/sffg/ - Science Fiction and Fantasy General

Locke Lamora is starting to get even worse than anime for me with this Wicked Sisters shit

>I speak fluent hatchet

I just need to suck up these last 200 pages and cleanse my palate with some Wolfe or something

god the edge in A Darker Shade Of Magic is so sharp you can make shallow cuts on your wrist with it (the MC has an evil black eye and literally slits his wrists to use magic) but it's the only thing I managed to find with comfortable prose and a good sense of aesthetic. Even The Name Of The Wind didn't have that.

If Theodore Sturgeon read fantasy instead of scifi he'd realize 90% is an overly generous estimate

Arthur C. Clarke wrote a story with thr exact same plot (Wall of Darkness) in 1949 but Chiang improved on it thematically and stylistically. Pretty good example of how originality isn't everything, I much prefer Chiang's story.

Any good sci fi about colonization? Preferably without FTL. I'll post a couple I've read

Crossfire by Nancy Kress has bland characters but has a nice first contact plot line. It isn't much of a colonization novel, since most of the time the point of view is away from the colony. The sequel is horseshit, like a big fuck you readers. "Look at this nice world I've built here. Are you looking? Now watch as I set it all on fire! Just making a point..."

Coyote by someguy. Bland characters, blander world. Nothing happens except for a guy who is awoken midtravel in the ship and can't sleep anymore. Worse sequel.

I don't know shit about fantasy but the OP pics for these threads have been awesome lately.

Repostan from last thread

To the guy that was writing the story about a god using a busting-through-your-chest-like-alien moth plague to drop the number of people in a certain area below some number. Did you get the idea from pic related?

This was at the back of my head when you talked about it.

KSR's Mars trilogy of course.

A lot of Ben Bova's stuff in the Grand Tour series deals with exploration and colonization of the solar system. I haven't read the most recent books but apparently they deal with a expedition to another solar system.

The third Old Man's War book uses a space colony as a setting, though it's not focused entirely on it. (series is worth reading though)

Star Colony by Keith Laumer is not worth reading, it's one of his post-stroke books IIRC.

Anyone know of a good scifi or fantasy book/series that is set mostly or entirely within one city?

Chasm City once it gets going, a good standalone bit of hard scifi cheese.

Bakker's series also has this idea within it.

Glen Cook's Garrett PI is about a ex-marine private eye in a low-fantasy setting. Sometimes he leaves the city but mostly everything takes place in it.

Same for a lot of the Discworld books, especially the Watch focused ones.

Dresden Files

That was made before bakker publishe. He probably heard of that monument and put it in his story.

Altered Carbon, if I remember correctly.

Arg

I'm looking for scifi primarily about the crew/captain of a single spaceship in a big traditional scifi world that's not too far on the hard scifi scale.

They can be doing anything on said ship and I'll probably like it.

I've read
>Some CJ Cherryh
>Some of Expanse
>Culture
>Everything Elizabeth Moon
>That Undying Mercenaries series some user recs all the time (thanks)
And liked most of it.
Really I'm just looking for fun action or intrigue within that setting

Any recs?

Is he a Mary Sue? If so, why does he work so well as a character?

They fly to Europe in AC
Jemisin's Inheritance trilogy is almost entirely set around one but the city itself isn't really the focus

> some of CJ Cherryh
bruh, you better be in a severe love-hate relationship with that bitch, as her stuff is oscillating between horribly bad and quite enjoyable, HARD.

You might enjoy Liu Cixin Three Body books, though only the third of those has "adventures aboard a spaceship". It's really great, but also really depressing, and (not memeing) it makes your neurons fire.

>Arg
Wtf does that mean?

Also altered carbon has him hoping the universe.

He doesn't work well as a character

Why would you claim that

try GRRMs a thousand worlds books,
especially the one with the biological engineering corps seed ship, " Tuf Voyaging "

also, John M Harrisons " Light ", " Nova Swing " and the third book whose name escapes me at the moment.

Cherryh's Angel With the Sword. Would reccomend.

>Undying Mercenaries
Thanks for reading senpai. Try Neal Asher books like the agent cormac series. Or Bv Larson's imperium trilogy.

Maybe hull zero 3? If you don't mind some horror in your scifi.

Joe Haldeman, The Forever War
spends large parts of the protagonist in space and shipside.

Perdido Street Station.

Nova by delaney.

If i could clearly articulate why I think he works as a character, I wouldn't need to ask.

Perhaps it is just the fact that the story is told from his perspective, and the reader gets a direct line to his thoughts, perhaps the lore of the world and the extensive allusions and foreshadowing Rothfuss puts into it, that I enjoy, rather than Kvothe's persective of said world.

But I'm really not sure.

NEVER READ ANYTHING BY SAMUEL HOGG DELANEY

He's real weird, and many of his books are bad for sure, but Nova is free from his chronic obsession with sexual deviancy.

I actually read almost a whole Dresden Files book once. I don't remember why I did that.

>They fly to Europe in AC
Yeah, I forgot that. But it's really brief, isn't it?

Is that what arg means? You read something once and can't remember why?

Means it's so bad it actually triggers me that someone would recommend it. I should've put the H at the end, 'argh'.

>dresden files
>bad
You are one of those moorcock lovers aren't you?

What's good about it?

I didn't hate Darker Shade but there were a lot of little things that made me roll my eyes. Bought the second book because it has higher ratings everywhere and I like the setting enough that I want to see some Black London happening.

The City and the City

The Icarus Hunt.

There's at least one other fan on this board.

Tone, attitude, pace, setting, Bob.

>zahn

Read it and then argue you fruit

Is Dying Earth worth reading past the first book?

Cugel the Clever is the best Dying Earth.

>implying Ninjas vs Aliens is bad

/sffg/ is there a limit to how powerful you can make the main villain before THEY become a mary sue?

I was thinking of having a villain who can control electromagentism (including light) and uses it to among other things create flesh golems, bend the iron in blood, staple his wounds closed and even bring himself back to life. He's ultimately killed by being consumed by a black hole

If you give the character too many powers, or powers that feel undefined, then the use of those powers will likely smack of narrative convenience inserts. Those always rub me the wrong way, at least.

People South of the Wall freaked the fuck out when monsters came, though.

Depends on how you write it. I think the whole mary sue thing came about because it's not believable for one person to be so good irl. Which is fucking stupid seeing as it's fantasy and not real life.

If this person has all those abilities, then abilities will have to be common to some extent in your world. Or maybe the guy is an alien from some far reaches of the universe. He has some advanced tech that allows him to control his body's aura(magnetic field) what you talked about ensues.

You can write about literal fedora wearers using katanas to kill people and pull it off. It all depends on how good a writer you are.

Is Zahn frowned upon here? I read his Thrawn stuff and while is might be star wars EU it was what defined it as something that wasnt shitty

what if all the powers are based on the same core principal but are just highly creative applications of said power?

the powers aren't really common, but there are at least three other characters who gain powers for the same reason he did, though they kind of vary in strength. Another character is strong enough to tear reality apart with their bare hands, while another gets a power that's comedically weak

>what if all the powers are based on the same core principal but are just highly creative applications of said power?
I'm sure there are ways to pull it off, but it strikes me that the odds are pretty high it will turn out shitty.

>the powers aren't really common, but there are at least three other characters who gain powers for the same reason he did, though they kind of vary in strength. Another character is strong enough to tear reality apart with their bare hands, while another gets a power that's comedically weak
This sounds like a comic book premise, and not in a good way.

This. I was thinking fantastic 4 when I read this like I said, it all depends on how good a writer you are. What did you write before? Are you a published author brainstorming some ideas? Or is this your first ever everything?

I'm making it sound like they all got superpowers in an accident but that's not the case. A group of warring gods are investing in human hosts in an attempt to kill each other, because their own nature prevents them from doing so themselves

It's not the first thing I've ever written but I'm not published yet. at the moment I'm just kicking around an idea that's been in my head for a while. I'm working on something much smaller with tuned-down prototypes of him and another character but admittedly it's not going well. There was a while where it felt like it was going really well but circumstances have led me to realize it may be my worst abortion yet

t.cuckamian

>. A group of warring gods are investing in human hosts in an attempt to kill each other, because their own nature prevents them from doing so themselves
Sounds like Sanderson meets Grace of kings

never read any Sanderson, but I am that idiot who keep recommending Grace of Kings to everybody

in reality, that mix is probably a lot more patrician than the bullshit that actually inspired it so sure, let's go with that. Sanderson meet Liu, a match made in hell

Name a single person who has benefited from meeting a Dunyain

Pro tip: there isn't one

>Well first off, you should know that I don’t write fantasy – only hacks write fantasy. My books are about the triumph of the human spirit which just happen to have everything you would find in The Wheel of Time.

Saubon.
Stop oppressing minorities shitlord

>Saubon
>he hasn't read TGO

Wew lad
DONT TRUST HI-

>And so what that I smoke weed

Do they have spankings?

So what. He went from literally no one who got spanked by conphas to become hero of holy war, king and an exalt general thanks to kellhus.
Knowing him, he probably much enjoyed waring and fucking for 20 years too.

*warring

And then he was discarded when it was convienent, with nothing to show for it, because that's what the Dunyain do to people. And in that final moment, he obviously regretted everything he did for Kellhus

I just finished reading the Commonwealth saga. I really enjoyed it but Jesus Christ Melanie and Dudley chapters were a struggle to read. She is a fucking turbostacey who gets everything handed to her on a silver platter and Dudley is such an insufferable cuck.

Alien battles were fucking dank though

>Mfw relativistic suicide ship attack

Seconding: Guards! Guards!
And other books from the Discworld series set mostly in Ankh Morpork (the other Watch books, the onse with Lipwig)

Watch>Susan Death>de Worde>Lipwig
Not saying he's terrible, he's just eclipsed by the other Morporprotagonists.

Alastair Reynolds has some. Pushing Ice, Revenger, many of his other books are heavily set on spaceships, but not exclusively. On the Steel Breeze and Chasm City have generation ships.

If you are willing to endure a cock-tease of a generation ship book with an ending that might be unsatisfactory to you, read Aurora by KS Robinson. I prefer my generation ships form Reynolds, but KSR makes some interesting points.

If you're really desperate for books set on spaceships try the "funny" and "up-beat" Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. Maybe you'll like it. I didn't.

But he's the one we got an okay movie of in the form of the 4-hour Going Postal. Watch TV-series when?

Melanie chapters triggered my sexism because of that 23rd century pussy pass

Not everyone can be saved kiddo

I am about to read it. I made that post at 2 AM in the morning.

*
And yup, I read it and I fucking loved it.

Did he really say that somewhere? Or is it just the impression you constantly get from reading him?

Asimov really has power when he has small groups talking science, doesn't he? Try C-Chute next.

Is there anything out there close to 1984, but people are ruled by a computer?

Probably going to do Foundation, I've put it off long enough.

Old Man's War is fun

Thrawn trilogy worth a read? Doesn't seem to be much else other than that

It was pretty fun. Don't know about the sequels.
TV series soon maybe.

Are there any books with a worse evil than the inchoroi , dunayn? Etc

Closest is probably agent cormac by neal asher.

He did say it but it's obviously a joke if you read the whole interview.

Guys I've been reading Stephen King's salem lot and I discovered that I have a new fetish.

Are there any books with a spencer or a woman who is over the age of 40 and a virgin? It would also have to include her getting fucked by a younger man. And I don't want a bare mention then they awake. I want grrm style sex. Devious and degenerate.

Thanks.

>grasping absolute is evil
fucking worldborns

I think 4channers would defend someone they saw rape, mutilate, rape, torture, rape, butcher, kill with their own eyes just to be contrary

Only if they were raping and butchering Dunyain

They follow the shortest pass. They don't think about what's good or bad. That's hardly evil

are there any good pirate books?

>mfw "I, Adolin Kholin, cousin to the King and third in line to the throne of Alethkar, have shat myself in my Shardplate on three separate occasions."

Brandon is slowly, slowly morphing into GRRM. If he retains his work ethic, this may not be a bad thing.