/sffg/ - Science Fiction and Fantasy General

>Why the fuck would I want to read something that is as close to the crusades, just with fae creatures and greek deity names thrown in.
Because reading for inhuman unrelated to human experience themes are boring.

Left Hand of Darkness is amazing.

"Old way" is:
-magic that isn't explained (not talking deep Sanderson lore shit, I'm talk "i ain't got to explain shit" shit)
-focuses on adventure
-people are the magic, you show how the smallest person can make the difference for humanity
-it's a fucking Knights book, no toilets, and they are just discovering gun powder during the novel
-the GRI i was promised is non existent, even though I'm halfway through the novel(unless you call Michael's cunny and the Drover's cunny GRI.. and those happened behind the scenes)

I didn't find it amazing, but it was certainly a worthwhile read.

>Old way
>magic that isn't explained (not talking deep Sanderson lore shit, I'm talk "i ain't got to explain shit" shit)

You mean "magic isn't explained in a way that a retarded 9 year old would understand", right? because otherwise your wrong.

>Lem writes a whole essay about how PKD is one of the only SF writers he respects
>Dick thought "Stanislaw Lem" was a pseudonym used by dozens of ghostwriters as part of a Soviet conspiracy
Feels bad man

To be fair, by that time Dick was going mental so anything he said should be taken with a grain of salt.

Anyone read this?
goodreads.com/book/show/22859850-dark-intelligence

I need a break from fantasy and want some space opera type sci-fi to read. This seems pretty good to me.

Dick was an interesting read only because he was mental, interestingly enough.
I've read 8 of his novels, and he's sadly been getting more and more predictable and 'of the same' with each novel. Not sure if I should read any more of him.
Maybe I've just grown out of him.

hello plebo

Hello woman.

Did you read Hyperion? Because if you haven't, that's the best space opera out there, with maybe Book of the Long Sun which is closer to game of thrones in space by a competent writer without cheap tricks.

We don't have women here.
But you should read Theresa of Avila and Edith Stein.

I haven't read those, but I want something new and set in space as far away from a fantasy type setting as possible.

Oh, forgot, also Golden Age by John C Wright.

Ranking and descriptions
Hyperion- 6 (I think) characters with specific backgrounds converge to a pilgrimage in the end of which is a Shrike, some spooky being which may or may not fulfill their wishes. Read the first two books. A ride for the imagination with strong characterisation, but lackluster in how it all unveils. A good read, especially if you like Keats.
Golden Age is space libertarians with plot twists and insane tech. Well done, but also weak 3rd book. But has the most space in it.
Book of the Long Sun is the second series set in the Solar Cycle, but barely related to the first. Would recommend only if you like Wolfe to get to Book of the Short Sun. It's quite a drag at times, but very intelligent.

>game of thrones in space by a competent writer without cheap tricks.

I'm sold. Beginning reading right now.

It's slow, the reason I make the comparison is that there are at least 15 major, important characters all of whom play a significant role in the plot which serves as Wolfe's exploration of his own prior works and continues with the Thomist admiration for ordination of the universe.
Don't expect something exciting, the first 600 pages cover like 2 days and it grows in scale massively later on.
Read Fifth Head of Cerberus (70 pages, can be found in Best of Gene Wolfe) and if you like what you read give it a go.

It's nothing like GoT, you got baited.

It has a large plot with a lot of characters, lots of politics and a looming mystery.
There are a lot of elements that are similar, and I made myself clearer

Obivously not the book for you. No one forced you to read this you know.

You're like those people who complain that they didnt like james joyce because they "read books for a story".
It's so whiny and just proves you only wanna complain about shit fuckj

But Joyce has a very nice story, what do they complain about?

>your

Who is the retard who complained that Earthsea had a strange language which was forcing ye old English?
Because this is really straightforward (in a good way).

>Rothfuss ripped off Le Guin's magic
I can loathe the disgusting fuck even more now, glad I picked it up.

How does one get into writing this genre? I'd be more interested in writing like Lem than Orson Scott Card.

>Supposed to have 16 metals because muh 16
>Instead become 23

Bravo sanderson

>-magic that isn't explained (not talking deep Sanderson lore shit, I'm talk "i ain't got to explain shit" shit)
You mean magic is mysterious rather than over-explained? Because even in Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, which is one of the lightest on magical explanation I've found, and which gets shit on by dino-user in this thread, magic is explained insofar as the characters understand it. In the story when the Gray Mouser is introduced, the magic he uses is explained at least in broad strokes, for example.

Simak has nice ideas and, as I recall, incredibly sincere prose. He feels like a more educated Bradbury.

I've always wondered why the publishing industry is so lax towards plagiarism, It's amazing how liberal the definition of plagiarism has become too; popular authors sometimes even brag about it!

what is a fantasy book about an adventure of people travelling like in lotr? not like asoiaf where its politics and wars

by travelling I mean going from a to b like in the hobbit or fellowship of the ring

It's nothing like GOT with its crude, awful prose which changes POVs every five minutes nor is it full of incest subtext.

Although I hate literary fiction and usually avoids 'dinosaur fiction' except for the really nice ones (I'm not that memer who openly shits on everything though) Hyperion's prose was just magnificent. It was exactly the right number of parts lyrical to convey both the worldbuilding, characterisation and plot without feeling too beige or too purple. I greatly enjoyed how the author did not explicitly spell out every phenomenon but left enough detail to synthesise an explanation. A thorougly enjoyable read.

and with all the marvels between a and b of course

Veeky Forums is a pretty slow board friendo, let your question sit for an hour or so

I'm trying to find a book I started reading but never finished ages ago. The only thing I remember about it was that it was a fantasy setting, and the main character receives a grievous head injury at the start (I think they get thrown off a cliff?), some monk-surgeon rescues them and uses some gold coins to make a metal plate for their skull and goes "if you live you owe me the coins, if not it doesn't matter."

I did and nobody responded
(not him)

Probably means no one was interested. Happens to me too.

Link it again this thread usually has a flamewar or two going on and everything else's a blur

Spent 7 hours at bookstore today. Bought 400 SFF. Exhausted.

I honestly can't think of anything more like that.
Le Guin a shit.

I'm sorry, user.

I am trying to write one but I've heard Belgariad is like that. I've also heard Belgariad is terrible.

>I am trying to write one
Neat. What does your setting look like?

Reading The Worm Ourobouros atm. If this isn't essential Dinosaurcore I don't know what is. Not even Tolkien comes close to this level of archaism

>essential Dinocore
Eddison, Hodgson
>extreme Dinocore
Dunsany, MacDonald
>exalted Dinocore
William Morris

Incredibly big planet with human civilizations rising, gaining modern+ tech levels, and falling without generally knowing about each other; landforms are huge, weather is huge, all kinds of strange and magical creatures keep vast swathes of territory generally deadly for humans; most societies assume the ocean is a myth. I'm trying to create fantasy for a modern audience that does what fantasy did for a pre-modern audience, to recreate the feeling of not knowing for sure what was over the next hill, knowing there's a chance someone you've never heard of like the Cimbri will cross the Alps and burn your civilization to the ground.

I know that's been a theme of SF since Wells, but there's something less visceral about space, something harder to pick up intuitively. I'm trying to make a world we couldn't explore, just like the Romans couldn't really have explored Earth. Imagine if Lewis and Clark had reached the Pacific, but on the other side of the Pacific there was another America to explore, how long it would have taken us to get there and colonize it.

Why would someone buy a book when you could just as easily, if not more easily, download an ebook for free

Why would someone download an ebook when you could just as easily, if not more easily, buy a book?

I get a lot more reading done with physical books.

>it's easier to buy a book

>Go to bookstore
>Purchase book
>Go back home

meawhile
>click a few buttons on a computer at home

Why would someone buy a book when you could just as easily, if not more easily, hire a skald?

I get a lot more reading done with oral sagas.

Anything else like this?

I especially liked the whole "skeleton crew on an ancient, decrepit ship that's taken on a life of its own so much that the crew is afraid to go on certain decks" thing it had going on.

Sounds great. I'm not so sure about the tech though, I don't think post-industrialization phantasies has ever worked for me. The attempt at recapturing the sense of wonder and the unknown that was ever so present until recently in the human experience is admirable though. Sounds perfectly set up for a story about someone undertaking a long and perilous journey through ancient lands and undiscovered places. I'd love to read it if you ever finish it, especially if you are influenced by the great masters of Dinocore.

I'm working on it, but writing is hard. I wish it wasn't.

Why would you buy that many books at once.

You plebs and your audiobooks :3

They were cheap?

You know amazon exists right?

Does amazon deliver to your house in 5 seconds after you purchase?

A fraction of a second, actually, unless you prefer your books on bundles of scrolls or stone tablets or something.

Oh cool tell me how amazon delivery breaks the speed of light then

If you live in a decent sized city you can get it on a few hours

They're working on cutting that down to 30 minutes with amazon air

Maybe it's because i'm not from Clapistan, but 400 books at, at least, 1 buck each(and up), doesn't really seem cheap to me.

We learned how to keep the book and throw away the paper, nerd.

Dude probably got them for a dollar a bag or something like that.

Also this is all assuming you can even find the pdf immediately when it can take a good hour or two for obscure stuff if you find it at all. #bookz exists of course but they have a queue system in place and that can get kinda long

Any brothas writing fantasy?

If it was easy it would not be a task worth undertaking.

The Dark Tower by Steven King

If the main character is female it might be Best Served Cold

400? What the fuck?

Yeah, 10 for a dollar.

>tfw want to write fantasy but I know anything I do write will at best result in shitty fan-fiction tier work.

I like the idea of it being centred around some magic item, and the story is from the perspective of the person holding that magic item. Set in a world where magic items are really common but usually too dangerous for normal people to use.

But it'd just end up being seen as a shitty Lord of the Rings knock off because it's the king of powerful artifacts controlling people.

Absolutely.
>tfw I want fantasy that's not lolmagic and not a cut-and-dried magic system, so I study old alchemy books and they're really boring

I really want to write a fantasy novel with the technology of the late 19th/early 20th century. Men and orcs going at it with bolt actions and what not.

Those are excuses. Either sit down and do it or stop talking about it. There's no loss to doing it, even if it's crap you'll learn a lot and feel good about having achieved something. But if you're a sissy and won't try, don't even pretend like you're considering it.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcanum:_Of_Steamworks_and_Magick_Obscura
Like this?

Yea I suppose so. Spoiler alert the elves stab the orcs in the back in the war and cause them to go full nationalist mode in which they genocide elves and eastern men en masse in an attempt to gain more living space and free themselves from international capitalism but are ultimately crushed by the forces of men who's rival ideologies have both been subverted by said elves in order to stamp out the spirit and will or the orcs once and for all.

No, I'm planning to do so later when I have finished the two science fiction stories I'm currently writing.

You got it wrong, gnomes are the kikes. Orcs are negroes and elves are germanics and italians. Humans are obviously anglos.

Those elves will accept multiculti and they'll fucking like it.

No, let's just put the gnomes in the oven instead.

Reinstalling. Thanks, so much for finishing one of my stories.

But then they'll get their own gnome-state out of it at the expense of the orcs and be able to operate behind the scenes freely without fear of criticism because >oy remember the gnomes

Yes, a novel where Oberon and the court of Faerie fled a powerful being grown weary of their mischief through space and time to a distant world that is in the process of reincarnating from a realm of animals to a realm of mankind. They found a band of humans that found their way there from classical Japan, and Oberon set himself up as Emperor, hoping that by their disguise they might hide themselves from their creditors.

The heroine is a shrine maiden placed in a fake family sent to spy on the Fairy King, preserving them from the dangers of their underworld journey through her extreme maidenly purity.

Fake family becomes real, fairies become more humanlike, humans become more fey, Romantic poets have cameos as dragons and tree spirits, horse archers hunt stegosaurs and groups of firemen patrol the streets at night, burning away foliage so the town isn't swallowed by the power of this world's life energy.

You just have to make sure to get all of them and win the war against the humans.

I know what I must do.

Thanks user.

>Human empire covers 1/4 of the planet
>Massive human industrial complex guarded by the sea while your navy sucks
Not gonna happen.

>implying we won't win the war in the east before winter and create Fortress Elfurope

If only the humans had realised that the fight between the Elves and the Gnomes was none of their business.

>Implying the new great magical weapon wouldn't subjugate the human colonies
Remember that elves are the best at magic and that without their expertise humans wouldn't have come very far.

Do you think when including mythic figures you should try to hide it by changing their name, and personality or should you just play it straight?

Depends on what you are doing.