/sffg/ - Science Fiction and Fantasy General

wtf? how is this implied? god i'm such a brainlet

>selected
>No simak
SHIT taste. Do you hear me? SHIT list. fuck you, NIGGER.

The books are quite bad and they get worse as they go on. Unfortunately I started to develop some kind of taste during the period of time that they were released, resulting in me loving the first book and hating the last, in the process realizing that the first book wasn't that good either.

That cover is great.

Im about to embark on my first short story that will be written within a universe that I intent to also portray in novel format.

/sffg/, what do you think is the best narration mode for the best way to get the story out there? I'm thinking limited third-person, limited by the character(s) the narrator is observing.

My entire library is in a cardboard box.

Sounds good to me. I'm not an expert critic though.

Why is it that every book sffg shills is always some philosophy shit piece?

I figure avid SF/F readers may have some insights on my choice and other modes of narration

what's a good series about dwarves (or at least with a dwarf as a main character?) someone recommended the death gate cycle but i don't know anything about it.

A Tournament of Shadows series

Was the prologue to Lord of the Rings meant for a first time reader? I'm reading it for the first time, and I have little to no clue what the prologue is talking about.

>about dwarves
No dwarves, but what about gnomes? You okay with that? Try cogweaver trilogy for gnomes.

thanks for the rec

i'm okay with gnomes. david the gnome was one of my first forays into fantasy as a kid

>There was an interesting system of magic along with an generally engaging setting
He stole the core of his magic system from Earthsea and ripped off nearly every halfway interesting thing from his setting from Tolkien. Including the names. His books are so shamelessly derivative that only somebody who has read almost no fantasy could enjoy them.

The prologue is absolutely meant for first-time readers. It's just a combination anthropological study of hobbit society and summary of The Hobbit for those who haven't read it, so I'm not sure what's so confusing about it. Unless you mean the foreword, which is more of a commentary on the text and not really meant for new readers.

If you never see anyone talking about scenes or characters they really enjoy from a book, yet you keep seeing it recommended, that's a pretty good sign it's just being shilled by pseuds. It's also a pretty big red flag to me if the only consistent praise I hear is the author's writing style.

>Where do you store your sff Library?
Mostly on shelves, but there's too many for the shelves now, so some of the less good stuff gets put in dresser drawers or shoeboxes under the bed

>How much did you spend to make your library comfy?
Too much. Probably an average of 5-6 USD per book (I do a lot of yard sales, flea markets etc) over several hundred books. Thousands for sure.

>How many sff books do you have in your library?
Around 300 out of a total collection of 700 or so (the rest is nonfiction, "outer Veeky Forums", and other genres like mystery and horror)

>How many sff books you read this year?
Maybe 8 or 9. Been doing a lot of heavier Literary-with-a-capital-L stuff for uni.

"scenes and characters" aren't what matters about a book. Soap operas have scenes and characters.

Are there ANY decent litRPGs?

Yeah but books are supposed to have better scenes and characters.

I actually mostly read horror, and that's the narration style I like the most. So I'm not what you'd call an avid SF/F reader.

I'm currently shilling The Influence by Ramsey Campbell. It's on Mobilism. It's a good book.

no

brandonsanderson.com/oathbringers-timeline/

I love this, pure autism

What are some more old fantasy novels like Tolkien's work or the Earthsea cycle that feel mythic and magical. The kind of stuff that goes well with dungeon synth. Stuff tgat feels obscure and special. A lot of modern fantasy feels srtificial and empty. Like it's missing something special.

>It’s a period of turmoil in Britain, with the country’s politicians electing to remove the UK from the European Union, despite ever-increasing evidence that the public no longer supports it. And the small town of Lychford is suffering. But what can three rural witches do to guard against the unknown? And why are unwary hikers being led over the magical borders by their smartphones’ mapping software? And is the immigration question really important enough to kill for?

I remember when Paul Cornell was good

The Worm Ouroboros. Alternatively, anything by Dunsany.

>watch a couple Brandon Sanderson's lectures
>talks about interesting stuff like limitations of magic systems and making the fictional world feel culturally original
>suddenly starts talking about white privilege and feminist theory

What is with American colleges? I mean it wasn't twitter tier bad but jesus.

Well you get what you deserve when you watch Ian Brandon Sanderson.

nobody cares that you got triggered, snowflake.

Is he not popular around here? Don't post much.

I'll kick you're ass kid watch out

>Dunsany
He wrote some top-tier short stories.

I am writing a chapter in my giant fantasy novel where I suddenly throw about 20 new characters in my readers' faces. The story is pretty easy to follow up until this point, so I'm hoping to perplex and take people off guard with this.

Is it a bad idea? I genuinely need these characters to be developed, but there is so much exposition to be done early in the story that I am thinking of just slamming this group of characters down and hoping the readers can keep up with atleast the important ones.

lol

That seems like Itd be really hard to pace. 2-5 characters maybe but 20 is just ridiculous.

exposition is for plebs

>I'll kick you're ass kid watch out

you're gonna have to get out of that rascal scooter first old man, careful you don't have a heart attack.

They're amazing.

I want to read these books. Are they good?

Why lol?

No. They are edgy shit. Good only for kindling. But that's just my opinion.

>Are they good?
No.

This is science fiction and fantasy how?
Read the second apocalypse series, all seven books of both trilogies, R Scott Bakker has scenes with many new character names.

Why would you ever want to perplex your readers?

>Where do you store your sff Library?
My room, duh
>How much did you spend to make your library comfy?
Money? Not much, most of my furniture are hand-me-downs from my family house. But I spent quite a lot of time getting the arrangement right, so that direct sunlight never shines on my books.
>How many sff books do you have in your library?
Around 110
>How many sff books you read this year?
Hate to admit it, but only around 20-25. Way less than last year, don't have much time for reading lately and I don't enjoy audiobooks. Currently reading Cordwainer Smith's short stories about the Instrumentality of Mankind.

The protagonist can get pretty grating at times. I enjoyed The Red Queen's War and Red Sister more than The Broken Empire books but you'd still probably need to read The Broken Empire first before reading them.

Robert E Howard's 'Conan' stories.

Any books which involves curses like in silmarillion?

>reading codex allera
>first book was alright
>second book starts out slow and halfway through turns into invasion of the body snachters
i like it. i hope the series keeps this up.

No fantasy or sci-fi book is good, really, if that's what you're asking.

What about Borges and Calvino?

Gormenghast, especially the first two. Doesn't get much more dungeony than a giant castle in a mountain.

Also, what dungeon synth do you listen to? I've only heard Depressive Silence. Goes really well with The Two Towers from LotR.

People say that after book 6, the series loses his steam and don't get any good? Is that true? I've only read up to 5 and I thought that was fun.

Barylambdas, diatrymae, gylptodons, smilodons. Wolfe loves extinct megafauna.

You're gonna have to google it bro, I don't have it on hand.

he talked about it for like 15 or 20 minutes and it wasn't even remotely as preachy as the usual Twitter/tumblr fare. stop being so sore anytime someone brushes the topic of feminism.

Seconding Gormenghast. It's really special.

it helps that Peake has absolutely incredible descriptive language

What is the Madoka Magica of /sffg/?

Tolkien

Is annhilation worth a read? The trailer looks interesting.

I started on this book, getting to the half of the story. its getting interesting, also i find the fights a little close to the hyperion cantos battles with the nemes.

Has anyone read this? I can’t tell based on the description whether it’s pro or anti leftism. Author is a fan of Gene Wolfe tho.

>What is the Madoka Magica of /sffg/?

>what did he mean by this

Jesus I thought Sanderson was one of the few redpilled authors out there. I mean he’s a fucking Morman who’s against gay marriage for fuck’s sake. I need to quit coming here.

Don't know. There's an user who's been asking for an sffg equivalent to popular anime for the past few threads.

>tfw you've only completed three anime in your whole life

For the memes I'll say Book of the New Sun.

>mormon
>redpilled

Are you this retarded user?

>Google it with the faint hope of finding something of interest
>Stumble upon the blog of some nameless guy
>"Confessions 5 - I hate Christopher Paolini "
>"[...]Fantasy sucks. The vast majority of fantasy and science fiction novels are badly written and cliched [...] I know there are exceptions to the hideous rule, such as the well-known and quickly-declining-in-integrity Harry Potter books[...]"

Thanks for indirectly making me laugh tonight user

...

They’re anti faggotry. That’s extremely redpilled in the normie sphere

You must be an ameritard to consider any of his writings to be redpilled. Literally 99% of it are reflexions over the need to believe in God or the need for social justice -especially racial egality.

And while he does oppose gay mariage because muh sanctity of bonds, he has no issue with people fucking people of the same sex and living together -at least on public record.

And I'm an absolute shiller for Sanderson. I think the only things I haven't read from him is the Wheel of Time and the animu thing. But to think him redpilled, man...

At the very least one of his character -albeit extremely secondary, I'll give you that- is a lesbian.
Inb4 tokenist publicity stunt imposed by his editor, but while sanderson might not like faggets on a personal level, his writing certainly does not reflect it.

Please contain yourselves.

>nemes.
Don't you mean weaponized memes?

>need for social justice
Give four examples or you’re full of shit.

>Ian Brandon Sanderson

You might be onto something...

Mormons are just another branch of your typical Israel-first, America-second, fuck-everyone-else American Protestants.

They're barely a step above Jehovah's Witnesses.

No, Radamanth Nemes from Hyperion Cantos

Oh because quantum thief has weaponized memes and battle autism.

just like you said, it was a huge let down.

I was reffering to the likeness of hyperion in the battles, like against the shrike. Its just matter of seconds to end the fight.

>Mistborn is about a girl from an inferior slave race (that "god" designed to be inferior slaves btw) who goes beyond the racial division to unite the people against a greater threat. Oh and also not only is she a fantasy-nigger, she's a street urchin fantasy-nigger. Double lot of social justice.

>Way of kings is about two young adult, one from the privileged side, the other from the slave fantasy-niggers side learning, among other things, to reject the norms of society and the social separation it taught them l(also goes for Delinar and pretty much everyone else) so they can unite the people against a greater threat.

>Elantris is about the privilegest white boy seeing his social order suddenly thrown upside down, with him becoming the niggrest and living in an actual segregated ghetto. Meanwhile, his future girlfriend, a privileged white girl, has to face unrealistic standards of beauty and must learn to look beyond appearances so they can unite the people against a greater threat.

>Warbreaker is about the degeneracy of an idle privileged class that totally lost its purpose of helping others. Not *that* much uniting people against a greater threat here, even if it's still present.

>Rithmatist is about seemingly normal guy that a genetic defect turned into a soft outcast -the kind of outcast that still lives in society, but knows he'll never really be a part of it, always at the bottom of the social ladder. Hopefully, his eagerness and talent forces the established social order to recognize him, and he and his privileged girlfriend unite the people against a greater threat (or, to be fair, they will once more books come out).

Broad strokes, but it should be enough for you, shouldn't it?

and what about mistborn 2nd era?

I didn't know you were supposed to get so much out of Sanderson. I honestly doubt Sanderson looks to promote such an intense agenda. He just writes what he thinks fantasy readers will find good.

Mistbirb girl is white. Was Charles Dickens an sjw for writing about poor english orphan boys?

>Privileged, upper class white boy becomes righter of wrongs with the help of his quirky former street urchin. James-Bond-Q-equivalent is a lesbian. Muh poverty creates crime, but muh the great minds behind everything are actually privileged white bois. Hero learns to look beyond social masks and markers to see the actual person -he learns to not hate/fear his wife that reminds him of the upper class he hates/fear. Ghetto with the Sazed-people (forgot their name).

I'll still give you three things: most of the social justice in 2nd era comes from the play on western codes, but it's undeniably there. Second thing is last book is a bit confusing as to where Sanderson wants to take it, with his SF-B-Movie feel, so I'll wait for the serie to end to make a final judgment. Third thing is while 2nd era is light on the social justice compared to 1st era, the whole religious pondering is much, much, much more present.

I don't know, were Dickens poor english orphan boys from a race that god literally designed with the intent of making them slaves -lesser intelligence, better physical performances for manual labour, better resistance to harsh climatic environment, etc, and were subject to enourmous social stigmas from the upper class due to their heredity, despite crossbreeding diminishing said differences over time?

Of course Vin isn't *actually* black-skinned, the same way Shallan isn't *actually* white-skinned. Because even Sanderson knows how not to be too heavy on real-world similarities

I'm reading it right now and I think I like it. The opening half is very slow because it's introducing all the characters and IMO is tiresome because they're almost all famous rich people, including literal goddamn nobility, but it picks up afterwards.

But what I'm getting from it is that she's a lefty writing a cautionary tale and is crafting a future where society kept moving towards a more socialist/communist state but did not actually enhance the rights of it's people. Society is still racist, the narrator points out that India has only one seat in the Asian Hive despite having more people than Japan's multiple seats for example. Gender issues just got swept under the rug in favor of being gender neutral, and likewise for religion, it's illegal to talk about your beliefs with more than three people at once. (and apparently most of the Middle East is a literal reservation)

In other words, I'd say she understands that in Latin "utopia" means "nowhere place," a place that cannot actually exist.

This isn't super deep analysis bruh. This is just pretty much just looking at the plot as a whole. Those points are so obvious and spammed throughout his works that I can't see it not being at least partially put there on purpose.

And anyway, him "promoting an intense agenda" is not actually the point. I originally reacted to an user calling him redpilled, and I said he must have been american to call him redpilled, precisely because all of that Sanderson writing is so, so, soooo american. Because all the segregation, slavery thing is something americans are always conscious of, and therefore, in a way, you don't even see it when it's as obvious as in sanderson's case. Precisely because for an american writer, "what he thinks is fantasy readers will find good" is fantasy that, in one way or another, deals with the social justice side of segregational heritage.

Pseud detected

I'm guessing you mean "story that starts out looking fairly light and straightforward and then goes MAXIMUM SUFFERING AND DESPAIR partway through"
Honestly, I can't think of anything.

If I recall correctly, Wolfe describes the avern moving and appearing oddly during the combat, as if it were a multi-dimensional object or otherwise not precisely how it literally exists in Severian's perception of reality.