/sffg/ - Science Fiction & Fantasy General

>not knowing that holding a book is better than sex
virgin spotted

why are you negros always memeing these old crusty ass 50 cent sci-fi novels? no one wants to read that corny shit.

It's a Welsh name. They're a funny breed

I recently finished the Dying Earth omnibus. The two Cugel books and Rhialto the Marvellous were comfy af. I wasn't as impressed with the first book, perhaps because it's such an early work that Vance's style hasn't fully developed yet? Anyone else feel the same?

Anyway, which should I read next out of these books? I also have that Songs of the Dying Earth anthology...

>not reading works by writers that think books are fucking stupid and people who read them are useless parasites .

It's almost as though they like books or something

The colonel-assassin got his happy ending. That's the only thing that matters.

Same reason y'all always memeing those babby-tier post-millenial fantasy doorstoppers. We read and enjoy them :3

...

based

/pol/ pissbabies BTFO

>/pol/shits confirmed for being reddit tier

I don't know

Read BotNS.

I've seen discussion of "cutting-edge" science fiction and what it means, quite a bit. Generally, there are two camps:

One argues that the absolute edge of science fiction is sci-fi that is rooted in the latest scientific knowledge and theory, and in likely further developments on current bleeding-edge technology.

The other argues that science fiction's "cutting edge" is fiction that explores the anxieties and fears of today, pushes the boundaries of how we think about fiction and about our lives, and generally tries to show the world in new ways.

Without choosing one over the other as the "right" answer, since I think both are legitimate things to look for in science fiction, I'm more interested in the fact that, while fantasy obviously has little to do with the first definition, it can, in theory, fit the latter. So, using this second definition of "cutting edge," what would you consider today's cutting edge fantasy, that explores the boundaries of what fantasy as a genre can do, deals with social, philosophical, and psychological matters in an interesting way, and generally is likely to blow the minds of its readers?

Broken Earth series

Thanks! Are there any fantasy magazines that push this kind of exploration, like how Clarkesworld does for sci-fi?

What is a good place to start with the
Strugatski brothers?

I was thinking pic related but roadside picnic seem to be more popular.

No, sadly. I might be overselling BE but its ths only recent fantasy that comes to mind. Fantasy is generally more lowbrow and escapism oriented than scifi from what I've read.

Clark Ashton Smith does the best dying earth stuff, fucken fite me

the new cover is a sight to behold

wew laddie
What the fuck is this about?

The levitating Moff Tarkin and his harem of thots.

Is "Skulduggery Pleasant" any good? Trying to get into a new series and was recommended it.

Sucks. I think both Earthsea and The Magicians do a good job of being "more" than that, but Grossman has tackled the same set of themes in all his work so far and Le Guin mostly does sci-fi.

Looking forward to The Bright Sword.

Hard To Be A God was written a bit earlier, but I couldn't choose between them. These books are great to read if you're jaded by American sci-fi. They have an earthy, ironic, slapstick, debauched and philosophical quality that is very Russian.

I'm about to cancel my audible account and Have one credit left.
Anyone got a good suggestion for a fantasy or scifi that's contained to one book?

>female gets pregnant
>is killed within 5 pages

I'm not someone who demands feminism in their books but it's ridiculous just how many books I've read where this happens.

Just finished Words of Radiance, I know the third book is out in November.

Any recs on what I should read? I'm enjoying fantasy so far, wouldn't mind it being over the top violent.

lol now the protag got buttraped

Is there some kind of weird attitude these days that only the absolute hardest sci-fi is actually sci-fi at all? I read a rant yesterday from someone claiming that women keep trying to pass off fantasy (read: anything that includes FTL or time travel) as sci-fi because they want to be the center of every genre, and while I haven't seen any other claims that extreme, it does seem like a lot of people are reacting to the increase in female sci-fi authors, black sci-fi authors, gay ones, etc., by trying to dramatically shrink the definition of science fiction.

I'm not saying there isn't stuff that gets called science fiction that really draws more heavily on fantasy, like the Star Wars movies for example, especially the original trilogy. But this seems like much, much more than that.

what the hell are you reading?

Do tell, it sounds like something that I should avoid

Aha! Thanks for the enlightenment.

>"The Blue World" (1966)
Gadget story but well written and check out this cover!
>"Trullion: Alastor 2262" (1973)
Excellent world-building and dialogue; hussade provides an excuse for a naked girl on the cover.
>"Showboat World" (1975)
Travelogue. In my opinion, a rare miss of his works done in this form.
>"The Worlds of Jack Vance" (1973)
Fairly random short story collection but includes "The Moon Moth" which is regarded as some of Vance's very best work, an opinion I agree with. I would recommend reading that story and then choose one of the novels.
>perhaps because it's such an early work that Vance's style hasn't fully developed yet?
Yes, I agree. The omnibus is a mishmash of works that don't really belong together but they sold well and therefore are now the de facto introduction to Vance.
Read the anthology only if you fell in love with the setting.

I've read that Cabell was generally considered the style Vance mimicked. I keep meaning to read some Wodehouse to see if that's where Vance got his dialogue.

I generally like the Spatterlight art. The paperback project is doing better work than the ebook guys; I found out recently that the ebooks aren't the digitized texts of the VIE which is just baffling (and irritating: what's missing?!).

Speculation on the influence of language on the behavior and capability of a society. It's an underdog story and quite good: one of my favorite Vance.

>Is there some kind of weird attitude these days that only the absolute hardest sci-fi is actually sci-fi at all?
To my knowledge, hard scifi fans have always been regarded as supercilious by those of us who don't require a physics textbook in our fiction. SJW aren't exposing any new divisions in the genre in that regard.

What's your favorite fantasy music?

>To my knowledge, hard scifi fans have always been regarded as supercilious by those of us who don't require a physics textbook in our fiction. SJW aren't exposing any new divisions in the genre in that regard.
I guess my question is if there are people who are moving in that direction and becoming more like the smug, pretentious hard scifi fans you're talking about, because they're bothered by either the actual increase in authors who aren't straight white guys, or their belief (right or wrong) that aforementioned straight white guys are getting shafted in the process.

>I wasn't as impressed with the first book, perhaps because it's such an early work that Vance's style hasn't fully developed yet? Anyone else feel the same?
YES. It was a chore to go through, mostly because of the writing style.

Nobody cares what those fucking grognards think. Hard sci-fi is by and large garbage anyway.

Well, how would that be knowable? Sales numbers of hard scifi versus whathaveyou?

Song of Edmon

I read a bunch of the new releases each month and this was one of the september ones I dl'd.

It's very similar to Red Rising's society structure and even has the same genetically modified protagonist.
The most interesting scifi stuff is very much in the background so far with there being 1 maybe 2 characters from other worlds and inconsistent ftl travel which could be interesting if the author leaves the planet.

It's a kids book, but it's okay if you're into that.

I've seen similar opinions thrown around a lot on Veeky Forums and /v/, but not so politicized. Here's the gist of the version without identity politics.

A lot of these people feel that true scifi is something with a few well-researched hard elements (the rest can be much softer) and demand that the author explore the consequences of those elements on the individual, society, and the human condition, etc. etc.

So it needs a certain level of speculation. We've made this distinction for years with the term "Space Opera" or "Science Fantasy." The complaints weren't about women or blacks, but that popular scifi no longer tries to speculate.

More specifically, these were complaints that games (and every medium too) no longer makes games like Alpha Centauri and instead will make Science Fantasy games like Beyond Earth for the lowest common denominator.

*game industry

Hell yeah, thanks user. I'll read "Moon Moth" tonight and then start Trullion. I picked up a copy of the Five Gold Bands at my local used bookstore. Know anything about that one?

I've also been meaning to dive into Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique cycle.... time to start a pile

>but that popular scifi no longer tries to speculate
This is one of the dumbest fucking things anyone could possibly complain about. Especially considering the vast majority of sci-fi speculation has never and will never be correct.

Oh, well that's what I get for getting recommendations from idiots.

>"The Five Gold Bands" (1953)
Space pirates. Vance is still trying to be a conventional scifi pulp author at this point. My guess is that you'll find it to be more like the parts of "The Dying Earth" omnibus that you didn't like. Unless you become a Vance diehard (oneofus, oneofus, ONEOFUS), you can safely avoid the pre-Sixties stuff.
>excepting "To Live Forever" (1956)

>pic unrelated

>old scifi books so desperate to draw in young generation they use iron man's bleeding edge armor on a guy
>having him transform one leg and one arm to aid with reactor flight

>What are you reading next?
The Two Towers. Nothing special I guess but it's my first time actually reading (well, listening to on audiobook) LotR.

Looks nothing alike.
>old classics need a younger generation to sell
Look at this pleb

Here we have it folks.

Just finished The Time Machine and kind of digged it, though I can tell by now that Wells loves two things: his kind of old-fashioned framing devices to lend credibility to the story, I suppose; and social and class inequality. From what I've seen from reading The Crystal Egg (which seems to me a prequel for War of the Worlds, but I can't be too sure about that), War of the Worlds is probably bound to be just the same motifs repeated again. Is it bad that as a sff fan I haven't read War of the Worlds yet?

But the books inspire people to try and make those things a reality.
They are trying to make a gravity drive from the enterprise right now iirc.

Alright, let's speculate a bit and make the assumption that there is an increase in people wanting to limit scifi to a harder definition:
>1: Do fans of hard scifi correlate strongly with STEM?
>2. Is SJW pushing hard to populate STEM with racial and gender diversity?
If both are correct then it stands to reason that this increases economic pressure on the existing STEM population while not providing them the traditional outlet of merit-based excellence in the subject; instead, some fraction of the population would need to be change color or gender to hold the same place they have now. Given that STEM has heretofore been generally governed by reason, this is a state of affairs that is going to provoke complaint.
>pic abstractly related

>The Two Towers
I enjoyed this one the most of the trilogy. Tolkien's use of the forest settings as peaceful interludes are memorable.

SHUT UP DONKEY

I'm at the last chapters of Way of Kings and getting a shitton of plot twists by the second. So anime, I like it.

I don't think there is a digital release but The Brothers War was enjoyable. Two brothers hate their guts and build machines trying to one up each other until it gets out of hand.

>The Brothers War
Magic the Gathering huh, I'll look into it thanks!

Just got my penguin classics Clark Ashton Smith collection. What am I in for lads? Where should I start?

Read The Tale Of Satampra Zeiros and report back - he's like a more worldly, morbid and exotic HP Lovecraft. Or for something shorter, The Last Incantation. There's no best order. One thing to note is that different settings have different tone/style, so the Averoigne stories are a pastiche of medieval tropes, Hyperborea stories tend to be more wry and ornate (and will make you reach for a dictionary a lot more than the other stories), Zothique morbid. Then there is the Lovecraftian/contemporary stories and science fiction; the Vaults Of Yoh-Vombis is my favourite of these.

The ebooks published by Spatterlight are the VIE texts

Sorry, you're correct, I phrased my complaint poorly:
>jackvance.com/ebooks/information/
>Vance Digital Edition e-books contain the latest digital versions of the Vance Integral Edition texts, formatted to the very highest standards.
>These e-books are not facsimiles of VIE volumes. A specific e-book version of the VIE is regarded as a potential future project for the team.

The ambiguity is what is inflaming my digestion. What would a 'facsimile of the VIE' contain that a digitized VIE text doesn't?

I love CAS. Vaults of Yoh Vombis, City of Singing Flame, and the Dark Eidolon are some of his most well-known aND are, I think, some of his best. But I love everything he does.

>t. have collection of all his stories

>tripfag mule was let out of prison and rampages on Veeky Forums once again

Anyone remember a fantasy novel where the characters (who are some sort of criminal) have to stage some sort of play for some reason?

All I can think of is Botns which it definitely isn't

I just read The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. Its pretty good, very easy read but also very entertaining and a great story overall. I thought half way through that I had figured out the massive plot twist but there wasn't any plot twist. I had thought that the Taurans were just future Humans.

Read the sequel, the reveal is way more insane than that

Try to talk me out of or into reading Moorcock's Elric and Corum stuff.

Oh shit what's the sequel called

Are the mysterious Collapsars explained

Someone's likely to pop up in the next ten minutes and tell you to read the Elric comic instead. Ignore that person.

Read Elric in in-universe chronological order, and listen to 80s metal in the background while you do it.

Forever Free is the direct sequel, Forever Peace however is actually set in an entirely different fictional universe

>Forever Peace

>This novel is for two editors: John W. Campbell, who rejected a story because he thought it was absurd to write about American women who fight and die in combat, and Ben Bova, who didn't.
kek

bless bova for helping haldeman but GOD DAMN bova's books are borin

name 10 books that do this

Does words of radiance ever let up on the shallan? I find her immensely boring

She's the protagonist user

Kaladin is the protagonist. Either way, she's boring and jeeds less screen time

Nah each book is designed to be focused primarily on one pov character over the others

book 1 was kaladin book 2 is shallan

I love her, she reminds me of my ex

There's a few ebooks put out by Subterranean that probably aren't the VIE, hence the difference. The facsimile VIE they mention would probably mean containing the illustrations as well.

I wonder if Sanderson will keep this structure for the rest of the series. It'd be weird in the last books.

Will probably bounce back and forth between 3-4 characters.

Have you seen the VIE? I haven't seen the illustrations. If they're akin to the ebook art ( pic related) then I can safely forget obsessing about the differences.

>tfw a TNF ad just now talking about scanning the dark web

Pretty sure he confirmed Eshonai for 4, and Szeth for 3 or 5.

Oathbringer will be Dalinar.

How are the mistborn series? Better than stormlight?

What is the appeal of Sanderson and Rothfuss? I'm a GRRM/Mieville fag.

Sanderson: Shounen battle anime
Rothfuss: NTR anime

I know about Dalinar. It's just that when he said that about Szeth, Dalinar wasn't confirmed. He may have changed his mind on it by now.

Yes.
Books 3, 4, and 5 are Dalinar, Szeth, and Eshonai (not sure about the order of 4 and 5).
Books 6-10 will be (in no particular order) Jasnah, Lift, Renarin, Shalash, and Taln.

Not sure why you're equating the two of them, they're not at all similar. Sanderson publishes a couple books every year; Rothfuss has published 2 books in the last 10 years. Sanderson writes several different series at the same time and connects them in a giant constructed universe; Rothfuss cannot even finish his debut trilogy, which will likely not be completed in 3 books because he squandered so much time in the second book not advancing the plot. Sanderson is famously milquetoast, avoiding gruesome violence or explicit sexual content, he even has minimal swearing; Rothfuss lavishes whole chapters on Kvothe's sexual exploits. Sanderson prose is commonly called "workmanlike" due to how plain and serviceable it is; Rothfuss fancies himself a bard and waxes poetic wherever possible, to mixed effect.

Library at mount char
I gave it a 4.8/5, but that's just me.