/sffg/ - Science Fiction & Fantasy General

>scifi books
>no space shit
For fuck's sake why do you have to make this shit hard, man. I'd recomnmend you the Golden Age by John C Wright, but I'll go with Void Star by Zachary Mason or Europe in Autumn by Dave Hutchinson (the second if you like some parallel dimensions).

I have no mouth and I must scream, Ubik, etcetera by PKD.

she's pure and sticks with sev through thick & thin

>I have no mouth and I must scream
That's more angst than horror. Also eternal reminder that title refers to AM as much as the POV character.

So loyalty is the main thing you look for? Anything else?

>John C Wright

post the euphoric quote

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Thanks baby

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>I have no mouth and I must scream, Ubik, etcetera by PKD.
I've read those too, thanks though.

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Somebody please make a "The Chad Miles and the Virgin Mark" image.

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Can I get a rec for a mindfucky book, /sffg/? I really like the way my brain feels when I read something that twists the ol' neurons. I've read some of the common recommendations here like Blindsight, the Spin trilogy, etc. Also some Asimov, Rendezvous with Rama (and similar alien megastructure books), Hyperion, Tau Zero etc. Most recent book I read (can't believe I forgot the name) had these Russian astronauts visit an alien asteroid or something and inside was a future human with a message... but I forgot the details. That was pretty good too.

Looking for a spooky/trippy space phenomena book.

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What's happening in this image?

Troika?

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Library at mount char

Why aren't you self-published yet?

Dunno its just some cool art. I think the environment is supposed to be some kind of hell

>Troika
Damn this sounds like the author was tripping balls when he wrote it. Will check it out

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That looks like an illustration of that SCP that leads to a post apocalyptic reality.

for once you're right mount char spammer user

Read it. This book is not really mindfucky

I have no idea but I'd sure like to read about it.

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>I have no idea but I'd sure like to read about it.
scp-wiki.net/scp-093

Well check out
>Radix Tetrad (right up your alley)
>Axiomatic
>anything Xeelee or Revelation Space
seconding. I was WATing hard throughout the book.

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Does a good book need a central conflict/mystery or can a character just going on a journey be enough

Short stories may not really depend upon it. But for a novel, you need it if you want to attract the mainstream. Most people are accustomed to the basic dramatic structure. It's easier to write around it as well.

What kind of journey are we talking about anyway?

Journey around the world with an old man (and his granddaughter) who's going back to his home country to die and wants to pass on his craft to a worthy apprentice before be does.

Problem is I can't really think of a conflict that would follow them. My best bets are either that he's a wanted man because he refused to use his skills to aid in a war and there's a spy following them from port-to-port, or he took on the MC as an apprentice because the granddaughter saw some evil spirit hanging over the boy's shoulder

fuck, meant

I really enjoyed The Stars, My Destination and A Canticle for Leibowitz.

What are some other books you think I would enjoy? I'm bored of Pournelle-esque sci fi for the moment; just finished a lot of his stuff.

Does somebody know if there are fan translations of Liu Cixin's short stories that aren't in The Wandering Earth?

I'm specifically looking for one called The Nebula of Poems that's supposed to be really good and also a sequel to a story in the published collection (Devourer).

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the camp of the saints

>jilted lover who crafted herself into an immortal daemon for revenge
>old man stole his craft knowledge Innana style from vengeful semi-omnipotent beings
>granddaughter was suckled by a mighty she-wolf and she wants her cub back
>shoddy record keeping by the regional daimyo incorrectly labels old man as dangerous ex-con
>a longstanding dispute with the tea brewers union boils over
>a cat goddess, source of the old man's craft knowledge, takes a liking to MC and won't take no for an answer
You're welcome :3

Sounds interesting. Here's a few (bad) ideas:
- his "gift" is the source of the conflict, seen as a curse or a disease, even in his hometown
- not a spy following them, but rather an old rival
- his "craft" is actually his granddaughter and she's rather sickly
- they have little problems (kind of a quaint easy going journey) until the old man dies at some point, granddaughter is left all alone trying to finish the quest.

You can always start little and go big, maybe pull a Gene Wolfe. In Short Sun, the MC apparently takes on a small quest (which would conclude stuff left open from the previous series) and shit just escalates all around him.

>they have little problems (kind of a quaint easy going journey) until the old man dies at some point.
way ahead of you on that one.

For the other stuff I already know what his craft is and it's not really something that could cause a conflict. Basically it's a handful of sacred cooking techniques that could allow a skilled chef to feed an army with a single grain of rice:
very useful for maintaining supply lines and it means essential farmers are now available and cheaper to draft into service

redpill me on Jack Vance

should i get treason?

This was written by a 14-year old right?

Fuck off you meme cocksucker.

Trying to write Multiple first person P.O.V for my novel, And I'm having trouble setting up their own voices.

A kind user told me to give them unique quirks. Not the manic pixie girl quirks, more like, character A has crippling self-esteem issues and that's why he sometimes acts aggressively over innocuous comments. Character B had a neglectful childhood and that's why they're clingy.

I appreciate his advice, but I also want to know if its feasible for narration?

Like for example, Character A Narration is a mishmash of modern words and Archaic Words in his Narration due to him trying to overcompensate for his family poorer background compare to his peers/friends?

Don't do this for Heaven's sake, it always turns out shit. If you do, have 3 characters tops.

I'm writing only for 3. Anything else is a bit excessive

Downloads: b-ok.org/s/?q=Childhood's End

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>more like, character A has crippling self-esteem issues and that's why he sometimes acts aggressively over innocuous comments. Character B had a neglectful childhood and that's why they're clingy.
Or, God forbid, you actually write characters that aren't mentally or emotionally fucked.

Not in our case. Genre fiction and especially SF&F is something that most people on Veeky Forums despise, thus having 10 threads instead of 1 would lead to huge amounts of shitposting. On a board like Veeky Forums that's not prone to spawn generals it's absolutely fine.

He's on the way to become one of the big names, an official translation will probably turn up sooner or later.

What this user saidNobody will want to read your novel because they want to read characters that are just like them. And what I mean by this is that they want to read a character has an idealized life, makes friends with no effort, the world revolves around them, everyone is giving them paise, They can do no wrong, they are always right.

Your novel is bound to fail if you keep writing the way you write.

52nd for Webnovels are novels too

>Dragonlance edition
>Everyone ignores it
Man how fast time flies, and changes. In 90s Dragonlance reigned supreme, 1 out of 10 nicknames were Raistling etc. Yet it faded into obscurity.

Sometimes I wish it remains as such. Yeah I would love to see a game of thrones like tv series and would also love to bitch about how they butchered the lore for it but, maybe its best left alone? Even though it was designed with corporate intentions I feel that dragonlance became more homely, while Forgotten Realms even though I love it also, started as homely but became corporate. Maybe making it popular - corporate again with tv series etc will be bad for it.

Forgive my hipsterish rant but It had a strong late 80s and 90s feeling and It should belong to its time. It was the definitive Romantic literary setting in Fantasy.

For those who want to read, don't be daunted by the long list, you can read a few and stop it there yet still enjoy the world of Krynn. Just read: Dragons of Autumn Twilight , Dragons of Winter Night , Dragons of Spring Dawning Which is the main triology. Avoid Dragons of Summer Flame for now, it is not the "4th book" per se. Then move on to the legends series Time of the Twins , War of the Twins and Test of the Twins. Those six books will be more than enough

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Hello /co/ /g/ /v/, what are you doing on lit?

The strain by del toro
Hull zero three
Metro 2033
Roadside picnic

>can't believe I forgot the name
That is why you use goodreads as a book info depo

So you found a way to incorporate your foodporn, flavoranon. But that sounds like part of the gunpowder junkie series (the god adam)

Aren't you the dude looking to make his characters an asian wise old man?

Would you say that someone that enjoyed Metro 2033 and it's sequels would enjoy Roadside Picnic?

Fuck off dragonlance user
No one wants that dated shit writing

>enjoyed Metro 2033 and it's sequels
Didn't read the sequels, but I went from picnic to 2033, so I assume the reverse is also possible.

I've been reading through a sword-and-sorcery sampler I found on Amazon, and (aside from the Fritz Lieber story I'd already read) so far my favorite story was the one about Jirel of Joiry.

Is there a recommended reading order for those stories?

There's not that many stories, just read them in the order they're published.

Halfway through The Sword of the Lictor and I'm really struggling to continue.
It's not the complexity of BotN's narrative structure I'm having trouble with, but rather the dullness of Wolfe's prose. It lacks the lurid excitement of his pulp precursors or the sensual lyricism of the best of literary fiction. Sure, it's interesting when Wolfe really stretches his imagination and does something far-out and inventive (eg. the encounter with the Alzabo), but otherwise it's drily utilitarian. I suppose some of the fault lies in Wolfe's choice of form, the book is narrated by a character who isn't exactly filled with the wonder of his predicament.
I understand that to fully comprehend BotN one must apply an exegetic reading, but that doesn't serve to make the narrative any more interesting and instead reduces it to some form of literary Rubik's cube. The numerous intertextual digressions throughout (Talos' play, the brown book's fairty-tales) are especially guilty of this and are honestly pretty boring.
It seems like in order to really appreciate stuff you have to buy into the literary game that Wolfe is playing with the reader, and I genuinely know if I can be assed to get of the bench and be one of his team players.

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>google it
>there's only six
Aw, that sucks.

I have not read them all but the last one is said to suck, if I remember correctly it's some kind of team up with a noir detective created by the authors' spouse.

Dorcas is also clearly hot as well as being quite a handful in the sack.

>some kind of team up with a noir detective created by the authors' spouse
I think it's a team up with the author's other character but her spouse helped write the particular story.

I don't have one. Recommend me some books where I might end up with one if I read them.

Childhood's End
The High Crusade
Too Like The Lightning

My favorite fantasy is Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, the Magicians trilogy, and ASOIAF.

Please recommend me some sci-fi I might like.

That's fair enough, Wolfe's prose is not everybody's cup of tea. I see what you're saying about the stories within stories. Those only became interesting to me upon the re-read. Talos' play especially, since you need the perspective of knowing the entire story before you really see the point of that.

Honestly on my first read of BotNS what kept me going was anticipation for the next "woah" moment (such as the garden of endless sleep and the averns, the underground cavern with man-apes, the library, or like you said the alzabo..) rather than his prose or the plot.

Quite an unusual experience, as typically with novels I'm drawn in by the narrative or even just the prose e.g. with Fitzgerald and Nabokov.

anything like this?
basically wacky space adventures?
read all of alan blacks stuff and i liked it. this particularly had a hitchhikers guide vibe to it.

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can also be wacky fantasy adventures. im not picky.

I've been very impressed with the characterization through the entire series. I think a lot of its length is due to that and they don't really cut anyone out.

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The Stainless Steel Rat. Read in order of release even though it's not in-universe chronological.

The first thing he does is literally drop a safe on a robot cop and it just gets wilder from there.

read that already. also read hard luck hank and waldo rabbit.
enjoyed them all pretty much. though i thought stainless steel rat was inconsistent in the narrative. enjoyable nonetheless.

Here you go user

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I picked up a copy of Dragonlance The Annotated Chronicles, but it kept putting me to sleep, so I never finished. Perhaps I need to get the normal version to keep in the zone without being tempted to read notes.

Anyone else really enjoy Dhamon Grimwulf's story arc?

I agree, most "high fantasy" (i.e. rpg type settings) characters were quite superhero like, Drizzt, Elminster et al. Dragonlance emphasized on the weaknesses the doubts the bad side of the "good" ones.
Sure it seems cliche now but back then I would say it was quite revolutionary
If you read the annotation you would realise that they were under "corporate" guidelines as I said above.

The entire novel was supposed to be a complimentary for the dragonlance ad&d modules and it shows. But after the first book the authors got more leeway due to its surprising success (even surpassing the module) and tthey had more freedom in the 2nd and 3rd novels, alongside the legens.
Not many people know that dragonlance is originally designed a 12 (iirc) module campaign that you can actually play. But as I said interestingly the novels shine. Which I attribute to the authors, Weiss over Hickman

The High Crusade. Small group of medieval christian crusaders wage intergalactic war with a large space empire.

I was gonna post this in a /critque/ thread but I figured i'd get better opinions from you lot as you're my target audience (stinky sci-fi fans)

I'm writing the hunger games but racist, give me some opinions on what I have down so far. If you find mistakes it's not edited yet and i'm also a brainlet so don't bully me or i'll go on a shooting spree

pastebin.com/xZhYeGAh

>The High Crusade
looks neato. thanks.

I actually liked that first trilogy. I felt it could have been reduced greatly but it grew on me. Then I read a synopsis of his continuation in his next trilogy and got disappointed that he 1) didn't really have any contribution to the greater story and 2) led a life full of negative unfortunate circumstances for no reason. Poor guy.

Yea, everybody has pros and flaws, and I love reading their thought processes.

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The most obvious problem with your prose is that it is the deepest shade of purple.
The whole piece is clunky and overwrought, ever paragraph is one needlessly wordy run on sentence. And amongst all those words not much is really happening, it's just a load of navel gazing.
In your attempt to write in an affected and unique voice much of what you've written barely even makes. Put away the thesaurus naturally, don't force it!
I'm not gonna comment on the plot because it's hard to even discern in that mess of a word salad you've served up.

yeah i'm pretty verbose
I try to emulate gene wolfe but it's preddy hard

Did you like any of it all?

Does the Malazan series have the most obnoxious fanbase?

Wolfe writes in a pretty unaffected voice, he isn't nearly as florid as /sffg/ seems to think he is.
Like I said, it's hard to discern what's going on since your writing is so over the top. Get to editing.
And use a fucking period or two holy shit.

Fine i'll use some dots ree
The overarching plot is that 1/3 of humanity colonised space, 1/3 regressed into africa tier primitive behaviour and 1/3 just stayed modern day first world

The plot of the book is 3 characters during a different period of time in the world

One woman lives before the world went to shit, the guy lives in the present in the third world and the other woman lives in space

Space people visit earth for a holiday, a mixture of going to the zoo and visiting your old shit neighborhood and in chapter 2 she is getting interviewed by the guy who lives in the first
world

Space girl has ulterior motives, the guy is documenting the world as it is now (he visits the primal people in the third chapter) and that's about all i've written

I hate the first chapter tbqh

Heinlein, Clarke or Asimov?

All three friendo

I'm gonna give you some more precise criticism which you can apply to the whole piece by looking at the first paragraph.
Immediately you claim your character is witnessing refracted light when I feel you mean reflected. Refracted implies the light is passing through the water which means it would only be visible if your character was under the water or if the water was especially clear.
You attempt to apply metaphor to the brook by anthropomorphising it, but I feel your metaphors are mixed. You mention the visual of light but then claim that this light is moved by the sound of brook murmuring. I don't really see how spoken sound effects the shifting of light, this makes no sense. Your character conceptualizes the whole thing as if it were a mouth and likens it to that of a TV celebrities teeth. Why? Why would they be thinking of that particular metaphor at that moment? It feels very forced. like your really searching for something to compare it too but it doesn't relate to the rest of your characters thought process.
There is also the obviously grammatical problem here too that this entire paragraph is one giant run on sentence.

I'm no Nabokov or Fitzgerald or whatever, but I feel I could rewrite this whole paragraph in one sentence:

'The curved and glittering brook called to mind the unnatural effervescence of TV celebrity smiles.'

Bam! Still not great since I don't see the point of the metaphor you're trying to make, but hopefully you can see what I'm getting at. Cut the purple prose shit and write naturally. You're not impressing anyone.

>typical elitist malazerg
>You either like it or it's ok that you don't get it.

I was going for the character seeing the water as if it was a celebrity as it's a famous brook (need to put this in the chapter) and it looks as if it knows it's famous, which makes her think back to when she felt like she was a superstar albeit in her little community because now she's just old and tormented by existentialist malaise like everyone else

I'll edit it and post it again later, hopefully you'll be around to give me your opinion again. I wrote most of it drunk hence the rambling but that's not an excuse obviously

If you want to make it actually like Africa, you should read some history and anthropology about Africa.

You should also establish where your character is, especially at the beginning of a story. They're beside a brook obviously, but where is the brook? Brook is specific and implies a pastoral scene, but it's equally as possible your character is in a forest as they are someone's backyard.

Pale Fire and BotNS are pretty similar, only in Pale Fire Kinbote's insanity shines in a different way.

I'm just making them generic grass skirt wearing savages except as they used to be 'normal' africans they are slightly more intelligent and use a more westernised form of voodoo. They hang pictures up of people they know or used to know in cracked frames nailed to trees if they wish do a ritual about the person and stuff like that
Will do
Gonna get some beers in and hope for inspiration :^)

>I'm basing my society on Africa!
>Except they don't actually resemble anything like actual Africans