/sfFG/ - Science Fiction and Fantasy General

I lost interest in it pretty quickly, he picked up like 4 followers rapidly while sitting in the mountains and has done nothing with them.

>mfw skipped over the academy entirely

Also erasing number ones mind killed anlot of the interest I had in the series, her devotion was kawaii while it was genuine.

Fuck, I'm dealing with some serious writers block here. I basically created nothing in the previous two days and today I couldn't meet my minimal daily word goal. I think I've wasted more time rewriting this act than I have on literally any other act in the book since I started up again a few months ago

I'm reading Persepolis Rising. The latest Expanse. Any other fans of the series on here? Or is that one of those popular series we're all meant to hate like ASoIaF or something

You ever read a book with a bummer ending? How'd you handle it?

I'm writing a book (who isn't, right?) right now where the climax blows up in the MC's face. They achieve their goal, and a grand new door of opportunity opens itself to them. However the price they had to pay would be difficult for anyone to live with; it was much greater than they anticipated.

I worry the somber ending will turn off too many potential Book 2 readers.

>inb4 implying I'll have readers

"High stakes" are more believable, so to speak, when there's an actual risk something of value is lost, as opposed to stories where the author serves up loads of hypothetical "danger" to a protagonist who never actually stubs his toe. Look at how people come back to Game of Thrones.

also known as, the standard process of writing a book.

I'm not sure if I'm catching your meaning, but it could be sleep deprivation.

Up until the climax, the plot and character arcs follow the typical formula and beats. MC gets much more than a stubbed toe along the way. But the MC does get what they wanted as a result of their actions. Its just, getting there may have resulted in more detriment than benefit.

Think about the final act of Return of the Jedi. Remember how the Death Star II starts blowing up Rebellion ships, before Lando helps blow it up?
Imagine a version in which, for whatever reason, so much of the Rebellion is lost, that by the time you blow up the Death Star, you're left wondering if the price is worth what you bought. Something that would leave the readers thinking, "was there really no better way?"
I want the readers to feel distraught, but eager to know what happens next. (but they'll have to wait for Book 2, haha suckers)

I'm worried about fucking up that balance.

Anyone else in /sffg/ WRITING? Working on a story about a guy and his friend who try to live their lives after the equivalent of fifty years in a grimdark-dreampunk world. One of the survivors helps people and gradually accepts the decisions he had to make while the other becomes a junkie of all kinds trying to get the feeling back.

>Steerpike from Gormenghast did nothing wrong

I read Persepolis but it was really boring and the visual presentation was webcomic-tier, really disappointing. I had no idea it turned into SF.

Is this good? Gonna read it later this month. And I did like his broken empire trilogy. Haven't read the other one set in the same universe though.

Most stories where the mc loses his powers and doesn't continue adventuring bum me out.
Looking at you, david eddings.

Writer fag here, that sounds interesting. I'm working on a web novel that I can't quite find a way to start.

Anybody have any experience with those pre-written plots?

>pre-written plots
wut

this is what happens with guys who wen to writing school and stuff like that they have themes they want to horse shoe into a book and already have a basic plot regarding how to horse shoe said theme

to me true creativity is just flying by the seat of your pants

I wouldn't say that Corey's strong point has ever been visual presentation. I'm enjoying it well enough though, even if it's probably mid-tier in terms of the series.

No one cares.

It's like using someome elses plot map to develop a story.

However bad it is you arent worse than GRR Martin.

>A few years later, a strange object is discovered flying around the Kuiper belt (giant asteroid belt that surrounds our solar system)

The object was already discovered it was just considered a statistical artifact until that event made everyone go super paranoiac

Echopraxia is actually the better book...

Speaking of WoT, the only romance plot in fantasy that has happened to be bearable to me is the one between Mat and Tuon. What went so right? Was it the brown loli?

I thought we got rid of you fuckers ages ago. Scram.

>i don't even read evidenced by my continuing of wot yet i know about different romance plots

not exactly
WoT for example was "pre-written", jordan already knew what he was to write

>what sff novel you reading
Manifold: Time by Stephen Baxter
>what's it about
Preventing a soon-catastrophe from annihilating the human race, and keeping humanity's survival infinite, past entropy (from what I gather, I'm around 60%ish atm)
>recommend a book from what you read this year to the general
Luminous by Greg Egan

HOLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE FUCKING SHIT I HAVE WAITED YEARS
YEARS
FUCKING YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAARS
FOR SOMEONE TO TALK ABOUT RADIX WITH
I actually don't remember much about Radix but the other three books in that tetrad are pretty fucking wild.
>thinking Attanasio was smoking mere pot when he wrote these

Is there any more watershed cyberpunk books besides Neuromancer and Snowcrash?

so he wrote the story then wrote it again?

How do you expect new books to read if no one is writing them?

>implying that fagolah reads

You write up a "plot map," it's essentially the whole novel in cliff notes.
Then you flesh out the scenes and characters.
Then you write the whole story.

It's a common practice for people who enjoy an ordered writing method.

>>what sff novel you reading
The Foundation Trillogy Omnibus
>>what's it about
Space Jews
>>recommend a book from what you read this year to the general
I read Malazan Book of the Fallen, but everyone here has read that.

So I'm going to suggest Swords and Deviltry

seems constrictive to any sort of epiphany that may come along during the writing experience

keep being held back i'm going to push the boundaries

>I barf on paper
So you need an editor.

Synners, Islands in the Net, Schismatrix, Mirrorshades, arguably The Stars My Destination.

>what sff novel you reading
The Book of the Long Sun. I took a break at halfway to read some Keats, picking it back up.

>recommend a book
>SF
Permutation City by Greg Egan. I had heard vaguely what it was about but synopses truly do not do it justice.

>Fantasy
The Green Knight's Squire by John C. Wright. If you've ever been interested in paladins at all then you should read this. Also, Wright successfully brings some increasingly-obscure medievalisms into modern language.

if you have a ephiphany you just rewrite the plot map

You'll find that plot maps typically produce far more creative works.

The thing with the map is that you can re:write the entire story in less than an hour at a moments notice.
Goodluck doing that writing as you go.

Fuck this guy, read True Names and Vurt. Actually Mirrorshades is right.

>i need muh plot maps or i'm lost guys help...

Post some lines.

>True Names
Yeah that's a good one. As for Vurt, I'm not sure I'd count it as cyberpunk.

None of those books I listed are great on their own, and they aren't as seminal to the subgenre as Neuromancer, but they are major works of cyberpunk in its original form (except The Stars My Destination, which is proto-cyberpunk).

you first

Does this look like the writer's general to you?

I read 91 books this year so far. How many you read?

92.

I'm not a writer, pal.

There are any good epic fantasy books like WoT?
I know WoT isnt perfect but its fuckin amazing

I think it's a good allegory for the lack of trust modern man operates in. The Medieval people are constantly surprised and appalled because he acts like a merchant, but all modern men are merchants. I find it interesting to read.

I'm slowly working on starting a fantasy comic

I have e-reader but everytime when i see a good cover on book i want to buy it instantly. How to deal with shit and should i at all?

> How to deal with shit and should i at all?
what did he mean by this?

Yeah it's definitely a great read, watching him mind break his slave just upped my standards for later chapters too much.

I miss it so much, /sffg/. Every day I google "winds of winter news" to no avail. I CAN'T COPE WITH THIS.

I just download the artwork since they're more hi-res than what you get on the physical book.

wordart I just want you to know you make whatever thread you're in very unpleasant.

I've stopped caring at this point

We're not in one of the good timelines, user

Nope, doesn't help.

No.

>they reused gurms quote for the first book, but removed the part about being a new author
cheeky

Depends on your definition of "good."

Noooo, not the nuggies house!

It was the closest to it, but sanderson fucked it in the end by leaving it open if Tuon actually loved mat or not.

Just like sanderson fucked all of Mat up.

That might've been planned by Jordan. He intended to write a sequel about Mat and Tuon reclaiming Seanchan after all.

Sanderson said that all of the character's endings except Perrin saving Faile were written by Jordan before he died.

>No Mat spin off ever

Dont remind me of this feel.

Yea, that one still stings.

antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/03/cmap-6-why-did-you-pick-such-a.html
>The review quotes on the back cover/inside the front matter ... obviously, good reviews are gold dust. But you don't need good lemons to make lemonade. If Kirkus Reviews say of a hardback "this was an exercise in meretricious misogyny, stunning in the depths of it's depravity", do not be surprised if you subsequently see a back-cover quote like this: "Stunning — Kirkus". (In general, the longer the quote, the more likely it is to accurately reflect the review. But see above about the purpose of a book cover.)

Russia Today reviews on the back cover always make me laugh. Really you couldn't find somebody better than Pravda to talk up the book?

>They will pay, Lews Therin growled. I am the Lord of the Morning
I wish he had just assumed control of rand when this happened

Old dino user here, I haven't posted in ages because the threads got overrun by retarded Sanderson posters and Bakker shills. It's just not interesting reading about contrived world building and juvenile edge.

I remember this book sparked an unhealthy obsession with this
anthropic-principle.com/?q=anthropic_principle/doomsday_argument
and I still don't know if it's complete nonsense or a valid
browsing the net you get both extremes
"Why am I alive now? Suppose we do go on to colonize the Galaxy. Then most of the humans who ever live will be vacuum-sucking cyborgs in some huge interstellar empire. And it's far more likely that I'd be one of them than what I am. In fact the only pop curve where it's reasonably likely that we'd find ourselves here, now, is..." "The crash," said Emma."
Full of mindfucks like these.this book

>tfw I read both dino and Sanderson

>I haven't posted in ages because the threads got overrun by retarded Sanderson posters
Don't be so dramatic. Oathbringer wasn't released that long ago. They'll go away eventually.

To be fair I'm not reading almost any fantasy these days, only did a reread of Lotr and New Sun this year.
And I don't think they'll go away, just maybe replaced by some other boring and video gamey author.

---
'I stopped very gently and sat upon the Time Machine, looking round. The sky was no longer blue. North-eastward it was inky black, and out of the blackness shone brightly and steadily the pale white stars. Overhead it was a deep Indian red and starless, and south-eastward it grew brighter to a glowing scarlet where, cut by the horizon, lay the huge hull of the sun, red and motionless. The rocks about me were of a harsh reddish colour, and all the trace of life that I could see at first was the intensely green vegetation that covered every projecting point on their south-eastern face. It was the same rich green that one sees on forest moss or on the lichen in caves: plants which like these grow in a perpetual twilight.

'The machine was standing on a sloping beach. The sea stretched away to the south-west, to rise into a sharp bright horizon against the wan sky. There were no breakers and no waves, for not a breath of wind was stirring. Only a slight oily swell rose and fell like a gentle breathing, and showed that the eternal sea was still moving and living. And along the margin where the water sometimes broke was a thick incrustation of salt—pink under the lurid sky. There was a sense of oppression in my head, and I noticed that I was breathing very fast. The sensation reminded me of my only experience of mountaineering, and from that I judged the air to be more rarefied than it is now.

'Far away up the desolate slope I heard a harsh scream, and saw a thing like a huge white butterfly go slanting and fluttering up into the sky and, circling, disappear over some low hillocks beyond. The sound of its voice was so dismal that I shivered and seated myself more firmly upon the machine. Looking round me again, I saw that, quite near, what I had taken to be a reddish mass of rock was moving slowly towards me. Then I saw the thing was really a monstrous crab-like creature. Can you imagine a crab as large as yonder table, with its many legs moving slowly and uncertainly, its big claws swaying, its long antennae, like carters' whips, waving and feeling, and its stalked eyes gleaming at you on either side of its metallic front? Its back was corrugated and ornamented with ungainly bosses, and a greenish incrustation blotched it here and there. I could see the many palps of its complicated mouth flickering and feeling as it moved.

'As I stared at this sinister apparition crawling towards me, I felt a tickling on my cheek as though a fly had lighted there. I tried to brush it away with my hand, but in a moment it returned, and almost immediately came another by my ear. I struck at this, and caught something threadlike. It was drawn swiftly out of my hand. With a frightful qualm, I turned, and I saw that I had grasped the antenna of another monster crab that stood just behind me. Its evil eyes were wriggling on their stalks, its mouth was all alive with appetite, and its vast ungainly claws, smeared with an algal slime, were descending upon me.

>planning a sequence
Why do this? I hate authors who are conceited enough to expect us to read a trilogy before they even publish one good book. Your first story should be self contained. Even if you do want to write a sequel, make sure you know exactly when and where you will end, as if your series is just one story that you had to split up out of necessity. But then even then the presumption involved in trying to write a 2,000 page epic as your very first work is off-putting.

...

This. Mieville did it right, having the three Bas-Lag books as self contained stories with different MCs and only subtle connections between them. Can't stand the Sanderson Cinematic Universe approach.

>the Sanderson Cinematic Universe approach
That's an apt analogy.
It really does remind you of Marvel

Just finished The Quantum Thief, I was wondering if anyone who has read the sequels could say how they compare to the first book?

>while looking for recommendations, constantly see the dresden files books.
>resist them for the longest time because I have a hunch
>finally give in and read the first
>the whole plot gets resolved because he randomly decides to go into the apartment of a murder victim while feeling shitty about himself, lay down on the floor to sleep, wake up, find a roll of film under the bed because he slept on the floor and then minutes later the guy who took the picture actually also comes into the apartment to give him all the info he needs to put the case together.
Why is this allowed? Fucking Deus ex machina.
also:
>Detective
>finds a roll of film in the garden of a guy he's investigating
>doesn't check out what's on the film right the fuck away.
Do the other books get better, or can I expect them to keep going like this? It's was actually kinda alright until he decided the best way to wrap it up was to have a guy come in, explain what's going on and then fuck off again.

I read part of the second one, I didn't really enjoy it as all the new concepts that are never really explained just got exhausting. It was like reading something in a foreign language.
You might be okay with them if you still remember what they were in the first one.

It's never deep literary shit or anything but as far as adventure stories, they do get good. The first genuinely great one (in the already explained terms) is the one with the werewolves, which I wanna say is book 3 or 4, but it's worth muddling through the early stuff to get there.

Hm, I'll stick with it then. Like I said, I somewhat enjoyed the book, but the way he "solved" the mystery, the Author might as well have written: "And then a post it note fell from the sky, with the real killers name on it".

Any good urban fantasy shit?
Already read the Dresden Files and Monster Hunter International.

If you don't hate comic books, Hellblazer is fantastic. Stars an ex-punk who basically gets himself into and out of scrapes constantly. He's literally made a deal with the devil that the devil later regretted.

More than once.

And despite this, one of the most complicated, flawed, human characters I've ever encountered.

Wolfhound Century is pretty good though it's more of a police/espionage thing set in fantasy Russia circa the 1950s.

I've heard the Kate Daniels series is good, somebody here recced it as "Dresden Files but if Dresden wasn't a tool."

Seconding this, love a bit of ol' Constantine. Even if you do hate comics, there's two novels by pulp maestro John Shirley that are worth a look.

DUDE FIREMOSS LMAO

ive sort of stopped caring. i guess it's enough to know the show is going to finish at least. grrm has no one to blame but himself though.

Did you have a point, or are you just contradicting him to be petty because he said he didn't like the book you preferred?

My point is that I think it's pretty good. Of course, to each his own, but if you enjoyed the first book chances are really good you'll really like the second.