The other day, an user mentioned wanting a story based on (up-to-date) evolutionary computing/machine learning stuff, and I'm kinda interested in trying to write at least something short like that. Trying to decide between something far-future, maybe with an AI "protagonist" and few humans, or something that's closer to magical realism, where those things are being used to understand some initially-Lovecraftian threat. Any thoughts on which of those sounds more immediately interesting to you?
Andrew Perry
sanderfag a hack
Lucas Torres
>It's like "Matt" except with only one T so it's also like a door-Mat XDDD
Yeah, no, terrible cringe-inducing character names are drop-worthy, I also refuse to read Lilith Saint Crow because it is the single dumbest pen-name I have ever witnessed in my life. So stupid a pen-name, in fact, that it actually manages to tell me everything I need to know about the content of such an author's work, thus making irrelevant even an attempt to read the first page.
Ryder Turner
I finished Gene Wolfe's The Fifth Head Of Cerberus (1972), a collection of three novellas about life on twin planets after human colonisation - planets whose mysterious shapeshifting native race provides much of the impetus for Wolfe's writing about human nature and memory.
The first novella is a comparatively straight forward New Wave SF told in the form of a childhood memoir by a murderer raised in a whore house ran by a Dr Moreau-esque proprietor. It's the strongest story in the collection with an intriguing narrator and curious minor characters, namely a robotic tutor.
The second novella is tonal shift, a more oblique and spiritual tale about the native alien cultures, pre-human contact. I didn't enjoy this one as much, but there are some intriguing biblical and Greek suggestions around The Shadow Children, and the story could be a rewarding re-read.
In a third novella, an officer reads the prison writings and research of an anthropologist who has recently returned from an expedition to native alien lands, and whose precise identity becomes increasingly unclear. Like the first novella it's another piece about human nature with an unreliable narrator - but this is told in a more fragmented way, with shifts of perspective and chronology, and with a more keenly felt protagonist.
I read these after BOTNS and it's interesting to see some of the subject matters from that book in here, in a more compact form and in a New Wave SF medium. This compares very favourably with what PKD, Le Guin and Silverberg were writing in the 1970s, so deserves two thumbs up, and four out of five dinosaurs overall. The first novella deserves five dinosaurs in its own right, but the second is more of a 3/5 story, while the last is a strong 4/5.
Jonathan Anderson
What are some Sci-fi that play up the industrial aesthetic? Most modern sci-fi leans towards the Star Trek look of everything being an Ipod with holoscreens and clean, white walls that make it look incredibly sterile. I really like the purely functional, blue collar aesthetic of things like the original Alien film, but it seems to be pretty rare.
Blake Hughes
Webnovels are novels too
Justin Howard
I'm gonna be doing a lot of driving soon as a delivery guy for GrubHub and need a lot of audiobooks as I'm gonna be working through 80 hours of this stuff a month.
Anyone got some good suggestions for audiobooks with good narrators? or good narrators I can look up and just listen to what they've done?
Andrew Powell
Man you are just doubling down on that autism. Have you ever held a conversation with another human being that didn't end in awkward silence? I'm guessing no.
Daniel Scott
...
Ryder King
This is tough, because many written novels really don't play up any sort of "visual" aesthetic at all. I'm absolutely certain that a modern reader doesn't have the same thing in mind at all as someone from the 1950s when reading Starship Troopers or PKD.
I'd recommend Heinlein, who tended to glorify the everyday American blue collar worker somewhat. Try his juveniles (especially Have Space Suit, Will Travel), The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, and the short stories The Roads Must Roll and Waldo.
I haven't read them, but you can check out James Blish's "Cities in Flight"
If you want something pretty modern, there's Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy about human settlement and terraforming on Mars. It's rather more "industrial" than his more recent 2312.
Hudson Roberts
...
Luis King
What is a good book/series focused on knights? Fantasy elements like dragons, monsters and magic are preferred of course but more than anything I want to read something with knights in armor doing chivalrous shit.
Ryan Lee
If you want the real shit, Le Morte d'Arthur and The Song of Roland, Don Quixote, and maybe The Faerie Queen. Beowulf is sort of a proto-knight. This is beyond "dinosaur" into "trilobite" territory though.
The Once And Future King is a modern (20th century) telling of Le Morte d'Arthur. Read it.
The Wizard Knight by Gene Wolfe is probably the best modern "knight book". Like most of Wolfe's novels there are additional layers of meaning beyond the adventure story.
I'll put in a good word for The Green Knight's Squire by John C. Wright as well; the protagonist wears armor and goes around the modern world slaying fantasy monsters with a sword. It strikes a pretty good balance between silliness and seriousness. The author and protagonist are unironically Catholic though so if that bothers you don't read it.
Juan Stewart
Who is this?
Ethan Watson
Thank you friend, that looks like a very solid list.
>The author and protagonist are unironically Catholic though so if that bothers you don't read it.
Not at all, I grew up in a Catholic environment and even though I no longer go to church or anything I don't mind religious elements on what I read.
>What is your best-case SFF future? Obviously the one pictured in the OP. >What SFF world would you like to inhabit? I'd like to live on Luna from Heinleins Moon is a Harsh Mistress. >What is you favorite SFF aesthetic? Dying World/BotNS type shenanigans.
Juan Evans
I just finished reading Solaris, what an emotional ride, I actually had to post-pone reading it before going to bed a few times because the thought of it haunted my sleep. Also read Hard to be a God before that, good recommendations.
Other things I read: Roadside Picnic, War of the Worlds, Farenheit 451, Martian Chronicles, H2G2, Cthulu Mythos, The Shadow over Innsmouth, also the whole Witcher series and some more on pic related.
Any other recommendation? Also, any good nazi SF other than The Man in the High Castle?
Jackson Harris
>For you patrician side:
Read Book of the New Sun. It's not a meme, it's that good.
The Illustrated Man by Bradbury The Dying Earth and Demon Princes (both by Jack Vance) Awake in the Night Land by John C. Wright (and the original Night Land if you're brave, might be tough if you're ESL), The Cyberiad by Lem The End of Eternity by Asimov Clark Ashton Smith if you liked Lovecraft.
>For Witcher-level shit Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny The Black Company by Glen Cook The First Law by Joe Abercrombie Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia The Legend of Drizzt by R.A. Salvatore
Adrian Evans
The Expanse.
Nathan Morgan
Either of those premises sound extremely interesting to me.
Sebastian Long
If you liked War of the Worlds I'd also recommend Wells stories The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau and The Invisible Man.
Luke Gonzalez
Thanks, I'll get The Illustrated Man and The Dying Earth for now. Kind of interested in Clark Ashton Smith but I don't know where to start.
Forgot to mention that I read all of these, it's been a while. Thanks anyway.
Carter Flores
>Lilith Saint Crow Dante Valentine was great though. Women gets her cunny fuck by a demon.
Josiah Parker
Trysmoon saga Wild waste series Daniel black Night Angel Trilogy (graphic audio) library at mount char
Isaac Morris
Metro 2033 and hull zero three
Elijah Hall
Warbreaker is kinda meh. Read about 2/10 of it and just don't wanna continue.
Joseph Lewis
I wanna try making pic related again guys. List the type of books you want to read (like milf, harem, gri, milf fan, etc) and I will scour the books I read to make a list. There will be at least one book in each section (might have duplicates...) just reply to me with what you want and I will put gother something.
Hopefully Jackson feels an obligation to redeem himself after the Hobbit movies.
Joseph Sanchez
It was good when I was under 18 and therefore the target audience.
Blake Miller
That logo is terrible but the trailer is great. Have not read the book(s), looking forward to the movie.
Owen Baker
Which Culture Series should I start with? Do I need to go in order?
Noah Jenkins
new dylan moran is sober and horrible.
Daniel Diaz
>Roadside Picnic Read Hard to be a God, same authors. Kind of depressing.
Zachary Parker
I tried reading in whichever order I happened to pick them up in, didn't work out. Tried reading from the beginning, didn't work out. Looked it up and some people were saying you should start with Player of Games, so I read that. Meh, not gonna read more.
Christian Cox
I saw him in Montreal early last year, he wasn't so bad
Carter Lopez
not as good as he was. now he seems the unwilling but broken father, before he seemed the maniacal actor. eh.
Jaxson Taylor
What's up with this thread's hate for Denna?
Henry Nelson
Whores are filthy creatures and should be culled, user. She isn't even a decent or intriguing character in-story.
Robert Cook
There's literally no reason to stretch an quite annoying plot point (Denna being a prostitute/in a abusive relationship/whatever her problem will turn out to be) for more than 2000 pages.
Ayden Lopez
True. The real plot point behind it is that he master is someone keeping tabs on Kvothe through Denna. Presumably Cinder (Ferule).
Remember when Denna was high and thus spoke truth she otherwise wouldn't? She mainly said that she's was beaten but also that "noticing things about Kvothe is her job".
David Lee
True. The real plot point behind it is that her master is someone keeping tabs on Kvothe through Denna. Presumably Cinder (Ferule).
Remember when Denna was high and thus spoke truths she otherwise wouldn't? She mainly said that she was beaten but also that "noticing things about Kvothe is her job".
Noah Flores
Consider Phlebas is a good entry point. Not really sure what this guy means when he says it "didn't work out". It's not as if the books follow the same story or anything, but whatever works or doesn't work him is fine.
Excession is the true best novel in the series.
Angel White
What I mean by "didn't work out" is that I didn't like it. I started with "Look to Windward" and thought I had missed out on some big chunks of the story that would make me care about what was happening. Then I read Consider Phlebas and it had some good bits sprinkled throughout but nothing I really cared for. After Player of Games I'm convinced the series isn't for me.
Asher Roberts
That's fair enough, but you know they aren't supposed to be all interlinked, right? It's not one big story. In fact the most crossover between books you ever really get is one character appears in two of them.
Camden Murphy
>but you know they aren't supposed to be all interlinked, right? Yes, that's why I started reading in random order. I just thought the first book would make the setting come off as more interesting to hook the reader after I was disappointed by Look to Windward, and it didn't. This doesn't relate to my lack of enjoyment though, the books just didn't grasp me much.
I feel like I'm starting to get a little burnt out from reading to many 800 page tomes, what are some shorter but great SFF stories? 200-300 pages preferably.
wtf I love Twilight now
Nicholas Garcia
>some popular things aren't good Wow, really makes you think.
Ethan Edwards
I pity the Japanese for being forced to translate this purple yiddery.
Carter King
Based Mikey-boy. Cucks get so fucking butthurt over him it's hilarious.
Evan Hall
>"Welcome, to The A Jurassic Park!" fucking dropped, he can't write for shit
Caleb Moore
>something that's closer to magical realism, where those things are being used to understand some initially-Lovecraftian threat this
Nathan Peterson
i am looKING for someONE with BALLS to recommend me someTHING sciencCEFIction that i haven't read BEfore with BIG BIG BIG SPACEships
Caleb Cooper
I agree with , sounds very cool if done right. Am I right in thinking you mean some kind of completely unprecedented (and possibly magical/incredibly advanced) incident is occurring and they're field testing AIs by getting them to come up with solutions? If so then absolutely that sounds great, but you have to be careful or you'll fall into the old trope of trying to write characters smarter than you are.
Xavier Evans
>big big big spaceships Dune, 40K, Culture novels, Xeelee
Robert Diaz
bEEn there dONe that
Ryan Cox
I'd like some present day cyberpunk/techno-thriller featuring cutting-edge high-tech from 20 minutes in the future and third world country backward ruthlessness something similar to a William Gibson Black Mirror script about Mexican drug cartels or Sicario vs Breaking Bad and stealth drones or a present day Doc Savage written by Bret Easton Ellis or something
Ethan Clark
Did you faggots block/filter my image? Is that why there are no responses?
Kayden Carter
okay, what about then? or at least anything sf featuring a pornstar?
Oliver Garcia
why is sf so prude?
Eli Flores
>Sicario vs Breaking Bad and stealth drones Could be cool assuming you're talking about the early seasons of BB, the later seasons holy fuck how did they fuck it up so bad? Also, what you're describing is arguably not scifi. Maybe push it to 20-30 years in the future instead.
Jeremiah Bailey
lol
Alexander Murphy
I kind of like what Gibson did since Pattern Recognition the atmosphere feels like some present day sci-fi, except his stories are usually underwhelming I'd like something believable and kind of hard-sf but not in an autistic nerdy way more like oldschool James Bond with a pheromone induced light mind-control/blackmail plot and mobile phones and internet maybe the occasional jetpack or laser prototype is ok but not casual FTL travel or kungfu robots
Ian Gomez
I just finished The stormlight archives. It was literally anime and the archives themselves are mentioned maybe twice. Interesting world, but I hated it. I found silly some of the quirks, like the hand thing and writing, drawing and studying being women stuff except if you are a servant of god.
What's next on my anime sff list? Preferably with equal length or more (I got lot's of free time) and with more RI, not G.
Bitch's got a crooked nose. Also she's a slut.
Brody Myers
The ending is pretty satisfying tho, but if you really want to drop it then The Emperor's Soul or The Final Empire might be more to your liking.
Cooper Perry
Daniel Suarez does a lot of that style of stuff. The Daemon books are about a AI/pseudo-AI setting up a darknet to destroy the world's old power structures. Kill Decision is about terrorists using swarms of drones to attack the US.
Luis Mitchell
>anime sff The Traveler's Gate Trilogy if you haven't read it already.
Jonathan Reed
>goodreads review >Simply put, this book is awesome! This isn't your garden variety multiple POV epic fantasy novel. >It's like Pokemon meets THE NAME OF THE WIND meets THE WAY OF SHADOWS Well, convinced me. top kek, I hope it's not too bad, you're not sending me to my doom are you?
Levi Cooper
I've never managed to finish even 1 (one) book by this guy. It starts slow, for one, and you push through it. And when it starts getting interesting, boom, he changes POV and slows it down again. It's like he's daring me, "how long can you take this before you drop my book??".
Brayden Harris
It's probably the most unabashed anime fantasy you'll find. If that's what you are into then you'll love it.
Henry Sanders
JCW, Count to the Eschaton
Hudson Gutierrez
>war is brewing in the megastructure's tubes >not looking good for humanity >magic cube from a human star empire finds the protagonists >itstime.jpg >nope nope nope much too stimulating >blow magic cube on rescuing the dissidents because your emergency services suck >no secrets of the megastructure for you
Andrew Rivera
thanks user I'll look into that thanks user I'll avoid this guy
Jacob White
"quirks" weren't any sillier than plenty of real life examples, or do you think safe hands are somehow worse than shit like binding feet or burkas?
Carson Baker
Gardens of the Moon was good right up the ending chapters. Then it turned into Wacky Races or something. Fucking disappointed.
Lincoln Moore
>tfw forgot about Stormlight Archives for a few months, then when I thought about it, it turns out book 3 is already out
Headed to the bookstore right now
Isaac Reed
>Interesting world It really isn't. It's superficially wierd to be sure, but there's nothing interesting underneath it. The only intriguing mystery in the whole fucking Cosmere he's setup is Hoid and the Shattering in general. I can't think of anything else that I'm looking forward to know more about. Honestly, I think Sanderson's biggest fault is that he's too eager to show his work, combined with an inability to foreshadow efficiently. We already know what Kaladin et. al. will be able to do when they reach their highest Oaths. We know how his magic system works. We know how they'll attain the shard plates. We already know what the fuck Odium is. It's just a question about watching everything unfold. Or at least it seems that way. Again, I wouldn't be surprised at all if he surprises us, but again, there doesn't seem to be much more to it. Because he doesn't foreshadow. He doesn't bait the reader with unsolved mysteries. He does the opposite. He just just exposes everything directly, through the letters and book excerpts inbetween chapters for example. So I'm not especially eager to read the next book.
Take the newest Star Wars movie for example. People are complaining because there's no hook for the next movie. The previous one had Ray's parents, who Snoke was, what Luke was going to tell Rey on that island. All of that. So no surprise, a lot of people went to watch The Last Jedi. The next one, though, has nothing of that. It could go anywhere. But the flipside of that is that people have zero commitment to go watch it. Because there's nothing there they're looking forward to see answered and explained.
Oliver Martin
where my /malazan/ bros at
Camden Robinson
Here What did you think, if you've finished the first book?
Nicholas Nguyen
I thought the last third of GotM was when it actually got good. Im on Deadhouse Gates now
Juan Jones
Felt like it turned into GoT near the end. The world building was amazing, I thought the way everything just had to fall into place that way was dumb and predictable. Exactly what I was not hoping for. Same here with just starting Deadhouse
Asher Taylor
>or do you think safe hands are somehow worse than shit like binding feet or burkas? Yes. We don't wear only the left shoe. Although burkas are stupid, they aren't just stupid, they are oppressive, and the reason for them is clear as water. But it's okay, it's not such a big deal, I think it's stupid but it falls under my suspension of disbelief.
Isaac Smith
Link a couple of good ones to prove it
Connor Morgan
how was the witcher series? i read the last wish but i was thinking about picking up the trilogy.
William Brown
Recommend me a good fantasy book. One that has good worldbuilding but doesn't waste half the book with just descriptions of it.
James Edwards
Started reading the Vorkosigan saga last month. Thought Shards of Honor was kinda hokey at first but it got a lot better around the time when the war ends and Cordelia tries to drown a psychologist in a fish tank. Barrayar was really good.
Josiah Wilson
Malazan. I'm this guy Even though it gets dumb near the end, up to that point it's pretty great, and at least it shows promise for the next books.
Adrian Powell
alright /sffg/ i hate to ask this cause it probably gets asked every thread but which series would you recommend i read after i finish book of the new sun?
>malazan >stormlight archives >wheel of time
ive already read lotr
Samuel Martin
Yes
Cooper Cruz
only wearing a left shoe would make more sense than feet binding since that effectively ruins both feet. Safe Hands doesn't really effect them that much, specifically the working class who just wear a glove on it, point is different cultures have different taboos for different reasons
Ayden Scott
malazan
Grayson Hill
For all its others faults, Wheel of Time has among the best if not the best world building in the whole genre. Excepting LotR.
Kayden Robinson
Age of Myth - Legends of the first empire series by Michael J. Sullivan.
It is a 6 book series, first book was out last year, next book is due end of this month with the rest to follow shortly after each other.
The first book is on 440 pages, second one is 500 something pages and the rest of the books are going to be around the same.
Chase Jenkins
>waiting for series to be completed Never again
Josiah Collins
Sullivan's pretty good in general, his Riyeria books have one of my favorite odd couple protagonists of all time, and they usually sell the in three books volumes so the length is good