/sffg/ - Science Fiction & Fantasy General

I'm really tired of world-ending threats, chosen ones, great wars with great empires and political drama.
Can you recommend me some good fantasy books focused on small scale where the protagonist has to deal with local problems rather than saving the world. Something like first two witcher novels. I want something more like hobbit novel and less like Lotr trilogy.

The Buried Giant is exactly what you're looking for.

If you think it looks interesting then read it.

Please, any good science fiction or fantasy book that involves a lot of politics. It can be about wars, clashing factions, debates, making of laws, revolution, anything

The golem and the jinni is a good one. Small-scale historical fantasy at its finest.

Grace of kings. Its about warring asian/pacific kingdoms and has lots of politics as well as military combat and technological development

The long price quartet
The coin and dagger series
Now leave so I can reeeeee about you triggering me

/sffg/ is deader than my sex drive

I liked it, twisted my expectations in a way I liked and I thought that most of the characters were cool.

But like said the world is really dull for a fantasy setting. Even the fantasy stuff in it feels like the author really had no idea what it was and just thought it might be cool.

ht45678tps://www.f0acebo0ok.com/NovelActivistPage
ht365tp://novelactivist.com/

Any recommendations for 'Robinsonade' novels? Any kind of stuff where man is trying to impose order and civilization on nature

Here's the stuff I can remember I've already read:
>Tunnel in the Sky by Heinlein
>Nation by Pratchett
>Lord of the Flies
>The Martian (kinda)
>a part of Red Rising had this

I usually don't browse Veeky Forums. It seems like you guys in /sffg/ have a low opinion of Baen. Why?

Kim Stanely Robinsons stuff
Gold Coast trio
Mars trilogy
Science in the Capital
2312
Aurora

Baen publishes a lot of retrograde trash
It'll be endless series, by multiple authors
>volume xvii by Mercedes Leckie and X
And after a couple of them X will get a series
Cowrite that with others
And then THEY will get series
All churning out the same generic space opera

A promising new series is Luna: New Moon

In your opinion what good stuff have they put out? Do you like any of their authors? I get what you're saying about putting out retrograde stuff. It seems like they try to keep alive the brands of a lot of the big name authors from the past by publishing their stuff, but like you said it either ends up as just more trashy space operas or mediocre collabs.

Can someone recommend a high-fantasy series similar in length to WoT, but not a meme like GoT?

Its cover art will also make your eyes bleed

I really can't think of anything, I just don't read that sort of stuff
>keep alive the brands
>brands
Says it all

Maybe Lois McMaster Bujold? Her series have been nominated and won Nebulas and Hugos

WoT?
World of Tiers?

What's /sffg/'s opinion on starting with an expository fairy tale?

Exposition is bad.

I need some way to introduce who my character is and the situation she's stuck in. an every idea I've come up with so far sucks.

The story is fairy-tale fantasy so setting it up like a disney movie seems appropriate, but there's a reason I'm not a published writer so i dunno

Go to the writing critique thread for this.

He means Wheel of Time, friend.

are they okay with sff stuff?

What would you guys think of a series set in a fantasy world with contemporary technology+styles of warfare but otherwise traditional fantasy features? Assuming it's done well of course. Has anyone done anything like this before?

Disney-style fantasy has been dead for years. Nobody knows this better than Disney, themselves, which is why all their animated fantasy films get by on subverting and/or spoofing the conventions of their dead genre.

90% of ideas suck, and the other 10% can be easily ruined by poor execution. Just get your story down and beat as much suck out of it as you can through editing and revising.

>series set in a fantasy world with contemporary technology+styles of warfare but otherwise traditional fantasy features
You mean like Warhammer 40k?

The answer to this and EVERY OTHER IDEA is the fucking same: It depends on execution. If you can't write, it will be boring. If it's well written, people will like it.
And from experience, people who have to ask these kind of questions fall into the former category.

Is the polity universe by Neal asher gobshite

I'm pretty sure I've got a good idea here. It's held up past the realization that the idea that spawned it is awful. I just need to beat the shit out of the beginning because no matter how many times I write it it's still awful. I need to set up the premise and the main character at the same time and this is kind of the only way I can think of doing it, but even that isn't perfect, its just an improvement

what do you mean by traditional fantasy features?

Don't listen to them. Everyone loves BAEN here :3
How dare you sir! Sure, there is the occasional physiological horror like pic related, but it's better than the photo garbage that's common now.

What, like guns and guerilla warfare but with dragons and shit?

I'm not sure I follow.

Here's how stories are typically structured.
-Hook
-Exposition
-Rising action
-Climax
-Falling action

Hook and exposition are two different things with two different objectives. The hook is meant to hit the ground running, and exposition is meant to slow things down to establish just what the hell is going on. Of course you're going to screw it up if you try to combine two fundamentally different phases of conventional story structure.

If your reader wants to know the premise, they will read the blurb on the back of the cover, or the description on the Amazon page. Don't worry about explaining your premise. Just worry about introducing your character and her conflict. If you establish the character and her trials as interesting enough to warrant following, then your beginning has done its job.

The beginning I have just doesn't do its job right. People seem to like it, and it establishes the main character and setting, but it's not right for the genre and honestly seems more like the opening scene to Batman Begins than to a fairy tale.

Different genres have different demands for how a story should open. I feel if I opened with the classic grimm's style narration before opening onto the scene I have now it would work better but I just don't know

>You mean like Warhammer 40k?
40k is more in the realm of sci-fi, but kinda. It would be like if a fantasy world underwent subsequent technological developments past the high middle ages but had little to no social or political change.

>It depends on execution. If you can't write, it will be boring. If it's well written, people will like it.
>And from experience, people who have to ask these kind of questions fall into the former category.
>Assuming it's done well of course

>what do you mean by traditional fantasy features?
Magic, religion/gods based on european or other pagan systems of belief, monsters, dungeons, etc.

>What, like guns and guerilla warfare but with dragons and shit?
Kinda. Like what I said in reply to , it would be like what's going on in the fantasy world post industrial (and maybe computer) revolution.

Like I stated, I'm asking because I'm wondering if anything like this has been done before.

The fairy tale is dead. If people get the inkling that it's a story about Chosen One #626 overthrowing Evil Empire #1945 from Big Bad #90210, they're going to drop it.

I'd consider writing a different kind of fantasy story, especially if your premise focuses on modern warfare/combat, one of the most grimdark things on this entire planet.

>underwent subsequent technological developments past the high middle ages
>had little to no social or political change
That can't happen. Social change always follows from technological change. Maybe not directly mirroring ours, but there does have to be logically sound change.

>That can't happen. Social change always follows from technological change. Maybe not directly mirroring ours, but there does have to be logically sound change.
I agree, but still I kinda thought it would be interesting leaving the state of politics and society pretty behind the technological development. Like what if constitutional monarchy or small merchant republics were the main forms of government but with modern technology, I just thought it would be fun to mess around with. Also assuming the right to govern is tied up with religious/magical things in this world could lead to a situation where there are countries led by hereditary monarchs or theocratic forms of govt. that are still pretty technologically advanced.

I just read the first 2 books of the traitor son cycle, and loved them. I'm looking for something to switch it up a little. I really like how realistic it feels(minus the magic of course). Any recommendations?

You're looking for the dresden files. I won't spoil the main books, but in a side story the main character chases a vampire into a shopping mall that's closed for rennovations. He ends up blinding it with a shaker of garlic powder he stole from a pizzaria and accidentally caving in the ceiling when he tries to use a spell to increase gravity in order to crush it

It doesn't matter if it's "done before". Every story ever written has been done before. What matters is a good author, because he makes those stories feel fresh and engaging. The best stories are the ones when an author writes for himself and simply puts what he loves to paper. Writing for an audience and asking beforehand if it's OK or original is the absolute opposite of this and shows a lack of confidence - if you weren't Anonymous you'd enter my "never read anything from this author" list.

Oh. I thought you were talking about maintaining feudalistic social structures in a world with the railroad and the telephone.

You could have monarchies in modern-style worlds. If Enlightenment-style movements crash and burn, or just don't appear for whatever reason, you can still have aristocratic political and social structure.

>You're looking for the dresden files. I won't spoil the main books, but in a side story the main character chases a vampire into a shopping mall that's closed for rennovations. He ends up blinding it with a shaker of garlic powder he stole from a pizzaria and accidentally caving in the ceiling when he tries to use a spell to increase gravity in order to crush it

I'm familiar with Dresden Files and urban fantasy in general (I like Larry Correia's Monster Hunter+Grimnoir books). This would be like an inversion of that though. Instead of our mundane world+magic doodads like in Dresden Files, it would be fantasy with the technological elements of our world thrown in.

>The fairy tale is dead. If people get the inkling that it's a story about Chosen One #626 overthrowing Evil Empire #1945 from Big Bad #90210, they're going to drop it.

That's not a fairy tale, that's a legend. Legends are epic-scale and deal with wars, dark lords and great heroes. Fairy tales are usually only on the scale of the individual characters.

What I'm doing is more Pan's Labyrinth but the heroine is an oracle and not a princess

honestly, all I can think of are Shrek and Order Of The Stick

Oh, so something like 'Hansel and Gretel', or 'the three pigs and the big bad wolf'.

Still a dead genre. Shrek was spoofing them over a decade ago. And it's still not compatible with modern warfare.

They still have commercial viability. Neil Gaiman is pretty damn popular

>Still a dead genre.
No such thing, only dead authors.

I had a look at one of Correias books back in the puppy thing, it was dreadful
>he smiled ruefully to himself as he thought of...
Fuck mate not even battletech novels are that bad

Maybe you don't sell more or win awards because you write garbage? Is that so much incredible than a vast conspiracy to hijack sf awards?

>Writing for an audience and asking beforehand if it's OK or original is the absolute opposite of this and shows a lack of confidence - if you weren't Anonymous you'd enter my "never read anything from this author" list.

I've never written anything book length before and have most certainly never been published. I get what you're saying. If I didn't feel like I could really write something good with this idea I wouldn't be pursuing it and asking questions here. I just thought that seeing as /sffg/ seems to bash on what's "retrograde" or just a re-hashing of old stuff a lot, I was wondering if I had the opportunity to really do something new here.

>Oh. I thought you were talking about maintaining feudalistic social structures in a world with the railroad and the telephone.
>You could have monarchies in modern-style worlds. If Enlightenment-style movements crash and burn, or just don't appear for whatever reason, you can still have aristocratic political and social structure.
Yeah user this is stuff I'd have to all figure out.

>honestly, all I can think of are Shrek and Order Of The Stick
Technologically past both. OOtS is kinda like a mix of traditional fantasy levels of tech and Warcraft black powder+airships. Imagine following a fantasy realm through time going past it's analogues to the renaissance, enlightenment, industrial revolution, Victorian age, etc. ending up roughly somewhere around where we are today in terms of technology and somewhat but less so in terms of societal change. The party of adventurers is basically a small mercenary fire-team with a wizard or alchemist or engineer tacked on. Dragons aren't as much of a problem any more because we have heavy artillery, Dwarves run steel mills, and so on. I hope that's conveying the kind of vibe I'm trying to give off.

Fritz Leibers was the first and still the best contemporary or urban set fantasy

>Yeah user this is stuff I'd have to all figure out.
This is the kind of thing you need in your worldbuilding notes beforehand. If you don't think things through, then the inherent illogic of your setting will reflect that, and your story will be worse for it.

Faggot
>time can be measured, so it's manipulatable
>some dimensional being that travels the time stream forgets his gun in the knights era (what ever pre technological civ you want)
>the gun runs on some infinite power source, it uses pressurized carbon atoms that travel in a vacuum envelope (w/e mumbo jumbo you want)
>some homeless waif picks it up and discovers how to use it by accident
>fast forward 20 years
>subjugated the entire continent
>is looking to expand to the other 4
>hi-jinx ensue
>w/e
If you good you can write a story with that. Great writers can turn any topic into a story.

Which book? The first two monster hunter books were pretty horribly clunky. He's a lot better now. Also IIRC the puppy thing started when he got nominated for a Hugo and people in the blogosphere said not to vote for him based on his political beliefs.

>This is the kind of thing you need in your worldbuilding notes beforehand. If you don't think things through, then the inherent illogic of your setting will reflect that, and your story will be worse for it.
I've got 30+pages of outline already and few books on things like medieval and renaissance law I was going to read to try and help me figure this stuff out. I appreciate your feedback user.

All urban fantasy is shit prove me wrong

TUC excerpt FUCKING WHEN

I very recently got into hard sci-fi. In fact, all I've read so far is the Rifters trilogy and Blindsight, both by Peter Watts. Do most authors show their work with citations at the end of their books like Watts does? If not, can someone name a few authors that do?

FUCK NPR

Except for Car Talk reruns and Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me.

This.

What's with the obsession with Car Talk that people who don't even care about cars have? The guys where pretty charismatic, but it's about fucking cars. Why would you care?

Don't tell me is smug garbage.

>What's with the obsession with Car Talk that people who don't even care about cars have? The guys where pretty charismatic, but it's about fucking cars. Why would you care?
They were funnier basically improving stuff about their jobs and each other than many professional stand up comedians are.

I read another Conan story by Howard, The Queen Of The Black Coast from 1934. This is a slightly saucy (she likes rough sex) tale of a supple pirate queen, her crew of naked black sailors, and a quest to find ancient city full of treasure down a dangerous jungle river.

As well as a high body count there's a lot of lore and worldbuilding, with a theological discussion as well a Lovecraftian account of a degenerated ancient race: ''they who had been winged gods had become pinioned demons.'

Solidly entertaining pulp if you like seafaring, pirates, jungles, and monsters. I give it four 'ivory globes' out of five

The Book Of The Fallen Mazalan series by Steven Erikson

I recently started the Dresden files and I honestly can't stand the supposed "witty dialogue" and especially the way the main character acts towards women in general, or how the women react towards him.

It's 15 year old tier "comebacks" and dialogue. Not to mention the characterizations are annoying as shit. Especially interactions between characters.

Does it get any better?

>as well a Lovecraftian account of a degenerated ancient race
Conan exists in the Lovecraft universe. It's Conan canon.

How much sex is there? If it's over 1/3 of the book I will consider. Also there have to be orgies where she takes advantage of her crew.

It does get much better but the series might not be for you. The witty dialogue is what it is, and while it becomes very clear that dresden does in fact deeply respect the women he's fought beside and against he never really grows out of that attitude entirely

Queen of the Black Coast is a short story not a book
I don't remember there being any sex, what are you talking about?

Not really. The plots get better, and threads start coming together, but it maintains pretty much the same "voice" throughout

It's not so much respecting them, I have no problem with someone wanting be a gentleman.

But I've already read the first book and in one scene, this woman supposedly ropes him into having dinner with her by her looks/charm/wit while he's telling himself "oh i really shouldn't go" yet somehow she talks him into it? All he had to do was say no.

Just that exchange sticks out and annoys the shit out of me.

It's not porn, but there is at least two suggestions of Conan and Belite's sexual preferences, as well as other innuendos. Quite saucy stuff for the time.

>"Look at me, Conan!" She threw wide her arms. "I am Belit, queen of the black coast. Oh, tiger of the North, you are cold as the snowy mountains which bred you. Take me and crush me with your fierce love!

Even further:

>"There is life beyond death, I know, and I know this, too, Conan of Cimmeria—" she rose lithely to her knees and caught him in a pantherish embrace—"my love is stronger than any death! I have lain in your arms, panting with the violence of our love; you have held and crushed and conquered me, drawing my soul to your lips with the fierceness of your bruising kisses. My heart is welded to your heart, my soul is part of your soul!

Remember it's the thirties.

looking for more BLACK PILL genre fiction. Stuff like Watts's ouvre or Neuropath is getting there but theyd never mention race and iq, for example. Its amazing Watts even gets away with his K/R selector references.

bakker

not even memeing

Do you have links to somewhere I could try it out/get it for free? I wanna see if the series is good enough before I actually pay for it.

Dune series frank herbert, issac asimov foundation books
Mazalan series by Steven Erikson
Nigga get yourself a kindle, but just go on piratebay pretty much and dl the series. I've saved so much money on series I would have hated.
neal stephenson

The unincorporated man series

Found the first 3 books of the Eragon series in my basement lads, read through the first half of one in an afternoon and man, I can't believe I liked this as a youngin
Eragon's a dickhead
How did this get published

D'aw eragon was a comfy series for me when I was around 13.

But I feel the same way about the Sword Of Truth series.

At least Eragon was a lot more bearable.

Now that I recall so much of this story, it just reminded me how cool Roran's chapters were, have no idea how he became a better character than Eragon over the course of 1 book
Eragon is some all powerful dragon asshole and Roran is an all too human hammerweilding self trained warrior

But holy fuck did this series just copy from LotR and Star Wars

What sci fi book takes place farthest in the future? Im talking thousands and thousands of years

The last Dune novel?

What makes Use of Weapons post-cyberpunk? I may have misunderstood what post-cyberpunk is supposed to be, I took it to mean more modern takes on cyberpunk than Necromancer or Snow Crash. Cyberpunk without the 80s aesthetics and maybe a better understanding of technology, but retaining the megacorps and noir-ish elements.

I only recently read Use of Weapons and it seems to be well beyond cyberpunk, like all the Culture novels I've read so far.

Permutation City seems like a better candidate for the post-cyberpunk title. It has the virtual world which is kind of cyberpunk, but from what I recall it was more of a metaphysical look at uploading consciousness. Same themes but without the action adventure elements or goggles.

Same, though. As much as I don't remember Eragon well, what made him such an asshole? It's been a couple of years.

Roran though, ngl. I thought it was very mature and sweet the way the relationship between him and Katrina was portrayed.

I really wish the series had continued into a spin off about some spin off characters.

I know people bash on it but the author had decent characters desu. Then again, I read it when I was really young.

I just looked up if there's anything by Christopher, and turns out he'll be writing about angela the herbalists backstory apparently.

I might just read it for nostalgia sake. She was one of the more interesting and likeable characters.

Even as far as typical monomyth stories go, where hero starts from small beginnings, learns to fight/other, goes through growth as a person to match their martial abilities, etc
Eragon touches on all the headstones of those but never really does anything with it, like after he learns the Ra'zac who did kill his uncle in the first book are a dying race in the 2nd, he's still fine with killing them off entirely in the 3rd book.
Now there's more to this and the more I talk about the books the more I remember and i'd be fine with him being focused on vengeance, killing, etc if this was BEFORE he spent time with the elves and became "one" with nature and life and junk

I mean, you could argue that this is signs of a flawed and complex character but we all know he isn't that deep of a character

I might re-read this more later with time but I might also find a way to recycle these books too, so maybe not
It has been a long time though so I don't blame you for your opinions from almost a decade ago

Just to point out something, if I'm wrong then disregard this.

But when he was with the elves, he did not become "one" with them exactly. The purpose of him being there was just to hurry up his training/change his body. He did talk about feeling odd and out of place, because he did not fit in with the elves and neither with humans.

The whole not eating meat I think wasn't a big factor of "one with nature" it just meant he became too sensitive due to having done the work outs with his mind but other than that he never really did state he had become completely into the elves religion.

As for the Ra'zac, you could argue that they had no redeeming qualities in the first place but again, my knowledge is rusty.

You might be right there user, I'm probably rustier than you are
I might have to re-read more because I am doing most of this from memory

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