/sffg/ - Science Fiction & Fantasy General

okay let's discuss Roshar. Dysian Aimians can create new bugs to hold more memories - does this mean they can just infinitely expand their cognitive presences? humans look like flames from Shadesmar - what do dysian (or for that matter siah) aimians look like, given that both display abilities connected to the Cognitive? Is Tashi, as referenced by Nin, one of the Unmade, dealing in secrets? It would fit their theme.
Remember the forgotten - Listen to the unheard -> ???
(actions? Care for/speak for?)

Nightblood likes Lift - of course it does.
Confirmation that the Skybreakers feel honor is something outside the self they bind themselves to.

Wait, we have other info on the bugmen? So the tattooed guy collecting spren is also a bugman/other spren-catalyzed life?

How long do you think Harmony will last once it turns into a knock-down drag-out Shard-collecting godly slugfest?

Reading The Demon Princes right now. Thanks to whoever put that on the recommendation charts, I haven't had this much fun reading a Sci-Fi series in a while. Space Count of Monte Cristo is an underutilized genre.

there are two kinds of Aimians, both immortal; arclo mentions axies.

harmony attempts to act as referee, fails miserably. autonomy fucks off to do whatever (wait isn't bavadin a guy Khriss calls autonomy She) (did the shard get passed on? trans shardholder?). Endowment covers her ears and says I can't hear you very loudly. odium murders everyone else.

It has a fantastic ending too. Have fun reading it.

>harmony attempts to act as referee, fails miserably

wut

He'll try to forge peaceful bonds between shardworlds because he is le peaceful eunuch but he's way out of his depth, missing a few thousand years of experience and any kind of friendship with the other gods.

He has to offer his sweet soft boipussy to the other gods to ream, that way he will forge bonds.
People do crazy shit for pucci, I take it gods are no different.

>Odium, my pussy is ready for you I think.

from sanderson on reddit:

Bavadin has several male personas, and has often appeared as male for one purpose or another, so it's not that much of an issue. She has more female personas, but some of the male ones are quite popular.

This won't be relevant for a long while, but as a service to the community, let me say this: try not to get too hung up on gender, race, or even human appearance where Bavadin is concerned. There are some peoples who worship entire pantheons where every member is actually her.

no wonder hoid hates bavadin. he can't stand other trickster asshole figures.

apparently Rothfuss was dumb enough to leak a page from the third book on his own twitch stream and is now throwing a bitchfit while blaming some watcher for capturing it

fucking fat manchild

What happened in the page?

Is this book shit? I'm getting close to finishing LOTR and I've already ordered The Silmarillion off of Amazon. Should I bother with this one?

Everything by Tolkien is shit and you seem to like shit so go for it buddie.

>Leaks something on a twitch stream
>Gets mad when someone captures it
>On a site where you can easily re-watch past sessions unless they delete the entire session.
LUL

>2015+1
>Almost 2016+1
>Still reading Tolkien unironically

Am I being a luddite, or is twitch an unseemly preoccupation for a published author? The place has the whiff of vanity that makes even youtube look more wholesome. At any rate, nothing I have heard about Mr Rothfuss makes me want to read his books.

Shoo shoo, away with yee Moorcock.
Same goes for you, GRRM.

>youtube
You mean, Nazitube?

It's top notch, perhaps you should read the Silmarillion first before going for it to see if you enjoy the more mythological stuff Tolkien wrote though. It's not quite the same as The Hobbit or LotR.

I support the capitalistic urge to monetize everything, and I can see some authors being able to interact with their viewers while writing. Can't say I'd want to watch Rothfuss though.

>GRRM.
Dude, you're completely out of your element. No one here praises GRRM.

>is twitch an unseemly preoccupation for a published author?
It's another way to broaden your author platform, but it's far from a good way to go about it. Then again, I'd love to see how many viewers a big name published author could pull if they streamed playing video games on Twitch.

Thanks for mentioning this user I missed that thread and this sounds great

I would watch Pierce Brown grooming himself on Twitch.

This is God-Tier. Discuss

I don't know any other grimdork author who's a "Current year!" SJW faggot.

If you like Tolkien you'll love it

I broke my ereader a bit through Heroes Die but it was great fun.

Might go back to it now if I can find my place

how do you plot stuff?

>scifi and fantasy
>picture is cover of a sanderson book
>"guides" from imgur, aka reddits image board
>unironic recommendation to read sanderson
>the only direct asimov recommendation is "The Last Question"
>NPR top picks
>people talking shit on Tolkien in the thread

You have to be at least 18 years-old to use this site.

>tfw you give your villain a generic evil stage name and just frame it as being incredibly tasteless to divert suspicion only to realize your readers won't fall for it

fuck

>the old "have someone comment on a cliche to show you're subverting something, then play it straight" trick
Almost pulled it over on us.

I mean, it's supposed to provide insight into his character. He's evil for the sake of evil precisely because he's convinced he's an edgy dipshit who's convinced he's supposed to be.

He's a former circus freak who got played up as a cambion for the sake of showbiz so he started going with it and took pride in it and eventually got convinced it was real

>He's evil for the sake of evil precisely because he's convinced he's an edgy dipshit who's convinced he's supposed to be.

fuck, one too many "convinced"s in there

fuck, the more I explain the stupider it sounds.

this was all a huge fucking mistake. I've wasted hours and hours of my life on this garbage. all this time could have been added to the job search but no, I just had to waste it on awful writing because Veeky Forums kept telling me they liked it to fuck with me!

FUCK!

Well, there is usually only a negligible amount of science fiction in these threads.

I wonder if the genre has had its thunder stolen by other mediums. Something like the Westworld tv show, which has been a triumph, presents Philip K Dick's ideas about robots and reality in a form that is more accessible, that requires less work from the audience, most of whom would struggle to read Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep.

The advance of technology means that tv, film, and videogames offer the pleasures of SF in a way that books did previously - so that books struggle to compete.

We used to accept sci-fi books as an ideas medium; not to be read for the elegant prose, but for expanded perspectives, prophecies, warnings - so what is left when other mediums do is more vividly and more conveniently?

Well, I say, the sci-fi writer must then transcend the pulp mindset and write better, poetic and elegant. yet visionary, thought-provoking.

What are you writing?

6.5/10

It was a good book but it didn't quite hit the mark. The set up was interesting and the characters had good potential and then the pacing turned out to be pretty bad and it devolved into animu fights with extremely low impact between characters with minimal amounts of consistency.

Jury is out on whether I'll read the second book in the series or not.

Why are opinions on Gormenghast so polarized?
The general description I've read about it sounds interesting, like something I would enjoy, but people seem to either absolutely love it or think it's a fucking slog to read through it.
What gives?

Why don't you read the literal first page on amazon preview and find out yourself you dumb fucking nigger?

To Kill a God.

>let me pull this theory out of my butt
We talk about SF all the time. Westworld isn't nearly as popular as Game of Thrones. You can have an engaging conversation about Blindsight or Anathem literally at will, PKD has a number of fans present, a guy that writes books on Gene Wolfe shows up now and then.

>transcend the pulp mindset
That's how you get pic related. SF writers have been trying to "transcend the genre" and suck up to the literary establishment since before Aldiss. The genre's alive, don't mess with it, that's how you kill it.

>hey guys what's up with this book I wanna read
>GO FUCKING READ IT YOURSELF

It's a shitty fucking fairy tale.

a girl who can see the future goes to bed knowing tomorrow is just another day, but wakes up to find gunmen in her house and her parents dead. She's saved by a man with questionable fashion sense who pulls her out a penthouse window and spirits her away to a circus where she goes into hiding as a fortune teller. Little does she know the magician who saved her is not what he appears to be

unfortunately I made it too obvious he's the villain by making his stage name really obviously villainous and i'm sure there are plenty of other things I fucked up that I haven't noticed yet

Post some of the writing. Maybe your pure skill with language will save you.

>a girl who can see the future goes to bed knowing tomorrow is just another day
You almost had me hooked at once when I assumed the girl sees what will happen the next day in her dreams at night and acts on this knowledge during the next day. That shit is my guilty pleasure.

>Nightblood likes Lift - of course it does.

figures that dumb fucking sword would like worst girl. anyway I kinda wanted to see the division surge in action, shame we didn't.

>Wait, we have other info on the bugmen?

one of them shows in the lift short in Arcanum Unbounded, kills two skybreakers and generally gives the little slippery street rat the creeps. they're watching all the current knights radiant apparently

I'll post the worst first

No sooner had she reached out to prod it than the door to the boxcar slid open, casting the whole boxcar in the harsh light of day. The pigeon bolted as Ava shielded her eyes from the high noon sun. In the opening was the most dispassionate-looking showgirl she had ever laid eyes on. Oh what fresh hell is this? She wondered.

She was dressed all in turquoise from tailcoat to skirt, and emanated all the personality and warmth of a rack of uncooked short ribs. Her voice did nothing to dispel the notion. “Oh good, you're up,” There was nothing glad in the woman's voice that suggested the oh good was anything more than a figure of speech, though if Ava was honest with herself it also didn't sound disdainful or sarcastic either. She spoke like she was reading lines off a script, and didn't care enough to be emphatic about it. “Please get out of bed, it will make my job a whole lot easier.”

Ava did as she was told while the showgirl rooted through one of the dress racks. Occasionally she would pull one out, hold it up against Ava, and then place it back on the hangar. “Master Damon's been waiting for you so we're a bit behind schedule.”

“Master Damon?” Ava asked, trying to reorder her memories of the past night. The showgirl pulled the dress rack back, allowing Ava to see the poster hung behind it. Two enormous yellow eyes stared back at her, rays of light banding from two unsettling rectangular pupils, like those of a goat. Between then stood the man who had saved her last night, a smug grin of triumph painted across his face. Between his two outstretched hands, held by neither was a flecked with lightning and sparks. The words Maxwell Damon, sorcerer among sorcerers, devil among men was painted across the bottom in the sort of font that would have looked better on a poster for absinthe, or maybe a refreshing bottle of children's heroine tonic. “A bit overdramatic, don't you think?”

“Try this on,” the showgirl said, ignoring her. It was a gaudy silken robe of swirling blues, purples and reds. Ava hesitated to stare at it too long and risk succumbing to vertigo. “He's left a package for you on the desk over there. Don't throw out the bandana it's wrapped it, it's part of the outfit. He'll be waiting for you in his office car, so I suggest you hurry.”

“How will I know which one is his office?” Ava sputtered.

“Believe me,” she muttered, stepping back out of the box car. “You'll know.”

Let's extend the question to /sffg/.
/sffg/, what are you writing? Have you been published before? Are you confident in your writing skill? Are you confident in your imagination?

I'm trying to put together a short story in my Cold War tech big-planet fantasy. I had a good outline for a different one but I shelved it for now, it didn't introduce the good concepts fast enough and it wasn't as fun.
I published a short short with New Realm last year, apparently they didn't sell enough for royalties. They have an 85% acceptance rate so it looks like I got taken for a ride. The story was all right, about talking swords that get hung out to dry when the war's over, but I could have put the words together much better.
Not confident in my writing skill at all. I'm eloquent when I talk and pray but turn into a stuttering moron when I write.
Super-confident in my imagination. I've got some good concepts, good weave of theme, setting, and character, decent action choreography, in my head and notes.

Yeah, that's where I found out there were bugmen. I thought the blue guy with the weird shadow was just some freaky wizard.

I'd like to write a small number of short SF stories. However, I spend more time researching (by reading and thinking about books) and brainstorming ideas, than actually doing the craft and writing. No matter how I look at it, writing fiction is tremendously difficult. I think it is the most difficult creative pursuit by a large margin.

I feel you. It's more fun, too. I'm trying to figure out what a caravan would look like if the modern US Postal Service had to arrange it to cross a desert the size of Canada, and all my research will just boil down to a few paragraphs, but if I don't do it anyone with any knowledge will get blown out of the story. I don't regret it though.

>what are you writing?
About a young Ori (A human with elvish features from the continent of Orion) trying to fulfill the steps of becoming the next Ashikkiri; a Hero from the very first days of the Empire of Man that has reincarnated continuously until the fall of said Empire. It is a dangerous and uncertain quest as he has to succeed where others before him has failed and died, and he needs to convince the major political houses/individuals to recognize him as the next Ashikkiri.

Meanwhile, there are some Humans, Ori, and other racial nations that don't want to see the rise of another Ashikkiri, because it would send ripples through the plans they have for the remnants of the fallen Human Empire.

>Have you been published before?
Unfortunately, no.

>Are you confident in your writing skill?
Fairly so, but I'm still educating myself and considering joining a local creative writing course to solidify any aspects of my writing that I don't have under full control yet.

>Are you confident in your imagination?
Absolutely, but I don't want to be too over-confident. I doubt I'll become the next J.K Rowling or anything.

>what are you writing?
Nothing anymore
>Have you been published before?
Nope
>Are you confident in your writing skill?
I was until today
>Are you confident in your imagination?
I was until yesterday

Just finished up Ninefox Gambit. Ended up enjoying it quite a bit and I'm looking forwards to the sequel.

How does it compare with similar works like Quantum Thief/Golden Age/Nethereal? At least those are what it looks like.

>reincarnating hero
Are you pulling from JRPGs? I've got an outline in the back of my notes that plays off a Final Fantasy-style magitek/ragtag group of stereotypes/save the world kind of story.

Give me some essential cat/lit/

>Are you pulling from JRPGs?
No, but I am taking some inspiration from the Nerevar Reincarnation in Morrowind. I always loved the thought of someone who needs to earn and prove themselves as the reincarnated Hero instead of just being called out as the chosen one from the get go for no reason.

scifiwright.com/2014/04/do-i-role-play-ask-rather-do-ever-i-stop-part-three-edge-of-the-empire/

I was happy as a cat when I was reading that book

what was the point of this?

Can we have "To Kill A God" added to the charts?

To let us critique his prose style. It isn't much, but it isn't rotten. Not much personality in it yet.

Can we confirm Stevian is exclusively /ourguy/?

Truthfully you aren't awful or anything, but there's a lack of punctuation that makes some of this a little hard to follow and it lacks the punch that makes a POV character interesting to follow.

I haven't read any of those so I can't comment on their similarities.

Essentially a young but promising soldier gets the essence of a long dead general shoved into her head to lead a force to recapture a space fortress from heretics. The space empire she's from has a caste system and uses highly advanced math/calendar systems to alter reality and run their technology and get benefits from battlefield formations and so on, with the heretics wanting to deviate from the standard system to get different effects.

>Can we confirm Stevian is exclusively /ourguy/?

I think we can do that

Anime fights how? Stormlight/house of blades anime tier?

Read and find out, not everyone is the same.
We all have different tastes.

oh, I try to deal out more of her personality in other parts but it's kind of difficult because she needs to be the straight man to the other characters. she's supposed to be a dubiously ethical mad scientist, but instead everything about her is dulled down for contrast. Here's an example of the intended character peeking out

>“Well you might want to come along anyway, I'm famished. Frankie, be a dear and grab our guest a vase and some potting soil, she seems to prefer to engage in osmosis.” With flourish of his wrist he dismissed Frankie and schmoozed off towards the fairgrounds. After 15 minutes of self-involved commentary, Maxwell arrived at a roasted nut cart with Ava in tow. Ava could not remember seeing so much variety. There were almonds candied with ginger and sugar and peanuts dusted with sweet paprika and salt. A bag of walnuts were being churned in chocolate and caramel. “What do you think?” he said handing her a bag of hazelnuts coated in musky sweet dust. “I pioneered this recipe myself! It's a secret blend of invigorating spices from the jungles of unknown Zanzibar. It's guaranteed to fortify your frontal lobe for two guilders a bag, but aren't you lucky this one's on the house”

>“Oh, it's coffee,” Ava determined. Maxwell's grin faltered. “coffee, cinnamon, cloves and pepper, plus a bit of sugar.”

>“Not bad. I didn't realize I had a cook in the audience”

>Ava blushed. “Not really, no. I just had a friend who liked to test recipes on me.”

>A chill ran down her spine as a thought dawned on her. Had Luca realized she was there that night? She wasn't exactly quiet, and Luca was nothing if not thorough. If he had known she was was a witness the first place he'd look is with her friends.

>For a moment the silence that draped over them took a dreadful weight, bearing down on them like a blanket of lead. Ava forced herself to push past it, and soon enough the vacuum lifted.

>“What surprises me is how mild the bitterness is. It should be enough to make me claw my own tongue out, but I actually like it. Are you dulling the flavor with small amounts of salt?”

At this point, the only real sign of who she's supposed to be comes during the part where she spends four pages telling a pigeon her backstory

Sounds sort of cool.
It's alright.

That honestly sounds better than most of my ideas. Why can't you just give him a different name?

okay, gave her a bit more personality here

>“Oh, it's coffee,” Ava determined. Maxwell's grin faltered. “coffee, sucralose and cinnamomum cassia”

>“Could you repeat that?”

>“Cinnamon. The cheap kind.”

>“Not bad. I didn't realize I had a cook in the audience”

Honestly, I could change it. I was thinking of a color-based name scheme and giving him a name that means "cyan" would work

More like pic related. I know it's not animu but one of the magic systems is elemental and there's a fight where two guys are lobbing fire and earth and water at each other.

Then there's a different kind of dark magic which causes your veins and eyes to go black and the magic itself appears as black smoke and all I could think was that it was pretty on-the-nose.

My problems with the magic systems were very secondary to the fact that the story took place over about 3 or 4 days and the established characters just go around breaking character and then marvelling at how far they've come from the person they used to be 2 days ago.

Is it strange if I unironically prefer cassia cinnamon to ceylon cinnamon?

lol still got Veeky Forums on my mind

Anyway can someone recommend a fantasy book that isn't shitty nu-epic fantasy, gritty, omg so realistic (aka super edgy dark), generic, un-fantastical, omg subvert blah blah, stupid goofy hur hurt nerd comedy in joke bullshit, romance/sexfest, YA drama faggotry, autistic magic systems, or any other garbage, but that is actually good?

Maybe something by Diana Wynne Jones or Peter S. Beagle?

I legit can't tell the difference. The only other cinnamon I've tried is mexican cinnamon, which literally just tastes like tree bark

In terms of fantasy I'm not really sure what you're looking for. The Grace of Kings is my go-to but I'm not sure if it conflicts with your "shitty nu-epic fantasy".

It's fantastic but the the magic is a very small part, with the scientific and technological development of a southeast asian society on the cusp of the enlightenment era being in the focus. It's realistic and can be violent, but it's not dark or gritty, showing both the human capacity for good and bad. The only thing that you might find objectionable is the heavy-handed feminism but even that has a deep basis in the story of han mulan

*hua mulan

my bad.

thanks for acknowledging your mistake and helping create a friendly imageboard culture user.

>I legit can't tell the difference. The only other cinnamon I've tried is mexican cinnamon, which literally just tastes like tree bark
Really? Mexican cinnamon is generally Ceylon cinnamon. To me it tastes exactly like cinnamon candies, very spicy. Cassia is more dark and savory imo, less of a spicy bite, I find it more complex and fits better with how I use it.

Anyway that book sounds pretty interesting, I don't think I've read any Asian influenced (other than WoT if you can call it that) in a very long while, not since middle school when I read some book I can't remember about a girl in a sort of fantasy China I think that featured a chinese type dragon and some other things. Feminism in general annoys me, but I can look past it so long as the book is good.

Beagle is good, though admittedly I've only ever read the Last Unicorn of his works, might as well see what else he's got. Don't think I've ever read anything by Diana Wynne Jones, will look into it.

Face in the Frost.

speaking of asian-influenced lit, check out Guy Gavriel Kay's River of Stars and Under Heaven.

He's been cranking out comfy little short stories lately, a lot of which are collected in the book on this chart . DWJ's most popular is Howl's Moving Castle, mainly because Miyazaki made an anime of it, but Charmed Life and The Tough Guide to Fantasyland are also good.

read the first book then and leave it at that, it's fine self-contained and the feminism is pretty light. It goes all-in on the second book to the point that most of the POV characters are women and being accepted quickly enough that it's actually a little unrealistic. The best scientific parts are in the second book however so it's kind of a trade-off.

As for cinnamon, it's possible I was cheated on the mexican stuff. The place I got it from was a little sketchy even for a new york deli. All cassia is just sold as cinnamon here so it's kind of hard to know what you're buying, even at the high-end places

>mfw I adore DWJ and shill her when I can but still haven't read Howl's or Chrestomanci
Archer's Goon and Deep Secret and the others I did read were so good though.

What kind of scientific revolution? Is it Isaac Newton in kimono or do they reach conclusions in their own way? I'm working on a story that includes an Asian culture having a scientific and economic revolution, and I'm trying to make it feel like it definitely came from them, with things they realize easily vs things they never seem to figure out, attitudes toward sharing knowledge, attitudes toward ill-informed ancient chroniclers, that sort of thing.

Also is the sparse magic included in their scientific revolution?

It's kind of mixed. Some parts are renaissance, other parts are steampunk. Some of the information comes from excessive and often demeaning research, others are literal deus ex machinas (part of the plot of the story is that the local gods are involved in mortal matters, nudging their most interesting humans into position while in disguise)

The first book has very low-tech balloons, hang gliders and submarines.

as for the magic being in the technology, no, not really, though as I said the gods do give hints and there is a part in the first book where a augurer mentions that divination techniques are repeated a few dozen times to avoid false positives

>divination techniques are repeated a few dozen times to avoid false positives
I love this sort of thing.