/sffg/ - Science Fiction and Fantasy General

So wait is the Handmaidens Tale good or not?

I thought it was pretty interesting, at least the idea of a fallen manic Christian US was. It was obviously putting across a lot of ideas and themes about feminism which went over my head but I thought the story and world were pretty good. I was considering a 7-8/10.

I'm not sure why you're asking for confirmation when you already read and enjoyed the book. But yes it's good.

Well I also enjoyed the Dune sequels so I'm not sure if I trust myself. I've heard people talk shit about it on this board before, and seen it recommended as a troll once. I guess I just wanted to know if I was in the minority or not.

Reminder this sick asshole is a pedo, supports pedophilia, and is in general a low test edgelord.

Don't be fooled, most people in this board do not read books. Stay true to your own senses and judgement.

I wouldn't worry whether your preferences are popular or not. Besides, your tastes will change over time as you age.

>invents evolution
>asshole

you're probably a salty Lemarkfag

>invents evolution
>invents
>science

God confirmed real?

shetterly.blogspot.com/2014/07/a-conversation-with-samuel-r-delany.html

I came across this awhile back and found it an interesting read.

>Implying an author needs to be moraly correct in order to be good.

Bait 1/10, since you made me reply

Actually guy in pic invented the periodic table.

Checkmate gaytheists.

>>Implying an author needs to be moraly correct in order to be good.

No but they do tend to weave their perversions into their writing. If nothing else, it gets tiresome and therefore poor.

If they compartmentalize their inability to cope with being beta and keep it away from their writing, then I've got no problem with them.

Dimitry Mendeliv was a saint, get out.

You have never written a single shit in your life, have you?

>found from that link

he doesn't have to you cuck. and he clearly knows more about literature than you, which is enough for his critiques to be taken seriously, tripfag or not.

I'm sorry, that came out as pedantic. What I wanna say is that your comment is completely narrow minded and simplistic.

Assuming the do then to weave "perversions", as you call it, is simply not true.

Louis Ferdinand Celine, Roald Dahl, Erza Pound, just to name a few, are known polemic figures, yet they did nothing of the sort, and western literature wouldn't be the same without then.

On the other hand, must we asume someone like Pynchon, for example, is into coprofilia for his amazing description of it in Gravity's Rainbow?

A good author should be able to convey such "perversions" (again, your words) without having to be labeled as such.

Your view is simplistic and narrow minded.

If he knows more than literature than anyone in this place, then def this is not my place.

What is the thing you like most, and the thing you like least, about the fantasy genre?

It's like this place has never heard of Roland Barthes and the dead of the author

It's Redditor masturbation material and another case of "Heinlein did it better 20 years earlier".

Where did I say that idiot? Learn to read.

You should leave anyway.

Because I called bullshit on some dude's comment? Cry me a river, cunt.

Most: Made-up rules
Least: Dark Lordism

Also the author is objectively fucking awful at writing prose, it reads like a first draft where word corrupted the file and randomly injected prefixes everywhere.

And then there's the fucking ending, which is literally "lol and then social progress was made overnight!". The ideas, themes and concepts about feminism shouldn't have went over your head, they're so simple the book is primarily read in high school by 12 year olds.

I was referring to science fiction, or at least the authors I've read. If you're addressing a pan-literature critique, I can't defend it because I have no interest in Pynchon or D.F. Wallace.

My experience is by no means comprehensive but yes, their less desirable traits often seem to print through. However, so do their desirable traits. My point isn't that writers should be saints to be taken seriously; it is that their vices often do color their work. Assuming that to be true, the severity of the vice should be taken into account and I would rate pederasty quite high among vices.

Is it possible that I've read and enjoyed books by pedophiles? I would say yes. I wouldn't knowingly read or promote them, though. Some evils outweigh any good.

Fair enough answer, man. No mean to cause harm, you seem like a well read dude. Peace out.

No offense taken. This is Veeky Forums, after all.

>"lol and then social progress was made overnight!".
???

The end takes place 200 years after the events in the book.

>"Well," Shallan said to the captain, blushing but still eager to speak, "I was just thinking this: You say that my beauty coaxed the winds to deliver us to Kharbranth with haste. But wouldn't that imply that on other trips, my lack of beauty was to blame for us arriving late?"
>"Well...er..."
>"So in reality," Shallan said, "you're telling me I'm beautiful precisely one-sixth of the time."
>"Nonsense! Young miss, you're like a morning sunrise, you are!"
>"Like a sunrise? By that you mean entirely too crimson"-she pulled at her long red hair-"and prone to making men grouchy when they see me?"
>He laughed, and several of the sailors nearby joined in. "All right then," Captain Tozbek said, "you're like a flower."
>She grimaced. "I'm allergic to flowers."
>He raised an eyebrow.
>"No, really," she admitted. "I think they're quite captivating. But if you were to give me a bouquet, you'd soon find me in a fit so energetic that it would have you searching the walls for stray freckles I might have blown free with the force of my sneezes."
>"Well, be that true, I still say you're as pretty as a flower."
>"If I am, then young men my age must be afflicted with the same allergy-for they keep their distance from me noticeably." She winced. "Now, see, I told you this wasn't polite. Young women should not act in such an irritable way."

>The man pulling the machine was short and dark-skinned, with a wide smile and full lips. He gestured for Shallan to sit, and she did so with the modest grace her nurses had drilled into her. The driver asked her a question in a clipped, terse-sounding language she didn't recognize.
>"What was that?" she asked Yalb.
>"He wants to know if you'd like to be pulled the long way or the short way." Yalb scratched his head.
>"I'm not right sure what the difference is."
>"I suspect one takes longer," Shallan said.
>"Oh, you are a clever one." Yalb said something to the porter in that same clipped language, and the man responded.
>"The long way gives a good view of the city," Yalb said. "The short way goes straight up to the Conclave. Not many good views, he says. I guess he noticed you were new to the city."
>"Do I stand out that much?" Shallan asked, flushing.
>"Eh, no, of course not, Brightness."
>"And by that you mean that I'm as obvious as a wart on a queen's nose."
>Yalb laughed.

can't believe i fell for the meme. two chapters of fighting with no characterization worth a damn, then this autist

fucking DROPPED with the force of a thousand suns

Pro-tip: Read a history book about Welsh law to understand why the ending is hilarious.

There see, he showed again he's smarter than you, even if he isn't widely read in literary fiction. Why do cucks like you have knee-jerk reactions to this sort of polemic?

You might at least update the quoted passages in that copypasta, friend user.

no i will sink his career through repetition

he black tho

How is GRRM's prequel book, 'A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms'? I finished the series the month A Dance With Dragons came out, which must have been at least 4 years ago. Is it worth trying?

what the fuck does Welsh law have to do with the Handmaid's Tale?

Your one dimensional hatred makes me want to read the book t b h

I liked it more than the main Song of ice and fire series desu Since its a knight going around and having small adventures like the stuff i read as a kid. Feels much more satisfying and actually has pacing throughout the short stories rather than the mess that his books have become. I wish he would just write Dunk and egg stories instead

dont say that

you're clearly a darkeye pleb

Have you read "Tuf Voyaging" by GRRM? It reads more like a series of short stories using the same protagonist, Tuf Haviland.

why didn't you guys tell me a song of ice and fire was boring as fuck before i bought all the books? i'm trying to get through a clash of kings but i keep dozing off.

just watch the TV series

That's the good part. If you want boring get ready for book 4.

Nah ive only read his song of ice and fire stuff. I did know that he had written sci fi but ive never read any of it. Is it actually good? or is it a mess like game of thrones

God help you if you try to read books 4 and 5. Dance with Dragons is cocktease: the book

I'm gonna have to be that asshole and ask, none of theses stories were copyedited were they?

the tv show is garbage.

I only liked the 1st and 3rd books. The 2nd is meh. The 4th and 5th book are filler-trash.

What are some good dark sci-fi books? Not cyberpunk, mind you

Preferably something that points out the fragility of man and the powerlessness of technology in the larger scene of existence. Dark, helpless tone is a must.

Something like a futuristic Lovecraft

Hello, what's a good book that involves a time distorted city? Already read Dhalgren.

>Is it actually good?

I would say it's worth reading. I haven't read the Dunk & Egg stories so I can't directly compare them to give you a better idea but the underlying concept of the novel is interesting. It's earlier writing so his dialogue and characterization isn't as polished as it is in Game of Thrones.

>or is it a mess like game of thrones

You know, it's valid to say the series after "Storm of Swords" is pagefiller trash but the series to that point was very good. I can't really hate on GRRM for bowing to the logic of market forces and choosing wealth over quality production.

Poul Anderson's "Tau Zero" fits the bill, I think.

P.K. Dick's "A Scanner Darkly" or "UBIK", possibly although those are more innerspace than outer space.

The summary seems interesting so ill pick it up in the next few days.

>You know, it's valid to say the series after
"Storm of Swords" is pagefiller trash but the series to that point was very good. I can't really hate on GRRM for bowing to the logic of market forces and choosing wealth over quality production.

Yeah i used to really like the series but im just annoyed because i finished a re read of 4 and 5 and realised how bad they are in comparison to the earlier ones. Im just hoping its a mid series slump that gets broken whenever the next book comes out

>Im just hoping its a mid series slump that gets broken whenever the next book comes out

Anything is possible but I suspect "A Song of Ice and Fire" is to this generation what "Wheel of Time" was to mine: a lesson in the economics of publishing. At least this one has a twist, what with GRRM having the TV royalties as well. Perhaps being financially secure beyond any reasonable expectation will allow him to turn his attention to preserving a legacy. I doubt it but maybe.

Hello, what's a good book that involves a time distorted city (or any other particular place)? Already read Dhalgren.

Oh hey, I was just checking GRRM's scifi novels to see if I had read any others and one of them might be what you're after: "Dying of the Light". I haven't read it but the Wiki summary fits.

I hate to ask for recommendations but I have practically no idea where to start. Does anyone know any space opera sci-fi books that are similar to this? But done better basically, the closest I have found was The Red Rising Trilogy which has all I like about pic related, so anything that contains Mars, orphan young protagonists, brutal and dark tone and a lot of politics.

hey there fantasy people

I had a dream some nights ago and it was weird, I met like, an evil Randall Flagg style wizard and he told me his name, and I was like "Wow that is a good name for an eldritch wizard" and then I woke up, so I could write it down.

But it sounds super arabic to me, and im trying avoid it

"Guerm Al Vulca".

Is that good? How can I make it sound less arabic?

Try Veeky Forums if you don't get an answer you like here.

>Vulcar the Eternal

Stick to A/Z faggot.

Hmm. Greg Bear meets Fullmetal Alchemist. Nope, can't say I've come across anything that matches.

Endymion is really similar to IBO and indeed the Gundam franchise for all the wrong reasons especially because the female protagonist is the spitting image of Mineva/Kudelia and suddenly everyone becomes a newtype. I believe Mars features roughly once. A couple of times?

Hyperion (the two books before Endymion) is less space opera but fantastic and worth the read.

All the books have much more religion in them than Gundam.

>be subhuman then get adopted by guy who (almost) killed your waifu and wage interplanetary war also mars.png
>that file name
You know, I read Kay's Tigana (which is not in any way shape or form anything to do with scifi) and Brandin actually makes Slaine look well adjusted.

I read two Philip K Dick short stories from the early 1950s: Defenders, and Second Variety. Two post-nuclear Cold War tales with robots.

I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed them, especially Second Variety. Its images of desperate military bunkers beneath ruinous ash-strewn landscapes, filled with killing machines, will be appreciated by anybody who watched the Terminator films.

Have you read "Wool" by Hugh Howey?

Opinions on this trilogy?

Yes, and I liked it. It was published serially, which I think impacts the structure of genre fiction in a positive way, pushing it out of the three act rut a bit. It irritates some people, though.

As a story, all of the weight rests on the concept, with the characters just acting out the scenario. Not necessarily a bad thing. I gave the book a solid 3/5, the sequel a less solid 3/5 and the third a weak 2.

I hadn't heard of it, but it looks popular and something that I might enjoy. I can never quite tell. New authors are a leap of faith. Meanwhile the to-read pile accumulates steadily.

>tfw dont know what to read next
pls kill me rn

Blindsight

Fellow anons aren't complying with you? Consult the i ching my nigga.

>Second Variety

Thanks, I picked up the ebook from Project Gutenberg. It's pretty good so far--coming up with "The Terminator" in 1953 is remarkable.

...

>blurb from Salon

hoo boy

>Dragons are overdone? This isn't a dragon...it's a...flying dinosaur...

Any new good coming of age fantasy/science fiction come out this year?

It already doesn't sound Arabic.
1. Arabic, save the Egyptian dialect, has no g sound.
2. Arabic can't have two vowels consecutively.
3. Arabic never has a v sound.

>2.
يوم for instance you retard

Is Django Wexler any good?

I'm 100 pages into The Thousand Names and the pace is so glacial that I'm considering dropping it already.

Yes, it gets better once Janus starts flexing some muscle

Cool I'll carry on

I don't have an issue with not revealing your plot straight away but I was losing faith a bit

Except that ي is exactly analogous to y in that it sometimes acts as a consonant and sometimes as a vowel. The first letter of "Yankee" is a consonant even though the last letter of "why" is a vowel. يوم is an example of the former.

Also, you should go full parody and call him "Gurm el-Baka". You could even make the tetragrammaton "GRRM" significant.

>>This isn't a dragon...it's a...flying dinosaur...

Incidentally, does anyone know when dragons showed up in fiction?

>flying dinosaurs make a lot more sense

>Incidentally, does anyone know when dragons showed up in fiction?

Dragons are ancient mythological creatures (although i bet their characteristics have changed depending on the culture) that appear in stuff like Gilgamesh and Beowulf (and this Mosaic of a Roman dragon). So i think its safe to say they have existed for most of Human civilisation in Folk stories and stuff. But im betting some more knowledgble people could trace the creation of the 'Modern Dragon' to some exact date or period

>when dragons showed up in fiction?
They predate the written word

To be honest I can't think about Aldnoah Zero without getting a little nauseous and that was just after watching the first three eps. I like the idea of IBO much better than the execution of that premise as of now though so that's why I stuck with it longer.
At least you tried.
Thanks, I'll definitely try those books out.

Hmm, interesting. Wiki says that mosaic dates to the third century BC. I was guessing dragons were Norse but it's clearly much older--from what I've come across, China may have the oldest evidence to date at 5000(!)BC.

Thanks, anons.

Hey guys

So I read a few of Jemisin's other books (namely The Inheritance trilogy and Killing Moon) and I have to say that they aren't anywhere nearly as well written or polished as TBE.

>The Inheritance Trilogy
The Inheritance trilogy has a very simple prose style except in the third book but unfortunately the plot in the first and second books are more developed whereas the third book essentially consists of pagefiller and then a random battle. The third book also reads like Jemisin initially loved the universe and as time went on it became a chore to write. The first book has the best pacing and sequence of events and the worst prose but it's a very light series where random edgy occurrences happen for no reason and have no real lasting impact on anyone. The second book extends upon the universe established in the first in a more logical manner whilst worldbuilding in a different manner without losing the dramatic tension that the third does.

Gods or otherwise supremely overpowered beings on the side of the protags are a genuinely awful concept in fiction as there is no real tension or meaning if they have reality warping powers to shape any circumstance to their whims. The series should have ended at the superior book number 2 as it not only maintains a good dose of tension and plotting but also has a surprise ending. Not randomly wanting to cause a genocide isn't an excuse for non-interventionism especially if the characters themselves make it clear that they care about the outcome.

Unfortunately a good portion of the characters are obviously evil or behave gratingly like being a fucking faggot versus a bigger fucking faggot and the third book is narrated by the shota god of childhood shitposting. The second book is somewhat a significant improvement on this state of affairs.

cont

>Killing Moon
It's somewhere in between Inheritance and TBE in quality. It's almost like a proto TBE as Jemisin leaves behind that awful first voice narration and makes significant improvements to the worldbuilding and prose. The plot pacing is fixed. Lapses in characterisation never occur and the mood is not ‘happy go lucky and moments of edginess’ like Inheritance. The characters encounter interesting philosophical quandaries such as euthanasia and have their views challenged and pleasingly reach a middle ground. The characters are more morally grey which is good and are not bizarrely grating like IT. Also, much like TBE plot doesn’t rely on random battles but internal struggles and conflicts and the characters feel and act more humanly than IT with more complex machinations and red herrings.

The ending definitely does the book as a whole justice.

Conclusion: Killing Moon is worth reading if you like TBE but is still a bit unpolished compared to the most recent works. Inheritance Trilogy is not worth it other than book 2 unless you like bad anime cliches. I mean it’s fun, but there’s nothing about it that is especially thought provoking about it.