/sffg/ - Science Fiction & Fantasy General

>learning the language, the laws, the rules. Learning how to make money, that kind of shit
That doesn't sound interesting. Any time travel story will give you something along those lines. Looking at the thoughts and character of somebody whose reaction to travelling 400 years back in time is to become a pirate is what I want to see. I'm getting the distinct impression here that you are the one who can't judge the potential of a premise worth a damn.

Walking out of a late 20th century monastery and then becoming a 16th century pirate. The fact that he chose piracy of all things is the story here. Not that he's in the 16th century. That could be anybody. How would the monastery fit into it? How can you see this premise and just wish it were a fish out of water situation? What is it about the late 20th century mindset that led to him becoming such an extreme character in the 16th century? I'm actually very excited to read this now.

It sounds to me like his 20th century mind is the point of the story. In interviews Wolfe has explicitly stated that he is a believer in the theories of Lamarck. Namely soft evolution, the idea that noticeable changes occur generation to generation, rather than only across extreme periods of time. Basically Wolfe believes that where you're from and what you're born into play a significant role in what you are and that someone born in the late 20th century would likely be fundamentally different to somebody born in the 16th. He doesn't just prefer to wear blue-jeans, his brain has completely different wiring. And this difference in wiring apparently drives him towards extreme anti-social behaviour. Does this not excite you?

Reposting because no answer

Guys I just finished The Prince of nothing trilogy .
At the end the most dangerous of fags ran away with his second dickgirl.
Does he turn up in the next trilogy? He was one of my favorite characters.

Did conpheus turn into a boipussy at the end? Did I read right that he wanted another dicking?

Can one of you that keep screaming bakker related stuff plz answer.

>Basically Wolfe believes that where you're from and what you're born into play a significant role in what you are and that someone born in the late 20th century would likely be fundamentally different to somebody born in the 16th.
And with this sentence you argue that it would NOT be interesting to read about this person adapting to the 16th century?

If he becomes a pirate it doesn't sound like he adapted at all. If he adapted he'd do what all of the other well-adjusted 16th century people were doing and not be a pirate. I haven't read it of course so I can only say what I think Wolfe would do, but it seems to me that Wolfe is presenting piracy as a late 20th century response to 16th century circumstances. The substance here is what it is about this kid's 20th century mind that causes such a radical reaction to new circumstances. That's why I now want to read Pirate Freedom.

You're a dumbass, and you're arguing that it's not shit as someone who hasn't read it, against someone who has.

Obviously piracy isn't a 20th century response to the 16th century, that's fucking retarded. 16th century piracy is a response to 16th century circumstances.

I'm telling you, as someone who's read the book, the fact that he's from the future has exactly one single impact on the entire fucking story, and that's that he can speak spanish without being a spaniard.

He doesn't become a pirate as a first choice, he become a sailor and becomes a pirate like most people ended up being pirates: pirates boarded his ship and told him to join or die.

Wolfe managed to take a great concept and strip it of any and all magic by making the narrator dull, uninteresting, and by skipping over any and all interesting things. No, the fact that he's from the 20th century doesn't excuse fucking anything. It doesn't present any conflict, it doesn't influence his actions, it doesn't spark any internal debates. It's a completely superfluous fact and I think you're a retard for defending something you know absolutely nothing about.

It's a fucking fact that the entire concept of a time-travel story is a stranger in a strange land trope, and if it isn't even worked with, than there's no fucking reason to make it a time travel book.

And no "people learning to adapt in a strange place" is not "boring", it's one of the fucking cornerstones of storytelling you cockslap.

>the fact that he's from the future has exactly one single impact on the entire fucking story
Isekai once again proves that it's the most cancerous genre.

>Wolfe managed to take a great concept and strip it of any and all magic by making the narrator dull, uninteresting, and by skipping over any and all interesting things.
Yes, the point of the book is to paint a realistic picture of real-world piracy, which is dull, brutish and ugly. Wolfe explicitly said that 'Pirate Freedom' is his response to the Johnny Depp Disney movie about pirates.

>It doesn't present any conflict, it doesn't influence his actions, it doesn't spark any internal debates.
Read the book carefully, the narrator is actually his own father and grew up in a monastery cloistered away from the 21st century world. (But again, this is mostly irrelevant as the book is about the pirating lifestyle, not time travel paradoxes.)

Are you the "Severian is his own father" dude?

>Yes, the point of the book is to paint a realistic picture of real-world piracy, which is dull, brutish and ugly. Wolfe explicitly said that 'Pirate Freedom' is his response to the Johnny Depp Disney movie about pirates.
He can say whatever he fucking wants. The fact is, is that the book pissed me off so much, I'm never reading wolf again.

>which is dull, brutish and ugly
How the fuck would we, the reader, know that? The narrator doesn't fucking TELL US ANYTHING. He fails as a narrator.

>Oh, it's a good book because It's SUPPOSED to be boring.
Fuck you.

>Read the book carefully, the narrator is actually his own father
Yes I know, and it's stupid. Wow. So your plan is to abandon yourself in a monastery so you can make yourself your own cabin boy when you go into the past, and then have him marry your second waifu. That way, I get BOTH chicks. That's not how that works, by the way.

Everyone is the "Severian is his own father" dude. Read the books he breeds his own grandmother, who makes his father, who breed severian himself.

Now please answer this post

>he breeds his own grandmother, who makes his father, who breed severian himself.
I've only read New Sun so I can't be certain, but I thought that Severian's father was born normally and was the son of Dorcas and the man he met on the boat who Dorcas finds dead at the end of the story. Does that guy turn out to also be Severian or am I just retarded? I remember Dorcas said that she thought she had a family before she met Severian and if his father was old enough it could make sense that he was born and they lived together as a normal family, then she died and he fathered Severian, then Severian rezzed Dorcas and she's now younger than her son. How wrong am I? I don't mind of Urth of the New Sun onwards gets spoiled. Plot secrecy is for plebs.

No Catholicism in the pages?

If I recall correctly, Absolute Aram(i think it was him) said the recent books written by wolfe were not up to scratch. Age got him, the Pringles is reaching his expiration so you can't expect it to still taste fresh.

It's a stupid theory only he is supporting.
We know who his granmother, granfather and father are, the only missing link is the mother, because she died at childbirth. You aren't wrong. He just has a Borski tier reading of it.

>Absolute Aram
Who is this? Do you mean Marc Aramini? I can't imagine him criticizing Wolfe.

Ah, so everything I wrote is as it is? I heard that Urth of the New Sun went in some strange directions but Severian being his own father sounded like a bit much.

>not wanting to cuck your grandfather and breed your grandma's nubile womb
It's like you're a normie or something

Arguing with rabid Wolfe fanboys is pointless, they will defend even the biggest pile of poo and bad writing he puts out.

...

Look: you misgenred the book, it's entirely your own fault for being an idiot, not Wolfe's. 'Pirate Freedom' is a book in the tru-crime-life-of-pirates genre, not the time-travel-shenanigans genre.

As far as pirate books go, 'Pirate Freedom' is a very good one.

>Absolute Aram(i think it was him) said the recent books written by wolfe were not up to scratch.
He's an idiot, 'Home Fires' is top-notch.

>Absolute Aram
Again, who is this and why is what he thinks worth discussing?

>tru-crime-life-of-pirates
no
>As far as pirate books go, 'Pirate Freedom' is a very good one.
no

Urth didn't actually bring anything new thematically, it's literally a compendium of the plot in form of a novel.
New Sun is a complete work and ended where it needed to, Urth just unintentionally opened a few questions it didn't need to. I mean Wolfe didn't want to write it for a reason. Not that it's bad, it just didn't need to be. The whole New Sun is an epic of well a thomist view of the universe and a personal religious tale.
Marc likes his new stuff. Especially Land Across if I remember it correctly, but it is no secret he no longer takes upon himself to write the greatest sff stories out there.
He is soon to publish his second volume on Wolfe out of three. It will in total be somewhere around 2500 pages. He clearly thinks everything he wrote is worth discussing.

Anyone got any True Detective (Season 1) type stuff?

'No' what, you idiot??

Anyways, 'Pirate Freedom' is great if you're interested in pirates and history. Skip it if you're a fan of """genre books""".

Ligotti

I've never read any Wolfe because it comes across as 2deep4me, but I'm interested in The Wizard Knight. Will a dumb shit like me be able to enjoy it?

The question then is why he would put time travel in a novel about pirates and history in the first place

goodreads.com/list/show/71245.HBO_s_True_Detective#13647086

goodreads.com/list/show/87245.Books_Rustin_Cohle_would_have_read_#13647086

>Anyways, 'Pirate Freedom' is great if you're interested in pirates and history.
No. As in you're wrong, moron.
Neither of those statements are true, and this one isn't either. Get fucked.

Thanks, lads.

Probably because nobody read The Devil In A Forest. Time travel makes for a catchier blurb than 'here's an old timey person doing exactly what old timey people did.' A common complaint on TDIAF is that the blurb is an enormous exaggeration of what the story's really about.

That's his only decent book precisely because it isn't as 2deep4u. Give it a go, but definitely ignore the rest of his library, not much of merit there.

Wolfe isn't that hard. He always goes out of his way to deal with themes and characters, but he obscures the plot. Certain details are always strange and sometimes incomprehensible to many people, but it's always about Catholicism.

>I'm interested in The Wizard Knight. Will a dumb shit like me be able to enjoy it?
Yes. (IMO it's Wolfe's most complex and most interesting work.)

>The question then is why he would put time travel in a novel about pirates and history in the first place
That has a simple answer -- because he wanted a neutral, blank-slate narrator. Anything else would have clouded the reader's view of the setting and historical facts.

Whew, laddie, you really convinced me here with your biting argument.

There's no need for Wolfe in 2007 to rely on the blurb. DiaF was written 30 years before and back then he wasn't THE author of science fiction.
It has plenty of "2deep4u" going on, but you are too stupid to dig bellow the surface. All of his post New Sun novels split the plot from the themes in a way that plebs can follow, but patricians still have a lot of interesting stuff in.
This happened because people complained too much they didn't get it. Which is a shame, because his more dreamlike novels are usually better.

Then a simple 3rd person would have done the job. It's a strange choice.

>Whew, laddie, you really convinced me here with your biting argument.
You mean after the entire fucking hour I wasted listing, in detail, everything wrong with the book? Which you dutifully ignored like the cumgobbling little fanboy you are? Fucking neck yourself.

Here you have a pretentious Wolfe fanboy in his natural habitat.

When is the last time you read something that isn't a fantasy novel?

>it's a pinky derails another thread on Veeky Forums episode

>Then a simple 3rd person would have done the job. It's a strange choice.
No, because then it would have been a non-fiction book.

>Which you dutifully ignored like the cumgobbling little fanboy you are?
Do you have fetal alcohol syndrome? I agreed with your criticism, you mong. Everything you wrote about 'Pirate Freedom' is correct, except for the fact that it's a book in a genre where these things are positives, not negatives. Nobody wants exciting tales of boys living vicariously through adventures in a novel that aims for a mostly accurate depiction of complex historical periods.

But you are claiming that the point is nonfiction- the history and lives of pirates. Hence, strange. It wouldn't be his first non fiction.
I just came back my man, haven't posted in a while. It's raining like hell and I can't get out of the apartment.

muh Wolfe

muh Christianity gimme some of that jesus cock

C'mon man I used to shill a lot more than just Wolfe.

>But you are claiming that the point is nonfiction- the history and lives of pirates. Hence, strange. It wouldn't be his first non fiction.
You don't understand the difference between 'non-fiction' and 'historical fiction'? You a tard or something?

>a novel that aims for a mostly accurate depiction of complex historical periods.
It's not an accurate depiction- it's fiction and too vague. You can't eat your cake and have it too. Either your goal is historical accuracy or it's a unreliable narrator. You can't argue it's supposed to be historically accurate, if Wolfe skips over all the interesting historical parts- which is what I was complaining about in my very first post! So no! You're not agreeing with me!

>our ""older"" users post their tributes to the Wolfe

But he chose to write "historical fiction" with a time traveling guy because he just wanted to be impartial because it wasn't about characters or anything, just history. The usual historical fiction uses characters that fit the time because they help the authenticity and if anyone, Wolfe is used to creating characters that are incredibly authentic concerning the setting.
Is the fact that I find it to be a strange choice so hard to understandd? You a tard or something?

>It's not an accurate depiction- it's fiction and too vague.
It's definitely not 'too vague'. If anything it's too autistically detailed.

>Wolfe skips over all the interesting historical parts
"Adventures 'n kicking ass 'n shit" aren't interesting historical parts. The interesting historical parts are e.g, how they had to make their own bullets, or how long a musket took to load, or the specific details of buccaneer lifestyle on Hispaniola.

>The usual historical fiction uses characters that fit the time because they help the authenticity and if anyone, Wolfe is used to creating characters that are incredibly authentic concerning the setting.
No, Wolfe understands how the narrator colors the narrative and 'helping the authenticity' (a.k.a. exoticism), is exactly what he wanted to avoid. Nothing strange about it because his Latro books used the exact same 'blank slate narrator' trick.

Just picked up Grim Company.

anybody have any recommendations for science fiction books with a Bladerunner sort of feel to them?

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep

He does, but late in the trilogy. Can't really say more without too many spoilers.

And Nah. Conphas is too delusional to accept a dicking

Any good works of fiction with a little girl protagonist?

Yeah but you won't read them anyway so I'm not telling you.

...

yeah, why not just read anime light novels?

Because I don't know Japanese.
Reading translations is an abomination.

>Reading translations is an abomination.
I hope you're being ironic. You're going to have to choose one or the other, because pedophilia is illegal in the west.

I didn't even ask the question in so the joke's on you.

Learn Japanese then. It's easier than you think.
He's not wrong, especially when you're talking LNs. They don't have experienced masters like Jay Rubin in the lit world. Most LN translators are teens to young adults who can't be considered fluent in either Japanese or English for the most part. Plus there's very few translations in total, and most of them are crap. The true gems will never be translated.

Yeah, I guess. I don't really care about light novels, because the concept seems suspect to me. What the hell is a light novel? Mostly dialog? 30 pages long? I have a translation of a Baccano LN on my kindle, and it wasn't bad- I actually thought it was pretty well translated and it got a chuckle or two out of me. But to be fair, I don't know who translated it. It was a rip, so it could be legit.

>that gif
Wtf is this shit?

Is there ever a dickgirl with a vagina in the series again?
How I understand it that one was special his first prize dickgirl

Reposting Malazan question

LN is a marketing term and doesn't mean anything really. The west has gotten a very distorted image of them because of popular anime adaptions thinking it's all harems or isekai stuff. It's best if you forget everything you ever heard about its definition on places like /a/.
Wanna know how LNs originated? People slapped anime covers on normal science fiction books in the 70s~. But there's also LNs without any illustrations, and books with illustrations that aren't LNs (did you know Fate/Zero is a normal novel, not a LN?). There's also LNs that are 600+ pages thick so size isn't a factor either. Hell there is one author who basically writes early 20st century historical fiction and sells it as an "LN" - when you read reviews of Japanese people quite a few of them complain it's too dense.
Basically like with books and anything else, most of it is bad and generic, but there's also a good chunk of greats. Unfortunately the former is also the stuff that usually gets super popular.

>Hell there is one author who basically writes early 20st century historical fiction and sells it as an "LN" - when you read reviews of Japanese people quite a few of them complain it's too dense.

What's this?

It's my gf.

oh, ok. thanks. i always assumed it was like ya - you know, "light reading"

>Anybody got any decent time travel stories that aren't sci-fi?
"Timeline" by Michael Crichton although the time travel plot device is scifi. Crichton does well with demonstrating differences that I believe you'd enjoy although not anywhere near as good a job as he did in "The Great Train Robbery".

Thanks. Read that one though. I liked it. I especially liked the part where they straight up murdered the guy just because he was a dick.

Seriously though, the guy didn't even do anything. He was just talking about cutting his losses, which, yeah, dick, but he always backed down and never actually even endangered anyone, let alone actually attempt to let them die. Bad end.

Have you read The Eaters of the Dead? I really enjoyed that- about that 10th century arab that went of to live with vikings.
Do you know how Pirate Latitudes is?

Will anything ever compare to LOTR?

I mean GoT is extremely popular right now but let's be real it will be some niche forgotten series in 30 years time where as LOTR won't be.

>Anybody got any decent time travel stories that aren't sci-fi?
A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court

read that too

Bamf!

Neuromancer

You could try the film the butterfly effect. It's not exactly what you're asking but not SF either. Find the director's cut.

Ooh! Haven't read that one! Thanks, I'll def. check it out.

What can you tell me about Robert Charles Wilson? Just read his short story 'Divided by Infinity' in an anthology and it freaked me the fuck out.

Three Dark Crowns was pretty good despite the autistic reviews

>Time slips featuring a child and a realistic depiction of an earlier period enjoyed a vogue in the UK in the mid-20th century. Successful examples include Alison Uttley's A Traveller in Time (1939) going back to the time of Mary, Queen of Scots, Philippa Pearce's Tom's Midnight Garden (1958) returning to the 1880s and 1890s, Barbara Sleigh's Jessamy (1967) and Penelope Farmer's Charlotte Sometimes, both slipping back to the period of the First World War, Ruth Park's Playing Beatie Bow (1980), where the slip in Sydney, Australia, is to the squalor of 1873, and Helen Cresswell's Moondial, where three times are involved (1988, also televised)

Also, perhaps this.

thanks. I know it, but that's really not what I'm looking for.

thank you, I'll check some of these out. Though by the titles, some of them remind me of that outlander series (which irritates me, because that outlanders movie (from 98?) looks like it'd be good book, but I can't even find a novelization)

>A TOUR DE FORCE
thank you, I'll check it out too.

SnowCrash is awesome. It's like a full length novel based on those AnCap memes.

My main complaint is the annoying nu-male irony. Why do all the characters have to act like effeminate, sassy teenage girls? When did annoying, insincere characters become the norm? How do we fix this?

Y-you do know that Y. T. is a girl r-right?

Would you fug? Benis in bagina?

>When did annoying, insincere characters become the norm
around the same time depicting women as obnoxious, unloving harpies became a thing.

being a bitch =/= a strong female character
being a sarcastic asshole =/= cool, relatable male character

I swear to christ.

Good news: light novels are fucking trash so nothing is being lost in translation.

Yeah, I've noticed PKD does that a lot. Why was the Dickmeister so damn bitter?

if non-fiction is good too you should check out your diary to be honest