/sffg/ - Science Fiction & Fantasy General

Weekend Edition
>what new sff are you reading for the weekend?
>what sff are you finishing?
>what you want 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
>imgoat.com/uploads/6d767d2f8e/21331.jpg
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:

Attached: elric-melnibone-1961-michael-moorcock-L-ehmowx.png (300x458, 308K)

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=Was4vsxLEng
archive.org/details/outaroundrigel20553gut
twitter.com/AnonBabble

rec me some scifi with weird spiritual shit

Attached: 1506007227651.jpg (931x782, 392K)

Second for Bakker

Attached: spurdohus.png (853x543, 48K)

Meh.

Attached: 220px-Macroscope(Anthony)[1].jpg (220x363, 27K)

>praise the Logos
but Kellhus has abandoned the Logos. It's the Consult that still holds value in it.

Anything with medieval feudal politics?

Is this accurate?

Attached: kuOkQ.png (1032x766, 60K)

No, no one has ever written fantasy focusing on that.

Are you sure

Positive. Now's your chance user. I bet there's a huge untapped market for this.

>love fantasy
>haven’t even attempted sc-fi because all technology baffles me
Am I missing out?

yes, sci fi that is actually technical is a minority anyway

like, actual well-researched medieval politics or something that kind of resembles it?
if the former, there aren't really any aside from like asoiaf, and even that isn't too accurate. go read the Accursed Kings or something.
if the latter, go to the fantasy section at B&N and pick something at random, chances are that it has what you're looking for. especially if you look in YA fantasy.

I'm still not convinced

Really! Good to know

have you read any of the sci fi fantasy shit? you would probably really enjoy that too and it seems like a good starting point

Alright, I heard the Trysmoon Saga was some cuck GRI shit with a solid milfu. Is this true? Goodreads and amazon rate it highly so I'm on alert for it not having the true GRI GRInd.

>GRI
>milf
If it's not mother-son incest someone dropped the ball.

I'm new to this, the fuck is GRI?

Probably haven’t, any recommendations?

Gay, Rape, and Incest.

I'm okay with all of those things in a story, but why are they grouped together? Is it because they'll all unnecessarily distract from the story with sex?

>unnecessarily

Any scifi or fantasy story that has all three is mysteriously guaranteed to be good. Any one of them in isolation is meaningless.

>Is this true?
Yes, milf pussy is the only good thing about it, by the way. It's not a complete disaster, the characters are well developed and the writing isn't bad, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone sane. You seem to like cuck fetish though, so you might like it.

What a strange arcane combonation

No one has figured out why this holds true, but it's a universal constant.

Strange, but sometimes the greatest truths are.

Attached: GRI approved.jpg (3000x3000, 2.58M)

Attached: barbed.jpg (244x366, 83K)

>there are no nice looking heinlein books in print

Attached: fatjak.jpg (747x754, 71K)

Re posting my question from the last thread, sorry if you frown upon that sort of thing.

Do any of you fine fellows know of any authors that have a character that is present or at least makes cameos or appearances in all of their books?
A la Hoid or Randall Flagg.
>
Who's Walter? Flagg? I haven't actually read too much King. I enjoyed The Stand and read that Flagg had made at least another appearance in The Dark Tower.
He was one of the better examples I could think of, I haven't really encountered this trope too often.

Walter is Flagg's real name. He only appears in the Stand, the Dark Tower, and Eyes of the Dragon. Even then, identity between his various incarnations is weird to say the least. His memories are pretty wonky and his abilities vary a lot depending on how ruined the world he's in is, and how much drugs King had done at the time.

Is The Fifth Season good?
>female protag
>n k jemisin
>hugo 2016
These are all red flags, but maybe...?

By the way, Good Intentions is shit, don't bother.

Oh that's interesting, should I stick to what I know of him in The Stand or read his other appearances? Any idea why his name is Walter?

He's good when he first shows up in the Dark Tower but he goes to shit as the series does. Eyes of the Dragon is alright.

>Any idea why his name is Walter?
Presumably because his parents named him that. hard as it is to believe, he was actually born a regular guy at one point, a very very long time ago. Although even measuring time in relation to his weird multiversal nonlinear existence is rough.

Attached: Walter_o'Dim.png (220x291, 114K)

Why is there such limited literary fantasy? And I don't mean magical realism. I'm talking high fantasy shit that's written like a real fucking prose writer.

Same reason most of any fiction has mediocre prose. Good prose is hard and most can't do it.

What the guy above said along with the obvious "Fantasy is for children, you should write a REAL grounded story."

And honestly it works far better in the form of short stories. Most people with the technical skill to write "realistic scifi" don't have the writing chops to pull off the narrative framework for anything longer.

Example, I read a novel a while back, recommended by the hard SF writing site Atomic Rocket, about "space pirates" hijacking remote shipments of Helium 3 from the moon. The best summary I could give it would be a shoddy knockoff of Neal Stephanson's Reamde written by a less eloquent nerd

>By the way, Good Intentions is shit, don't bother.

the succubus harem erotica wasn't good?! who could have guessed at this shocking turn of events!

Perhaps I'll pick up Eyes of The Dragon. Not too sure about The Dark Tower though, it might be worth a read once I've read everything else I want.
And I guess asking why his name is Walter was kind of a stupid question, it never occurred to me that he would have had a human upbringing. In The Stand he felt more like a force than an actual person, like a personification of the bad shit that's happening.

Honestly, even though it's not a complete story, i recommend reading the Gunslinger and just ignoring the rest of the Dark Tower. It's a very good short story with a unique atmosphere. It's totally unlike anything else Stephen King has ever written.

>it never occurred to me that he would have had a human upbringing. In The Stand he felt more like a force than an actual person, like a personification of the bad shit that's happening.
Well he is like that, now. So I can see why you wouldn't think of him as having ever being born and growing up. Especially when he himself doesn't really remember it.

tl;dr because it's mainly written by and for fans who are predisposed to like anything with dragons or space ships in it.

See also: the furor that results when video games are actually subjected to literary criticism and found lacking.

There needs to be more gunslinger protags in Heroic Fantasy.

Attached: The Jerusalem Man.jpg (580x800, 607K)

>See also: the furor that results when video games are actually subjected to literary criticism and found lacking.
Only soy boy fake nerds actually get pissed off at that. Actual nerds that aren't obsessed with being part of "nerd culture" recognize that almost every video game writing is pure shit by any standards outside the game industry. Even the big exemplars of vidya story telling have only ever risen too is okay to pretty good by the standards of other media, and we all know it.

>tl;dr because it's mainly written by and for fans who are predisposed to like anything with dragons or space ships in it.
Is this really true? I love fantasy but hate most fantasy books. I drop almost everything I've tried a few chapters in because of the utter lack of creativity and lifeless writing. I maybe complete 1 in 10 of the fantasy books I start, and that's being generous.

Any fantasy novels where the protagonist is a healer/doctor of some sort? Not necessarily an occupation.

I liked it, but I had a major nitpick with what I call YA Proper Noun Syndrome. The Guardians, The Fulcrum, The...

>pretty good by the standards of other media
Shadow of the Colossus wants a word with you.

>Is this really true?
No. The quality of prose dropped off with the rise of "realistic" fantasy (aka nihilistic fantasy). I guess the writers figured, "well if I'm writing dreary crap my prose should be dreary crap as well."

I was actually hoping you'd say something like that, can't stand committing to a series if I know the ending will be bad.

Basically they all tried to emulate GRRM, who has very average prose, but they lacked the strengths that make up for it in his writing.

A perfect example of what I'm talking about. Shadow of the Colossus is some of the absolute peak of presentation in vidya. And it's just an unusually well done Hollywood monster blockbuster that actually had a scrap of pathos.

it's not just the ending. The last three books of Dark Tower are mostly bad, and pretty much none of the series resembles the first book even when it's decent. Ironically the only good part of the final book that feels like it fits with the first story is the coda, which King explicitly instructs you not to read.

>the succubus harem erotica wasn't good?! who could have guessed at this shocking turn of events!
To a hipster movie critic, every comic book looks like juvenile shit.

Thanks for all of the advice user, I really appreciate it!

Compared to other harem erotica the Good Intentions series is probably the best of the lot. The writing is decent, it actually has a plot and characters, and the sex isn't the same scenes repeated over & over again. It's also funny as hell.

>WHADAYA MEAN CALL OF DUTY MODERN WARFARE 2 ISN'T ART?!?!

>I guess the writers figured, "well if I'm writing dreary crap my prose should be dreary crap as well."
it's not that, it's just the newer generation of fantasy writers are fucking awful and should not have been allowed to be published (but they were because their books sold well after the popularity of GRRM)

It literally is art, retard. The quality is irrelevant to that.

This. Art is no measure of value. There's tons and tons of shitty worthless art. Like almost every videogame.

I guess the main guy in the stormlight archive? He was a doctors son and knows most things about medicine.

Webnovels are novels too

worm is pretty dope

Anything can be art, /sffg/, thats why one day even your novel will get published!

I just read "I’m Sorry For Being Born In This World!"
It was pretty good, I'd recommend it.

The cogweaver trilogy

For someone ready to jump into the world of Tolkien how important is it to read The Silmarillion and The Children of Húrin?

Attached: 2031655455.jpg (792x1188, 104K)

Library at al-rassan

I'm wondering, is there fantasy set in a WW1 type era?

Not at all important. Read the Hobbit or LOTR first, always. Only read the Silmarillion and similar materials if you end up really loving it and wanting to immerse yourself in the mythology.

Feanor did nothing wrong.

This is impossible to read. I was excited for the annotations, but there's one every 3 words.

Attached: 9780393064506.jpg (372x400, 39K)

Recommend me some sci-fi akin to the kino opening of Man of Steel.

This. The Teleri had it coming.

So, I know it just started but any theories on who the biggest bad of Warden is going to be?

at the moment, the options look like
>Teacher
>Amy
>Marquise
>Tattletale
>Valkyre
>Nilbolg
>Whoever's in charge of Earth Dalet

Teacher and Dalet look like the largest in terms of scope but Amy and Valkyre are the most dangerous individually

Given that Valkyre kind of had a redemption arc while Amy's more unstable, my money's on the latter

not good ones though

There are good ones.
Most novels aren't good novels either.

Which Discworld should I read next?

Attached: reading order status.jpg (1000x1795, 755K)

Mort, and then the rest of the Death novels. Then the remaining Witches novels or The Amazing Maurice.
After those there's two novels missing from your chart, but I'd read the Tiffany Aching books before those.

Or you can just stare at Nanny Ogg's great big tits:
youtube.com/watch?v=Was4vsxLEng

Attached: Comfy comfort literature.jpg (1141x2048, 504K)

>when you fuck up so bad your sons literally kill themselves recovering your precious gems and you doom your entire race to millennia of suffering and endless war as a result of your wrath
But hey, the 4 living Noldor at the end of the 3rd age can finally rest easy knowing the last of Morgoth's minions had finally been defeated.

The Silmarillion isn't really a novel, it's a compendium of elf lore written in the style reminiscent of the Eddas or even the Bible, a collection of myths, legends, and histories. As an introduction to Tolkien it is very obtuse, I wouldn't recommend it unless you have already read the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, it's very much a work for people enamored of Middle Earth's lore and a hunger for more.

Children of Hurin has more of an actual narrative to it by comparison, but being one of those stories from the Silmarillion it's told in the style of an old epic and not in the style of a modern novel so much, so while it's very good it's probably not the best introduction to Tolkien.

>tfw they found asbestos and I get to spend tomorrow shifting an entire store worth of books

The Warlord Chronicles comes to mind, but honestly you might be better off reading more medieval historical fiction than fantasy.

Yes it's alright, but I would add some of his earlier work like Red Planet and Citizen of the Galaxy which are both standalone books.

If you really want an annotated edition then go with Norton Critical m8.

Attached: 71xnRlEX56L.jpg (800x1308, 193K)

Strongly disagree.
The main character is incredibly annoying with his "nicest person in the world" act. The girls aren't super interesting. And to top it off, it's urban fantasy.

>BAEN

Are there any SF books like this album art?

Attached: a0066559196_10.jpg (1200x1200, 372K)

thanks user

Attached: trumps up.jpg (630x453, 43K)

It's not fantasy but you should check out Umberto Eco's novels, especially The Name of the Rose and Baudalino.

teacher would be incredibly lame as ward's main antagonist

How about the short story "Out Around Rigel"?
archive.org/details/outaroundrigel20553gut

Old school Heinlein had kino book covers

Attached: 00003907.jpg (757x1103, 468K)

Is it one of the ones where the guy is a virgin but for some reason is good at sex ala Kvothe?

I like it.

Do you listen to music while you read scifi?

'What in Heaven's name are you?' asked Shannow, rising to his feet and keeping the gun trained on the man.
'I am a man.'
'But you are black. Are you of the Devil?'

I don't think it's the same, i mean he IS "good at sex despite being a virgin" but it's a supernatural excuse instead of "he's just that good"

>new Undying Mercenaries
Fuck yea, faggots.

The scariest book I ever read is Ubik, moreso than Barker, Lovecraft, Ligotti or any other straight up horror writer. There's just this existential hammer coming down on everyone, in a kind of slow godlike motion, that will not miss because missing is not an option. It's fucking terrifying. It's also quite funny.

I can't name you one genuinely great fantasy book. I'm not saying it can't be done, it just hasn't. I believe this is because fantasy writers rarely concern themselves with anything other than worldbuilding, making the characters, ideas, motifs and themes take the back seat. Also, the sex is not nearly weird enough, or it's weird in all the wrong ways.

>inb4 LotR
It suffers from the exact problems as the ones stated above, but makes up in beautiful prose and still looms large over the genre. The mythweaving and folklore never drew me in tebehe, but I get why people like them. I for one would rather read Beowulf or Kalevala.

Maybe if you took all the original Howard Conan stories and compiled them into one book, similar to The Foundation, you could call that The Magnum Opus of fantasy. Other than that, you're left with Dracula, Arthur Gordon Pym and other things I can't even be bothered to try and remember. Scifi writers trying their hand at fantasy always turn up lower quality work than their usual. That goes for gurm too.