Old SFF Covers Edition
>What old sff book you read recently based on the cover?
>How was it?
>Would you recommend?
FANTASY
Selected:
>imgoat.com
General:
>imgoat.com
Flowchart:
>imgoat.com
SCIENCE FICTION
Selected:
>imgoat.com
>imgoat.com
General:
>imgoat.com
>imgoat.com
NPR's Top 100 Science Fiction & Fantasy Books:
>imgoat.com
SF&F author listing with ratings and summaries:
>greatsfandf.com
Previous Threads:
first for sanderfag a hack
Have you started reading yet? I have, I've never read Clarke before and had no idea what to expect but was pleasantly surprised.
Downloads: b-ok.org
I read it two years ago. Pretty amazing, I recommend it.
Hardly sci-fi, though. At it's core it's almost a religious text.
>fucks sake
>no way back
>the saliva tree
>the monkeys thought 'twas all in fun
Are these titles for real?
Here's a cover for you
I asked this question once before but didn't get any good answers so I'll try again at the beginning of the thread.
_____
Why is almost all high fantasy so low-concept? Every blurb I read sounds like:
>in the land of Clichéa, a guy sets off on a quest to do a thing
or
>the above but with DINOSAURS
or
>the above but it's a 2meta4u parody deconstruction
They all sound like the same thing. Don't get me wrong - I'm sure many of them are great and unique books that are worth reading; but all they have going for them is someone's recommendation - "check it out, it's high fantasy and good". Considering how many of them are also part of doorstopper n-logies, I rarely take the risk to try them.
Sci-fi and low fantasy doesn't seem to have this problem, I usually know whether or not a premise interests me from the start.
non-cliches dont sell.
If you are worried about writing a hit instead of a classic you probably shouldn't be writing at all.
It's because of genre fiction. Most fantasy authors are idea wise bankrupt hacks writing to fit a mold. Like imply, publishers and readers are also to blame because the books sell like hot shit.
If you think you're choosing between a hit and a classic you should probably just try to get some words on the page.
True.
When I'm reading sci-fi or fantasy I always self-insert some made up character who's related to a main character in one way or another, for myself.
I'm not sure why I do it, is it autism?
>Why is almost all high fantasy so low-concept
May I suggest the Road to High Saffron ?
I sometimes do that. Other media as well.
Somebody with autism wouldn’t be good at doing so.
Yeah, but why doesn't that happen as much in sci-fi?
To contrast, I'll write short summaries of Goodreads blurbs of the first four books in the OP's selected recommendations charts. I have not read any of these. I'll try to be fair and unbiased. I omitted Shadow of the Torturer because it's sci-fan, I hope that's not unfair.
fantasy:
>an Earth teenager is transported into a magical world with 7 levels of reality. he is transformed into a man but is still a boy on the inside. he must go on an epic quest to find a sword from a dragon; on his way he will encounter elves, wizards and dragons, as well as other challenges and dangers.
>the capital city of a small country is at the confluence of two rivers. one of the rivers flows from Fairyland, and some centuries earlier the people of the country liked fairies and ate fairy fruit. but then the benevolent Duke was banished and fairies and fairy fruit were banned. now, the mayor of the city's sun is rumored to have eaten fairy fruit, so the mayor must uncover the city's old mysteries to save him.
>the greatest sorcerer in the land was called Sparrowhawk in his reckless youth. in his lust for power and knowledge, he unleashed an evil upon the world. this is the story of how he mastered spells, tamed a dragon and crossed death's threshold to restore the balance.
>the first year in the life of the heir to an ancient castle. doom and foreboding, sterile rituals. the villain exploits the aristocracy for his own profit.
sci-fi:
>when a man goes to a planet to study its ocean, he finds a painful repressed memory embodied in a phantom that looks like his long-dead lover. others on the planet are haunted by similar manifestations of their repressed memories. is the ocean creating these creatures and why? the scientists must look inward.
>in a recovering post-apocalyptic world, a group of Christian monks rediscover old world science through the venerated writings of a man they consider a saint
>an epic poem about a luxury space cruiser fleeing an uninhabitable Earth. due to a malfunction they can't land on Mars but instead are knocked into deep space.
>in post-apocalyptic Russia, a man transcribes old books and presents them as the words of the new leader. he is glad that he isn't a hideous mutant forced to pull a harness. he's glad he has mice to eat and can escape the agents who repress free-thinking. a legendary beast screeches in the faraway wilderness.
Now let me be super clear: I am NOT saying that the last four are better books than the first four - again, have not read any of them. But they SOUND a great deal more interesting, at least to me; I want to read them simply based on the premise.
Seems like high fantasy should be more like this, given that anything is possible with magic and a constructed world. So why isn't it?
Isn't that set on Earth?
sci-fi has more cliches that are viable to write about. thus writers have more of a leeway to write about different topics.
its not that fantasy or sci-fi writers cant write whatever they want. its just that not everything sells. a lot of inde writers have carved out their own niche but really big writers cant fall back on that. they need to sell as many copies as possible.
I do that too, or self-insert as one of the main characters and play out what I would have done in my head. Helps me come with ideas.
>in post-apocalyptic Russia, a man transcribes old books and presents them as the words of the new leader. he is glad that he isn't a hideous mutant forced to pull a harness. he's glad he has mice to eat and can escape the agents who repress free-thinking. a legendary beast screeches in the faraway wilderness.
sounds like modern russia desu.
(again,) I haven't read it, but I think that's kind of the point.
Sometimes I pretend one of the characters is in the passenger seat of my car and I talk to them about things (mentally).
I have a few scifi books I want to read. Which should I read first? I have:
>The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke
>The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
>A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller
What's the book called?
Arwen best girl.
>Why is almost all high fantasy so low-concept?
Does Bakker count as high fantasy?
Leibowitz
>Yeah, but why doesn't that happen as much in sci-fi?
Sci-fi have always been a more idea based genre while fantasy originated in myths and folklore turned adventure and S&S.
if you like this this kind of stories this one was good:
berkem al atomi marauder
getdefault.com
nerohelp.info
don`t know about it in English version but in Russian it was good, and author seems to know what he is writing
This one went for over a million in 2016
>Why is almost all high fantasy so low-concept?
Because "high-concept" doesn't make a story good or characters interesting.
I've been going over the Codex Alera series.
Picture Roman legionaries with the power to control elemental spirits (furies). There's also about five different races, including the human race (Alerans).
The main character is a boy who can't use any furies and we watch as he gradually goes from nobody to legend.
It's very war heavy too. I've read three of the books and all of them involve a war against some other race.
Definitely a fantasy series I can recommend. Does anyone else have any fantasy series they'd recommend to me?
P.S.: I've already gone through A Song of Ice And Fire.
>I've been going over the Codex Alera series.
>check reviews on goodreads
>all high ratings come from women who post nothing but gifs
Not for me I think.
I don't know about it's fan base but I definitely enjoyed the hell out of it. If you got any questions about the series, feel free to ask.
how much gay, rape, and incest is there in this series, my man?
There is some rape in the first book. I only read the first three though so I don't know if it's gonna be a thing.
There are some sex scenes here and there. There's also some interracial sex with Tavi and Kitai.
no gay sex or incest, though? i don't know if it'll keep my attention.
Wow that sounds terrible.
>romans + pokemon
Not my cup of tea
I'm glad I stuck with Ship Of Magic
it took a damn while to have a plot besides family disputes but starting with the slaver incident the story really picks up.
at this point, I might potentially regret putting it down when I'm done to read some of this month's new releases
Butcher pretty much wrote this series as a joke. Someone challenged him to write something with two wildly different concepts: lost Roman legion and Pokemon and this is what he came up with.
Romans and Pokemon were the two topics that Jim Butcher was told to make a series based off of. IT works pretty well. The "pokemon" aspect is pretty light. It feels more like Avatar: The Last Airbender than Pokemon. With Metal and Wood added to the elements that the Alerans can control.
That seems to be his thing. He wrote the first dresden story for a writing class as an example of what not to do but it turned out good by accident
>tfw you want to read fantasy with gunslingers (like the backstory to The Dark Tower with King Arthur and his knights using six shooters) but there's nothing really like that
Good. I don't want you joining the fanclub.
>With Metal and Wood added to the elements that the Alerans can control.
So basically the Chinese classical elements (although they didn't consider air to be an element). Kind of funny how the story based around old western civilizations uses an eastern system of metaphysics while the one based around asian civilizations uses a western one.
Why do we never get phlogiston, aether, or quintessence in our fantasy elemental metaphysics?
Read Sufficiently Advanced Magic.
I literally haven't even read the plot summary but Powder Mage sounds like it probably has guns.
Just finished the Court of Broken Knives and it was good. I was surprised because the name was super generic and it was written by a womeme. Any other slightly less well-known books that are good? I personally recommend The Traitor Baru Cormorant.
also anyone have good spy novel reccs? I read A Single Spy a while ago and loved it, especially the first 2/3rds of it. Lecarre isnt gritty enough for me and idk any other spy authors.
you are definitely not alone.
You get tired of Tavi Alwaysright pretty fucking quickly. The only saving grace of that entire series was that hermit-y swordsman. wew dat powerlevel
Pic related came today. Paid eight extra bucks for this edition because of the cover, and the fuckers put a sticker on it. Can't wait to read it, though.
Saw Annihilation today. Recommend some books that are like it -- spooky/strange 'zones' with weird happenings (yes I know about the Southern Reach trilogy already)
the library at mount char
As good as it is, it’s time you read something else, friend.
library at mount char user, do you think i will outlast you on this board or you will outlast me?
Indiana... let it go
I just finished Logan’s Run in two sittings. Was pretty short and predictable. Like a PKD novel without the flair. Why did I feel like I needed to read this book? What part of consumerism culture subconsciously told me this was an important book?
Well, yah gotta read it before yah gets too old eh?
Do any of you listen to anything while reading? If so, what?
I enjoy asmr videos, the "white noise" effect helps me focus when reading, painting, writing or studying.
>stickers on your cover
M8, I feel your pain.
I listen to Audio Books. Works well with a busy schedule and a car.
roadside picnic
I'm vaguely familiar with a old Lets Play of a game that was made based on the books. Used a overly complicated "3D Jagged Alliance" style game engine IIRC and had been fully translated to English but was never released in English officially because the final release got leaked and the project was canceled, but the LP'er got a "unofficial" copy of it that had been released on a demo disc for a Polish gaming magazine. Quite strange overall.
I thought it was hilarious that it was basically the typical "intensely paranoid John Birch tinfoil rantings about the coming UN invasion of America" but in Russia and the protagonist/author is some Muslim guy from the Urals IIRC.
Okays so for gunpowder fantasy this is what I know of:
Powder Mage by Brian McClellan is the big one. Fantasy kingdom has a revolution and guillotines the nobility, most of the main characters can use certain types of magic by consuming gunpowder.
The Thousand Names by Django Wexler. Cuts much closer to historic Napoleonic events and is more in the style of the Sharpe novels.
Instrumentalities of the Night by Glen Cook: Early Modern period, around 1300 or so, gunpowder warfare is just starting to become practical and Fantasy Europe is facing a apocalypse.
The second Mistborn series has guns in it, but it's more in the style of those old Shadow pulp vigilante books from the 30s by Walter B. Gibson.
Temeraire by Naomi Novik. It's literally the Napoleonic War but with dragons.
Other ones I know of and have on my list but haven't read:
Guns of the Dawn by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
Iron Elves series by Chris Evans.
Cold Iron by Stina Leicht.
Wolfhound Century by Peter Higgins. Cop in industrialized Fantasy Russia gets called to Not-Moscow to hunt down a terrorist but gets swept up into much stranger things.
I know about Powder Mage, but I'm hankering to read something closer to what I described which doesn't seem to exist.
Are there any male writers who don't spend an inordinate amount of time describing how beautiful some female character is? Reading Gene Wolfe and he definitely has a problem with this.
I used to but the app I used to listen to youtube videos while reading doesn't let me use another app simultaneously anymore for some reason
while I did it was mostly pretty embarassing shit. soundtrack music, anime openings, Homestuck flashes
honestly? high fantasy is primarily written by two groups of people
>bad writers who want to emulate tolkein but have no creativity
>greedy writers who realize generic european fantasy is a bottomless dead horse colon full of gold ingots
There are high-concept high fantasy writers out there but there aren't a lot of them, and most of the ones I see are YA
it doesn't make bad writing better but leaning on tired cliches again and again and again makes passable writing worse and it's a warning sign that the author either lacks creativity or is just phoning it in
one of the purposes of fantasy over any other genre is that it's meant to be a departure from the usual. If you do the same unusual thing over and over again it's not unusual anymore and you might as well not be writing fantasy
butcher only spends like a page and a half describing how hot a half-incinerated woman tribbing her disemboweled cousin to death is
No, you faggot.
Here's one of the many reasons why, when straight non soy-boy males find a woman attractive, like wide eyed fuckable the descriptions and effect it has on them isn't inordinate.
In this instance they show by telling, revealing a large amount of information by describing the heroes reactions, thoughts and observations.
all you're telling me is that you jizz your pants on sight
Beats shitting them instead, you nerd.
I can actually FEEL your virginity through my computer screen.
noisli, lets you stack multiple white noise elements together
Well they made a movie out of it, so it has slightly more fame than books of similar quality.
>autist doesn't understand social ques
Jesus christ, user.
whoa calm down geek, go wash ur plastic elf ears off before u get heated up again and ya mom bans u from larpin in the basement again faggot
Is Altered Carbonbon any good? How much GRI is involved?
The whole trilogy is pulpy goodness.
Butcher? What? Urobuchi?
Underrated post
>supple cunny gilf strikes again
Marathoned the first 10 pages and it reads like hot shit
>Read Sufficiently Advanced Magic.
>goodreads
>Popular Answered Questions
>Any gay romance or relationship in this book?
>2 Likes · Like 2 Months Ago See All 2 Answers
>Andrew
>This answer contains spoilers… [Yes, there is a male/male relationship between two of the main members of the cast.
Fuck off. Blurb sounds like the author watched that dungeon crawler anime with the headless genie. Magi or w/e the fuck it was named. The guys in that anime looked pretty faggot too.
The G in GRI is not there for no reason bub.
can anyone recommend fantasy books that revolve around mercenary groups? I'm considering writing a story about one, but I don't want to write it all out and then realize I ripped off someone else that I never heard of
rings of saturn has a pretty good cover
1. Is discworld good
2. where do you recommend I start?
think you're in the wrong place homie
its probably a shit book but gay is one of the pillars of /sffg/
>The author clearly ripped off Magi
I'm the guy that recommended it and i wholeheartedly agree. However it's so blatant in places that I'm convinced that he didn't conciously do this.
I disagree, he knew what he was doing and I'm honestly impressed with his ability to fill a market niche.
>Marathoned the first 10 pages and it reads like hot shit
>marathoned
I want /tv/ to leave
I just marathoned the first 3 lines of this post and I was impressed with the very robust prose.
>zack Snyder
>copied frank miller's and Moore's picture books
>can't even copy them right
LOL
Black Company
You certainly are vocal sure. Hopefully noone decides to spam RIP (Ponies) for the next three years.
Thanks based snyder