/sffg/ - Latest Edition

I'll repeat myself for you.
Rothfuss is an awful writer and you won't see your theory come true because he'll never finish it. But by the time you finish it you won't care, unless you have severe autism.
Smiles sardonically*
Raises an eyebrow*

Terra or Tellus?

Kaladin dropped his pants and let out a flurry into the trough. Fecalspren slowly rose around him as the smell of Shallan's jam n' bread. The bread had digested in his bowels, came into his nose. Relieved, he pulled his pants up and performed a quarter-quadruple full lashing. Which meant his down was now up and...

Terra because Rewrite

I'm looking for a new book. Literally anything fantasy that isn't shit.

Hit me with your number 1 choice, /sffg/

The Buried Giant

Aside from the obvious answer of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, are there some great sci-fi books with an underwater/ocean setting/theme?

Looks good. Thanks.

Never Let Me Go has to be one of the most boring books I've ever read

There are no stakes, there is nothing engaging in the story, it's just a drag to get through

The prose isn't good enough for atmosphere alone to carry it, either

I can definitely understand why people don't like Never Let Me Go, it's a middle ground of sci-fi lit that I don't think will satisfy many people looking for science fiction or people looking for literature, but I liked it very much. Like The Remains of the Day, it's Ishiguro writing a character study, so the events of the story are minimal and downplayed, and I can see why you would think it boring. I disagree about the lack of stakes and the prose, however.

Mervyn Peake

Lyonesse

This has to be one of the worst scifi books I've read in a while.

Premise
>in THE FUTURE America has been reduced to a bunch of the burbclaves from Snow Crash and imports Chinese people to labor for them, dystopian society, the rest of the country is lawless, etc etc
>The boyfriend of a Chinese girl at a fish farm in Baltimore gets kidnapped by the corporations, she sets off in search of him

Actuality
>One dimensional main character leaves the city, gets hit by a car, spends some time recovering with the family of the country doctor who ran her over, then gets kidnapped by crazy cat lady who now keeps girls like pets because pets got banned in the burbclaves, THEN THE BOOK ENDS

So much wasted potential.

Forgot something:
>one of the other girls poisons herself with spoiled canned food to let the main character escape, this has no real emotional impact

Oh man I'm geeking out. I emailed an author to ask him about a release date and to tell him how much I enjoyed his books and he actually responded. He just said thank you and gave me a date but still, that's awesome.

Bakkerfags, report in.

>The fields must burn to drive Him forth from the Ground.

So let me get this straight: Kellhus is going to kill everyone by becoming the No-God in order to starve heaven and hell until God comes out of hiding, and then he's going to kill God?

what is the No-God ? what is it's end game?

You can't grasp the mind of Kellhus. You are but a child to him.

>you will never feel Kellhus's wisdom flowing deep inside you

I can't come up with stories short enough to actually finish /sffg/, what do I do?

Maybe practice writing individual scenes first, then stitch them together to make a story?

It's the desire to fix things and start over that screws me up though

If it was Sanderson, it's probably Peter who responded.

.... this reads like you are a spammer who is looking for short stories to "finish" sffg by filling up all 310 posts.

Be happy you can come up with stories at all.

When will fantasy move away from autistic levels of description?

Choose your meme

When autists stop paying money to read about their favorite autist-sensei's autisticly-constructed fantasy world. I.e., never.

Imagine a sperglord analyzing magic systems on an anime message board, forever.

I'm honestly not sure if this is in the book or not

I just finished pic related, after hearing for years about Chiang.

The stories are technically well-constructed; hardly a wasted word. "The Tower of Babylon" is very similar to Clarke's "The Wall of Darkness", for instance, but much shorter while including additional interesting the details of the tower and the workers. Chiang's prose is far above the typical SF author; I recall maybe one or two awkward sentences in the whole collection. No wonder he publishes so few stories. Posters complaining about bad writing in SF should consider this to get into the genre.

The stories were more of a mixed bag than I would have thought, though. "Division by Zero" felt like a shaky trial run for the far better "Story of Your Life"; I don't think it should have been included. "Hell is the Absence of God" is a ridiculous shaggy-dog story that couldn't have been written as anything other than to troll Christians.

"Understand" is one of the best first-person portrayals of a superhuman intelligence out there, although Chiang didn't adequately explain why THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE.

This is a dumb comparison, but I'm going to make it anyway: "The Golden Age" did a much better job describing a pervasive computing's effects than "Liking What We See". The campus politics phrasing, evul corporations, quasi-epistolary format, narrow subject: I can't take this story seriously.

Would definitely recommend though.

The sounded way too negative. "Seventy-Two Letters" was great, as of course was "Story of Your Life" (I was initially put off by the intercuts about the narrator's daughter, but they turned out to have a purpose). "Division by Zero", while bad, was short, and "Hell Is..." is probably more "divisive" than "bad" and at least worth discussing.

What do yall think of these lists?

goodreads.com/list/show/5406.Best_Fantasy_Books_Under_the_Radar

goodreads.com/list/show/26220.Contemporary_Fantasy_for_Guys?page=1

Which obscure ones you read and would recommend?

The real problem is that fantasy readers still buy books by the pound. Fatness is a known selling point in that genre, so authors pack in the lard to bulk up a thin story.

I'd recommend "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling"
>subterraneanpress.com/magazine/fall_2013/the_truth_of_fact_the_truth_of_feeling_by_ted_chiang

and "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate".

I'm surprised Gor never gets mentioned even as a troll recommendation. How are those if you ignore or don't care about the girls being willing slaves? Don't actually know anything about the series besides that since it's the only thing everyone talks about.

I only checked the first 100 books in each list. I have read the following from each.
BFBUR: The King of Elfland's Daughter
CFFG: The Way of Kings, The Final Empire

TKOED is an interesting read, bit slow, very good prose. At least one passage struck me as if a physical blow.

TWOK was okay. TFE is pretty rad, if you like action anime/have autism.

>Unfortunately for me, only about seven or eight publishing houses maintain a mass-market paperback line in science fiction and fantasy; this small, closely-knit group effectively controls the market. With such a group, a blacklist need not be an explicit, formal written or oral agreement subscribed to by a gathered cabal pledged to secrecy. It is an understanding that a certain individual is to be ostracized, excluded, methodologically overlooked or such.

Did he name the jew?

lmao decided to look at the first book from the first list and look at the reviews

goodreads.com/book/show/16155612-the-orb-of-truth

is goodreads always like this?

I want to write a short story its actually a fan-fiction tier story for a game I'm making set in a world with fantasy elements, specifically with magic people use to fight each other. The magic is explained away as technology left behind by an advanced civilization thats no longer around (left of their own accord or maybe post apocalypse etc)

The actual plot of the story is going to be a seven samurai rip off. Each chapter will be told in the style of singular pov a la Hyperion, explaining each character's journey up until the end chapter. The end chapter will be narrated in a more traditional third person fashion.

I'm having trouble not just creating a braindead copy of seven samurai's plot. I'm looking for some inspo and ideas for how I can make it a bit different.

One thing I really like (but that's gotten cliche lately I guess) is an element of mindfuck. We've all experienced this in great /sffg/ books where you go "oh shit!" when something is revealed, etc.

Anyone want to recommend stuff that'll inspire and help shape what I'm trying to write?

Stuff I've read over the last while:
>book of the new sun
>blindsight
>spin
>wind up girl
>water knife
>hyperion, fall of hyperion

I've never read them, although I do have a weird uncle who once mentioned he had. The following is my impression:

They're written in the pulp tradition. Burroughs' Barsoom stories are pretty straitlaced, but everybody is running around naked, and the erotic subtext isn't completely absent. Many fans in the old days were not content with leaving things where pulp authors left them.

Then in the 60s John Norman basically writes "Hardcore Barsoom" and there were plenty of people who lapped it up. He merely put into writing what everybody else had already been doing and saying. And by most accounts, the first few novels were at least passable outside of the BDSM stuff, certainly better than whatever fanfic was being put out in zines.

I have no idea how well the new Gor novels sell, but I imagine Norman has gotten really good at writing BDSM pulp after doing it for 40 years, so if that's what you're into he's probably got what you want.

Write the ripoff version first. Give yourself one week. Then write the same thing, but different. Keep doing this and one time you'll go "oh, shit!".

will try that user thanks

im going to dump some BoTNS art I found

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>tfw u will never own BoTNS with covers illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano of Final Fantasy fame

Japan gets all the coolest shit

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I'm sure Vox Day would have loved to publish him.

stupid sexy severian

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not anime enough you say?

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Wait, wait hold the fuck up, is this an actual thing?
Is Book of the New Sun even a logical thing to turn into a manga?

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I think they are just book covers, not manga.

>is it even a logical thing to turn into a manga
Have you ever read manga? It'd fuckin' work man.

Man this fucking pose. WHAT IS A MAN?

Speaking of Book of the New Sun, I'm about halfway done with it and I'm enjoying it a lot.
Is Urth of the New Sun worth a read too?
From what I understand it's sort of like a sequel/conclusion to it, but is it of the same quality?

these were drawn by the death note guy if anyone cares

alright /sffg/ im looking for a book series. forgot the title but it's supposed to be similar to a song of ice and fire.
apparently its really complicated with a huge cast of characters. not only are there humans but also gods who play a part in the politics and war as well.
its fantasy but i dont think its necessarily high fantasy. i know this is pretty vague but thats all i can think of. i found it years ago on goodreads then just forgot about it.

Malazan?

Smells like Malazan

i think thats it. thanks. also, if anyones still here, is it worth reading? if youve read it?

First book is a bit overwhelming, but you'll eventually pick up on things. Supposedly begins a nosedive at Reaper's Gale (I just finished that one, did seem like too many povs). I've enjoyed it so far, but the thing is looong.

It's there to explain itself to stupid people because the editor made him write it.
It's good, but not as good.

Abercrombie's Shattered Sea is better than First Law. Less edgy, but also unfortunately less deep (if FL ever had that much depth to it)

no

I fucking hated how edgy FL was.

I can live with edge, but he had a straight face about it and made his novels dull so you couldn't just read it fast and be done with it, he had to write 1800 pages to finish the story.
And that writing does not carry a story for so long.

The Dream-Questof Unknown Kadath.

Am I the only user who really likes Harlan Ellison?

No, he's even in the Veeky Forums top 100

I feel like a lot of fantasy readers are sleeping on Michael J. Sullivan.

I'm reading the Riyria Revelations, on the last book. It's a really fun series, even if it's only PG.

I might need to spice it up after this series though. Can anyone recommend some good fantasy with a lil bit of sex (don't want anything graphic) and appropriate cussing (as in not overdoing it)? After reading this series for a while, I feel like I need something a little more appropriate for my age.

sword & sorcery is what I dig the most, but really it doesn't matter too much.

Thanks.

*tugs braid*

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Raises eyebrow*

Welcome to the fold new Sullivan reader.

Try Lightbringer series, fifth season, and the magicians by lev grossman.

Those three are gri approved authors.

nah senpai, i have like 7 collections of his short stories on my shelf.

I always get made fun of during "post ur bookshelf" threads for it though :(

Everyone reply to this post with a GRI APPROVED book, so we could help others our who are looking for such.

I'll start: Night Angel Trilogy
I know its edgy but wew is it GRI filled.

Does it have to have all three or does just one make it GRI passable?

Is there a more powerful "realistic" human in fantasy? And i'm talking about his manipulations not his magic...

Imagine when Kellus walks out of the wilderness he ends up in another novel. Who could beat him at his own game? ( no magic powers)

Bakker fans have finally devolved into Naruto versus Goku tier

2 minimum.

That's pretty gay, other than non-consensual incest...

"In the combat autism, the world always makes sense".

My sides have reached orbit. If this author cunt never used to lurk on Veeky Forums then I'm a faggot.

They don't have anything else to discuss, what you expect?

They are not reading other novels.

what book?

The sequel to Veeky Forums the novel.
It's filled with battle autism, otakus, and weaponized memes.

Is Jeff VanderMeer worth reading? The local library had some of his books out on the "New Old Arrivals" shelf and the blurbs seemed interesting.

They're pretty good, but I wouldn't say they're better than the First Law. Everything is so dull and grey. I think he could have compressed the story into one book and nothing would have been lost.
Also none of the fights are as hype as the ones with Logen. Him fighting the Feared is an amazing scene.

I was asking this specifically because i would like to read another series...damn u guys are triggered by bakker....what about him makes you so upset ?