/sffg/ - Science Fiction & Fantasy General

You made me laugh.

I haven't laughed since October 2010 when my girlfriend miscarried.

Buy yourself some banana stickers.

For an entertaining post-apoc about religion, dreams, and memory, with surprisingly good characterisation, Tom O Bedlam by Robert Silverberg.

For a PKD novel that reads intriguingly like a Martian soap opera while speculating about schizophrenia and autism, Martian Time Slip.

For something more cerebral that, by its icy prose and surreal post-flood imagery, could leave a mark on you (people who like him, really like him) The Drowned World by JG Ballard.

I rarely read series desu, there is a lot of good standalone SF

>miscarriage
I-is that you?

Hey, what's some genuinely good portal fantasy for adults?

I've already read all the Amber books and the Magicians trilogy.

The Compleat Enchanter.
Three Hearts and Three Lions.

Dan Simmons Hyperion Cantos features portals extensively but sci-fi.

Thanks.
Might check it out.

Not prime Wolfe but There are Doors is thick with portals

100 pages into The Wizard and I was really shakey about Wolfe when I finished The Knight but now I'm hooked, this thing really is good and holy fuck do I appreciate all the little shit, story feels light and adventurous while still bringing up stuff that most fiction would think of as dark fantasy
I seriously might pick up Book of the New Sun because I've heard good things about it here and it's held in high regard, fuckin thanks /sffg/, haven't felt like this about a story in a while

Timothy Zahn's Flight of the Icarus is pretty good.

What would be a good series or one off after old man's war? I need to get my sci fi fix.

The Man Who Folded Himself.

Just finished this. Goddamn, it was good.
Halfway into Marko Kloos' "Terms of Enlistment" and liking it. What's some other good military sci-fi?

>Flight of the Icarus
Are you talking about The Icarus Hunt?

Starship Troopers, Armor, and Forever War

Ignore this

homophobe

From a person who's read a lot by PKD already but not everything, what should I read next: Martian Time-Slip or Dr. Bloodmoney?

Anybody else have trouble getting through the Foundation trilogy? I've read a decent amount of sci-fi and have some appreciation for Asimov, but I couldn't get more than 100 pages into it. It just felt like I was watching CSPAN with spacesuits.

I loved the Foundation Trilogy.

I know at least one person IRL who read it all the way through and really dug it. I really wanted to like it, I just couldn't get into it. Maybe I'll give it another shot.

Could you expand on what you mean by "grounded"? To me that means stuff that's less whizz-bang ooo-rah space marine stuff like Starship Troopers, and more like Hammer's Slammers (mainly drawing off the author's experiences in Vietnam in a tank unit) which is more about actual soldiers at the sharp end instead of the author going on about patriotism and MURICA or whatever.

The Red by Linda Nagata. It's very near future (almost more technothriller "logical applications of DARPA programs") stuff about a team of special forces soldiers, with a rogue AI being the catalyst for a lot of events.

Have you even read Starship Troopers?

So is there any good stand alone fantasy or sci-fi where the girl wants to destroy the universe for whatever reason?

Anime
Or try empress though it isn't standalone (it is if you read the first book). It's about a gril that wants to remake the world for her god.

Portal fantasy refers to the "person from our world goes through a portal and ends up in a magical place" deal.

I'm actually not even sure to what extent the Amber books apply since Corwin is from Amber.

But examples (not all aimed at adults; just here to give you an idea what the term means):

>Narnia
>The Magicians
>Alice in Wonderland
>Neverwhere
>The Phantom Tollbooth

Arguably also the story of Orpheus descending into the underworld.

So, Thomas Convenant then?

There's also this by Terry Brooks.

could try the Agent Cormac series

I was gonna say Thomas Covenant but I will add that it's shit. If you say otherwise it's your 12 year old nostalgia reminiscing on your first rape experience. Read as an adult and it's shit(doesn't even hold up well).

>user gave the shekel and is now shilling Neal Asher on my behalf
Did you read Bv Larson too user?

Best sci fi of 2016? Best fantasy?

Not saying it isn't was just all else I could come up with.

I would, but mostly just so you can reach Short Sun. It's good, but Wolfe took criticism of complexity to his heart so it's far less evocative, outside of the rare instances of neoplatonic ecstasy. It's an epic with something like 40 important characters, who are all well written, but is missing the intimacy of his other works.
Short Sun on the other hand rivals New Sun, Peace and Fifth Head as his best.
Book of the New Sun is far less adventurous compared to The Wizard Knight. He wrote two decent adventure novels recently, A Borrowed Man and The Land Across were decent. Depends on what you like in him, if you are interested more in his contemplative side Peace, New Sun and Fifth Head are highly recommend, if you want adventure TLA and ABM are decent choices.
The Wizard Knight has a portal and a boy going through.

Anubis gate
Cabal the necromancer
His dark materials trilogy
Night watch by.. ser(in my pic)
The magicians trilogy
The iron druid chronicles
Jim Butcher
City of stairs
Black Jewels Trilogy
Iron Dragon's Daughter
Perfect state
Quantum thief

For Fucking java emulator crashed

I've got The Thousand Names, Promise of Blood, and The Black Prism sitting on my desk. Which one should I start?

Black Prism

Thanks

A-aram that you? Happy New year.
Did you like the Wolfe meme I made?

He's in my backlog.

It's not Aram and I don't like your meme.
I am the other prime wolfeposter who was away for months and will probably again go away as this thread and lit in general are still incredibly awful.

Nuuuuu! Don't abandon me to these degenerates.

>Nuuuuu!

>degenerates.
Have either of you had an urge to fuck a trap?
Would you fuck line trap?

No.
No.

Is 'Red Mars' Veeky Forums?

it's Veeky Forums af

literally can't wait, I ordered it yesterday.

>literally can't wait
>is waiting anyways
You don't know what that word means do you user?

You're literally killing me with your faggotry

>literally (adverb)
>used for emphasis while not being literally true.
>"I have received literally thousands of letters"

Gonna power a series. Should it be Red Queen's War, Shadow Campaigns or Long Price Quartet?

Shadow campaigns is the best of the three imo

The Hammer's Slammers series

Yeah, I suppose grounded in that sense but also in terms of going into history, politics, logistics, effects on civilians, all that kind of stuff. As opposed to being exclusively about combat scenes and cool tech. I know something like Starship Troopers has a lot of political chinstroking but the actual war itself isn't really fleshed out that much from what I remember.

>control + f "bakker"
>0 results

Not sure if something to that extent exists. I'd surely like to read it as well if it does.

maybe the lotgh translations?

Give me another 500 years of banging my head against a wall trying to research enough to do it justice

I have an autistic aversion to weeb stuff but I'll give it a look

Shaeönanra did nothing wrong.

Not really Military SF but i thought the Commonwealth Saga did a good job of world building and including a shitload of POVs that give different perspectives on events and the impact of a rapid arms buildup. But its slow to start and the ending is a bit shit. It also goes into history a little but it isnt in depth. You might be better served by reading actual history books concerning wars or individual battles (Antony Beevor's Berlin focuses heavily on the civilians fears for the future and the war crimes by the red army and i think it would help)

Yeah, I've read tons of history stuff from GOAT Beevor narrative type stuff and civilian/military first-person memoirs to dryer strategic accounts, plus reference books on logistics and command/control etc. The problem is now I've shoved all that shit into my head I can't write a basic plot because all I can think about is how fucked you are if you run into the wrong gauge of railway line or something. I don't know whether to carry on using the bits of a novel I've started writing or just accept that it's basically a detail-wank setting and write a bunch of short stories set within it.

I'm starting to realize that I do not much like it when a novel constantly switches perspective because it leaves me in suspense as to what's going to happen next for that character and breaks up my flow. When I'm reading slowly it makes for decent stopping points but I don't always want that.

What are some good books that don't switch perspective too often, if at all?

Try Senlin Ascends. No switches at all.

>a novel constantly switches perspective

Perspective change does not have to equal cliffhangers. You're just reading shitty authors that think they're writing a script.

LoGH will hopefully make you realize how silly it is to call all Japanese things "weeb" because it was written in the 80s and thus does not fit the stereotypes people tend to imagine when they think of Japanese stuff.

Thanks, hopefully.

I don't necessarily mean it results in cliffhangers but I usually want to see what's next for the character only to turn the page and find I'm now reading about a different character.

Getting exposed was probably not part of his plan

off-topic but for a military history rec Pacific Crucible is top-tier.

looks good, I'll be sure to get round to it

I admit that I'm too dumb to understand 99% of this book.
Is Permutation City also full of physic stuff and theories? I heard it's better.

You really should read
> Starship Troopers
> The Forever War ( Joe Haldeman )
> Forever Peace ( Joe Haldeman )
> Downbelow Station ( C.J. Cherryh )
in that specific order.
Starshiptroopers gives you a very inside look into a militaristic society, The Forever War expands on that theme from the viewpoint of a Soldier, but also commenting on the militarized society and the effects it has ( but mostly on the alienation of a soldier versus the society he left behind which kept on evolving ),
Forever Peace is down on earth, and ( belying the title ) unrelated to Forever War, but goes more into details of continued war, associated societies and such.
Downbelow Station is mostly a civilian point of view onto a war which has been going on for generations, and how they cope with the resulting fallout of constant warfare, isolation, empoverishment, refugees etc.

That's as far as SF is concerned. There's possibly some more stuff you could read, specifically:
> Three Body Problem ( Liu Cixin )
> The Dark Forest ( Liu Cixin )
> Death's End ( Liu Cixin )
which form a splendid Trilogy. They essentially deal with perpetual warfare state ( as earth needs to progress scientifically but also has this big war going on ), an insane societal pressure applied to humanity. What's great with this is his perspective on things, as to how people deal with such overwhelming pressure applied from above via a gouvernment. ( His perspective here, I found, must be unique as I found it rather Alien. Which is possibly natural, seeing as he grew up in communist china ).

Hope I could be of help! :)

>Not prime Wolfe but There are Doors is thick with portals
No, "Sorcerer's House" is the Wolfe portal fantasy novel.

Wizard/Knight is the very best Wolfe novel by far. 'Home Fires' is also great.

>Is 'Red Mars' Veeky Forums?
If by 'Veeky Forums' you mean "aimed and 80 IQ students who think they're hot shit because they sat through some dumb-as-a-brick feminist lecture them about curtains in fiction", then yes, definitely very Veeky Forums.

Veeky Forums is cucked

Anyway, need some GRI recommendations. I have read almost everything.

Give me some obscure shit.

If all you care about is GRI, just go to /h/ and read greentext. It'll be quicker.

ok, let me rephrase.

Someone recommend adult SF or Fantasy with mature themes and without young adult bullshit.

>no
Sanderson
Rotfuss
Womym
>yes!
Malazan, Game of thrones, Prince of nothing, The quantum thief, Forever war, Dune, Red mars, 3 body problem, Legend of the galactic heroes, Anything by Wolfe,asimov, Thomas covenant etc etc

Of course, I like some more than others, but you get the point. I don't know what else to read...I have exhausted every list in this thread.

Try this.

Any thoughts on Malazan?

I think I need to man up and get my re-read over with

>Starship Troopers
>Militaristic society
When will this meme finally die? The only militaristic society in ST is the military. Military aren't allowed to vote and high-status families demand their children pick the non-violent option.

Is this the "murder mystery but with mushroom people" one?

Richard Morgan?

>was gonna read malazan
>woman warriors

just why. I know there are white knight faggots on here but why? If this is accepted then I might as well accept men becoming pregnant in the novel. Oh wait gender roles don't exist duh. Yeah they fucking do. What's the point of having female characters if they are just going to take on male traits?

Any one got books where women are women and men are men?

I know ST and the Joe Haldeman well yeah (>tfw you get back from trapping Zoidbergs in domes and the whole planet is gay). That trilogy sounds really interesting and I hadn't heard of it, thank you.

hnnggghhhh

>Any one got books where women are women and men are men?

Literally every book ever. A = A is assumed.

If you mean "anyone got books where women are all barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, eternally making sandwiches and men are all constantly killing things," not any good ones.

I mean, shit, Conan is the archetypal "manly man" and his stories have at least one female warrior.

1. women warriors, although never the majority, have existed plenty of times
2. fantasy books can have unrealistic things in them.
3. stop being mad on the internet.

>Any one got books where women are women and men are men?
prince of nothing

>was gonna read ASOIAF
>dragons

just why. I know there are scaley faggots on here but why? If this is accepted then I might as well accept bats having scales in the novel. Oh wait species doesn't exist duh. Yeah it fucking does. What's the point of having lizards if they are just going to take on bat traits?

Any one got good books where lizards are lizards and bats are bats?

>Literally every book ever. A = A is assumed.

Idiot?

He clearly meant right now men are men and women are men with tits