/sffg/ - Science Fiction & Fantasy General

Fantasy
>Beginner's Guide to Fantasy:
>i.imgur.com/fOGNfWK.jpg
>Selected:
>i.imgur.com/r688cPe.jpg
>General:
>i.imgur.com/igBYngL.jpg
>Flowchart:
>i.imgur.com/uykqKJn.jpg

Science Fiction
>Selected:
>i.imgur.com/A96mTQX.jpg
>i.imgur.com/IBs9KE8.jpg
>General:
>i.imgur.com/r55ODlL.jpg
>i.imgur.com/gNTrDmc.jpg
>NPR's Top 100 Science Fiction & Fantasy Books:
>i.imgur.com/IJxTQBL.jpg

Previous Thread:

First for charts that aren't full of "urban fantasy" dreck

>Beginner's Guide to Fantasy
When did we sneak that one in?

Last thread is when I first noticed it .

I also hate dreck charts.

Does any oldschool 80's 90's predictable full-of-clichés-but-still-lovable fantasy exist? I mean, shit like the orphaned farmboy who can talk to wolves goes on adventure to save the world or whatever.

I do enjoy modern works, but there's something to be said for the romantic innocence of these books, and I haven't really read any since Wheel of Time (I gave up after book 6 or 7).

Codex alera?

What, generic elves/dwarves whatever DnD ebin fantasy?
Raymond Feist, Terry Brooks, Joel Rosenberg etc. There's tons.

>Terry Brooks
There is a rule I follow and it has never let me down as yet. Don't read any books whose author has in their name.

?

It's that anti-Terry namist.
Yiff in hell :3

Veeky Forums tell me about Steven Brust the Vlad Taltos series

Are we "above" Star Wars here?

Is it bad if a large chunk of my scifi inspiration is from anime?

Things like Macross, Outlaw Star, Gundam, and Legend of the Galactic Heroes, to be precise.

I just feel as though a lot of western scifi just doesn't touch my buttons the way I'd like them to.

Also, any ideas? I was just going to do a space colony war thing, but I feel like everyone and their nanna does that.

Anyone read Children of time by Adrian Tchaikovsky or Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson? Thinking of picking one of them up.

Nigga, I read Children of Time not long ago, and that fucking book is great as hell. I'm not familiar with Aurora.

I'm not sure what to say about Children without giving too much away, but it's definitely worth a read if you're into sci-fi. I enjoyed it immensely.

anyone else read the rangers apprentice when they were a kid?

I personally wrote some Colony Sci-Fi, however I plan on expanding on the tech and universe in later books.

Really, I like scifi because of its mythological kind of character it has. Everything is big, there's so much at stake, yada yada.

Also Lots of anime scifi is just so goddamn fun and unapologetically nutters. Western scifi is all but exclusively grim and "prophetic" and such. And all the scifi comedies the west produces is on the nose with its humor and is more parody than just a good ol fun romp.

Wheel of Time is SHIT.

Is it? I tried to read the first book, but I must not've been in the mood for it and I lost interest in it. I keep hearing high praise for the first four or five books, but I haven't gone back to it.

Should I give 'er 'nother go, /sffg/?

I agree that it is shit. The series is not worth wasting your time on.

I dropped WoT after book six or seven, I think. Up until that point they were mostly good, just brace yourself for stereotypical high fantasy.

Fourteen books is a lot, though, and personally I got fed up with the women in the story. I don't know if I'll ever go back... it's hard to justify reading so many pages of the same story.

Book one is great though! If you didn't like that one then you probably won't like the rest either.

>that filename

wut

Yeah that was my jam, I stopped reading once they went to not-japan though.

Which one is the best?

I've read them all. The main problem is that Robert Jordan has zero respect for the reader. You will get to sit through literally 1000 pages of uninteresting slice of life garbage just to get to the climax, which is relegated to the last two pages of the book.

This is not a hyperbole. Literally the entire climax, to which the previous 1000 pages have built up, is over in the absolute last two pages of most WoT books. It's like Robert Jordan didn't want to actually write a story. He just wanted to indulge a cathartic hobby of free writing pages and pages of absolutely unbearable boring shit.

The part that I will never forgive: In book 6 (maybe?), the climax that has been built up to is that one of the main characters has to fight Couladin, who has been one of the main villains for the last 3 books. This is a massively important event for this character that sets the stage for his entire storyline in the rest of the series.

This is how the book is actually written.

>*1000 pages of L I T E R A L L Y N O T H I N G*
>"We were walking along... and then Couladin attacked us!"
>*scene cuts to 10 pages of women not on the battle lines talking about how the desert people raise their kids or some stupid shit*
>*scene cuts back*
>"The desert people danced around the fire, where Couladin's head was impaled on a pike."
>*book ends 5 pages later*

Every day since I read that, I've felt bad that Robert Jordan is no longer with us -- because I'll never be able to tell him to his face what an absolutely indefensible, nauseating piece of worthless trash he is.

So basically you hate it because it wasn't all action and battles and you have zero ability to appreciate world building or understand intrigue. There is so much going on in these books that claiming they are filler just proves you are barely even engaging with the story. The first book alone is so jam packed with foreshadowing of events that stretch all the way to book 7 that you probably could not cut a single scene from it.

Alright fucker, now I'm triggered. That entire post just revealed what an absolute, irredeemable pleb you are.

>So basically you hate it because it wasn't all action and battles

No you stupid asslicker. 99% of good books have zero "action and battles" and are still good because they have good plots, interesting characters and substantive drama. Wheel of Time books has NONE of that. Robert Jordan's world building is a mile wide and half an inch deep.

>world building or understand intrigue

World building? Maybe. But you can't hold up 15,000 pages on world building alone if NOTHING happens in it and there are NO good characters. Intrigue? AHAHAHA. Please tell me what your favorite example "intrigue" was. Was it the Tower of Genji, which was mentioned once in passing randomly in the first book, and then LITERALLY NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN until it becomes important in the 13th book? What about the part where they're about to get killed by the Aelfin, but then Mat somehow remembers the precise wording of a wish he made 10 books before, and somehow deduces that it means his spear is a magic key to escape? What about the entire plot device of "Ta'verin" which meant that ANYTHING MAGICAL COULD HAPPEN TO ANY OF THE MAIN CHARACTERS AT ANY TIME AND ROBERT JORDAN DIDN'T HAVE TO JUSTIFY ANY OF IT? Of course, I'm guessing you haven't even read past the first two books (like most people, since everyone ends up finding it unbearable.) Any "intrigue" in WoT is like fifth grader garbage from a bad anime.

>There is so much going on in these books that claiming they are filler just proves you are barely even engaging with the story.

Did you even read the fucking books? There is no story to engage with. Each WoT book is about 1000 pages long. The entire timeline of the story takes place over just 2 YEARS. 13 extremely long books to cover just 2 YEARS of story. Perrin's wife gets kidnapped in book 7. She doesn't get rescued until book 10. For three books, Perrin's entire plot is him being depressed. They just keep cutting back to him jacking off over leather. He doesn't even START to try and save her for two books. It's not filler. It's worse than filler. It's Robert Jordan just fucking around aimlessly repeating the same "WOAH LOOK AT HOW BITCHY WOMEN ARE HMMMM I'D BETTER TUG ON MY BRAID SOME MORE" platitudes that he had repeated constantly over and over throughout the entire series.

>The first book alone is so jam packed with foreshadowing of events that stretch all the way to book 7

That isn't good novelization you fucking kike. Novels should be modular stories, even if they are serialized. Instead they're just an indecipherable, jumbled interconnected fuckfest where each book starts 5 minutes after the last book left off. Every entry in the series was just a delay until the end -- which is pathetic because very few things happened that contributed to the series as a whole. Tarmon Gaidon just randomly started whenever the fuck Jordan decided.

...

Not who you were responding to, but can't a book be just about world building with not much else in it and still be good, because the world was good? Also I have never read any of the books in this series.

Can we have "To Kill a God" added to the recommended list?

*tugs braid*
*straightens skirt*

wew lad

fucking autistic piece of shit, no book will be okay in your eyes.

kek. you're alright by me triggernon.

I should just untrigger you by saying I really think you should read Name of the Wind, at least it has substance compared to WoT

messed with the wrong user.

It's a masterpiece

i dropped it after 300 pages

Did you like it?
Because my book provides 300 pages for free.

g-guys please respond

It's trash never write a book again

Gaskun?
ding

One of yall Tchaikovsky fans hyped the black and gold empire, not reading anything by him again.
Fat fetish, cucking, friendzoning, etc. Fuck you.

There's no weird romance in Children. Only evolving intelligent spiders who enslave ants and build an empire, and they also fuck up humans... sorta.

You could hate fuck his widow and hope he feels it in whatever afterlife he is in. She isn't bad looking either...

Although I think Sanderson got there and cleaned out the cobwebs before you
>that look of satisfaction on her face
>that look of regret on Sanderson's

I only read the middle, so I will say that.

>listing Star Wars
>lists The Joiner King EU trash

Tbh, there's not even a single good Star Wars book.

Stevian, stop shilling your own book. The reason books are in the chart is because people read them and liked them.
Go to tumbgay or redshit to shill your work.

So he is reusing his insects guild shit from black and gold empire?

>Tbh, there's not even a single good Star Wars book.
(not true, by the way)

Say I were to write a Fantasy novel. What concepts, genre, story, etc. would be considered God Tier potential to Veeky Forums? Then give it the best author to deliver its prose.

I don't know, the only book of his that I've read is Children.

Eh. Like what? And if you say anything Zahn, I swear to God.

Does the guy shampoo his hair in oil?

>guys tell me what to write about, then tell me whose flow and prose to copy

I'll copy Goodkind just to get you to read it, you pleb.

I'm not Stevian

I don't read terrys. Sorry.

>honestly he's better at worldbuilding than he is at writing.
>endless pitched battles with no exhaustion of manpower
>nobody seems to be doing any farming
>castles are starving during sieges when they should have 20 years of food storage just for the winter

It's probably better to deal with universal experiences and with the conventional trappings of the genre, and there are plenty of those to choose from, but, anyway, I will throw some word salads at you, because I have little else to do after eating a meal.

LIVING DEATH (in the sense of living wrongly, this turns up in Russian writing quite a bit, maybe try plugging it into a fantasy)

THE CAVE (metaphorical or not. womb? )

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DOOR (metaphorical or not. what's in there, should we bother?)

THE HOLE IN THE GROUND (metaphorical or not. how deep, what depths [in man?])

FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE VS RESPONSIBILITY (a well worn trope but it's good enough for Shelley, HG Wells, Lovecraft)

THE NEXT STAGE OF EVOLUTION (is it purely psychological? Ties in with...

MAN'S HIDDEN POTENTIAL. What is holding it back?

IS MAN A VILLAIN? (standard ruminating of good vs evil)

You will probably have no use for this mulch, but there you have it. Ray Bradbury recommends compiling a random bunch of nouns, any that come to mind at the time, and then ruminating on them, thinking what they mean to you, and using that as a creative well. I am not a writer, but if I did bother, I think I would begin with an evocative concept of mine and treat it with a bunch of Jungian archetypes in there to start with (the hero, jester, the crone, the maid, etc.)

Any good Char Aznable style stories? The best I've read is The Traitor Baru Cormorant.

two more interesting tidbits and the writers who treat them

THE SKULL IS A PRISON FOR THE CONSCIOUSNESS (Robert Silverberg)

PERCEPTION IS REALITY (Philip K Dick)

WE ARE WHO WE PRETEND TO BE (Vonnegut)

THE PEOPLE OF THE LONG PAST ARE NOT HUMAN (Strugatsky Bros)

THE DIVINE SPARK (as referred to in biblical texts. what is it? Is it the unconscious - is it the god within?)

Ok, no more, I promise.

The anime you mentioned is the stuff that's most like western SF. Look up Planet Stories and Astounding Science Fiction on archive.org, also try stuff like Larry Niven and Jack Campbell.

saved

Sexy praying mantis women.

>THE NEXT STAGE OF EVOLUTION
Is this a list of the worst SFF concepts?

Thanks for saying what i was thinking user

Are there any Fantasy books that has a main character who is essentially a version/copy of Judge Dredd?

yoda dark rendezvous

Why is anubis gate in modern fantasy?

Any fantasy with a real mana sue/gary stu who also happens to be very positive as opposed to a whiny bitch boy?

bonus points if he/she has a clear case of plot armour

runelords?

this

I think he means you can't SS with 2 guys

Mistborn

then this guy has a really effeminate body

I agree that WoT is shit, can't get behind your point about novels should be modular stories.

Wrong.

well I have not watched old gundam and read the subs as kistler and not kycilia

I'd recommend old Gundam(Specificaly the original, Zeta, ZZ, and Star Dust Memories), but that's because I'm a UC fag. I like everything up until Unicorn. Turn A was okay.

its not happening. I have seen
Orphans
Thunderbolt
Reconguista
Age
Trailblazer
IGLOO
00
SEED
SEED DESTINY
Turn A
wing
Victory
and I can see no more

There's your problem:

All the ones you watched were either shit, mediocre or just plain ol' not UC.

Try 08th MS Team. Takes place during the One Year War, has great animation, and is only thirteen episodes.

They can contribute to a wider series, but each novel should have a distinct, enjoyable plotline. While maybe not to the point where anyone can pick up any book and enjoy it without reading the others, the books should have explicit individualism. Otherwise, you don't have a series of novels. You have one big novel that's arbitrarily split up so that you have to pay for it multiple times.

>can't a book be just about world building with not much else in it and still be good, because the world was good?

Name a good book that does this. Maybe its possible, but I've never read one.

Thanks.

I've read on tvtropes a while back that the MC is a bit insecure.

Jesus you should just kill yourself

>I've read on tvtropes a while back that the MC is a bit insecure.

Only in the sense that he's just a man who's now responsible for leading a revolution.

Which Ursula K. Le Guin book should I read first? I was thinking of getting A Wizard of Earthsea, but I hear it's a YA novel and that kind of put me off. Is it good?

(I'm broke so I can't afford any screwups)

None.

It's really good, it's listed as YA sometimes because it's written simply enough but there's a lot of artistry in how it's put together. Not a bad starting point at all.

Also learn to find ebooks already, it's in the Veeky Forums sticky.

>(I'm broke so I can't afford any screwups)

Pirate an ebook..

Wow so you watched everything except for the original UC. How did you fuck up so hard?

>you need to watch the QUALITY-infested toy commercial and 100 eps of MAXIMUM TOMINO or you're not watching Gundam
Really, Turn A was all he needed to watch.

>get 50 pages into a book and realise I'm not enjoying it
>again
ffs

Time to cross Mercedes Lackey off the list of authors I've tried and disliked.

Why is it apparently so fucking hard for people to write decent adventure fantasy?

Zeta is the greatest Gundam. Turn A is the hipster choice.

>Are there any Fantasy books that has a main character who is essentially a version/copy of Judge Dredd?
Talion: Revenant is literally about a warrior judge

> 99% of good books have zero "action and battles"
And yet that was your primary complaint about WoT. You apparently spent the entirety of book 4 anticipating a battle and ignored everything else happening in it.
>Wheel of Time books has NONE of that. Robert Jordan's world building is a mile wide and half an inch deep
This from somebody who probably skimmed them.
>But you can't hold up 15,000 pages on world building alone if NOTHING happens in it
You just keep digging that hole ever deeper, proving you didn't even bother to pay attention to what you read and just assumed it was fluff. WoT has lots of parts you could cut out past book 5, but the first 4 or so books are densely packed with information.
>Please tell me what your favorite example "intrigue" was. Was it the Tower of Genji, which was mentioned once in passing randomly in the first book, and then LITERALLY NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN until it becomes important in the 13th book? What about the part where they're about to get killed by the Aelfin, but then Mat somehow remembers the precise wording of a wish he made 10 books before, and somehow deduces that it means his spear is a magic key to escape? What about the entire plot device of "Ta'verin" which meant that ANYTHING MAGICAL COULD HAPPEN TO ANY OF THE MAIN CHARACTERS AT ANY TIME AND ROBERT JORDAN DIDN'T HAVE TO JUSTIFY ANY OF IT?
And here you prove you don't even know what intrigue means. Most scenes with Forsaken involve some kind of misdirection or veiled hints, most of the parts that involve Darkfriends are this way actually. Though I guess if all you care about is "Muh battles" then stuff like figuring out who is the traitor and what somebody is planning doesn't matter because it's not "epic" enough for you.
>Each WoT book is about 1000 pages long
More than half are 800 pages or fewer. In fact Jordan only wrote 3 books that came close to 1000 pages (they were still under). The only WoT books that broke 1k were done by Sanderson. WoT started off much tighter and got more bloated as it went, book 1 was almost 800 pages exactly, 2 and 3 were fewer than 700 pages. And these contained some of the most deft world building and tightly written intrigue in the series.
>Perrin's wife gets kidnapped in book 7. She doesn't get rescued until book 10. For three books, Perrin's entire plot is him being depressed
Yes this is easily the weakest part of the books and is well past what I consider to be the best part of the series. By then Jordan was bogged down by side plots and needlessly illuminating trivial events. What was once very carefully planned scenes that deepened understanding had just become informing the reader of everybody's status by rote.
>WOAH LOOK AT HOW BITCHY WOMEN ARE HMMMM I'D BETTER TUG ON MY BRAID SOME MORE
If you don't even understand what Jordan's books were doing with relationships between the sexes then you definitely did not follow this series at all.
>Novels should be modular stories
lol

maybe you're a #pulpmuncher

Seriously though, how does any one enjoy reading Bakker?

I don't understand what he's trying to say half the time.