/sffg/ - Science Fiction and Fantasy General

Not saying I would, just letting you know where you are.

Poorly written soap opera where you can't learn the characters as fast as he's killing them off.

If Martins croaks, which author could finish the series, with the summaries of the series' endings, that Martin left with the TV producers, as a last resort plan?

>le grrm kills all his characters

Reminder that people who say perpetuate this meme have no knowledge of the series and are just spouting normie memes about the show

t. non-reading pleb normies

>Robert Feist
>Daughter of The Empire is included in the list above when it's the 4th book in the series.
a-are you feeling well user?
>I just started the Sector General series by James White
Yes, those are fun.

On one hand, the rule in Inheritance was that the younger, comparatively normal person (T'vril, Madding) lost and the more ancient, comparatively weird person (Nahadoth, Itempas) won, which seems like a point for Hoa. On the other hand, sticking to Inheritance, Hoa gives off Sieh-pining-after-Yeine vibes, and Sieh wasn't even a contender in the Yeinebowl. And if we expand to Dreamblood, everyone lost every bowl.

The only reasonable conclusion is that Hoa will vore Essun while Scaffa rides into the sunset with Nassun for more loli headpatting.

replied in wrong thread...

use a real argument instead of ad hominem attacks.

What way would character flooding add to a story?

prove my argument is ad hominem

Ad hominem attacks aren't an argument.

prove it then

A lot of ADOS may already have been written, GRRM probably spends a great deal of time organising the order of the story, he's had a Tyrion chapter where he has recurring dreams for like 10+ years now

It's the "kills all his characters part" that shows you have no knowledge of the series

The characters that die, with maybe the exception of the Red Wedding, die at natural progressions in the character arcs, just like any other story. Like Ned's death is the standard "mentor dying to the bad guys to spark adventure", but idiots treat it like "omg the main character dies in the first book!!!111"

I think most people agree that he introduced too many characters in books 4 and 5.

That's what i thought you dumb faggot.

V
A
N
C
E

I don't think its the ending thats getting it delayed. He just bloated it up with unnecessary crap. The whole point of his delay was the unwrap the meereenese plot as well as aging up the characters to the point where arya should be a hot assasin lady.

>with maybe the exception of the Red Wedding

No, Robb was way fucked by then. His arc was over

Calling you a pleb doesn't make it an ad hominem. It's only an ad hominem when the attack on character is used as an argument. He wasn't making an argument, he was just calling you a pleb you pleb.

prove it

finally, a smart man in this pointless chain

>aging up the characters to the point where arya should be a hot assasin lady

I think GRRM originally meant to create a time gap in the series sometime after the Red Wedding and then resume the series from 5-10 years in the future, where Arya is now a implacable assassin bent on revenge. Then the series' sales went through the roof and he or his publisher changed his mind.

I don't think GRRM ever had a firm ending nailed down besides a few specifics (like Jon's heritage being central to both political and magical storylines). He's said in interviews that his process is more "organic" and he writes first and organizes second. Plus if you read his original query letters about these books his original vision for them doesn't at all resemble what we have now, so who knows how much his vision of the story has changed since book 1 was published.

Why is the Wheel of Time so fucking slow? I really like the story and character but I just can't get gripped to it because of the pace.

What are Jack Vance's best works? I'm reading through Dying Earth right now and I'm absolutely in love with his prose and the tone of the stories that is melancholic and playful at the same time.

If you're enjoying "The Dying Earth", read "Rhialto the Marvellous", "The Eyes of the Overworld" and "Cugel's Saga which are set in the same world. I think some editions of "The Dying Earth" include these as well--I'm pretty sure I have a big paperback copy of it somewhere.

After those, you can try the Lyonesse trilogy which has a similar feel except it's a pre-Arthurian legendary setting.

Honestly, once you're hooked on Vance's prose, there are very few "bad" books. His early scifi books, like "Vandals of the Void" and "Big Planet", bear little relation to his later work as the dialogue is stilted and dull. 1956's "To Live Forever" ("Clarges") marks the dividing line between these books and his familiar style.

I would say "Clarges" and the Cugel books are my favorites.

I like his prose but found what I read of Dying Earth very boring.

Yeah, I have The Compleat Dying Earth. Reading Guyal of Sfere at the moment, and it's fun to see what elements Gene Wolfe used for Book of the New Sun (especially the giants-as-mounts), but it's one of the best setting for stories I've ever read.

Even looking back, thinking about something/someone like "Chun the Unavoidable" is almost funny, but at the time of reading it was terrifying.

The original "The Dying Earth" stories--"Guyal of Sfere", "Turjan of Muir", etc.--are very different from his later work. I don't really care much for these other than it's interesting to see his progression from writing these during WWII while in the merchant marine to his later, better work. Still, these stories are what made his bones.

>Even looking back, thinking about something/someone like "Chun the Unavoidable" is almost funny, but at the time of reading it was terrifying.

The contrast between "Guyal of Sfere" and "Liane the Wayfarer" is startling. "Guyal" has arguably his worst lines:

>Shierl gazed at him with a marveling expression, and Guyal's soul throbbed
with love.
>She felt him quiver and whispered recklessly, "Guyal of Sfere, I am
yours, I melt for you..."

while "Liane" is as solid as anything he writes in Lyonesse, which was written roughly 40 years later.

Anybody got any ideas what I could read for some sci-fi post apoc? Imagine an incredibly advanced run of the mill society like that of Star Wars or any other Garbage, with undergoes a massive collapse and has most technology bar FTL set back generations?

I can't find dick, in both senses.

I agree that "Guyal" is much more melodramatic, but it is still miles above most scifi/science-fantasy. "Liane" seemed to almost be a dark fable you would tell children, and I love it.

Isaac Asimov's Foundation series covers the fall of an intergalactic empire and the aftermath. It's intended more as an overview though with short pieces written as interludes.

Hmm. GRRM's "Tuf Voyaging" stories are set in a post-imperial galaxy as well, if I recall. I'm drawing a blank otherwise.

Foundation isn't really a story, more and an interesting history book. Still in my top three though.

Memes aside the early ASoFI books were ok so I'll hope that means Tuf as well, I've give it a look.

Teenaged me really enjoyed Timothy Zahn's Grand Admiral Thrawn trilogy of Star Wars books, which are set after Endor. That could work for you.

To add to what said, which I agree with 100%, I'd add

>The Demon Princes (5 books)
>The Dragon Masters
>Lyonesse (3 books)

I've also heard a lot of good things about the Cadwal Chronicles, but I've never read them.

If you look into it on your own, Rhialto the Marvelous gets a lot of hate for some reason but I loved it.

If you really liked the Dying Earth setting, the Songs of a Dying Earth homage anthology is actually really good--only one or two flops and several excellent stories with most being quite good.

He has one of the omnibus volumes of "The Dying Earth"

>abebooks.com/9780739401101/Compleat-Dying-Earth-Jack-Vance-0739401106/plp

so "Rhialto" is included.

The Cadwal Chronicles are great--my favorite Vance scifi series--but they're a degree or two removed from "Dying Earth". They're closer to Vance's mystery writing output, I suspect. I haven't read "Bad Ronald" yet, which is supposedly his best mystery work.

"The Demon Princes" are probably his strongest series, don't you think? The others tend to tail off towards the end where this series, if anything, improves towards the end. I just have a soft spot for Cadwal; perhaps I like a mystery better than a revenge motif.

I think david webers, safehold series would be right up your alley. basically futuristic man gets driven to the brink of extenction by homicidal aliens so as a last resort the send out a colony ship at the cost of an entire fleet as a decoy. and set up a colony where tech is religiously banned, and the enactment of a plan by dissenters hundreds of years in the making, to overthrow the religious stranglehold and take man back to the stars to prepare for the inevitable rediscovery by the homicidal aliens

It's not post-apocalyptic but you should read Dune if you like the "low tech + FTL" aesthetic.

I shill John C. Wright a lot and he's not for everyone, but you might want to try Count to a Trillion; the whole series involves a sort of cyclic collapse of civilization in a "two steps forward, one step back" pattern although probably FTL doesn't exist.

I think Demon Princes is his best-constructed series, although I prefer the setting of Dying Earth and I liked Lyonesse better overall. However you're right that his endings can peter out a bit and DP's certainly didn't; Lyonesse probably needed another book to do it justice.

>Essun
Well Alabaster and Innon already won the Essunbowl. Innon won the Alabaster bowl too. Essun will become a stone-eater like Alabaster so she can get reunited with Alabaster.

>Schaffa
F.
>literally has his role as villain replaced by Steel and only exists to keep Nassun in line
>getting cured is essentially instadeath
>if he doesn't get cured he's going to lose his mind like Ehiru and remember he's already too scared to an hero
>Mentor deathflag
>Redemption deathflag
>'You’ll kill everything you love, eventually. Your mother. Schaffa. All your friends here in Found Moon. No way around it' t-thanks Steel
>Even if he survives everything Essun is going to kill him because of MISUNDERSTANDING
>even if he survives everything + Essun old Schaffa will return and murder Nassun in maximum velocity tragedy because of Finagle's law
But that's probably's not going to happen. Schaffa's going to die and then Nassun will have a mental breakdown Shinji style and then go full Woobie, Destroyer of the Worlds trying to save him..
And it sucks because he's essentially won the Nassunbowl and they were really cute together.

which is the best volume of the latter dying earth?

>John C. Wright

>At age 42, Wright converted from atheism to Christianity, citing a profound religious experience with visions of the "Virgin Mary, her son, and His Father, not to mention various other spirits and ghosts over a period of several days", and stating that prayers he made were answered.[6] In 2008, he converted to the Roman Catholic Church, of which he approvingly said: "If Vulcans had a church, they'd be Catholics."[7]

hey /sffg/, I recently had to restart an entire story from scratch, and while I'm now confident that the plot is a good one, the writing is coming out so bad that I don't even want to do any more today.

I've abandoned enough projects know the death throes of one of my stories when I see them, but a the moment my prose is so awful that even looking at it is discouraging me, and I'm not even sure I want to tell the story the way I've been telling it: as a fairy tale

Of course, no matter how I end up telling it, the story is going to be really fucking long, and I've never finished a story of more than 4300 words.

What should I do?

docs.google.com/document/d/1xbvK7hyOoGoOJzNxk0I-XPl_98AZQUWLrQX00F_406g/edit?usp=sharing

this was my first and possibly last attempt at writing fiction. short two page introduction, I promise this will make you feel better by comparison.

>Will it ever be weleased? Will GRRM ever deliver the conclusion of the series?
He's obviously resigned himself to letting the show finish the story for him.

Keep writing and deleting.
Are you writing on word? Open other word tabs and keep your main project on hold, write whatever excites you on the moment but always try to keep it on the same universe, on the same time period.
Rewrite what you think has shitty prose from another POV or on another style
Do little experiments to your plot (what ifs)
Just a few ideas to keep the ball rolling

As in, which collection of stories? I would choose one of the omnibus editions like what user has, "The Compleat Dying Earth", or "Tales of the Dying Earth", which I have.

The original novel that contained the short stories alone is probably hard to find and then you'd have to hunt down the Cugel stories anyways, which I would consider the must-haves from the Dying Earth. Better to simply get one of the omnibuses and have it all at once.

>Lyonesse probably needed another book to do it justice.

Yes, the war at the end felt hurried, almost an afterthought really, as if he only wanted to tie up loose ends and turn in the book on deadline.

Jordan kept adding points of view to the story and it slowed to a crawl as a result. Rather than taking advantage of his multiple points of view to jump ahead in time, so that while one principle character is doing nothing interesting you can look at one who is, and then get back to the first guy once shit is happening again for him, he tries to do about a dozen viewpoints all happening concurrently. And you know, simultaneous plotlines can work when it's like 2 or 3 at most, but more than that and it just turns into a clusterfuck or a slog depending on how spaced apart the view points are.

Sounds like The Mote in God's Eye. The cyclic cycle of collapse, archeology, and technological rise over and over.

Ringworld Engineers has an interesting setting. The ring itself is so big that post collapse, it's inhabitants couldn't mix to interbreed and diverged into separate humanoid species.

Jija is a good man who did nothing wrong.

>murdered a toddler
>beat a loli

He's still only the third worst Jemisin dad, but come on.

It's a shame. He writes in a very compelling way.

The guy made me hungry more than once on his food discriptions.

This is a terrible /sffg/

I know some people disparagingly refer to Sanderson as western anime because it's all about powering up and fighting

But I kinda like that

What would the best book in this subgenre be?

So do I. But he needs to grow as a writer.

Opened with a GRRM image. What can you expect.

Have you read the stuff with Cugel the Clever?

>ignoring Schaffa who could probably kill him without lifting a finger and not even feel bad after it
>trying to kill a loli with SS rank transmutation/molecular manipulation skills
>Hating on the cool magic and not realising what kind of story he was in
Jija did everything wrong.

He's extremely readable in a way that I think more authors could strive to be. People can call his prose staid and simple but I'm not reading fantasy for the prose.

Who reads fantasy for the prose though?

And don't even say Bakker...

What are you fucking talking about

Having an author repeatedly use a very limited vocabulary doesn't make them "readable" it makes their writing very offputting

>Who reads fantasy for the prose though?
People on good reads probably. Or at least they claim to.

His vocabulary is fine. He just doesn't bother thinking up 100 different ways to describe the same simple action. I find it more distracting when an author has to contrive some "creative" way to describe somebody walking across a room. He reuses a lot of words but its for things there's little point in being original about.

*tugs braid*

"Sanderson is anime" isn't even really a put-down, it's just a description. If you actually like shonen manga, you'll probably like Sanderson.

The use of a sesquipedalian loquaciousness does not in itself improve the plot and indeed it may result in needlessly abstruse and stilted writing as well as the abject ruination of the reader's joie de vivre. The perusal of a thesaurus and its incorporation into the vocabulary constitutes no grand or obscure skill save the pedantic air of pretentiousness which may be exploited to indicate a poster's logical fallacy in a lofty manner or to consign a thread to the inimical fiery depths of shitposting perdition.

It would also be remiss to overlook books written in common vernacular, which in itself may maintain a distinct authorial voice and lend gravity to the wordbuilding. Furthermore, ubiquity of the formal register may devalue the characterisation of individuals if their every conveyance and rumination is composed in precisely the same manner.

My penultimate argument: prose is merely a conveyance and a vehicle. It is but one component of an aesthete's enjoyment. A flourish, but not substance. The plot, I cherish more. Sanderson possesses this facet in copious quantities and although his work may suffer shortcomings, correction of plot bereft of prose is a minimal endeavour when starkly juxtaposed against the effort required to repair a prose bereft of plot.

Indisputably, a piece which lacks needless descriptors possesses more impetus and more events than a work of equivalent wordcount which includes said descriptors. Excessive verbosity forgoes clarity and reader appreciation - a tale of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Indeed, the reader may be left wanting by the conclusion.

*skirts parted for riding*

I thought you were serious for a moment...

Certain immutable laws of the extant universe are best left unquestioned.

Throw in a few adverbs and semi colons, and you are Lovecraft at his worst.

My two bits regarding fantasy and prose: Lord Dunsany used the King James vernacular in a rollicking way in The Gods Of Pergana. He is somebody I would read for prose and not plot.

“He took about forty pounds,” the old man said aloud. He took my harpoon too and all the rope, he thought, and now my fish bleeds again and there will be others. He did not like to look at the fish anymore since he had been mutilated. When the fish had been hit it was as though he himself were hit. But I killed the shark that hit my fish, he thought. And he was the biggest dentuso that I have ever seen. And God knows that I have seen big ones. It was too good to last, he thought. I wish it had been a dream now and that I had never hooked the fish and was alone in bed on the newspapers.

“But man is not made for defeat,” he said. “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” I am sorry that I killed the fish though, he thought. Now the bad time is coming and I do not even have the harpoon. The dentuso is cruel and able and strong and intelligent. But I was more intelligent than he was. Perhaps not, he thought. Perhaps I was only better armed.

>"The Old Man and the Sea"
>Ernest Hemingway

On the third day of the fair Cugel had disposed of only four periapts, at prices barely
above the cost of the lead itself, while Fianosther was hard put to serve all his customers.

Hoarse from bawling futile inducements, Cugel closed down his booth and approached
Fianosther's place of trade in order to inspect the mode of construction and the fastenings
at the door.

Fianosther, observing, beckoned him to approach. "Enter, my friend, enter. How
goes your trade?"
"In all candor, not too well," said Cugel. "I am both perplexed and disappointed, for
my talismans are not obviously useless."
"I can resolve your perplexity," said Fianosther. "Your booth occupies the site of the
old gibbet, and has absorbed unlucky essences. But I thought to notice you examining the manner in which the timbers of my booth are joined. You will obtain a better view from within, but first I must shorten the chain of the 'captive erb which roams the premises during the night."

"No need," said Cugel. "My interest was cursory."

>"The Eyes of the Overworld"
>Jack Vance

There's room in good writing for both simplicity and eloquence, no matter the subject.

People who read Tolkien?

>There's room in good writing for both simplicity and eloquence, no matter the subject.
And the point of the conversation is that Jordan has neither

Hemmingway and Zelazny have relatively simple and concise prose but the important distinction between their authorship and Sanderson's is that the simple words are chosen for complex effect.

Vance has more eloquent prose but somehow his dense choice of words somehow doesn't inhibit how you read his work.

>"No need," said Cugel. "My interest was cursory."

Vance writes with a kind of innate rhythm, it makes it easy to read and interpret.

>"Biochemistry is a tradeoff. The faster you synthesize ATP, the more expensive each molecule becomes. It turns out scramblers are a lot more energy-efficient at making it than we are. They're just extremely slow at it, which might not be a big drawback for something that spends most of its time inactive. Rorschach—whatever Rorschach started out as— could have drifted for millennia before it washed up here. That's a lot of time to build up an energy reserve for bouts of high activity, and once you've laid the groundwork glycolysis is explosive. Two-thousand-fold boost, and no oxygen demand."

Prose like this just sounds awkward. Watts has no talent for prose, he simply loads on jargon as an artist lays on colour to hide their shoddy linework.

>Shallan glanced up over the top of her book. The volume was one of Jasnah’s earliest published works as a full scholar. Jasnah had not assigned Shallan to read it. Indeed, she’d been hesitant when Shallan had asked for a copy, and had needed to dig it out of one of the numerous trunks full of books she kept in the ship’s hold.
Sanderson's prose is awkward but he makes no effort to actually disguise his fact. However, a resorted or reordered sentence structure isn't beyond possibility and he is not ideas.

>you'll never see Attanasio excerpts posted
It can be some wild shit I tell you hwat

>Vance writes with a kind of innate rhythm, it makes it easy to read and interpret.

Yes, I admire how he gave his prose redundancy without verbosity, a failsafe in case the reader didn't know the word. The meaning can still be grasped by context. I surely wish I could successfully imitate it.

Post something, then.

I remember really enjoying Ender's Game in high school. Is the rest of the series worth reading?

I read "Speaker for the Dead" after "Ender's Game". I found it a bit of a slog as it focuses on Ender's feelings of guilt after the war. There isn't much action.

I understood the other Ender books were the same story told from a different character's perspective so I didn't bother reading them.

i only read the first one but apparently the rest are garbage. bit of a one hit wonder.

I've seen this posted here before but I completely agree, Card managing to write an actual good book was a complete stroke of luck he has yet to replicate. The gods must have smiled on him that fateful day he took Ender's Game to the publisher.

Realistically none of his other books manage to capture the military and officer leadership aspects of EG, which is where the novel truly shines.

Has anyone here read Chamiel? How is it?

Speaker for the Dead is a very different book but IMO worthwhile reading. The rest of the series after that isn't though.

>Ctrl+F
>no Egan
>no Erikson
>no Vinge

REEEEEE

>ctrl+f
>vance
My fampais have good taste.

I remember reading the first one in the fourth grade and absolutely hating the main protagonist. I wonder if other people walked away with the same impression the first time they read it.

Finally finished the book series, now awaiting the inevitable news of the GRRM's premature death

GRRM dying is probably the only way you'll get a conclusion like what happened with Robert Jordan

He already said he has standing orders(probably in his will, to be enforced by his lawyer) that if he dies and the series isn't completed, no one will complete it. You will have to settle with the show ending.

nah just have to wait 70 years for it to go into public domain