly inoffensive, and there are scattered bits of an interesting premise woven throughout the three books I read. He is a decent writer that simply doesn't aspire to much. His overreliance on torture porn, "wacky" twists and subversions. refusal to make an overall thematic statement not buried in fifty layers of "well it depends on how you look at it" are all very symptomatic of modern fantasy publishing. It's a very systemic, efficiency-under-time-constraint approach to writing that I personally find very uninspired and uninteresting. Breaking genre and character conventions to make something different is not inherently bad, but it truly never goes anywhere worthwhile and states nearly nothing in the end.Its general overall incohesiveness is more due to the fact that the first novel punches above its weight by having pretty singular focus in character, carried by shock value and introduction of novelty post-apocolyptic setpieces scattered throughout to get the first book in the trilogy selling as many copies as possible. Then it spends two books circling the drain and calculating it's price point against average number of pages, the entire third book is a gentle declining slope intended to put you to bed safely unenthused about the thought of what any of it meant or what the characters did after.Its palatably woke, superficially different from any other book on the shelf that describes itself as gritty, and the literary equivalent of eating paste for the flavor if you are looking to read a genuinely interesting fantasy author
>>25518747What are you mentally retarded losers talking about. I havent touched 4shitter since I last posted about when I read The Blade Itself.
I will say though. The Sisyphus "thought experiment" and Camus in general is retarded and simple minded slop for the exact type of pop phil retards that love A-Z quotes.
First book was quite underwhelming, but damn if it doesn't get good in the second. Happiest I've been since I found Bakker a decade ago.
>>25519049.....................
>>25518998>It's a very systemic, efficiency-under-time-constraint approach to writing that I personally find very uninspired and uninterestingWhat's a popular novel with good prose in your opinion? Dune? Aldenata (Posleen)?
>>25519103Thats a funny sentence to take issue with, but assuming you're not trolling there are a few examples I could point toIf you're speaking about popular novels roughly in the same class of quality, Jim Butcher's fantasy novel series is of similar level and less boring, across more novels. It's no highbrow take on the genre, but it's less uninteresting in a general sense because things are actually happening. It makes no pretensions about grittiness and you might classify it as young adult ficiton, but the same would be true of Abercrombie if you edited out the 100 or so pages of "character development" hes very fond of there is obviously Tolkien, whose style is something I personally enjoy even though I understand some people take issue with itKen Liu's Grace of Kings is of a higher quality in prose, a more successful series, and more interesting in every metric. I have no personal investment in proving so, but it clears anything Abercrombie ever wrote Sapkowski is translated from polish and still better if you disregard popularity, and just want to talk about prose, Gail Z. Martin has some pretty cozy two book series that is similarly unambitious but a more pleasant readfeel free to nitpick these as predictably as you desire
So I read book of the new sun, book of the long sun, and book of the short sun. I'm restarting with BOTNS again. I started reading some reddit threads now that I have actually gone through it, and I apparently missed 99% of what was happening. It's fun reading stuff again and being like "oh, that's what the fuck this retard was talking about."
>>25519130I think BOTNS takes that sort of intentional obscurity way, way too far. There's fun in re-reading something and picking up on obfuscated angles but BOTNS almost requires you to read it again to grasp the basic plot, let alone all the subtleties. There's a world of books out there for me to read, man, miss me with that tedious bullshit.
>>25519139I could give you a general plot play by play of BOTNS right now book by book, but I don't think I could tell you why most of it is relevant. Like that scene where he is in some shamanistic ritual with Dorcas at the end of book 2, I'm sure that is central to the plot, but even thinking about it I have no idea wtf Wolfe was trying to tell me. Or Typhon, despite him being so important in BOTLS and BOTSS, no idea why the fuck he was in book three. Hopefully I'll get something from the reread. I just don't want the book to beat me after I have already put so much time into reading it
>POV: You are Bakkerfag experiencing the visual hallucinatory effects of schizophrenia, seeing the same person in all of your naysayers
>>25519129>to take issue withNo, not at all, sorry it came off as thatI genuinely wanted to know your opinion >Jim Butcher's fantasy novel series is of similar level and less boringFortunately I have read Dresden Files so yeah that's relatable to me>Ken Liu's Grace of KingsInteresting, I'll look into thatThanks
Just finished Lord of Light
>>25519130Did you not read Urth in between because Urth basically explains everything that was implicit
>>25519129>Ken Liu's Grace of Kings is of a higher quality in prose, a more successful series, and more interesting in every metric.I am never living down how boring and contrived Liu Bang's story is. I don't care if its "historically accurate" It's absurd historically too. Also huge huge red flag, when you need to make the enemies/villains retarded for everything to be set in motion, even again, if thats what "actually" happened (I doubt the Han dynasty usurpation is remotely entirely accurate to actual reality anyway)This might genuinely be the one cut short series I return to one day though, it just has so many good endorsements and vouches.
>>25519212I read Urth as book 5 and came out more confused than I was going in
>>25519198No need to apologize because the mistake is mine, I mistook you for a bad faith poster, they often play on the subjective nature of prose to claim shit books are actually le based or whatever they think will make you upset >>25519222As said here, Ken Liu does pull a lot from Chinese historical/mythological accounts so the plot does have some strange features, but I have scoured new releases for years and its one of the few things I found enjoyable in recent terms
>>25519049I'm on the first third of Empire of Silence and it's dragging.
>>25519203>picThe BDSM community has gone too far this time.
ted chiang's story collections were nice>>25519203>invention of the toilet led to hindu gods declaring war on humanitywe do not deserve zelazny
>>25519278The 2nd book is actually possibly even worse than the 1st. That guy is just retarded.
>>25519049>>25519278It gets good around the 7th book. On the 12th, it really gets its legs. Be patient.I talked the author at Dashcon, and the 19th installment looks like it'll deliver multiple payoffs.
>>25517958I thought the guy on the right was Hitler for a second.
>>25518329>Asimov raping his kidThat's a new one. Go on.
Can somebody post the nu-male fantasy chart? You know the one.
>>25519278I would say it gets better after he leaves home because it is much less "totally not Dune" but it just sort of rambles around and the major plot twists don't really have much of a reason behind them.>>25519322I don't get how anyone could honestly think this. The thing with the first book is that it has no real message and no real climax or antagonist. As an adventure story it works sometimes, but it jumps through too many different settings to settle into any one of them. You could almost start in the second one because the first feels more like a backstory montage for the real story. The second has a solid plotline all the way through and much more original stuff going on in the cosmos.
I stumbled on this book by chance and the books look weird as fuck. does someone have ever read or know 'Orbbelgurren'???
>>25519592Agree with this. I read 1-4, and the 2nd book was the only one I enjoyed.
>>25519103NTA, but Guy Gavriel Kay is one of the few genuinely good prose writers in sff, and could pass as popular. He worked with Christopher Tolkein ("Chris T") on editing and publishing the posthumous JRR works, and the influence shows without being overpowering.
>>25517854Global warming and muhpressed brown people
>>25517854"Best sellers" are >>25519729, next tier down in popularity is gritty first contact military (naval) stories.In the independent space, there's a lot of AI-focused stuff, both what if the machines take over or what if they just live with us like people.
>>25519729>>25519768No.
>>25519837Yes? The Hugo awards have been basicslly all afrofuturism fighting environmental catastrophe for the last decade.
>>25519845The Hugo Awards are irrelevant.
>>25519845>>25519845>>25519845Aside from them being irrelevant, that narrative is entirely wrong.2026 The Everlasting, Alix E. Harrow2025 The Tainted Cup, Robert Jackson Bennett2024 Some Desperate Glory, Emily Tesh2023 Nettle & Bone, T. Kingfisher2022 A Desolation Called Peace, Arkady Martine2021 Network Effect, Martha Wells2020 A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine2019 The Calculating Stars, Mary Robinette Kowal2018 The Stone Sky, N. K. Jemisin2017 The Obelisk Gate, N. K. Jemisin2016 The Fifth Season, N. K. JemisinNone of these are afrofuturism, and only Jemisin's are about environmental catastrophe, though not with the usual narrative.
>>25519327>>It gets good around the 7th book. On the 12th, it really gets its legs. Be patient.There are only 7 books, retard.
>>25519891>2021 Network Effect, Martha WellsHoly hell that's sad.How many of them don't have queer and / or brown representation?
>>25519943All of them have one or the other.
>>25519891Arkady's books are basically the same thing as afrofuturism
>>25519950So basically it's gay afro-futurism.
Posting fantastical sculptures by Clark Ashton Smith.>Werewolf - Head of talc. Being with pointed ears. Features are a cross between human and lupine.
>>25517565Some years ago I signed up to this website as part of a larger whim when I researching/doing some stuff. https://firstlookreaders.comThey email you potential books to read and critique then be paid. From what I understand they're usually drafts rather than almost finished books, as with Netgalley* and similar sites. During the years that passed I got emails now and again, mostly stuff I wasn't interested in, or simply didn't feel like doing at the moment. The most notable book that was presented to me was the newest at the time of Drizzt books, which I considered, but I had fallen so far behind and it had been so long since I had read any of them. Otherwise I would've gladly done so. Recently I got an email about a SF book that I believe I had seen before a couple years ago, I'm not sure because apparently I deleted the previous emails, and I thought it was interesting that he was using the service again. The premise and marketing was interesting, so I decided to give it ago. The deadlines to accept is only a few days and it seems to be first come, first serve, for a limited number of people. A few days later I got the email to sign the NDA, which was done through Zoho, and was just me typing out my name rather than signing anything. More concerning was that I had give my personal details, but that's how it is. The process seemed liked it was more for legal liability than a serious matter though. Soon after I received the manuscript, which was a Microsoft word document converted into a PDF. I know it was because that was in the filename. I converted the PDF to read on my Kindle. The book had a lot of problems and marketing was misleading, but it was better than I expected it to be. Given the author's biographical details as a tech bro and specfically what he's involved with, I was expecting something different. I was pleasantly surprised. Afterwards I had to fill out a questionnaire with ~32 questions. I considered looking it over before I read to better take notes, though it wouldn't have made a difference. The questions were all very generic and nothing was specifically about the book. It was a template. I was disappointed. Most of my notes didn't have any place until the freeform response at the end, which I considered writing at length about stuff, but decided it wasn't worth the time or effort. It was an interesting experience, though I don't know if I'd do it again. The payment is $25 if accepted, but I was mostly doing it for the experience. I had no idea what their standard was, so I didn't know if I'd be paid. I was, a week after it came to a close. The main question I have now is how much the author paid. The site paid out a max of $625 to readers, so I assume the author paid considerably more. If the book ever comes out maybe I can say more. I may or may not make a note in a placeholder on Goodreads about it. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galley_proof
>Black Princess - Head in fire - black talc. Girl witl exotic headdress.
>>25519962Only in the sense of it being something you dislike.
GAR coverGAR fight (Walker Boh vs. Four Horsemen)Can't even post the initial intro scene where they appear because it's too long. :( Sad I own the newer reprinted version. It shows the Druid keep Paranor instead of this one.
>>25520061>GARBeen a long time since I've seen that. Do they still use it on /a/?
>>25520069Rarely but yes.
>>25520060PreciselyAssuming that what you dislike about afrofuturism is anything other than "there are black people in it," you would dislike all of the same things about Arkady's books
>>25519963Cheer up, Jim Baenazi has a David Duke Award for those who write pro-war slop.
>>25520110What is afrofuturism aside from being about black people?
>>25520069Only a few oldfags, but the board is a gutted shadow of what it used to be, same as the rest of this site.
>>25520120>primative cultures were the real scientific geniuses all along>pre-colonial culture aesthetic
>>25520207So your entire conception of it is the Marvel Black Panther movies? Well, ok.
>>25519845>Hugo awardsHave been irrelevant for decades.
>>25520215All awards are. Only individual preference matters. If there were /sffg/ awards, they would be irrelevant to everyone here.
Anyone read the Riverworld books? Are they any good?
>>25519725I'll put GGK on the list, thanks
>>25520210>how dare your description align with the most famous modern example of a subgenre!
>>25520263Yes, it does, which isn't all that different from saying all epic fantasy is Game of Thrones because of the TV series.
>>25520248The first novel is entertaining. The sequels are longer and duller until the disappointing ending. Farmer didn't give a fuck by the time he wrote the last volume.
https://4chan.org/bans4/25 of the current bans listed are for racism. That's the second most after off-topic. There's also a ban for "Respectful Discussion of Cultures".
>>25520286>drawing conclusions from random small sampleAnon, you're a dumb negroid
>>25520301and you're being cautious.
>>25520327Not really. But good luck I'm behind seven proxies.
>>25520286This place is so cucked. No one has learned anything from the hack.
>>25520380The ban list has refreshed and there's one for Global 8 - Complaining About 4chan
>>25520286What is this off-topic post meant to suggest or imply or inform or express? The current mods are newfags and ban arbitrarily while perceiving the rules through strict pedant face-value.
>>25520393It's not off-topic. It's part of the afrofuturism duscussion.
>>25520396Pfft.
>>25520345That's been a meme only now for a long time. Good luck trying to reliably post here with a proxy or VPN.
>>25520120Do you mean "what is there to dislike about it other than being about black people?" Personally my main complaint is that it's using genre as a substitute for plausibility. You say some random modern or historical culture came to be the dominant monoculture of an entire planet or system or galaxy, and that's the starting point of your scifi, in an "afrofuturism" novel. To me the mechanics of that seem like an important part of the setting, but their explanations of how it happened are either not present or very simplistic and handwavey. That's a problem I had with AMCE as well. Indigenous American cultures in space? Sure, I guess, but why? The book doesn't care, so I guess the reader isn't supposed to either. Same thing with afrofuturism. There are also the other genre hallmarks that you either like or don't like, revolution and romance and shoehorned poetry. If you like them you'd like them for the same reasons, if you don't like them you wouldn't like the same things in them. I think AMCE is better written than most afrofuturism novels probably are but it's really no different at any level deeper than that.
>>25520401
>>25520425What did he mean by this?
>>25520431
>>25520425Refreshing your dynamic IP address isn't the same thing.
>>25520442That's what I subtly tried to tell him but I think he's too far gone.
>>25520425>phoneposting*holds nose*EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
>>25520421Do you dislike alternate history in general for the same or similar reasons?
>>25520421Foundation is terrible for the same reason. It's also why I dislike Dune. Most books written by white men assume that it's going be a monoculture. "Space Rome" is the worst.
>>25520459NTA but read alt-history (or did before the whole historical fiction genre turned into romance), and it depends on how it's presented. If it's just "British empire but it's Mesoamerican" it's bad, if it's actually explored and supported, it's good.
keep getting humble bundle ads opinions about C.J. Cherryh?
>>25520472What if it's the Nazis or Confederacy won?
>>25520478She's pretty good. Give Pride of Chanur or Downbelow Station a try, they're very different from each other, but both are cozy classic sci-fi.
>>25520478You've been fooled by the initials. Carolyn Janice Cherry is a woman.>>25520482For shame, reading a known woman.
>>25520466>most scrolls written by white men assume monotribalism>pan-hellenism is the worstThis is you 2500 years ago.
>>25520478Was just checking the /sffg/ thread still up over at website-that-should't-be-named. The OP is using the cover of Chanur's Venture. That was half an hour ago. Now you post this. The simulation is getting sloppy.
>>25520061Another observation I found noteworthy:>published in 1993>elf city named MorrowindlHmmmm.
>>25520481As long as it's explained, it's fine. An example is Turtledove's famous series on the Confederacy surviving, the explanation bit of an ass pull but he at least puts some thoughts into it and has some details. What bothers me is if it's just unexplained, or entirely hand-waved. You can argue that the Confederacy manages to force a peace by winning one or more of the big mid-war battles, or that more states broke off, or in a bunch of ways. But setting something in 1970s with an inexplicable slave owning Confederacy as a direct replacement for the USA would be bad writing.As with most things in speculative fiction, it's how you do something more than what is done. Relating back to afrofuturism as a popular trope, there's a perception of being given a free pass to handwave the reasons because it's empowering or something. Basically it can be read as DEI-style prejudice supporting those works, though of course it could be argued that the perception is created by racism-motivated additional scrutiny that isn't placed on other works.
>>25520513>As with most things in speculative fiction, it's how you do something more than what is doneIsn't basically anything in general that isn't fetish content?
>>25520491There are a few good female authors in the sff space. She is one of them. Mary Gentle is another. Martha Wells is too, if you like nuPulp and can stomach the muttification of the far future.
>>25520521Martha Wells is a fantasy author. She's only did one SF.
>>25520518
>>25520531That's wrong. Many care about the "who" much more than the "how" or the "what" combined.
>>25520117>david duke >pro war I love how folks here just imagine shit.
>>25520556You're 6 words short of your 14 words.
>>25520538What an exceptionally unimportant observation.
>>25520574How so? Many here won't read anything that's outside their preferred identities. The same goes for elsewhere with different identities.
>>25520459No, and I haven't read any alt history because it sounds gay. But to your cocksuckingly pedantic point, you couldn't just swap the white guys in a "y2k if Nazis wonned" for black guys and have it be virtually indistinguishable from an afrofuturism novel. But you could with AMCE.
Came back to a horrible shit thread. Too many retards in here.
>>25520622Statistically, 1 in 4 posters is Bakkerfag.
>>25520521>the muttification of the far futureAlways struck me as ridiculous because literally nobody wants to look like a fat, nongendered abbo, and standards for controlling your appearance will only go up on a long average. It may be their ethnicity, but they ain't gonna look like that. You're gonna have furries and futanari space elves and shit. Abbos will be the far future version of neckbeards and women with mustaches.
>>25520637>You're gonna have furries and futanari space elves and shitTrading political fetishes for sexual fetishes.
>>25520626Statistically, 1 in 4 posts are Yev.
>>25520598Have you even read anything you've been talking about?
>>25520642everyone does it
>>25520678Is everyone here in the room with us?
>>25520682>i-it's not my fetish>everyone will have big brown body positivity orgiesYou're so fat you can't even fantasize about being with attractive men. Just lay off the diet coke and corndogs.
>>255206996-7/10 schizoposting.
>>25520682Actually the more I think on this the dumber it is. Can you imagine a world where sexual preferences didn't guide politics? Even asexual is a political orientation. I'd say someone should write a book, but how the hell would it make any sense?
>>25520783>Can you imagine a world where sexual preferences didn't guide politics? Yes, easily, even outside of AI running everything.
I'm currently reading Words of Radiance. You know what's weird is it feels like The Stormlight Archive currently has an eerie similarity to the Assassination of Charlie Kirk. Think about it- there's this huge assassination of King Gavilar and everyone thinks this huge war is gonna break out because of it and everyone will come to see justice prevail against those who wanted him dead. And then the story flashforwards to 5 years later and they're all just stuck in the biggest nothingburger non-war and everyone feels like they're just kinda jerking off while the highprinces try to opportunistically get rich off the gemhearts. No one really cares about avenging Gavilar. And maybe Dalinar and Navani are JD Vance and Erika Kirk, I dunno.
>>25520819This is your brain on /pol/.
>>25520797AI is just pedophile governance
>>25520825would you rather I just post a screenshot of a page of Words of Radiance and spend three paragraphs explaining how I don't understand it and got AI to tell me I'm not retarded?
>>25520884
>>25520884No, of course not. It's fascinating to read personal interpretations. Especially when they say so much about the person.
>>25517565Is r/Malazan better than this place?
>>25520884Your post was shallow and irrelevant.
>>25520934Why haven't you gone there to find out?
>>25520934Why, of course!
>>25520942I ain’t no reddit cuck, ya hear? We would’ve chewed you up in basic.
>>25520949Performative posturing.
>>25517565I barely even read Fantasy, I realised. I just read New Wave /literary Sci Fi if I ever do. Books I’ve read in 12 months:1. The Master of St Petersburg — J. M. Coetzee2. The Only Good Indians — Stephen Graham Jones3. Rakesfall — Vajra Chandrasekera4. The Vegetarian — Han Kang5. Iron Man — Ted Hughes6. Blood Meridian — Cormac McCarthy7. A Streetcar Named Desire — Tennessee Williams8. The Pearl — Anonymous9. Beowulf — Seamus Heaney10. The Divine Comedy — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow11. Leaves of Grass — Walt Whitman12. The Case of Charles Dexter Ward — H. P. Lovecraft13. The Brothers Karamazov — Fyodor Dostoevsky14. On the Heights of Despair — Emil Cioran15. Colossus — Sylvia Plath16. The Turn of the Screw — Henry James17. Frankenstein — Mary Shelley18. The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath — H. P. Lovecraft19. The Man in the High Castle — Philip K. Dick20. The Enchiridion — Epictetus21. The Transmigration of Timothy Archer — Philip K. Dick22. Ubik — Philip K. Dick23. Crash — J. G. Ballard24. Nymphidia — Michael Drayton25. Noctuary and Spectral Link — Thomas Ligotti26. Crow — Ted Hughes27. Consider Phlebas — Iain M. Banks28. Heart of Darkness — Joseph Conrad29. Tales from Ovid — Ted Hughes30. All Gall Is Divided — Emil Cioran31. The Communist Manifesto — Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels32. The Waste Land and Other Poems — T. S. Eliot33. Lupercal — Ted Hughes34. Grand Tour — Catherine Tobler35. Selected Poems — Miroslav Holub36. Suttree — Cormac McCarthy37. The Bell Jar — Sylvia Plath38. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? — Philip K. Dick39. The Netanyahus — Joshua Cohen40. Sonnets — William Shakespeare41. Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers — Grant Naylor42. Stoner — John Williams43. Death of a Naturalist — Seamus Heaney44. Door into the Dark — Seamus Heaney45. Wintering Out — Seamus Heaney46. The Haw Lantern — Seamus Heaney47. Station Island — Seamus Heaney48. Electric Light — Seamus Heaney
>>25521095>posts on /sffg/>barely reads sffWhich is much more than the usual poster here.
>>25521100Don’t you get bored of reading one genre or conceit every week?
>>25521109No.
>>25521110Science fiction does better as short fiction anyway. I like space opera as a concept but Culture series is the only one that is written well enough for me, and even then the characters aren’t that fully fleshed.
>>25521115Your statement has been acknowledged.
I can't get into PKD. His concepts/themes are interesting for sure, but his works themselves fail to grab me. Something about his prose just doesn't click. I've tried Time Out of Joint, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and the short story We Can Remember It for You WholesaleI'm gonna give Valis a shot before giving up completely
>>25521173VALIS is autobiographical and largely different than everything beforehand. YMMV.
Your mum was on her back when your father, engorged as he was, mounted her. He thrust her with his phallus and stroked her long and deep, pleasured grunts filling the air. How he groaned as he ploughed your mother, whose cunt was vibrating with ecstasy. >”I’m making anon right now!” your father howled. “He’s jettisoning from my balls!”Your mother screeched as she spasmed at the hips, her legs buckling. >”Let’s buy him science fiction as a baby,” your mother rasped. “He’s going to grow up to be a Dickhead.”
>>25521196Very cool, I hate it, thank you.
>>25521196It was like all of the worst days anon had known distilled into 200 proof awfulness. The Horneater white of misery.
>>25520481What if it's the Nazis won?I enjoyed the man in the high castle
Harry Turtledove is an antifascist progressive. Get used to it, chuds
>>25520637>You're gonna have furries and futanari space elves and shitHave you been playing Trials in Tainted Space, anon? You seem rather familiar with futa space furries.
>>25521518Orson Scott Card is better anyway.
>>25520286I'm glad the mods got doxed.
>>25521579Not in a long time, but it's probably still a better reasoned piece of futurism than Murderbot.
>>25521658It's not supposed to be realistic (I hope), it's just a crapsack world in space.
>>25521689It's almost as if men often do things better than women without even trying.
>>25521579>>25521658Huh. Fascinating.https://desuarchive.org/_/search/tripcode/pm9GlB0%2F9W%2B/
>>25521694Yeah, probably. Suggestions for humorous soft sci-fi?
>>25521694These days men can be better women than biological women. Fascinating stuff.
>>25521937Almost 20 years ago now line trap would go from being an exhibitionist at a 4chan panel to becoming "Transsexual Performer of the Year". What a path in life. Now there are people like this having their own intriguing path:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F1NN5TER
Redwall will end before ASOIAF and KKC
>>25521981I was wondering how Redwall ended, IF it ended. I know Jacques passed a long while ago. Who the fuck has still been writing Redwall books?I got sad last night when I saw some Redwall adventure games on Steam. The description waxed on about how they tried to remain as faithful as possible and hoped that the game would become influential among the new millennium (a bit hopeful with that last one, to be frank).And they have good reviews but all three have less than 50 reviews. I suppose the publisher didn't bother with any advertisement. Supposedly "The Lost Legends of Redwall (tee em)" was turned into a film adaptation too?
>>25521937>men can be better women than biological womenThat explains why Rowling hates trannies so much.
You know, I'm sure that if the Elric saga had been better written it'd have been even more influential.
>>25522010Maybe it needed to be worse written. Much of the most popular stuff is.
>>25522012It can't be worse written than it already is.
>>25522015That only be true if beyond a certain point you aren't able to distinguish how bad something is.
>>25522020>aren't able to distinguish how bad something isI wish it had been the case.
>>25521981is this good?
>>25522055Yes.
>>25521981>Brian Jacques died in 2008>last Redwall book was in 2011, the same year as A Dance with Dragons and The Wise Man's Fear>Jacques STILL gets another book out while dead before George and PatI've never seen someone more btfo than these two bitches
>>25522076>Frank Herbert died 40 years ago >New Dune books are still coming out >HOW DOES HE DO IT!?
>>25522076he passed in 2011 but yeah who cares about grrm and fucking rothfuss
>>25522080>Brian Jacques>Brian HerbertHmm...
>>25522084Bgian?
How woke are the Expanse books (I haven't seen the show)? The only thing I know is that it's full of browns.
>>25522141If you have to ask it's too much.
>>25522141I thought it was fun for the first few books.
>>25518187>turbo nonceHow? Where's the proof?
>>25522141>scared of brownsState your gender.
>>25522141Pagereviewer didn't like it, take that as you will.
>>25522184If he's scared of Indians he's probably a blonde haired white woman.
>>25519049Demon in White > Disquiet Gods > Howling Dark > Kingdoms of Death > Shadows Upon Time > Ashes of Man > Empire of Silence"It gets good after the first book" kinda sucks but debut authors are inexperienced and subject to heavy editorial meddling. I enjoyed EoS enough to press on to HD but sometimes getting through the first installment is reasonable in a long series.If the second shows no improvement there's no shame in dropping it
>>25522184>state your gendernigga thinks he's talking to a plant lmao
>>25518561Ferro becomes bearable as she just loses out to horniness, logen gets explained somewhat and bayaz gets absolutely ruined as a character. In fact, the ending manages to ruin every character except two or three that simply develop into their logical conclusions. The entire ending feels like a bad cliffhanger that begged a sequel, which the author only started publishing a decade later.
>>25518794And dungeon crawler carl, which started out on royal road iirc. Does RR count as self published?
>>25522226Why would it not?
>>25522226nta Royal Road is a platform, not a publisher. It's like asking if Steam was a publisher or if uploading a video on YouTube means the same.
Grabbed this at a flea market and thought it would be a fun little romp. Kind of bad, though. Basic premise is "what if everything in Ivanhoe happened because of time travel soldiers from the future". Aside from everything being mediocre, the book is filled with EVIL BIGOTED CHRISTIANS being mean to the two Jewish characters. The Jewish apologia even goes so far as to claim Isaac of York was FORCED by the evil Prince John to charge high interest rates because of the amount of tribute which was demanded of him. Maybe this is a direct import from Walter Scott's novel and I'm exposing my ignorance, but it really is hammy.
>>25522250>Maybe this is a direct import from Walter Scott's novelPretty much.
>>25522256They really have been getting away with it for 2000 years haven't they.
>>25522289Yes, those Christians sure have.
>>25522141is there even at least one good space opera book?
>>25522226No.
>>25519049I've seen it said here you can skip the first book without much issue. Haven't actually tried them, and praising them in the same breath as Bakker doesn't give me much motivation to do so, so YMMV.
>>25522303No, there's never been a good space opera in all these decades of space opera writing.
>>25522226DCC is a special case because tradpub was looking to rebuild credibility, so they chose the goodest shabbos goy on RR with a salable product. If you read Dinniman's CV it's very obvious.
Rumor has it these books are all shit. Shame.
>>25522340That's not true. DCC wasn't even on RR before a year before being removed and being Amazon and Patreon exclusives. Tradpub didn't come for it until years afterwards.
>>25522340Also, they don't care about credibility.
>>25519656Is this real?It looks like an old elaborate shitpost.
>>25522354/lit/'s hateboner for DCC doesn't care about facts.
>>25522362Looks like some random KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) series to me that's basically Drizzt inspired OC fanfiction. Apparently there's 14 books of it now.
>>25522362How dare you? It's the mark of the greats!
>>25522367Being Reddit invalidates all facts.
>>25522374>it's Reddit!How novel.
>>25522362not a troll at all...I don't know why but I feel we should all read thos and it will be a kino story
>>25522373Is that woman in the book? Does she wear that?
>>25522440I don't know I don't read Ty Johnston. I have standards.
>>25522443Brutal Bayne Burn Bro....
>>25522440thats a woman
>>25522183>I have never had the slightest interest in children – boys or girls. They should be treated in the same way. But once they have reached the age of puberty, then it is OK. If the kids enjoy it and don't mind it doesn't do any harm … there is a hysteria about the whole thing in the West.... I am trying to think of the youngest boy I have ever had because, of course, you can't tell it here.Plus all the accounts of him having a reputation for nonce behaviour in the local community in Sri Lanka. Plus the fact he was in Sri Lanka in the first place, reminiscent as I mentioned of Gary Glitter in Vietnam, or any garden variety paedo in Thailand or the Philippines. None of this is ironclad proof, but I'm sorry you don't get this level of paedophile speculation without fucking children.
>>17392920lol
>>25522557>not on his wikipedo pageHow curious...
>>25522354>ahktuallyNothing about this invalidates the premise unless you read the premise as "Royal Road is the only indie book venue."
>>25522600Nice goalpost moving, going from a specific case to a general idea.
FACT CHECK HE WAS ON TUMBLR NOT SMASHWORDSCHECKMATE RACISTS
Only the spammer regulars keep /sffg/ active.
>>25522880
>>25522882You can only read so many books in a month.
>>25522888Yev can read 10 books in a WEEK. Also he's got an eight pack.
>>25522898Yeah but nobody wants to read his junior college essays about books he didn't even enjoy.
>>25522440Yes. Her name is Valdra.
>>25522940They aren't essays and I've been rating relatively a lot of books 5 stars, including the one at the beginning of this thread.
romance makes fantasy and sci-fi stories better. It does not have to be romantic, but adding a hot chick will almost alwats make the story better.
boring but calm threadour resident newfag shitposter must have gotten a 3-day or has finally hosted an irl /sffg/ book club :D
>start Voyage of the Jerle Shannara>few generations after Scions>no clear resolution on MorganxMatty because Morgan's descendant is his great great grandsonI didn't know I cared about a ship until now.I enjoy Walker Boh but I wish Voyage of... were within the same timeframe or at least maybe the next, instead of 130+ years later.How do you feel about subjectively pointless timegaps in your longterm fantasy series?
>>25523006I need to post this in the next thread since we are past bump limit.Not that it will help anything. Maybe I'll carry this over to /wng/.
Ferro chapters might actually legit be enough for me to never touch a Joe Ambercrombie book again.I've been noticing another trope and trend, and I've noticed it because I recently watched a TV show that has it. Are you aware of the loose concept of "If you leave me ill kill myself?" This is what this trope feels like, except instead of justifying the perpetuation of toxic relationship with a toxic person, it justifies the perpetuation of a contrived story, with a cheap character.If you remember my criticism of Howling Dark, you'll note that as much as I wish I could hate women. I do not. It's just that the two most recent examples if this trope I've come across have both been female characters, but Hadrian is actually the one that got the most scathing version of this critique.What I am talking about is this: When a character is allowed to get away with behaviours/actions that no other character can because a story is supposed to depict a "real" enough place that things can actualy matter and the protagonist cannot just contrive their way to a convenient outcome. Based on how this sounds you'd think my problem with Hadrian was him coming back to life. No that was just cringe that assured me that the series was one of those garbage ones that tease another mystery to explain the bullshittery so you get invested in its 7 book series where it will never answer that mystery till the 4th or 5th book. The first sign if this problem with Hadrian was when the book quite literally said "He hit me with a force too strong, I shouldnt have survived but I survived somehow" [paraphrased there is evidence in the archives Im sure, of the page im referring to] to this day I don't understand how anybody with the presence of a brain cell excuses blatant garbage like this. The entire book honestly is Hadrian getting away with bullshit he never should because the story has dubbed him special.Do I have to explain the problem with that? How getting hit by an immensely strong force and then "surviving it somehow" trivializes the blatantly artificial stakes you want to set up? How Hadrian putting on his Marlowe voice and convincing soldiers who he has no relationship/backing/reputation with to charge at the Cielcin with him after the text explicitly noted how Bassander couldnt do that even though hes supposed to be a highly touted soldier with tons of experience, undermines the legitmacy of whatever military caste theyre part of as legitimate?
There were 2 2000 character limit parts to this post but bc this retarded device lacks a clipboard its lost so Im not bothering anymore.
>>25522995If you mean pagespammer he's posted several times.
>>25523024The character limit is 3000.
>>25523025i mean bakkerfag
I got frustrated not giving further context so here: When ferro can punch a first magi with zero consequences, and end up being apologized to and coddled because "Shes simply too special", "Shes too important and needed" You have destroyed a degree of the story to be engaged with seriously. It could end up being that Ferro is "important" because she must be sacrificed to an eternal hell to be tortured endlessly and it wouldn't make the simple fact that she could do whatever she wants so long as the story pushes her towards the goal, the goal being ultimately a "consequence" for the character doesnt matter, because this isnt a binary team game or sport, this isnt tit for tat, the world is more complex than that, when you fundamentally undermind certain conditions of the world, you render what it maintains hollow, without ever actually proving it as such. It would be like getting away with picking up the ball in a soccer game and throwing it into the net because youre "special" at that point what the fuck is the point of the game, why is anybody playing, why does it matter, what was the point of those rules and the stakes, if one person, even if it were 2 or 3, could so easily trivialize the sport arbitrarily. It could be a kid with cancer, or somebody about to die the next day and it wouldnt fucking matter, if the sport is meant to be taken seriously in that context then its rules have to matter.The red flag went uo actually before this when she was trying to get into the city with her plot device mage friend, the guards ask her to put away her weapon, she doesnt because shes insane and retarded, so they are tense and on guard, then Collem West, comes strolls in and pleads with her to put away her weapon and that she wont be hurt, and then she arbitrarily believes him and not the guards presumably because shes too fucking retarded to understand the implicit guarantee of safety when invited into somebody's place of safety, because it would send a message to others to not trust the nation and therefore they could never do anything diplomatic with anybody else.it would be like somebody coming up to your door saying they were invited, holding out a knife the entire time, you tell them to put it away, they glare and hold up the knife, all of a sudden deus ex machina family member who is a stranger to the knife wielder comes out and tells that person that nobody will hurt them. This is genuinely fucking retarded, I dont have to explain why right? It's arbitrarily preferential, it frames the response if the house owner as a threat of violence when they instigated that threat by threatening violence and disobeying a reasonable request, the offender doesnt have to come to the table on equal terms, but needs to be placated. Why would anybody trust somebody who was openly threatening, and refused to listen when requested to stop being a threat, to have the rational capacity to trust in their home of safety?
Coddling them ignores this fact and reduces the world to an arbitrary and baseless thing that twists and conforms itself to the convenience of some random retard, stripping away the complex and legitimate consideration of why somebody would request that person to not be openly threatening.Am I being gotten? I dont know if my explanation is making sense. To bring it back to something personal. This inadvertently weakens Bayaz as a character, when Bayaz demonstrates he has too little consideration or self respect for his own feelings and sensations just so that he can "simp" for some retarded contrived psycho girl. It demonstrates a core lack of character that is a necessary condition of complexity.Retards may rationalize this with an abstract comparison. The classic "Plain boy is set out on adventure and is inexplicably brave and prepared to do whatever he needs to aslong as he "believes it" Although they are wrong isnt one of the classic reasons why people elevate Neon Genesis Evangelion so much because of the fact that they bothered to add a meaningful dimension to Shinji in depicting a kid that doesnt actually want to sacrifice their life to fight giant monsters in a robot suit.You can make an "interesting" (appealing, hence the interesting is in quotation) character that is completely devoid of any real substance, thats why retards love naruto, you can trick the retard into thinking this is actually good by depicting the character "struggling" and getting beat, before he pulls out his super secret willpower superpower and wins in the end because hes actually super special ninja jesus, and retards will eat it up because all they need is the appearance of world not contrived, a world independent, complex, with its own conditions, its own considerations that matter as much as the special character's.But you are avoiding and shying away from complexity when you do that. The complexity that would explain why somebody would ultimately get in the damn robot when they wouldnt before, the type of complexity lesser works (NGE is not even good) could easily sidestep.When Bayaz coddled Ferro because she's special. He is openly demonstrating that he does not have enough actual character, for the interaction to be more interesting, complex, and less one sided for simply considering him some more, because if the reason is external, it cannot be justified, because it is created by the conditions of the story, not the world.
>>25523068>Coddling them ignores this fact and reduces the world to an arbitrary and baseless thing that twists and conforms itself to the convenience of some random retardSo close, yet so far away from self-awareness.
>>25523075you're likely retarded.
>>25523096The feeling isn't mutual. I have unwavering confidence that you are in your own special way.
>>25523118Not an argument. Your concession is accepted.
I made the mistake of reading a comment on reddit where someone was autistically screeching that book of the new sun is "fantasy," so I'll autistically screech here about how I disagree... Someone shoots a fucking ray gun about 10 pages into the first book. 20 pages in, there's a character giving a sermon on light physics and how past advances in understandings of physics cracked the lightspeed problem. So I categorically reject that it's "fantasy" because the main character carries a sword around (never mind that it's for executing people with, he's not carrying it to fight people... the whole point because the autarchy is so stuck in pride and the past that it loves the idea of still lopping heads off..). But then other people were like "well it's science FANTASY." Wtf does that even mean? Is every book other than Greg Egan's works science fantasy because authors aren't autistically writing formulas directly on the page? People say that Iain M Banks is science fantasy??? How, he explains technologies to some degree and and glosses over parts in others. Same with Red Rising, I have heard that is "science fantasy" too. I don't even think Star Wars is science fantasy, who is to say that the people in that universe just don't understand the force yet? How about Neuromancer, is that science fantasy???
>>25523138>my arbitrary definition of genre boundaries is right and yours is wrong!Ah, the power of semantics.
>>25523149fair point. To me if there are laser guns it is scifi, full stop. In fact, handmaid's tale is also scifi because of the environmental collapse and birthrate decline factors. The only "science fantasy" i can think of would be something where magic directly powers technology, like final fantasy 6. I feel like it's just redditors trying to put scifi books down with a "na-na-na your book is fantasy too!!!" Idk why but it bugs the hell out of me
>>25523159>The only "science fantasy" i can think of would be something where magic directly powers technologyThere's a lot like that and similar. Brandon Sanderson does that for example.
I wish he would kill himself.
Anyone have any opinions on this series? Decent time waster at least?
>>25523218Xi manifest xir possibility unalive xirselfI've translated what you've written into the contemporary tongue.
>>25523218He's the only one here that will and can talk about books that thoroughly off of just a single page I think that neat
Spent 2 hours after what I posted thinking about it, and I've concluded that I am right. Ferro is a bad contrived character that naturally is a black hole for complexity by virtue of her contrivance. I left out the slightly more complicated reasons why this is the case, particularly for Bayaz, since I imagine for most people this doesn't destroy the idea of Bayaz' character, but it is very very difficult to write complex characters, and I was told that Ambercrombie was a psychologist that understands human beings better than most authors or something. So far even if Ferro's existence didn't ruin the book, the existence of Jezal and Ardee already alone would not bode well for character complexity, Logen isn't complex or deep either but there's a clear interesting direction his story can go. Glokta is literally a self admitted "I don't know why I am doing this" character, which Logen actually admitted to aswell, which is teetering so hard on the edge of contrivance "I need these characters to be doing these things for the story to work but I couldn't think of a smart and organic reason why these characters should actually be doing any of these things" Of course it could all eventually be explained, but I'm suspicious.I kind of don't want to continue the book especially now that my impression of Bayaz was shattered and I now understand that I didn't care for him as a character, or for any thematic depth he introduced. But simply because he was the only character pushing any of the other characters forward towards something vague and mysterious. Which only works writing wise because the reader has no Idea where they're going and is naturally curious to find out. Which is cheap writing exploiting a base instinct. The only thing that makes it even worth investing in, is that atleast it isnt a 7 book series. But that's not enough for somebody like me who's standard isnt merely "Read something to pass the time" I am here for more. To appreciate and understand a perspective worthwhile.
>>25523275>To appreciate and understand a perspective worthwhile1. You'll eventually come to accept that isn't what genre fiction is for.2. The only perspective you'll ever find worthwhile is your own.3. You're determined to suffer because you feel it it makes you superior.
>>25523275>is that atleast it isnt a 7 book seriesThere's like 10 books in the series bro and the latest one ends on a massive cliffanger lmao.
Thoughts on The Marching Morons by C. M. Kornbluth?https://archive.org/details/Galaxy_v02n01_1951-04/page/n129/mode/1up
>>25522947Sorry yev, if it's more than two paragraphs it's an essay.
>>25523275>I am such a sophisticated individual!Fucking DIE already.
>>25523532It was pretty good. In the book Search The Sky, which Kornbluth co-authored, had a planet with a similar setup, ie a small secret society of smart people take care of a population of quickly reproducing retards. Seems like he was very worried about it even back then, which is impressively prescient.
>>25523834> ie a small secret society of smart people take care of a population of quickly reproducing retardsHow unrealistic, haha!
>>25523235not enough blades
>>25522985
>>25523235Looks as generic as possible while looking refined enough to be a Sanderson Book Cover
Basically done. All thats left is some About the Author stuff and some preview chapters of the next book. Engineer trilogy is next before starting ASOIAF finally
>>25523981I can't wait until your year long reading experiment comes to an end. Next year will be glorious without you.
>>25523999Isn't it uncouth to look forward to somebody not reading in the /literature/ board
>>25523981>>>/lit/grrm
>>25524037Kill yourself.
Did I finish The Blade Itself before the other guy that was reading it? I took alot of breaks before finishing it so I doubt it but I'm just curious because there was a guy reading it too
>>25524190I'm at 60% according to Readest.
are you guys reading a certain book together and then talk about it afterward?
>>25524222no
>>25524222No, people just keep happening to overlap in reading the books I'm reading at the time. Last time it was Leviathan Wakes, this time The Blade Itself. I don't expect this to continue with the next book ill be reading though
>>25524226whats your next book?
>>25524231not telling
>>25524236k
>>25524240sorry youll find out when i post about it
>>25524266fine , no problem
>>25524274I said I won't tell, so you can stop asking.
>>25524289stop larping as me i wouldnt say that retard
>>25524295>>25524289no problem
/lit/ approved?
>>25524303you mean /sffg/ approved?
>>25524308No.
>>25524295>>25524298it's a secret, please stop asking
