/sffG/ - Science Fiction and Fantasy General

The New Genre Edition
>have you read the new genre that is taking us into the next 2 decades?
>why haven't you read the new genre as yet?
>when are you planning on reading the new genre?
>new genre you would like to recommend?

FANTASY
Selected:
>imgoat.com/uploads/6d767d2f8e/21329.jpg
General:
>imgoat.com/uploads/6d767d2f8e/21328.jpg
Flowchart:
>imgoat.com/uploads/6d767d2f8e/21327.jpg

SCIENCE FICTION
Selected:
>imgoat.com/uploads/6d767d2f8e/21326.jpg
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General:
>imgoat.com/uploads/6d767d2f8e/21332.jpg
>imgoat.com/uploads/6d767d2f8e/21330.jpg

NPR's Top 100 Science Fiction & Fantasy Books:
>imgoat.com/uploads/6d767d2f8e/21333.jpg

SF&F author listing with ratings and summaries:
>greatsfandf.com/authors-full-list.php

Previous Threads:

Other urls found in this thread:

archive.org/details/TheCompleteWorksOfHPLovecraft_201412
youtube.com/watch?v=aFZrqYn5f_0
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

first for sanderfag a hack

>stuck in a game
>Title: Online
>skills
Second for what a shitty edition.

please. litrpgs are so 2016 and 2017.
2018 os all about politically thought-provoking romantic comedy written by women of color.

No wonder outer/lit/ looks down on us.

the image art for these threads has really gone downhill in the fast few weeks

can someone make an actual thread? you litrpg mouthbreathers can use this one to talk about your harem sword art online shit.

It's better than that piece of shit you posted a few months ago.

Yet we have to hear blindshit and too like the shit every thread?
Why don't you make a general to discuss your philosophyshit.

You seem upset my friend. Just calm down, it's only books.

Really???

/outerliit/ are going to be laughing us again

at us

This here is a wholehearted recommendation for the marvelous book Senlin Ascends. Do give it a try.

posting your shitty rating chart that nobody laughed at it equally vapid

from now on just go back to the funky fanarts and epic landscapes that used to be our staple

>he cares what a bunch of roleplaying elitist fags who don't even read think

Let's be honest. Even we're laughing at you and your bootleg Sword Art Online shit right now.

>he doesn't know I get off on being shamed and ridiculed
>you're just making me harder

I would take this shit thread to the pol bait one last thread. At least this is lit related. Last one was a /tv/ fag waifu shit!

Dear OP,

Please to be redoing your list with fresh background for avoiding tard jpeg artifacts.

Praise Crom,
user

Seconded. One of the best fantasy books published within the last 5 years. It's incredibly good.

Serious question from someone who doesn't read science fiction and fantasy.

Why are they joined together like this so often? Wouldn't it be more reasonable to have them remain separate communities?

I actually came to this thread to vent a bit about The Final Empire. I'm nearly done (

If it was just fantasy it would just be a few autists posting about Ian Brandon Sanderson and Rothfuss for all eternity.

Because they're genre fiction, and genre fiction should be seen and not heard, so toddle off to your corner while the literary fiction adults do the important things.

So fantasy has attached itself to sci fi like some malignant barnacle?

>This dude's motivation for overthrowing a tyrannical, oppressive government that just drips evil is... because his dead wife wanted some flowers. Fucking really? This is some anime-tier bullshit.
Way to go, Nostromo.

>This is some anime-tier bullshit.

That's what Sanderson does. He writes anime in novel form.

same. buncha whiny babies.

Any horror themed SF released recently? I just saw W. Michael Gear's Outpost on a upcoming releases list and it sounds interesting.

Well once you've read one book about "depressed middle aged man struggling with alienation" or "woman ranting against The Patriarchy" you've kind of read them all.

Is Sanderson not a good writer? He is pretty popular from what I've seen but that obviously says nothing about quality. Curious what the run down on the guy is.

Precisely. But then the literary genre counterargument would be to essentially list off the most popular tropes in fantasy/sci-fi, then basically repeat what you've said, just substituting the tropes.

I'm near finishing my first Sanderson novel, and I have a laundry list of complaints. I go over two here

He was criticizing lit? I thought he was talking about the Witcher series.

*badum-tish*

Sure. But it's a very "write what you know" kind of thing which is probably why those examples I mentioned are so numerous. Both lit and SFFG are decadent wastes of time anyway and you'd be reading non-fiction if you cared at all about some sort of gay personal enrichment shit.

Read Dragons of Babel.

>It follows the plight of a young man named Will Le Fey after a crippled dragon takes up residence in his town and inside his mind.
I'm getting very bad Eragon flashbacks. You'll have to sell me on this.

Read online: www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/soi.aspx
E-book: archive.org/details/TheCompleteWorksOfHPLovecraft_201412 (including like 30 additional stories)
Audio: youtube.com/watch?v=aFZrqYn5f_0

Shit, forgot about that. Guess you'll have to count me out. Also, nice quads.

>nearly guaranteed not to occur at the end of this book
You sure about that? Sanderson usually ramps up the excitement at the end of his books, finally doing something with all that exposition. I certainly wouldn't drop one of his books with so little left.

>have you read the new genre that is taking us into the next 2 decades?
No.
>why haven't you read the new genre as yet?
My dick does not have much to say when it comes to what I chose to read.
>when are you planning on reading the new genre?
As of now, never.
>new genre you would like to recommend?
Eeeeeh, enviromental sci-fi?

>Eragon
Is that a Tolkien clone?

I'll tell you one thing, Swanwick the writer of Dragons of Babel writes differently. Very differently.
And the dragons in that universe are more akin to (evil) sentient fighter jets. They're sentient machines.
The dragon is only present in a small part of the story, he's not a typical goodboy anyway.

I'm not a great seller, but it's absolutely no Tolkien rip-off and no *pure* fantasy. More sci-fi/fantasy.

...

It's not a long story, you'll probably have time to read it in a week! I have not started yet myself because I'm reading another Lovecraft story, The Whisperer in Darkness, as side reading at the moment.

>tfw I got quads

Oh, I'm definitely going to finish it. I just had to vent about it, because I was just staggered when I realized I had about 4 hours left in the damn thing, and I couldn't believe how little had actually happened besides exposition.

It's actually quite fortunate I recently read Promise of Blood since it turns out the two authors knew each other, something I wasn't aware of at the time. You can definitely see a lot of similarities (eg. X-Men mutants), but overall McClellan is better than Sanderson. Even though McClellan stumbles on exposition (one of the three main plots is basically a fetch quest for more worldbuilding exposition, but it's fairly entertaining, and does tie into the other main plots as well), stuff actually happens in his book.

Guess I should've added an /s to that.

Sanderson's writing is essentially workmanlike, he has a formula for what he writes and follows it. The prose is mediocre, the characters are inoffensive and forgettable, and the plot rarely if ever stands out.

I forgot to read the last one till the day of.

Eragon was written by a kid and definitely feels like it too. It's been forever since I read it, but just imagine the most generic Tolkien ripoff ever, then add dragons. It was basically sold on the fact that it was written by a 14-year-old.

Might look at Dragons of Babel in the future, but it's not going to be high on my list. Also, the Wikipedia page said the same author wrote something called Iron Dragon's Daughter, would you recommend that too?

>the characters are inoffensive and forgettable
I dunno, I've gotten pretty offended by Eamond(?). He's supposed to be the leader of this rebellion, but he's a giant pussy. Princess Leia is more of a man than this jackass could ever hope to be.

>Eamond
Elend? He gets a little better I guess, by book 2 he starts to have more struggles and becomes more useful as well.

> Iron Dragon's Daughter
Yes.

Both of them are very unique books that explode the cliches.

No, not him. Uh... Yeden. Sorry, again, audiobook. And I'm not great at remembering names already.

Though speaking of Elend, I just find it weird how Vin seems to keep getting possible love interests. The thief in the beginning who gets gutted, Spook, and now Elend.

And speaking of Spook, is his "accent" any easier to decipher on paper than it is when listening to it? Because with the audiobook he's completely unintelligible.

And going back to the audiobook, is Sazed supposed to be fantasy!Asian? Because he really sounds like it in the audiobook. Though that could just be the narrator. He's pretty good, but I've noticed he also sometimes forgets to change voices with certain characters until he gets a few words in.

I've actually never listened much to audiobooks, so doing it now after reading books for so long is actually pretty interesting.

oh hey Swanwick is the guy who wrote "Dogfight." I really liked that short story.

Unless I'm misremembering Spook barely qualifies as a love interest. I'm pretty sure it was completely unreciprocated.

basically he's ur-pulp.

The impression I got was that the Terris are more of a generic "eastern mystics" ala ancient Persia and India than they are Asian.

There's a part I read recently where he blushes and gives a handkerchief to Vin, who is completely oblivious. Again, anime-tier shit.

And speaking of anime, watch Ghost Stories. I will shill the shit out of that show, because holy fuck it's hilarious.

...

yeah Spook basically plays no meaningful role at all, he's basically like a fucking appliance, only useful for his metal-burning thing

>good novels are just about communicating information efficiently
Is this a real opinion people have?

Eh, kinda figured. That tends to happen with these kinds of characters. Now that I think about it, there seems to be a lot of elements from Push (movie) in this. People who move stuff, people who find people, people who hide people, people who influence people.

Omit needless words.

don't write books

>there seems to be a lot of elements from Push (movie) in this.
>Mistborn: The Final Empire, also known simply as Mistborn or The Final Empire, is a fantasy novel written by American author Brandon Sanderson. Wikipedia
>Originally published: July 17, 2006

>Push
>Initial release: February 6, 2009 (USA)

You have it the other way around.

>I love filler.

eh i don't really agree with this

GRRM isn't the greatest author or even one of my favourites, but i maintain that ASOIAF is a good story (thus far) and told fairly well.

despite being super lengthy it never felt like a chore to read, the damn thing's a page turner, and i for one enjoyed reading about the backstory of secondary characters and all that description. it fleshes out the world, made me more engrossed in the story.

Similar influence I guess. Sanderson is pretty anime, but I see a ton of comicbook stuff in here too.

>filler
First you have to define what filler is in the context of fiction, brainlet. Obviously fiction's purpose isn't solely to convey information.

Speaking of GRRM, a friend just sent me a link saying that Winds of Winter won't be out 2018 because Martin is writing some Targaryen family tree instead.

Sagan''s "Contact" teaches you so much about the guy

In the end, he was just another fedora

>be reading the Expanse
>mfw they start dropping rocks on Earth

>i got caught and outed
>l-lemme save face

Thanks Hemingway. But not everything has to be whittled down to what amounts to a summary on the back of the book. Not to defend GRRM's bloated garbage but there should be room for some style and substance, the story is just the skeleton of a book and should have some meat on its bones.

People hate filler because nothing is happening, so the story doesn't progress. The point of the story is to be told, whether it includes character development, worldbuilding, plot twists, etc. How does any of that happen when information is still being conveyed? Actions can't be taken when information is still being conveyed, so the story has to screech to a halt until it does. Do you really think a story that actually takes time away to just convey information would be good? I don't even like Harry Potter, but don't you think it would be a lot worse if it took time to tell us about every trip Hedwig takes to and from Hogwarts to deliver letters?

The outline is the skeleton, the story is the meat. Everything else is useless fat weighing down the book.

>being so stupid you think the best parts of a novel are where you're "progressing the story"
why don't you stick to reading wikipedia plot summaries tbqh, sounds like it would be more your speed

The mistings and mistborn are basically X-Men. Superpowers derived from genetics, discovered during a moment of trauma, usually when young.

You're being deliberately obtuse. I'm not saying things like character development and worldbuilding should be stripped out of the story, those should be part of the story, at least when done right.

So basically you're saying the GRRM viewpoint characters that die quickly aren't part of the story? Who decides if something is or isn't "part of the story"?

I say all this as someone who isn't even a GRRM fan (stopped at book 4)

>People hate filler because nothing is happening, so the story doesn't progress.

progression of the story isn't *only* realised in terms of a series of actions being taken. progression is also world building, which requires description and back story. this is especially important in an "epic fantasy" such as ASOIAF.

i totally agree that it can be overdone, and often is overdone, in those types of books. and the later books in GRRM's series are a bit too long.

but overall is GRRM guilty of this? i dont think so. GRRM's world building is one of his strongest qualities. his faults lie in the overall cohesion of the story, the pacing, and the story knots he's written himself into. but i think it's cheap to criticise GRRM in this way

>So basically you're saying the GRRM viewpoint characters that die quickly aren't part of the story?
The characters who don't contribute to the story aren't part of the story.

>Who decides if something is or isn't "part of the story"?
The person reading it. It's not a science.

>The characters who don't contribute to the story aren't part of the story.
>character is in the book
>their POV provides information to the reader that otherwise isn't conveyed
>they aren't in the story (?????)
uhhh user

>The person reading it. It's not a science.
oof
so basically you're going with the "i know it when i see it" train of thought. brainlet confirmed

>progression is also world building
I said this. If important worldbuilding is happening in a chapter, it's not filler. It might be a dull part of the story, but it's still part of the story.

All of this stuff is on a spectrum. If you have worldbuilding explaining why the hero needs to find a mcguffin and stop the bigbad, that's fine. If the worldbuilding is instead about the inner workings of the kingdom of a foreign nation on the other side of the world that has absolutely no imoact on the plot, then maybe that should be left out.

Do you know what editing is?

>Do you know what editing is?
yeah it's a red herring to this discussion in which you are unable to provide consistent working definitions for any of the terms you throw around

Do all editors edit the same? Because if they don't, that might be an indication that writing isn't a science, as I said.

>Do all editors edit the same? Because if they don't, that might be an indication that writing isn't a science, as I said.
How did you get from "writing isn't a science" to "I don't have to provide any sort of logical consistency or make any sense"? Philosophy isn't exactly a science either but at least philosophers mostly respect logic

>If the worldbuilding is instead about the inner workings of the kingdom of a foreign nation on the other side of the world that has absolutely no imoact on the plot, then maybe that should be left out.

two points

1) how do you know that *anything* GRRM mentions in any of the books written thus far *won't* have an impact on the plot in a later book? we've heard characters discuss these random places (such as say, old town) since the first book, and 4 books later we go there.

2) even if he mentions stuff that has no impact on the plot, but it DOES make the world more interesting to me the reader and enhance my enjoyment, then it certainly should not be left out

honestly. there is so much of these random descriptions of food and mud and secondary character backstories in ASOIAF that if they really were an issue, no one would be reading those books in the first place. the fact that they became so popular shows that GRRM did something right with that.

not that popular = good literature, far from it, but it's still to GRRM's merit that the popularity is there despite the length of the books

>tfw Spook became a fucking pimp and literally helped repopulate the world post-Catacendre
Spook is a pretty cool guy

>tfw my lack of scientific qualifications make me feel inadequate about writing cyberpunk

All the best authors are scientists. I feel I do not belong in this genre.

;_;

Gibson was no scientist and didn't even have a computer when he wrote Neuromancer. Just go, remember that cyberpunk is before anything an aesthetic experience.

Hi Veeky Forumsguys.

I generally don't read fantasy, but as I've been in a bit of a reading slump, I think it's something that might get me started again.

I don't want a huge epic, fantasy books in the past I have enjoyed are; The Kingkiller Chronicles, Lord of the Rings, some of The Wheel of Time series but it was definitely too long....Does anyone have any recommendations on something I can pick up and get stuck into?

The Traitor Baru Cormorant.

Why would you need scientific qualifications? Cyberpunk is more focused on how technology warps society than anything else. You should be spending your time thinking about societal apparatuses of power rather than if a robot seems realistic or not.

>Finally find time to continue reading the Expanse
>Those Amos chapters
Absolute fucking gold that man

i didnt want to read the winds of winter anyways

quit reposting stupid shit about your anxieties and just write.

Good point mate. Thanks.

Is there any other sword and sorcery as comfy as Leiber?

Yeah, twenty pages of hooks at the beginning, hundreds and hundreds of pages of aimless exposition, and then another twenty pages of bait to get you to buy the next book, iterated ad nauseam. Quality!

This has made me think quite a lot about storytelling. About stories, worldbuilding, filler, etc. And I think you're right. I'm going to try it, to see if I can break down all this stuff we've been talking about into objective categories. Should be fun. Thanks for the idea!

webnovels are novels too