/sffg/ - Science Fiction and Fantasy General

I've already looked up most of them user.
Then, when I get bored I'll look up all the books on the charts again.

And again.

And again.

Any novels with a little necromancer girl protag?

Sci-fi fans, I'm a bit bored and have gotten a little curious. So I'm wondering, can you name me examples from sci-fi of the following?

>Space Jews
>Space Christians
>Space Muslims
>Space Hindus
>Space Buddhists

Hyperion Cantos. Especially the Endymion half.

The Old Kingdom series. Clariel is closest to the mark, but Lirael/Sabriel/Abhorsen are fairly close too and are meant to be read first.

Is that the only good book with necromancers? Even ignoring the girl thing, I haven't found a single good one apart from Sabriel

Is there any genre fiction that captures the millennial generation from the inside rather than "you dern millennials get off my lawn!" or is it still too soon?

Also, what years must one have been born in to fall into that category?

Yuusha ga Shinda truly has the wrong protagonist.

That's actually somebody's hobby.
adherents.com/lit/index.html

nice link

What would a "patrician" and "literary" fantasy recommendation chart/list look like? So far I've got:

The Epic of Gilgamesh
The Iliad
The Odyssey
The Arabian Nights
Beowulf
Le Morte d'Arthur
Journey to the West
Gulliver's Travels
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass
Idylls of the King
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
The Hobbit
The Lord of the Rings
The Chronicles of Narnia
The Once and Future King

I know Veeky Forums has a huge boner for Mervyn Peake and Gene Wolfe but I'm not familiar with them. Outside of these two and the books I listed, would anything else be on here?

>Patricians

>The Iliad
>The Odyssey

Thanks for the kek.

Have you read the Lankhmar stuff?
>no Discordians outside of Illuminatus! and some graffiti in another book
I am disappoint.

The Worm Ouroboros
Lud-in-the-Mist
Broken Sword

No sword-and-sorcery?

>Conan
>Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser

HP Lovecraft - Dagon (5 pages long)

Man escapes a pirate ship, is adrift for a couple days until his boat is grounded into a black mire. He smells dead fish, sees a black sun, and believes the stretch of land he is on could have only recently been uprooted by volcanic activity. He spends days exploring the land, reaching the base of a mound. Plagued by nightmares, he gives up on sleep and continues to explore the swamp. Over the mount he sees a valley with a monolith “not altogether the work of Nature.” Through the moonlight he sees aquatic hieroglyphics on the monolith depicting fishes, eels, octopi, crustaceans, and unknown species. He sees carvings of a humanoid race of people, yet these people have webbed hands and feet, wide and flabby lips, glassy, bulging eyes, and the size of whales. He then sees a one-eyed, fast, scaly armed monster that darts towards the monolith while making a sound that turns the narrator mad. He runs away, is whisked up by a ship during a storm, and taken to San Francisco where he continues to dream of the monster finding him.

Robert Silverberg's The Dybbuk Of Mazel Tov IV is a more humorous treatment of Jews in space by a secular Jewish author.

Jewish refugees colonise a planet, establish a new Jerusalem, and live in harmony with extraterrestrials, one of whom is possessed by a Jewish ghost.

Watership Down probably earned a place.

Here's a chart I made. If you can't find anything here, try another genre.

Any idea how good the anthropology is in Earth Abides? I'm an anthropology master's student so that piqued my interest.

Black Jewels Trilogy

Yeah I forgot to save this one whoops.

Have you read the Lankhmar books?

kek

Actually, A Wrinkle in Time IS way more deserving of a top-ten list than Eragon. How the hell did that person not mention Le Guin though?

""""""Eragon""""""

It was written by an anthropologist IRL. The author was an academic who didn't write a lot of SF, mostly non-fiction.

It's a wonderful book - the title refers to Ecclesiastes, which also informs the writing.

So, what were the best sci-fi and fantasy DEBUTS of 2017?

>2017
Do you think we have a time machine?

>2017
Meant 2016, sorry.
Typo.

I just assumed it was """""banter"""""""

>all the interesting books in the charts
How about this one?

I can't remember a single debut novel.

Dragonoak by Sam Farren. Girl is a necromancer who runs away to be a squire for a lady knight, they fall in love.

Though the author is a (alleged) child molester so probably don't read it.
>mfw I recommended it to a gay friend after the author got outed but before I knew about it

>reading a debut in its year of publication

too rich for my blood

Has there been any new sci-fi or fantasy with real "literary" weight in the past 5 years or so?

>Though the author is a (alleged) child molester so probably don't read it.
Why should that matter, if the story is good?

Last Days of New Paris, maybe, and Moore's Jerusalem if that counts as fantasy

An argument to be made for The Magicians.

Any other good heavily character-driven science fiction or fantasy besides the works of Lev Grossman?

I was literally in the process of writing this post when I saw this.

How's it compare to other Mieville?

>genre fiction sucks
>literary fiction sucks
>poetry sucks

When did you stop being a narrativecuck and start reading nonfiction.

Armageddon by Aaron Dembski-Bowden is part of the Grimaldus trilogy and is thus pretty good, if I recall correctly Armageddon introduces the Celestial Lions and I've always liked them since I read it
I do feel like I had to take his writing in paces though, it's not something I was able to sit down and read 200 pages in an evening

lol
yeah nonfiction doesn't have a narrative right? just lists of facts?
right?

Nonfiction is boring. I read to escape from the bounds of the actual.

On a scale of johannes cabal to sabriel, how much necromancy use is there in those?

Yes!

about a 50/50 split for me.

I read mostly nonfiction and fantasy.

Conan question, I heard this physical copy of a collection of Conan the Barbarian is missing some chapters
Can anyone attest to this? I kinda want one big omnibus but if this is true I'll just buy the small ones

Actually disregard it, one is female author the other is tumblr written gay trans shit

Pretty short and fast-paced by his standards, but with some neat ideas about the Surrealists, experimental art as rebellion, Nazi occultism, etc. Plus there's a neat little appendix in the back with historical background.

Mine's probably 70/30 to fiction, I want to do more essays this year.

>wants pedo shit
>whinges when he gets pedo shit
What a cuck.

I don't want pedo shit I want a cute little girl doing little cute girly things while also being a badass necromancer doing necromancer things!

It's the principal of the matter.

Only read the first one but it's a limited amount. Necromancers are hated and feared so the character doesn't do much beyond healing some people and resurrecting a few people at the end.

Hey thanks, i'll go ahead and just do it then. I liked Lord of the Rings, so im sure ill like this as well.

This was alright

What was the name of the punishment book in Anathem?

Is that David Drake/Eric Flint Belisarius (Byzantiens and Persians team up against Ancient Aliens) series any good? Asking mainly because the big titty Cleopatra cover caught my eye at a used bookstore.

famous last words

Vance > Le Guin >>>>>> Tolkien

Sabriel has a lot, every book is about venturing into Death and either killing the undead or bringing back the recently deceased.

I'm seeing a lot of people mention The Worm Ouroboros lately, so I want to post some A+ bants from it.

Lord Zigg is GOAT:

>"I like not the dirty face of the ambassador," said Lord Zigg. "His nose sitteth flat on the face of him as it were a dab of clay, and I can see pat up his nostrils a summer day's journey into his head. If's upper lip bespeak him not a rare spouter of rank fustian, perdition catch me. Were it a finger's breadth longer, a might tuck it into his collar to keep his chin warm of a winter's night."

>"That which feedeth on brains were overnourished in Demonland, and belike would overrun the whole country-side." "Send it to Witchland," said Zigg. "Where when it hath eat up Gro and Corund it may sup lightly on the King, and then most fortunately starve for lack of its proper nutriment."

And one from Duke Corsus:

>"Thy talk, wife," said Corsus, "showeth long hair and a short wit. In short, thou art a fool."

Fucking love this book.

>"Please, Mother," he heard himself murmuring. "It's been so long. I've been so lonely... Only you, Mother. Only you understand."
>He laid her across the great Black Sun embroidered into his coverings. His hands trembled as he fussed with her gowns. His groin throbbed so sweetly he feared he might soil his robes.
>"You do love me," he gasped. "You do love..."
>Her painted eyes had become drowsy, delirious. Her flat chest heaved beneath the fabric. Somehow he could see through the skein of wrinkles that made a mask of her face, down to the serpentine truth of her beauty. Somehow he could see the woman who had driven his father mad with jealousy, who had shown her son the ecstasy of secrets bundled between sheets.
>"My sweet son," she gasped. "My sweet..."
>His fingers and palm found warm skin. His heart became a thunderclap. He ran his hand along her calves, which she shaved in the fashion of the Ainoni, then across her still-smooth thighs. He clutched at her groin, squeezed the haft of her erection

wait a minute..

/sffg/ have you ever had that one character who just needs to be in the story but whom you can't find anything at all to do with?

I'm dealing with one. The story I stole her from had the exact same problem with her and failed to handle her but I kept her because she was my waifu.

I can't do anything with her because she's a stupid ophelia moe blob with no real arc that I can personally give a shit about, but I can't get rid of her spot on the cast, and any replacement I can think of would be generic and boring

I think the first book, yeah. An argument could be made, even if I wouldn't buy it. The second goes full YA, I think there's no argument there, and the third is pulp.

...

Pseud couldn't finish a philosophy degree so he dropped out of school and started writing fantasy where a Conan knockoff digs holes in the ground and fucks them.

Principle has nothing to do with enjoyment.

Are there any western fantasy novels that have a cute boy (girl) yet?

Any decent entry-level stuff with animals/creatures? Not a big reader; I've only read Wolf Brother and the Dark Griffin, also enjoyed Name of the Wind (though not animal related, maybe I just like lonely edgy MC's and sciency magic).

She's not helping her case mixing Lackey, Pierce, Briggs and McCaffrey in with Jones and L'Engle. And of course she hasn't heard of Le Guin, let alone Leigh Brackett.

The hilarious irony of the inclusive SF movement is how much erasure they practice on the ones that were included before they showed up.

I only read train timetables and flight logs, check and mate.

Tolkien>Vance=early Le Guin>meme lit you read as a joke>late Le Guin

>Tolkien's examination of morality
Every time.

Yes. Her story will come, much later I'm sure.

>any replacement I can think of would be generic and boring
Go to fantasynamegenerator.com, let it give you a bunch of random names, and try out the characters they imply to see if they fit the story.
Which waifu?

Yeah that's why I put that on the other end of the scale

Give them a strong motivation, if they don't already have one (which they should). If they can't get a motivation then they shouldn't be in the story. If the problem is that they have a motivation, but it's unrelated to the rest of the story, then have a different character or event put a roadblock between her and her goal which will force her to interact with the main story a bit more, even superficially.

nepeta

literally the only thing I can think of is an unfulfillable romantic arc that ends with her dying, which is exactly how it played out last time

Try The Golden Compass, it's YA and the people of the world all have little animal creatures that are part of their souls and shit. It's also pretty good.

Putting a female character into a novel just to have a romantic arc which ends with her death is a formula for a shallow, unlikeable character.

I don't want to trigger /pol/, but women are human beings. They have goals and desires like the rest of us, only theirs don't usually include the word 'waifu'. Give her a goal that's not romantic.

If you can't think of one, go back in time. Most adult desires are borne in childhood. Maybe her family used to hold land or a title or an ancient heirloom somewhere but it was unjustly usurped from them and she wants to get it back. You could use that to bring her into the plot by having another character be the one who controls the land/title/object now, or maybe he's their friend and has to make a decision and that furthers their character. Just a suggestion, you're better off thinking of your own that fits your story.

Robin Hobb has animal magic where a user bonds with an animal and can speak to them telepathically and such. Unfortunately, it really comes to the forefront in her third Realm of the Elderlings trilogy, the Fitz and the Fool Trilogy, which is difficult because you'll be thrown in the deep end if you start there.

>you say potato, i say new jose. i don't understand the massive nostrils like this nigga never seent a lizard???
It was merely an observation. not intended as disagreement.

agreed. I just have literally nothing to do with her.

my original concept of her made sense because at least I had a real goal in mind for her, and an arc too. The problem is I couldn't care less about her arc and personality because all the other characters are so much more interesting and relatable

Originally, she was supposed to be a feral street urchin who was raised by cats in the alleyways and wanted desperately to be one of them. Now she's just barely verbal autistic savant sister of that one normal guy on a team where everyone else has super powers who serves no purpose other than to give him angst.

It's crap! And either way I can't pass a fucking bechadelle test because I had to remove the third female character because I couldn't figure out a way to get her involved in the cast. although now I just realized I have a good way but it kind of involves time travel

Not every character idea you have can fit in one story. Maybe she's best suited for a different story.

Maybe you didn't go far enough. Giving her some feline features would go a long way toward improving your narrative.
:3

the problem is I need a character in her place because I have a motif to fill out and there are at minimum only 4 slots to fill

>wanted desperately to be one of them
Does she wear tailplugs?