/sffg/ - Science Fiction and Fantasy General

>daughter
>>>>implying

Why am I so fucking bad at frame characters? I have the perfect trio to follow for a compelling narrative, but none of them seem like the "main" character to write from the perspective of.

Why not have all three as the main characters? Each one takes a turn to have a pov chapter. Could be fun to read/write.

Which character has the most dynamic character arc? Which seems the most realistic to be seen from a first-person perspective?

>I have the perfect trio to follow for a compelling narrative, but none of them seem like the "main" character to write from the perspective of.
Is it completely necessary for the story you're trying to tell that it be written from a single character's perspective?

Why not write from three perspectives?

A good indication are the Hugo/Nebula winners. But Robert Silverberg is good; read Downward To Earth, and Dying Inside.

Brian Aldiss is a good British writer. He served in Burma in WW2, and apparently drew on this experience to write vividly about hot environments and mutated, overgrown, deadly vegetation; in Hot House (1962) and Non-Stop (1958.) They are both imaginative books, funny in places, with lots of deaths. His books have more characterisation than someone like Arthur Clarke.

Is there a copy of "The Last Legends of Earth" on #bookz?

>Has THe Great Ordeal secured Bakker's position as the King of GRI?
If Bakker is King, then Black Jewels Trilogy author is Queen.

Why is there a tripfag in our general, and why is he dinoposting?

I see some people asking for recs, if any of the names in pic related catch you, google and goodreads it before you read.

Oh yes.

>tfw Serwë is burning in hell

>tfw its turning into a straight up mindfuck midway

>unironically recommending Codex Alera

Whole fucking book of dude bugs lmao

>finish second novel
>watch some lectures on how to find an agent, get published, etc.
>read up on the statistics
>shelf manuscript and start on new one

Sometimes I wonder what the fucking point is. I'm an unemployed loser living in my parents' basement and no one is ever going to publish this weird shit. I don't even like writing, or enjoy what I write. I just do it because I can't help myself.

Sorry for venting. Here's some cool fanart for your thread.

>roman legions with pokemon
What's not to love?

Just sell them on Amazon

Anyone touched this shit?
I heard blood song is good, it's also by this author.

I think the reality of being a human zero would be more crushing than my suspicion that I'm a human zero.

It's usually the weird shit that people remember most or connect with. Like Kafka. He wanted his writings burned because he didn't think it was good enough.

Pretty much all the fantasy I've read is as follows:
>Harry Potter series
>first 3 books in A Song of Ice and Fire
>The Hobbit/The Lord of the Rings
>The Colour of Magic
aaaand that's pretty much it. How do I into modern fantasy? definitely helps but I'm not sure where to start. Where do start with Brandon Sanderson? Is he even very good? I could never "get into" anything by Neil Gaiman or The Name of the Wind, either. Also, I have Assassin's Apprentice loaned out from the library and I'm wondering if I should read it? Thanks bros.

So give them to me and I'll sell them

This me and I think you should consider self publishing. Most people are dismissive of self publishing (even myself) but it can be a viable and the only way if what you're writing is too experimental or weird for traditional publishing

>Also, I have Assassin's Apprentice loaned out from the library and I'm wondering if I should read it?
Why wouldn't you read something you'd already borrowed? Suck it up and take the hit.

Who isn't burning in hell at this point?

I really should 2bh

They're not even weird in an experimental or relatable way. They're recognizably fantasy, but without any of the things people read fantasy for... just weird fever dreams that appeal to me and me alone.

I may be a nobody, but the nothings I've created are still my nothings. It's funny how when it comes down to it, I'm still narcissistic about what writing means to me.

Chart user here, what are your interests?
What do you like to see most in books? GRI? Robots? Wizards? AIs? Religious Intrigue? Politics Intrigue? Shit that has you literally saying "what??" when reading?? Urban fantasy? Military fantasy? Cyberpunk? Biopunk?

What you like?

>weird chart user is also dino user
It all makes sense now

Every chapter that isn't Tavi desu

Fidelias is alright but it'd be a better series if we didn't have villain pov

It seems like a step up from Raven's Shadow.
Similar to powder mage in setting

But then again the first book of that (Blood Song) was great too, the series went to shit with the later two books

Hi user, this is gonna sound stupid as fuck but I really like specific things in my books, like tea and coffee drinking, pipe smoking, also a lot of "stoner-esque" stuff like wizards, magic, space... a lot of esoteric stuff and a lot of twists and turns in the plot and in the world... For example I really loved the parts dealing with Buddhism, the afterlife/rebirth and the Tibetan Book of the Dead in UBIK by PKD. Hope you can find me something. I'll look into reading "Hothouse" by Brian Aldiss, that one looks interesting. Thanks user.

>liking Tavi Alwaysright
Ew.

>For example I really loved the parts dealing with Buddhism
Try A Shadow in Summer

One of the dino anons. I will read old books and new, but some of the dino anons despises anything old. I have no problem, unless you permanently read nothing but old books, like the original dinosaur.

I saw one of my brethren put a t-rex sama in his place either last thread or the one before.

Was fucking glorious.

It's multiple PoV which Ryan isn't good at but it's only three of them so it's not too bad

This (it's political intrigue though so be warned).

The tea drinking is in an urban fantasy , but not gonna suggest that.

What specifically you want in your mag1/wizards?

So another book with jonesing soldiers, substituting coke with gunpowder?

Except this time it's dragon blood instead of gunpowder

>3 Paragraphs explaining how underpowered protag "ebicly rekt xD" a previously established overpowered character in half a sentence with the power of wits!

>Main charecter starts quipping

>Main Character starts espousing !communism

>main character enslaves pacifists because they don't agree with him

>MC has deadpan humor

>main character gets cucked

>mc is the one who cucks

>MC is socially awkward

Is there any good SFF with a self-deprecating MC, to the point he maakes jokes about himself?

>main character regards pacifism as morally superior
*tips ushanka*

Yes

Neat.

Blindsight comes pretty close and is also good.

The Martian does but it is very reddity.

Pretty much the wise old man, gentle but powerful, mystical and yet playful with his magic. Pretty much a frolicsome Gandalf.

Probably not the best advice but self-inserting as one might help.

>The Martian does but it is very reddity.
Thank God, someone finally understands.

Start out with Book of the New Sun. Gene Wolfe is easy to read and every thing is straight forward :3

To be fair, my first taste of GW actually was BOTNS and I read it on my PSP; it took be like 3 false starts but once I got into the groove I fucking got it.

Just dont be intimidated by the dense language and you'll be fine. He's surprisingly straightforward.

I've read it a few times and I still feel like I notice a new detail every time I read it. Probably my favorite senpai

Oh yea definitely, thats one reason why I like to just pick a page at random. Always a little gem to notice here and there.

>What planet has the best SF and why is it Mars?

American authors had seen Utah

It's been a while since I've read Robin Hobb, but I enjoyed the Assassin Trilogy a lot.

What do you guys think of Steven Brust? I recently started re-reading him for the first time in about a decade, and it's like putting on a snuggie and sipping from a mug of tomato soup. Super comfy.

>the Inchoroi created the Tusk
>hell is real, and everyone is going there
>the gods see souls as food and nothing more
>Kellhus is fucking batshit
>dunyain fucking shits still exist

is there a single positive plot revelation in this entire series?

every single reveal has been bad fucking news for everyone

fitz shoulda married the singer chick desu

Have you read The Phoneix Guards? Was thinking of reading that

That we've so lost our vision as a culture that people can't tell the difference between sci-fi and fantasy.

The Meat is delicious?

Is there no chance for me? There's no respectable writer in my language let alone SFF writer and there's basically no market. I know English well but as evidenced by the responses I got, it's obvious I'm no native speaker even if technically I'm apt to write.

Part of me feels like this is just meme-y bait, but I'm interested so I'll bite. Don't disappoint me user.

Can you explain further what you mean by this statement? What is this vision you speak of and how as well as why did we lose it? Also, why is science fiction and fantasy blurring the line between them a bad thing?

We have all read books by native speakers of English that made mistakes in their writing they really shouldn't have. If you are passionate about writing you should write. You are going to have to work harder than others regardless of whichever language you decide to write in, but it is possible. Write because you enjoy it, not to make money off it. You can worry about that after the you find a publisher interested in your work.

Right, how do I get started with the Culture series by Banks, do I just read from release order?

I enjoyed it, and the rest of the Khaavren Romances trilogy. It's framed as being written by a historian, so the prose and dialogue is excessively (humorously) formal. The majority of the dialogue is witty banter. If you don't mind the writing style it's consistently funny and a good story.

Thanks for the faith you have in me user. I don't write to make money, I don't even write to get known but I do want to be good at it and develop my own style. It's interesting because none of the anons said bad things about my prose (only the obvious non-native mistakes) and it seemed there's a certain naïve charm to my writing, but I would need constant guidance for it to improve, something I'll never get in my own language.

No, some of the books are shit and some of them are p good, do some research and figure out which ones are best. Ironically, Consider Phlebas isn't a terrible starting point.

Where can I read your work?

I'll get hate for this but DeviantArt

No rose colored glasses, I'm certainly not saying the past, least of all not the 1960s, were any sirt of utopia, but there was at least a sense of a direction toward a better future. It took the same Old World vision to grab Von Braun & his V2 and create ICBM's, but by the time Kennedy rolled around, even my bumpkin grandparents and parents had seen a worlds fair and understood what putting a man in an icbm and sending it to the moon would lead to in no time. Hence a solid decade of the popular press full of glorious space-age vaporware that could gave easily been built, but given the harsh realitues of the late 60s/early 70's, by the 80's, the only vision this country had had left was of the old power & wealth hierarchy, and tearing each others eyes out to claw their way up it.

Now, as plausible as the sci-fi dreams were a half a century ago, they might as well be fantasy, because theyre as unlikely to happen as dragons taking swordsmen and wizards into the nights sky.

Anybody got anything for me? The playful old wizard?

Oh God is that trope infecting western fantasy too? I thought only Jap fantasy had that shit.

Don't get me wrong. If you have a completed work you feel good about (even if just a little) then you should send it out. It will most likely get rejected even if it is good, but you should try all the same if that is something you are interested in.

Have you tried forming a writing group? In person group meetings are best of course, but online seems to work well enough from what I've heard. Most groups fall apart from inactivity, but might be worth a shot if you want more feedback on your work. Posting examples here and on similar sites also work well enough I suppose. Just keep practicing. At least that's what I tell myself. I feel like all my work is trash and I still don't have the confidence to share it in the feedback thread even under user, but if you keep writing you will get better. Otherwise I've wasted more than a few years.

Thanks for the thought out response.

I'll agree with you to an extent. It does seem at a glance that popular science fiction has removed itself from the hopeful near future of space exploration. My first reaction is to blame this on the state of our space programs across the world. After landing on the moon everything suddenly became out of reach economically speaking. Mars colonization is a joke. We cant even reach the planet in a realistic time frame to suppose a spacestation. No way in the near future can we even begin the ground work for future colonization efforts. Even a moonbase feels out of reach without a united effort across nations, but how do you justify an expense like that?

The moon landing was only justifiable because the Soviet Union had won the space race by that point in time. The good 'ol USA had to one-up the first satellite in space and landing on a foreign space body made the most sense. After that there was nothing the Soviet Union could do to one-up that.

So there seems to be nothing to look forward to. How can you write a science fiction story envisioning the future of space exploration when all that seems possible is launching a probe further and further away?

>Now, as plausible as the sci-fi dreams were a half a century ago, they might as well be fantasy, because theyre as unlikely to happen as dragons taking swordsmen and wizards into the nights sky.

I can think of good wizards in bad books and vice versa, don't think anyone's done the whole thing well yet

my autistic brother has written the greatest science fiction novel of the 21st century, but he forgot that he wrote it and now pursues a goal recreating dante's inferno in minecraft

should I steal his work and publish it under my name?

I don't know.
I keep ending up in post-apocalypse settings, a world where the land is irradiated and only running springwater rivers are safe, where tiny populations of scattered people paddle dugouts up and downstream, never step foot on land, and just fade in and out if the mists. Where the sci-fi is merely verbal, represented not by the physical technological objects around them, since there are none, but in merely relaying the surviving amassed wisdom of human accomplishment to each successive generation, since preserving it in hopes of someday guiding some generation lucky enough to have the chance to pick up where we left off, is all they can hope to do at the moment. Man I shoehorned 20 gallons of shit into that 5 gallon shoe.

I have wanted to write that story a while, and shoot it, but I don't know when I'd have time.

I've never tried forming a writing group because I'm not charismatic and social enough to carry it online, and in real life I don't have many friends. The closest thing to a writing group is critique threads on Veeky Forums and the odd /sffg/ where I may post excerpts.
As for publishing I can't publish because I'm foreign in the country I live in and none are English speaking. I really can't publish that's why I post on DeviantArt and tumblr

Yeah, then there is Elon.
The fact that one man has more vision than the entire US government, its electorate, to support NASA, is a perfect example of what I mean. NASAs been fiscally hacked off at the feet, ankles, knees, hips, etc, all the way up til all thats left is the hair, until engineers have figured out how to turn it into a hairpiece, to put on someone elses head to run off with.

Is this general active enough for me to post like a chapter of the sci-fi book I'm working on?

I want to build a whole world and all that good shit but I lack criticism since everyone I ask says "DUDE THAT'S SO COOL" when I know something must be wrong with my shit

Would anyone bother if I posted a chapter or two here?

Of course you should.

Please, by all means do.

I need something other than trump, jesus, & gun threads to look at fir a few minutes.

Alright that's neat
Book incoming nigga

Just go for it. It'd be better than having faggots whine about the same tired shit.

Please do. I need to see how other anons handled writing. I promise I'll write constructive critique.