/sffg/ - Science Fiction and Fantasy General

Book 2

The series is a mess at the start. King's forward talks a lot about how it has all the hallmarks of a young and inexperienced writer that he would fix if he didn't feel like it would compromise his artistic integrity.

The series as a whole is actually a really nice snapshot of how King's writing style changed as he got older.

He's mostly a mentor these days I think, helping newer authors get their stuff up to Baen's exacting standards. Lot of stuff in other peoples' settings.

Man, what is it even like being a Baen reader? It's not even a totally milsf ecosystem, plenty of people just read Honor Harrington and not the other stuff. Tons of authors writing in each others' worlds, really tight with their fans, apparently still making money. It's like there's an island of trashy novels with bad CG covers out there, equally foreign to any faction on /sffg/.

>Why don't people like the character who spammed "fart" several hundred times on twitter completely flooding peoples timeline
>Or the guy who hasn't hand a original thought in his entire career and relentlessly attacks people who have
>Perhaps it was that time he directed his followers to attack another author by writing fake 10-star reviews, accusing them of plagiarism and gloated about their book being temporarily removed from amazon by automated systems because of a massive amount of reports

It was probably when he treated tor fans so badly other tor authors had to literally beg and grovel for forgiveness.

>reread His Dark Materials
Why couldn't Lyra have traveled with Will until he closed all the windows except for the one in the world of the dead, and the one between their two worlds?
Why rebuild the Republic of Heaven especially when the fight was against them in the first place?

Will I enjoy The Vorrh and sequel if I'm a massive Blakefag? Or is it just another sub-Mythago Wood sort of series?

Have you read John C. Wright's hit piece on Pullman? It's some of his finest work.

Just read a couple of books on Veeky Forums's recommendations list and have mixed feelings about most of them. What does /sffg/ think?

>Sabriel by Garth Nix
Great tight plot and pacing, a very classic heroes journey story with all the usual suspects, leaves a lot to be desired on world building and feels like a bite of a smaller story. Could just be because I'm used to reading longer epics.

>The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
While I like the tone, plot, and setting the book has serious voice issues between characters and it's really obvious it was the writer's first book. Pacing lulls a bit in the middle but not so much I couldn't finish it.

>A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
This was a truly enjoyable read and had all the hallmarks of a great science fiction set-up with an equally fascinating plot. It was pretty unique and didn't feel derivative at all. Plot ratchets up slowly at first and most of the technology explanations are front-loaded but was well worth getting through. Really nice alien culture exploration too.

So what are you all reading/have recently read?

That series started out so promising too. It had a decent balance of deep concepts and lighthearted adventure with a perfect set-up for a classic coming-of-age narrative.

>lighthearted adventure with a perfect set-up for a classic coming-of-age narrative.
atheism.txt

To be fair this actually manages to make Redshirt look like Hugo award winner.

I'm still not convinced it wasn't ghostwritten.

Did you finish it? Are you the user that gave the short review a thread or two ago?

I pirated the audiobook of this and I still can't get over how amazingly bad it was. That they're trying to charge $12.99 for the Kindle version is hilarious.

That was me. If you want more rundowns on dumb shit that happens I can take a crack at it, not like I have anything better to do for a while.

Go ahead, I'm down.

Here's a link to Corroding Empire if you want to compare.
my.mixtape.moe/meyaqe.epub
I loved the first few chapters but it fell apart for the rest of it. Then again nobody was paid a million dollars to write it.

>Jacek Dukaj finally getting translated
!!!

headofzeus.com/article/ice-1000-page-polish-science-fiction-masterpiece-hoz

If you like gnomes did you read the cogweaver trilogy?

Why the fuck are people reposting old shit again?

The only two other glaring examples of really bad writing were when one character gets kidnapped and then broken out with minimal effort in the very next scene, and when another character's family is under investigation for a terror attack and instead of trying to do some investigating Scalzi uses it as an excuse to have off camera lesbo sex and then the issue is solved with a phonecall and them being in the same hotel as the man who carried out the attack when he kills himself.

>The Kidnapping
Earlier in the book the obvious bad guy who is also amazingly incompetent for no other reason than that the book's plot doesn't work unless he's a retard threatens a nobleman who is in charge of a planet's taxes and tells him to send the money to him instead because he needs this money to buy weapons to fight some rebels. This fails of course, so he goes to a person he just got done screwing over, hates his guts, and is the kind of person who would stab him in the back to get some revenge without a second thought, and bribes her for info. He learns that the nobleman's son is leaving the planet soon, and kidnaps him in broad daylight so he can extort the money from this nobleman.

To stop this guy from escaping, he puts him in an unlocked cargo container with a car battery wired to it, with two guys set to guard him. Right after the retard leaves, the nobleman's son falls asleep and wakes up to his ex-marine police chief sister breaking him out of the makeshift "jail". She knows where to find him because right after the person retard bribed told him where to find his target, that person went and told her too so she could break him out right after.

There was a whole scene where she offers him a stuffed animal from the luggage he dropped after getting kidnapped, and he asks where she got it given he dropped the bag earlier. I thought the bad guys were trying to use some weird drugs or hypnosis on him or something to try and get info out of him on why he was being told to get off planet by his dad the taxman but it's exactly what it seems like. He was broken out of a situation right after getting into it with no effort on his own. Fucking thrilling writing.

>The Investigation
So later on, another character's house is getting investigated for a terrorist attack that used a shuttle from the ship she was on. She's assigned a security guard to look after her. The very next scene is right after the two of them got done fucking. Then this character gets on the space phone with someone on their ship, finds out some names of people that may have just been on the shuttle before it crashed. The security lady overhears and offers to help for some reason. The next scene is one of the people on this list killing himself by jumping from the 12th floor of the hotel down to the lobby, and the the characters reluctantly stop fucking long enough to figure out which room was his, where they find a suicide note from the guy explaining everything about the frame job.

Give me something from the so callled "New Space Opera" in the vein of John Harrison. Something gritty, with little bit of cyberpunk and pretentious.

TUC Excerpt When????

Mr Russian chav. This is a blue board. No penis in vagina is allowed. Also
>tgirls
>tgirls
Fagget

The excerpts used in the promo for it was hilariously bad. Like 13 year olds who try to use swear words as often as possible because their parents are over protective level bad.

Reposting my question from the previous thread:

What are some dark fantasies with lots of rape/sexual-slavery in it? Preferably if it's the protagonist who's doing the raping/slaving and is unapologetic about it. Gor comes to mind.
>inb4 a song of fire and ice

what did he mean by this

Description reminded me picrelated. Are they really similar or not?

>This term's been used to insult me, so I'll embrace it, thus taking away its effect
At a guess.

What is /sffg/'s favorite Malthusian sci-fi?

He seems quite adept at cucking it up.
If only he had the writing talent to complement it.

Rifters trilogy

Not sure if you're making a joke about how many times we've had these conversations by now or not. Someone is always reading these books for the first time.

What are you reading lately?

I cannot wait, we have to totally rely on the Polish and the Chinese to save Hard Sci-Fi at this point.
More translations the better I say.

do you have any idea if Tais Teng's Cepheide is available anywhere?

>The mutineers would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for the collapse of the Flow.

This is the first line in the book. Just to let everyone know.

the rest of the prologue goes on to prove that isn't even true, the mutineers would have gotten away with it if they didn't forget they were doing it 10 minutes later

>and their stupid dog too

I'll be honest. I couldn't even get past that first line.

Read the other books after Sabriel, you fucking baka.

I posted my previous post exactly one time and never received an adequate answer.

The only stuff I have read of his is the free stuff on his site.

Cixin

What's some good (English) translated modern Polish scifi? I like expanding my library

>you will never tell Shaeönanra how much you love him
just kill me desu senpai

Who is Scalzi and why should I care about him?

Is that pic related to the Stormlight Archive somehow? I thought there were only 3 planets in the Roshar system.

he's a rapist

The Steel Remains I guess, but it's terrible.

Is this series any good?

Bakker fags get out.

come on user you enjoyed neuropath didn't you?

There are three Shardworlds.

I read Jirel Meets Magic, a novelette of swords and sorcery by C.L. Moore, a contemporary of Lovecraft and Robert Howard, and a woman author. Moore wrote about six of these stories for Weird Tales about a yellow eyed, red-headed female warrior. I'll be reading them for the next week or two.

Jirel Meets Magic has the woman protag following a fugitive wizard who has fleed through a portal into a violet-skied otherworldly realm. She encounters an exotic sorceress at her marble tower abode, itself a hub linking numerous realms full of strange beings behind closed doors. Jirel combats both wizard and sorceress in a tale where the hero is characterized by her strength of resolution, rather than by Conan-like physical prowess. 3/5 dinos for pulp lovers.

>ex-marine police chief sister
He wears it on his sleeve, doesn't he?

Any Scalzi fanboys want to talk about how great CE is? Or are they all ironic fanboys around here?

Stop posting Breivik.

I've never seen an actual review of CE talk about why the book is good beyond just saying "it's good" in some fashion. The rest of the review is usually just them talking about Scalzi and his career.

ClarkHat did a piece on him, about how he's a master of community-building but not a good author on his own. It fits, explains why Scalzi's Twitter avatar is a man swinging a banhammer - what he's most proud of is his ability to exclude from his community.

>and the Chinese
???

He's king of the Sci Fi SJWs

I always thought he was a right winger.

I assume he means Cixin Liu and others of his ilk.

Is there a book with a similar feel to Alan Wake?

Anyone read this series? I've read pic related a while ago and am gonna crush the remaining books once I collect them. This guy is dope.

Scalzi's an alright author who is the go to target of hate for all the sad puppy autists. If you bring him up here even for actual discussion you're likely to shit up the thread as they'll all go mental at the first mention of him.

He basically is, neoliberal dem would be right wing anywhere but the US

>this is what reddit actually believes

Found one! What did you like about Collapsing Empire?

Nigga your shitposting movement does most of it's canvassing on reddit. You're demonstrably more reddit than anyone else here

that is exactly right

Is there a market for artistically large multiverse novels? With hundreds of characters and tens of storylines and timeframes?

Sorry unlike you I'm gonna have to read it before I talk about it :)

The next two are really good, basically Azarchel gives each of his lackeys a thousand years to remake humanity in his image, then Montrose gets woken up by dog-men and has to work out what happened. The two after that have the timescale stretched out so it's much harder to be attached to any side character, and the side characters were the best parts of Hermetic Millennia/Judge of Ages, but they still have a ton of great ideas.

>neoliberal dem would be right wing anywhere but the US
Really? How about the Middle East? Africa? Haiti? Samoa? Russia?

Let me fix that for you:
neoliberal dem would be right wing in Europe

...it's literally the right wing of the israeli, senegalese and saffer governments

I did read it and it's shit.

What are some good coming-of-age stories?

No, it wouldn't. You're a retard.

So you admit that
>anywhere but the US
is not a factual statement?

No I gave you multiple counter examples whilst you're hinging your claim off of dictatorships

Robert Heinlein did an awful lot of them earlier on, look at his so called 'juveniles' (basically YA but well done.) I read the Red Planet and it was good but I like anything in that old fashioned Mars setting, so take your pick of the better regarded ones like Star Beast, Starman Jones, Citizen Of The Galaxy, Have Spacesuit Will Travel. These are breezier and more formulaic than his later books.

...

Don't bother, he's doing deep performance art as a Scalzite. Hitting every note too.

>anywhere but the US
Wew lad

>Less than 3.5 stars on Goodreads

Wright's the polar opposite of scalzi obnoxious born again christian

naturally both authors have idiot fan bases that fight each other. I'd stick to professional reviews for both of them

I read the first one and dropped it.

Why don't dictatorships count?

Of course both American parties seem conservative compared to yuropoor Social Democrats. Do you honestly think this is some kind of deep insight?

Have you read the excerpt?

>Chapter Two

>Kiva Lagos was busily fucking the brains out of the assistant purser she’d been after for the last six weeks of the Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby’s trip from Lankaran to End when Second Officer Waylov Brennir entered her stateroom, unannounced. “You’re needed,” he said.

>“I’m a little busy at the moment,” Kiva said. She’d just finally gotten herself into a groove, so fuck Waylov (not literally, he was awful) if she was going to get out of the groove just because he walked into it. Grooves were hard to come by. People have sex, and he was unannounced. If this was what he walked into, it was his fault, not hers. The assistant purser seemed a little concerned, but Kiva applied a little pressure to make it clear festivities were to continue.

>“It’s important.”

>“Trust me, so is this.”

>“We’ve got a customs official who won’t let us take any haverfruit off the ship,” Brennir said. If he was shocked or scandalized by Lagos’s activities he was doing a good job of hiding it. He mostly looked bored. “Offloading our haverfruit is why we came to End. If we don’t sell it, or develop licenses, we’re screwed. You’re the owner’s representative. You’re going to have to explain to your mother why this trip was the cause of the financial ruin of your family. So perhaps you might like to join Captain Blinnikka in talking with this customs official right now to see if you can resolve this problem. Or you can just go on fucking that junior crew member, ma’am. I’m sure those are equivalent activities as regards your future, and the future of this ship, and your family.”

>“Well, shit,” Kiva said. Her groove was definitely gone, and the assistant purser, her little project, looked pretty miserable at the moment. “That was a pretty impressive jab you just gave to someone who can fire your ass, Brennir.”

>“You can’t fire me, ma’am,” Brennir said. “I’ve got tenure with the guild. Now, are you coming or not?”

>“I’m thinking.”

>Why don't dictatorships count?
Because there's no actual opposition, it isn't a set of parties on a left/right sliding scale it's a single whole

>Taking Goodreads seriously

>it isn't a set of parties on a left/right sliding scale
none of them are

But did it have catgirls? That is the question.

Is it wrong I got a semi from this?

>woman needs six weeks to get a man to fuck her

lmao