/sffg/ - Science Fiction & Fantasy General Thread

ah fair enough
while we're complaining about publishers, and seeing how this is a "lovecraft" thread -- I just got in my copies of Langan's The Fisherman and Barron's The Beautiful Thing that Awaits Us All today and they are simply huge in terms of width and height
why are paperbacks so enormous these days? they seem immensely scaled up for no reason. I miss old-school little trade paperbacks, to the point of seeking out older editions of old books that I want

Yeah I hate large paperbacks too. Or when they arbitrarily change the size slightly from one printing to the next so that you try to collect a series with the same cover style and then some of them stick out slightly. Or when the covers have that rubbery "printed in China" feel like a book you get for free at a seminar or something

>The Kingkiller Chronicle Day One
Are you telling me this masterpiece is told over the course of a single day? That would be ballin' on so many levels.

I think you're wrong on many levels. The first of which is that it clearly isn't. The second of which is that who the hell numbers something that only has one part? It's be like people back in 1917 calling it World War One. "Day One" implies that there's a "Day Two" at the every least.

History of the World, Part 1.

I really liked his dream world stuff, a bit more weird than lord Dunsay works. And full of weird monsters, than are a weakness of mine.

...

This is my favourite Lovecraft book.

100% right but I would add The Color Out of Space.

Just finished tawny man trilogy, and goddamn there are like 10 different babies in the last 20 pages. If the author continues to refuse to kill anyone off, they're going to have a population issue. Is this what you guys were telling me about womeme authors?

Also, anyone know if I need to read rain wild Chronicles before hitting up Fitz and fool trilogy?

Yeah, kinda. It's the worst series in that universe tough.

It's as if someone read Lovecraft and completely missed the point. I wonder if this is a retaliatory strike over Lovecraft's racism.

Whisperer in Darkness is my favourite, along with Mountains of Madness. The White Ship is possibly my favourite dreamcycle story.

Fuck, it's just going to be 4 volumes of descriptions of how much Dragons smell like garter snakes as if anyone knows wtf smell that would be isn't it...

I'm in the mood for something like The Way of Kings.

I've read most of Brandon Sandersons other work and Kingkiller Chronicles.

Currently on The Dark Tower series but it's not keeping me all that interested.

I'd rather not have to reread Way of Kings again.

Read wheel of time before? Could keep you busy until the next volume comes out

I just heard it was very descriptive, and that's not really my thing.

Also, I go for audiobooks usually.

It has audiobooks. Sanderson is also the worlds biggest WoTaboo to the point they got him to finish writing it

I know, the audiobook thing was more of an offhand comment.

But I'm really not into very descriptive books. I couldn't get even 30 pages into any LotR book due to it.

I don't know who told you it was "descriptive" because is pretty fucking plebeian. Which I say as someone who doesn't subscribe to the shitting on WoT mean.

>he doesn't like books about nazis, space nazis and books about shotas and lolis getting fugged over
The world would be a better place if the west followed Japan by shoehorning it into everything.

I just heard it goes out of it's way to describe fucking dresses and shit, which is just not my thing.

Dude sanderson is a robert jordan clone you've practically been reading it already

I'm gonna pass on WoT though. Any other recommendations?

The authors most similar to Brandon Sanderson are:
>Isaac Asimov's the Foundation
Easy to read series with a fuckton of plot-twists.
>All the rest of Brandon Sanderson's books
>The Shadow of What Was Lost by James Islington

Books that are more Veeky Forums but that are just as fun
>Guy Gavriel Kay's Tigana

Sanderson's students Brian McClellan (arguably shit)
Copying Sanderson's style - Brent Weeks but the latest book is shit.

Man escapes a pirate ship, is adrift for a couple days until his boat is grounded into a black mire. He smells dead fish, sees a black sun, and believes the stretch of land he is on could have only recently been uprooted by volcanic activity. He spends days exploring the land, reaching the base of a mound. Plagued by nightmares, he gives up on sleep and continues to explore the swamp. Over the mount he sees a valley with a monolith “not altogether the work of Nature.” Through the moonlight he sees aquatic hieroglyphics on the monolith depicting fishes, eels, octopi, crustaceans, and unknown species. He sees carvings of a humanoid race of people, yet these people have webbed hands and feet, wide and flabby lips, glassy, bulging eyes, and the size of whales. He then sees a one-eyed, fast, scaly armed monster that darts towards the monolith while making a sound that turns the narrator mad. He runs away, is whisked up by a ship during a storm, and taken to San Francisco where he continues to dream of the monster finding him.

It's legitimately hard to sink any lower in terms of accessability, Maybe dragons of autumn twilight?

Also to piggyback off this, Mountains of Madness is the best HP story but some of his other short works are worth reading, but skip the curious case of Charles dexter ward that shit blows

It's not the accessibility that's the problem, more that I already have a predetermined negative attitude towards the books, so it's going to take some commitment for me to get to like them, and that's simply not what I'm looking for right now.

Try Isaac Asimov's Foundation. Cosmerefag liked it and so do I. The number of plot twists in it are mindblowing.

The three set of books most similar to Sanderson in writing style (aka simple prose with lots of plot twists) are Asimov's Foundation, The Shadow of What Was Lost by James Islington and Brent Week's Lightbringers series.

If you like Lightbringers read Jasper Fforde's Shades of Grey.

Also there are a lot of classic scifi writers which won't inundate you with complicated writing but do have a lot of great twists like PKD's Ubik which is also very similar to Sanderson.

Thanks. Will look into them.

The Shadow of What Was Lost seems interesting.

Have you read The Lies of Locke Lamora? Any good?

>Ubik is similar to sanderson

I really want to hear your justification for this claim

What are some fantasy books which influenced the development of D&D/tabletop rpg's lore?
Was it a gradual process from tolkien or were the elements already present when tabletop rpg's first began?

dying earth very heavily influenced the magic system

Book of the New Sun desu

Any great novels with a little girl protag?

Ubik has a lot of plot twists but very simple prose. Although it does not share themes with Brandon Sanderson's novels, I think that fans of one would probably like the other, especially readers who are fond of characters surprising them.

Ubik is probably the most similar, from what I've read, to Jasper Fforde's Shades of Grey, however. Lots of lighthearted humour and the undercurrent of something not quite right, going on, and some genuine horrifying mindfuckery at the very end.

I also think that Sanderson is also trying to introduce some measure of complexity with charcters like Taravangian which could potentially be the basis for plot complexity.

>Lies

Yes, it is fantasy and if you like Sanderson's stuff and Rothfuss stuff the author's writing is like half way between those two authors. Locke Lamora is a fun character and the books are fun in much the same way as an anime like Code Geass where you can live vicariously through one of the characters is fun.

Just order The Unholy Consult. let's see how it is. the first three books were very tight, the next three a bit stretched out.

I'm also currently re-reading the first three books. yeah I fucking love R Scott Bakker

Dick is a naturally mischievous person who puts a humorous spin on whatever he writes just because he can't help it. His dialogue and characterisation are top notch and his story ideas can barely be matched by anyone, maybe like 5 people. He isn't really a natural novelist, his novels are more like expansions or meshings of his short stories which is what he really believed in but novels are more commercial. He also almost always writes about the real world in the near future.

Sanderson is the epitome of the "world building" meme. Yes his world is interesting but he's also a humorless person. When he has to try and be funny for plot reasons it's amazing how bad it is, you'd think the publisher would at least get someone else to write some jokes that might fit. His dialogue is also pretty damned forced and characterisation does not exist.

I do still like sanderson's series enough to follow it but him and dick are so far apart it's like absurd to even mention them together.

If you really want wacky interesting sci fi worlds with a truly novel-like feel I would suggest Hyperion by dan simmons or The Reality Dysfunction by peter f. hamilton, also far better writers than sanderson

Scifi writers appear generally more capable, in my opinion, compared to fantasy writers.

That's because writing sci-fi takes a modicum of innovation while fantasy can be any old sword and sorcery shit.

>When he has to try and be funny for plot reasons it's amazing how bad it is
Give me an example, this makes me want to read it.

"The Sunday without God" by Kimihito Irie.

>>men can't write good female char-

Erikson wrote such a good female toon I still get butthurt whenever I even see her name

He rhymed assassin with ass sass

That is the worst thing I have ever heard. Picked up.

How much Wolfe has /sffg/ read today?

The answer: not enough

Can someone do me a favor and post the secret instructions for Madokami? I know one of you has them.

manga.madokami.al/READ.txt

Thank you.

Can I read Long Sun before Urth? I don't want to read Urth yet.

If only. Normally I can get behind Robin Hobb characters, but those in there were so fucking grating, specially the homo and the elderlings. If you want you could skip it, really it's only minor stuff, or better, read the wiki. The Fitz and the Fool books are different to the others in the Fitz trilogies, and the end it's bittersweet as fuck. I'm still internally debating if they were good or not.

Unfair. Scifi can wing itself on good ideas and passable writing and characters, but the content of fantasy books is harder to create (while being original) so authors are graded more on their prose and ability to write worlds/characters

No worries.

bretty gud

>tfw spent almost three years trying to write your own novel
>literally have hundreds of thousands of words with no value

I take back all of the terrible things I've said about crap books and their authors.

They're not doing anything of the sort, they just don't own the rights to the original piece of artwork anymore.

there is absolutely nothing wrong with an achievement like that even if the result is not great

Spend another three years on what you have and you'll improve. You only get better at writing and editing by writing and editing.

You can ... they are different books and one visual thing at the conclusion won't make you go hmmmm when you are supposed to. Definitely read urth before short sun. Dont expect new sun weird out of Long Sun. It is a great novel/series but the pace is strange on a first read.

Post some excerpts for us, user

>I go for audiobooks usually.

I know you didn't finish those thousands of pages I gave you a few threads back. You just shitposting.

Had enough Christianity allusions for the time being.

>tfw no pulp era cover No Longer Human
My SF Masterworks edition is just so dull by comparison

I feel you man, for years I could never understand all the godawful hackneyed shit out there. How the hell did people not notice how bad it is? How did that shit get written? Then I started writing, and for a little while everything seemed fine. But then one day I was reading something I wrote, there was a click in my mind, and suddenly I could see it fucking everywhere! I still don't understand how it's possible, but that shit is INVISIBLE to the writer! Maybe there's some sort of hallucinogen in the ink, or maybe the mental state involved in writing makes you delirious, but all sorts of incredibly awful shit sneaks right in there and you'll never know it!
Now, that still doesn't explain how it gets past editors and beta readers, but it's an amazing and horrifying thing to discover.

tl:dr - man who laughs at other's incontinence not so smug after shitting own pants

I don't know. For a period I was really overly critical of pretty much anything I wrote. I was like "this is shit, this is garbage. I have millions of years to go before I can do justice to my ideas" but it's died of since. I started reading a lot more to see what I should do instead of mentally lashing out at myself for everything I do.

I need some short fantasy books to read through, preferably pulpish.

It's complete garbage and you'll just start shitting blood if I showed you any of it.

>shitting your own pants

That's exactly what it feels like.

>That's exactly what it feels like.
At least when you shit your pants you don't go around loudly discussing it and showing everyone.

>itt anons discover reading and writing aren't the same skill

I'm the person who asked a few threads back and I just want you to know that's a different person. If I were to ask I wouldn't hesitate to say "loli." But you gave me a lot to work with so I'm satisfied.

Maybe repost that list again in case this other person somehow missed it?

Anyone read this? Is it badass?

Wanting to get into Arthur C. Clarke. Want to read either City and the Stars, Childhood's End or Rendezvous With Rama first, which one is best?

Anyone read the Death Gate Cycle? My brother used to love those books and I'm wondering if they're any good.

It's more like you crawled inside someone else's skull and took a shit there that they can never wipe clean. Best to just embrace it and at least entertain yourself in the process

They start really strong in the first four but don't sustain it for the last three; still worth it imo.

It's about marines in space? Because I'm sick already of wanking marines.

>kameron hurley

i doubt it

That's a stunning visual narrative you've crafted there.

This sounds interesting, I'll read it and get back to you.

...

You want me to make an aspiring author with tears streaming at an unfinished manuscript for you?

Robert Howard's Conan stories.
Nobody has done better 'pulp' fantasy since imho.
Also, it's mostly pre-Tolkien, so it doesn't feel like a Middle Earth rip-off like a lot of fantasy.

>Tampa
>That picture
>Nutting

Kek

What's the best collection of Lovecraft to get?

Childhood's End is a very interesting novel. Rama is good, but the first book is really just a tease for the rest of the series, which I haven't actually read, so I can't say.
Songs of a Distant Earth is my favourite Clarke novel.
The Light of Other days (co-written with Stephen Baxter) is also excellent, and a profound allegory of the societal changes brought about by mass electronic communication.

>Holy fuck it's never going to work women only want to read fiction based around child abuse or refugees or the holocaust

Imagine getting uppity and elitist about reading choices in /sffg/ of all places, like a subway customer laughing at mcdonalds plebs, completely unaware of the fact that he's as obese and retarded as them.

awful cover but got all the greats

so how was TUC, Bakkerfags?

>Starbucks plebs laughing at hard-working Subway customers who understand their food isn't the best but like it for other reasons

Isn't she pretty GRI?

Tfw the audiobook is scheduled to be released in december.