/sffg/ - Science Fiction & Fantasy General

so that /sffg/ can shit all over your prose when you make it big

Are the fantasy charts reliable, or are there some bad books on there?

I know literally nothing about Sanderson other than he taught Mclellan and that he's a Mormon, and I genuinely can't tell if this is sarcasm or not

the latter

Some of the charts have included so many books that it's virtually impossible that any one person would enjoy them all. You're bound to enjoy some of them, but unlikely to enjoy all.

Post star charts.

>>actually know to write

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

They are full of garbage.

>What are the essential memes that I should put in my writing?
Read all the manga and watch all the anime you can find, descend into neetdom and when the time comes and you're ready you'll know it.

Is this actually good or it is a meme book?

If by meme you mean "anime fights and GRI" then it isn't one. It's a slow paced adventure exploring themes such as memories and the past.

Good, because I ordered it based on a suggestion by an user. Sounds just like what I was looking for after all.

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If you know Sanderson, everything I wrote is true. Ask cosmerefag to explain.

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>You better be 100% with that book.
>Or I will lend all my autism to destroying it like I did red knight, dhalgren and others.

How could someone who liked library at mount char recommend buried giant?
>memory
I don't want a fucking botns knockoff fagget

it's excellent

is a faggot

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start worshipping the golden plates

everything else that you will need will come in time

start reading sanderson's new short story, first line

>Lift prepared to be awesome.

I like the guy's work but jeez he writes some cringeworthy shit

Sanderson took the advice that your first million words will be terrible seriously and wrote a million words, like four huge novels, before he tried to get published. He never had writing talent, he just brute-forced his way to writing skill. Mad respect.

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A minefield of trash. Chances that the title is good are much lower than the chances of it being garbage.
You confuse personal enjoyment and quality for some reason.

>You confuse personal enjoyment and quality for some reason.
Subjectively (and some might argue objectively as well), they're the same.

No, but I may have misinterpreted his question. If he meant "will I dislike some of these books", I think my answer stands. If he meant "are all these books critically acclaimed and of high quality", then my answer was completely beside the point.

Anyone here read Grace of Kings?

Got it sat on my ereader and I'm debating on starting that or downloading something else

That looks nutty, what's it from?

I was memed it.
Did not enjoy. I like magic, that book was more of historical fiction. If that is your cup of tea go right ahead.

Does the "chosen one" aspect to a main character deteriorate the character development and plot overall in books?

Might be what I'm looking for then

If an author isn't using it to explore something like destiny or free will then yes.
It's the only reason Jordan gets away with it

Only if it comes no strings attached. If he's chosen to suffer as well as triumph it's fine.

Thanks! I'm considering including the "chosen one" aspect, but the main character has to suffer for it and earn the title before he can obtain the possible powers that comes with it.

Give Deed of Paksenarrion a read

Main character becomes a Paladin and the novel's good at making it clear that they've been given their power because of their character and actions rather than just because of fate.

I'll check it up. Thanks for the suggestion.

Do you think it would be confusing if a character had two different names that they're called depending on who's addressing them?

C. J. Cherryh's hardSF space opera The Chanur Saga.

Like Gandalf and Mithrandir?

Exactly, but more frequently.

Yeah, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Half the characters/places in Malazan have 10 different names apiece.

It's pretty standard for fantasy to have at least one character called by lots of names, usually more than one character. Mind that you'll be aiming for veteran fantasy readers if you do this, most normies can hardly even get into stuff like GRRM because "his names are so confusing," no idea how they'd manage something like Wheel of Time where most important people have 2 or 3 names each.

This. He's a living example that perseverance and work ethic can get you to the top even if you don't have any genius talent.

Yeah, I prefer reaching out to normie fantasy readers and veterans alike, so the one name route is probably the best choice.

>oh, someone replied to me
>hardSF space opera? sounds right up my ally
>I'll ask what its like and if he recommends it
>see cover

fuck sake

That much effort is a kind of genius in itself.

Watch Casshern Sins.

Reminder that the puppies are retards.
>That’s what’s happened to Science Fiction & Fantasy literature. A few decades ago, if you saw a lovely spaceship on a book cover, with a gorgeous planet in the background, you could be pretty sure you were going to get a rousing space adventure featuring starships and distant, amazing worlds. If you saw a barbarian swinging an axe? You were going to get a rousing fantasy epic with broad-chested heroes who slay monsters, and run off with beautiful women. Battle-armored interstellar jump troops shooting up alien invaders? Yup. A gritty military SF war story, where the humans defeat the odds and save the Earth. And so on, and so forth.

>These days, you can’t be sure.

>The book has a spaceship on the cover, but is it really going to be a story about space exploration and pioneering derring-do? Or is the story merely about racial prejudice and exploitation, with interplanetary or interstellar trappings?

>There’s a sword-swinger on the cover, but is it really about knights battling dragons? Or are the dragons suddenly the good guys, and the sword-swingers are the oppressive colonizers of Dragon Land?

>A planet, framed by a galactic backdrop. Could it be an actual bona fide space opera? Heroes and princesses and laser blasters? No, wait. It’s about sexism and the oppression of women.

Alien merchant captain gets caught up in interstellar intrigue with other aliens and one human (previously undiscovered race with no translator available). Lots of politics and uboat tension. My personal favorite series.

...and yes, misandrist space lions, you pussy :3

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outdated meme senpai

Do you guys know of any comfy fantasy or scifi?

>science fiction author
>book about alien species
>can't come up with a different weapon other than a gun

Really? Even if it's lasers, why the fuck is it shaped like a gun?
Can't they use their imagination?

Here I just threw pic related together in 5 minutes.
What the fuck is it? What does it do? How can we humans comprehend this alien civilization?

The face in the frost - J Bellairs
Shadow of the torturer, some parts I found very comfy

I'm reading Shadow of the Torturer now (my first time reading Wolfe) and it's amazing how not-edgy he manages to make the journey of a black masked, exiled torturer with a greatsword named 'Terminus Est'. The summary makes it sound like a fanfic someone wrote of their Dark Souls character, but it's actually really great.

Guns aren't real important to the setting (they're never described by the author). It's not military scifi, but the cover artists really liked drawing spacedock shootout scenes.

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Whoa, space FLIPS

Come again?

The format of that map is similar to what pilots and atc use to plan flights across the us and other parts of the world. Just interesting to see an adaption of something few people know about to this guys world.

Link related if youre interested...
baseops.net/publications/

>it's space so they must have guns

Muh autism is triggered

Are cover artists required to read the book they are working for/on?

no

Ah interesting, but none of the links work for me.
Yeah, practically all the covers look like that. Here is one from a Croatian publisher with an actual space ship (yes, and guns again).

I loved the Witcher so much it really reignited my desire to read fiction. I didn't think I could enjoy a modern fantasy book series more than the Witcher, and I still don't, but I have been thirsty for more.

I read what's out of Kingkiller and liked that a lot. Now I'm about halfway through Way of Kings. Holy shit, is this stuff good. I guess I'm lucky that these books are so long because I don't want to run out again. I picked up the first Malazan book for then though.

Any conjecture as to when the 3rd Kingkiller and the 3rd Stormlight archive book will drop? Also, will any of us still be alive for book 10?

The covers in this style were drawn by her brother, but they're pretty weird too. This looks like medieval stonework to me. The only bars visited were on spacedock...

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>I read what's out of Kingkiller and liked that a lot.

You came to the wrong neighborhood, lilyplougher.

I feel kinda bad for Sanderson that you guys meme on him so much. If you've ever read any of his interviews where he talks about his early days of becoming successful you'd see how much work he put into it. Dude went to every convention imaginable to meet industry professionals, wrote something like 10 books before he had one published, organised his own book tours on a shoestring budget, basically just did a shittonne of leg work.

Just FYI mentioning Kingkiller Chronicles and especially its author in this thread is going to trigger people. They are extra sensitive. And Rothfuss seems hell bent on becoming another GRRM so he's probably playing Release-Delay-Chicken with him to see who can stall their next book longer.

Sanderson thankfully has a great work ethic and the next Stormlight book will be out in 2017. With him it's not about taking breaks, it's that he's writing a bunch of book series at the same time and he rotates by year. His idea of a vacation from writing his huge novels is writing shorter novels.

Lastly I'll say that Malazan Book of the Fallen is going to blow you away.

>Dude went to every convention imaginable to meet industry professionals, wrote something like 10 books before he had one published, organised his own book tours on a shoestring budget, basically just did a shittonne of leg work.
The amount of work one has to put in to make it in this field of work is intimidating at times.

Diana Wynne Jones, Peter S Beagle and mid-period Pratchett. Thinking of making a chart with comfy on on end of a scale and OW THE EDGE on the opposite.

Psstt

Anyone else read this?

I would just like to restate this question in this thread to see if there are other opinions.

I'm looking for some sci-fi that explores AI from as many possible angles and as expansively as possible. Is there anything like that?

>leaving bar
>see four motherfuckers trying to hide behind the corner of a wall, but they're like halfway out and one is waving a knife

For comfy, read Robert Silverberg's Lord Valentine's Castle. A traveling juggler recovers his memory and discovers he is the rightful heir to the throne - yes, it is reassuringly well trodden ground of an exiled prince narrative.

The descriptive writing is very lengthy and exacting, and depicts a large world with a varied geography of jungles, mountains, deserts, provincial towns and urban sprawls, where humans live among several alien races in harmony.

There is very little in the way of peril, drama, or high tension. Instead, the protagonist spends the novel chilling with his circus troupe, traveling up and down the land, playing shows, making new friends, and gradually building support for his throne with his easygoing charm, rather than by violence. This book is the opposite of all the edgy fantasy books full of sex and mutilation, and ideal for people with a heart condition, or living in a cell, who must not read anything too racy.

Have any of you guys actually written a finished story? If so, how did you get past the fact that it's complete garbage? I've been writing my story for a while and I'm on the verge of giving up now. It's horrible. I can't find any redeeming qualities in it and I just want to move on to another story. I know the common advice is to finish it anyway, but I don't see the point in it.

Sure, I've learned to force myself to write even when I don't feel like it, but this feels like something different from my usual anxiety. I honestly feel like I'm wasting my time because I'll never write anything good. The first chapter doesn't hook, the plot isn't compelling at all, and I think all my characters are shit. I'm at my wits end here. If anyone has some magical advice that can help me, I'd gladly take it. Man, I just want to shoot myself and get over with my life.

It's absolutely a bad thing about Mallzan

I kinda enjoyed suddenly realizing that some ancient race or whatever that I kept hearing about was actually this other people group I already knew.

Why is heart of a dog so revered? Seems like there's not too much for a non-russian/russian history major to get out of it or did I miss a lot of it?

Couple chuckles, deep thoughts in there, but far below M&M

is Logan's Run a good example of a mostly blank slate protagonist?

Is there any good action fantasy with no wars or kingdom vs kingdom stuff?

I find that stories lose my interest when they try to expand their scope like that

For some reason I've got a tab with the goodreads for The Boy with the Porcelain Blade bookmarked

Anyone read it? Can't remember why I wanted to look at it later

Sanderson kind of did it the traditional way though.

You can strike it big with self-publishing without doing everything Sanderson did, though it's still hard work if of a different kind. If you know how to market yourself and have the time/inclination to operate a blog, social media pages, and maintain a presence on writing forums/reddit/facebook pages where you subliminally shill your own works then you can build a pretty big fan base.

Still requires you to be able to write a good story though.

Sorry, I'm not a Veeky Forums regular. What's wrong with Kingkiller beyond it being a massive marysue "I'm going to write about my DnD OC" story? The world itself is really cool outside of Kvothe himself, at least in my opinion. Is it just because Rothfuss is an asshole with the delays, as you intimated?

Checked

The Rock Lee of fantasy authors?

No one? Ok...

>the first chapter
The trouble is you don't know how to write. Write short stories, not chapters. Just set them in that world with those characters. When you find out it's shit then at least you only spent a couple days. And you can try a new tactic in the next couple days.

Eventually you'll have a pile of words about your characters and you can tell just by reading them what's boring or interesting about them.

Maybe if you listed some AI-related books you've liked and disliked someone could get a sense of what you're looking for

I haven't read a lot of sci-fi. I did read neuromancer and enjoyed it but I'm looking for a more thorough look at AI with an opinion formed more from the modern AI climate. Something that takes ideas from something like Bostroms Superintelligence and puts them into play in meaningful ways and with interesting prose.

If this book doesn't exist someone should write it because there's potential here for a real epic.

I have completed 2 books (first was ~78k, second was ~94k).

Neither are complete shit (first one toes the line though) but that's because I spent a lot of time and energy writing complete shit to make it to where I'm at now. The fact that you can recognise the weakness in your own writing is good because it means you've passed total ignorance and have moved into the "I know the things I don't know" territory.

Keep writing and focus on finishing things. Finishing stories is a whole different part of the learning process than simply writing. You might have to write a million bad words before you write a single good one, but you'll get there.