/sffg/ - Science Fiction & Fantasy General

Any sf books like the original Halo trilogy? Looking for the awe, mystery philosophy, feeling of desperation, feeling of brotherhood, cosmic horror, etc. Something hopefully well-written as well.

Inb4 vidya games are stupid and so forth. That's why I'm asking for a book.

Well, aesthetically, Ringworld comes to mind. Probably doesn't fit your other criteria though.

Nothing, I'm just gathering ideas. I've found an extremely cool of way doing the whole "awakening" ala Paul drinks the water of death thing though.

Why is modern fantasy so incredibly one note? I've been an avid reader of Fantasy since my prepubescent years, but I haven't revisited the Genre since ADWD. Why are Fantasy Writers so intent on locking themselves into a handful of settings? I feel like I can find endlessly unique(Albiet low quality) SciFi novels, but every modern fantasy book I see is a direct copy of something I've already read.

Because the old guard of Fantasy writers have either settled into retirement or are trying new things.

The New Fantasy writers are all from the "I wanna be a billionaire, so fricken' bad" generation and just want to be popular across a broad base and make a living out of it. Very little interesting ideas or love of genre. It comes with the mainstreaming of a subculture.

>What has he written that you liked
Everything.

>and why did you like it?
Gemmell was amazingly consistent. He also never felt the need to bloat any of his books or series, unlike a lot of fantasy authors. His Drenai series is his longest series at 11 books, but each novel is pretty much a stand-alone and not a single one goes beyond 500 pages.

He's also the king of heroic fantasy.

AND

Oh look. It's the "take on god eating his children to gain their powers" user. I thought we got rid of your wannabe writer ass...

Getting into fantasy after reading tolkein and asoiaf.
>Get recommended name of the wind. >Starts off pretty good.
>Gets incredibly slow.
>Approaching the end of the book.
>Most anticlimatic ending ever.

How bad did I get memed Veeky Forums?

>Man, remember when we were kids?
>When we didn't like a book we just read another one if we wanted.

Last thread had a few posts about all the things wrong with the series yeah.

Tried ringworld, wasn't really my thing.

>every fucking thread it's the same autist that wants us to discuss the only book he read
>name of the wind
>posting like he just joined the thread and is "curious" about what we think of it.

Can we pick something else to discuss than fucking Rothfuss? This is the fourth thread that this reddit fuck is trying to turn the discussion to name of the wind. Getting pissed about this. There are literally millions of sff books. Let's discuss something different this thread, something that isn't botns or name of the wind.

I miss the bakker countdown autist. At least he was different every thread.
Dino-as-measurements user, you here? What you reading?
Absolute aram, how is your jack off to wolfe coming?
Catfag what you reading?
Tripfag what you reading?
Original dinosaur what old books you reading?

have you looked at /sffg/? Most fantasy is recycled garbage because 90% of the readers like to have the same trash given to them over and over again. They're terrified of new ideas and shit over anything different as "muh leddit"

nothing at the moment, I'm planning on coming back to that story about the fortune teller's daughter who wants to be an astrophysicist instead of an astrologer but winds up caught up in the schemes of a narcissistic wizard and a bashful thunder bird

You want modern pulp?
With every new installation being some more whacky planet than the last?
With you following a grunt in a space marine corps doing battle with aliens to earn money so earth doesn't get tripled bio-nuked?
Then the undying mercenaries is the series for you.

You will enjoy characters odst-ing to worlds.
Strange lifeforms and cultures.
The use of alien weaponry on civilians, commanding officers and aliens.
Act now and you will get a free addiction to space marines.

Havent been around but now is a good time to break the silence. Working on a latro in the mist writeup that will finish my second volume on Wolfe - this is my best work on Wolfe's best work, so the terrible beauty of the intellectual effort between two of the greatest minds of our time should reach sublime heights. They can take their awards and shite ideas and stick them up their ass - nothing better can ever be written on Wolfe, unless some Pierre Menard comes along and recopies the book and refines one or two small details.

Okay user you seem to be the person to ask this. I'm getting fatigued with GRI and grimdark fantasy and want some simpler, heroic shit so I'm looking at picking up a Gemmell book to try. Can you recommend any book in particular that would be a good starting point or example of his writing? I'm hesitant to jump straight into his long 11 book series without knowing if I'll enjoy it, so a shorter series or a standalone book would be preferable.

>Catfag what you reading?
You think you can just summon me an I'll respond? Throw around some epithet like it's inscribed on my collar and expect it to yank me from my well-earned meditative repohhhhh yeah... um, so...
Reading this.
You'll be pleased to know that it starts fairly early with a bit of reverserapecest. Lots of death. Some maiming. Not terribly comfy.

>so a shorter series or a standalone book would be preferable.
Like I said; The Drenai series is less a series and more of a collection of stories that take place in the same universe. You can pretty much read any Drenai book by itself as its own story. But I'd suggest any of his actual stand-alone novels for starters. Give Morningstar a shot. If you dig it then check out his other stand-alone books and take it from there. But his Drenai stuff is arguably his best works as far as heroic fantasy goes. His Rigante series is also great but has maybe more "drama" in it than his Drenai stuff.

Word of warning though: His books do feature plenty of violence and rape BUT not for grimdark reasons. Gemmell was a christian (not the preachy kind so don't worry) and the themes I quoted from him in my post right here are prevalent throughout all of his work. It's not about having violence and rape to shock his readers like your typical grimdark writers, but about his characters trying to overcome such horribleness.

>Name of the Wind
Whoever recommended this to you is not your friend. Read Gene Wolfe.

Had this idea of someone coming across a big floating sphere in the forest. When they go up and touch it, their handprint stays behind and a bunch of strange markings slowly fade in, which the person soon realizes are also "hand"prints.

I don't know how to phrase this next part, but then they walk 360 degrees around the sphere back to where they started and see that their handprint is missing. They keep walking and see that all of the handprints have changed, and walking back around changes them back. So the person keeps walking around and around and the surface never stops changing for as long as they walk.

Thought about ending it there but also thought it might be cool if the person touches one of the handprints and the sphere's surface turns a murky green. They think they've broken it but after a few seconds there's a dark smudge on it that turns into the reflection of a weird octopus looking thing swimming up and leaving the handprint that the person touched. Then the sphere turns back to normal. Then they'd go back and touch their handprint and watch themselves walking up to the sphere and leaving it.

At this point they'd be running around the sphere giddy and euphoric, reflecting on the awesomness of the universe and wondering about God or some shit and then they'd come across what was unmistakably a human handprint. They'd reflect on this briefly before proceeding to touch it whereupon the sphere would turn pitch black. It'd stay that way for a little, with the person watching the spot intently.

Then what looks like a human arm flashes out of the darkness and strikes the sphere with a loud bang, the first sound the sphere has made.

The person doesn't move and the sphere folds in on itself and disappears.

So Gantz?

Da shapes are da same so it's da same!

No.

>Morningstar

That looks perfect

>It's not about having violence and rape to shock his readers like your typical grimdark writers, but about his characters trying to overcome such horribleness

That sounds fine, in fact focusing on heroic stuff which includes overcoming horrible shit is pretty much exactly what I'm looking for

Because fantasy has always been heavily flavored with nostalgia. It goes straight back to Tolkien. LotR and the Hobbit are loaded with nostalgia, it's a powerful, pervasive feeling that has probably just been conflated with the general appeal of fantasy over the years so that they are now inseparable. When you write fantasy you instinctively try to go for that nostalgic feeling.

>That sounds fine, in fact focusing on heroic stuff which includes overcoming horrible shit is pretty much exactly what I'm looking for
Well you're in luck because that's Gemmell's style to a T. Be prepared to shed manly tears though.

don't tell us the idea just write it

Ay yo I'm still here

>Would a book with a more fanciful tone (like pulp) still bother you in the same way? Does the realistic presentation of the story lead you to expect modern sensibilities where other presentations would not? Or is it all one in the same?
I think most people apart from the most hardcore feminists can forgive pulp, and the more male-dominated Golden Age scifi. They're products of their time, and can hardly be blamed. As long as modern readers can laugh at it for its older mindset while still able to enjoys concepts, I see no problem.

>Can aliens be sexist? There is a popular space opera where the main alien race doesn't allow one gender into space because they consider them mentally unstable and thus unfit for such precise important work.
Which space opera? And aliens can be anything, including sexist, but it'll just be a metaphor or parody for real world views. The concept you just described has nothing wrong with it literally, but it's obviously an attempted reference to sexist views towards women on Earth. What the writer does with that is their own business:
>If they're liberal minded: the mentally unstable race are secretly smart and overcome their problems and join the hardy space crew
>If they're more conservative: nothing changes in the plot and it's shown the unstable race are just that, unstable

It's actually the second option which interests me more, as one of the biggest problems with our interpretations of aliens (and animals really) is our attempts to humanise them. if the scenario described in your space opera was actually more of a caste system thing, and despite us humans trying to introduce equality to that "horribly awful sexist world!", we were actually being cruel because of how differently evolved the other races genders were. That would be a cool idea, and I always love books which play with the authors expectations. Even this good idea would ultimately draw criticism however, because the author would be seen as trying to imply woman ARE second rate or whatever.

In todays political climate, especially regards to gender and especially in the genre of sff, gender issues are massively overblown, making matters harder for more moderate liberal cunts like me.

About to start reading some Dragonlance novels as I hear they are comfy and not as edgy as forgotten realms.

>reading books written by Marxist feminist neckbeards...

>judging a book by the authors opinions

>implying an author's personal ideas don't influence their work

>give well thought out recommendations to anons
>they collect the book and don't respond
>every single time
>they wonder why people don't respond to him when they ask for help

>implying implications

Am I the only one that thinks these threads would be a lot more interesting if people shared and discussed their concept art?

not on Veeky Forums
concept art should embellish your writing

I don't think embellish is the right word. Anyway a lot of people are into concept art for it's own sake, I'll accept that it's not Veeky Forums though.

...

>Why?

after the big western art purge on /d/ I find myself looking content on /aco/ too. I wish the mods had just left /d/ how it was, literally nothing wrong with the old system. :^(

to keep it Veeky Forums, any idea when too like the lightning will be on the kindle store?

>What's your favorite non-edgy fantasy (or SF) work?

Blindsight is pretty edgy, but not in the traditional sense
>muh consciousnesses is wasteful
ok maybe not

Medium creep. New writers who want to write Fantasy stories don't want to write books, they want to write Planescape Torment, Tyranny or Dark Souls. Fantasy as a medium has been heavily influenced by tabletop RPG's, which means that the story structures and systems within adapt exceptionally well to video games. Brandon Sanderson is a prime example - one of the most common criticisms about his books is that they feel like novelized video games.

>As long as modern readers can laugh at it for its older mindset while still able to enjoys concepts, I see no problem.
Then it isn't the style, but the cultural context in which it was written. What about a novel published today, done expressly to ape the pulp tradition? Does it get judged by the culture it imitates, or the one in which it is produced?
>Which space opera?
Well, the Chanur Saga. The author appears to be mimicking the social behavior of lions. Landowning males are titular lords over a large group of female relatives (wives, sisters, and daughters) who work and make most decisions. Males are expected to enter a berserker rage on encountering other males, so male children are worthless and get thrown out to die in the wilderness whenever the lord gets tired of them. Survivors challenge lords and take their land (usually supported by sisters). Human sensibilities don't really affect the situation due to communication difficulties, but the main character is fairly progressive for her race. The gender issues are used for political fodder to drive parts of the story and aren't really given the scifi treatment.
In Chanur's Legacy this stuff is more prominent, one of the main characters is an unwanted male crewmember. Analysis is difficult because it's most valuable as self-insert for space catgirl harem :3

In Ringworld, there's a race of cat people too, and it's taken more to the extreme. Females of their species are literally non-sentient, and they breed selectively to keep it that way since as a species they're extremely warlike.

>Dino-as-measurements user, you here? What you reading?

For the past couple of days I've been non SF&F material, early Anton Chekhov stories about impoverished clerks, jaded deacons, salty peasants and daft constables. Here's some inspiration for you writers: write a Chekhov-like slice of life short story set in a provincial town of your fantasy setting as a world building exercise.

As for my dino pile, it's still here, my volumes of shorts by C.L. Moore, Howard, Vance, Lovecraft, and sundry anthologies of old SF. I have something a little newer (1988) in the mail, one of Robert Silverberg's lesser known novels, At Winter's End. Its premise, of a primordial tribe emerging from the underground after a 700,000 year ice age, was too intriguing to pass up.

Yeah, I need to start reading through the kzin wars at some point so that I can find out exactly where they're going with that.

Do humans get catpussy? Your answer will decide if I read or not.

More like a misunderstood retard.

>tfw this still hasn't been re-uploaded on mobilism despite the original uploader saying he would

There's only one human.
No, but a sexually frustrated hani female fantasizes about it (not in a very lewd way).
This is the book you want IIRC. Might be misremembering cuddles though.

>people must instantly gratify my wants
>this person doesn't understand that he need to upload this instantly when asked by me
>how dare he believe he has a life other than subservience to me

Look what we have here boys. People shit talking us:

You're a girl aren't you?

>Does it get judged by the culture it imitates, or the one in which it is produced?
I guess as long as it's clearly imitation, then doesn't need judging at all.

And while I'm doubtful Chanur is on my hitlist, does raise an interesting point I tried to make too. The idea of gender equality is almost exclusively human in nature. If only we put the genders side by side, of all the species on Earth, that could mean its highly unlikely that aliens do. Or even we have an advantage on aliens, seeing we would have double the working population if the two were identical.

About to start reading the Wheel of Time and I was wondering.

When you lads read series, do you read other books in between or just power through and read every book in the series consecutively?

Reading the Demon Cycle.

The percentage of the story that's directly plagiarized from The Wheel of Time is actually hilarious.

It's not that bad, very readable - but honestly.

Who thinks to themselves "Hey, I really liked that series. I'm going to rewrite it verbatim except I'll change the magic system."

Always read something else in between each book

Go hard, dont stop

...

Apparently that's what The Sword of Shannara did with LOTR

I went absolutely ham.

I skipped some of the more boring Nynaeve parts, though.

Come on man, no one would just do a really shitty job blatantly copying WoT

I didn't really feel like that series copied Wheel of Time that much.

It was also so fucking awful that I barely even made it through the first book, though, so maybe I missed those bits.

This is at least better than that one was.

Hmm, that makes me wonder how realistic it would be to posit that such egalitarian ideals persist in the distant future given the relative briefness of their ascendancy.
It would be interesting to a read a book where two estranged human spacefaring populations meet, one with differentiated gender roles taken to the extreme, and one with undifferentiated gender roles taken to the extreme. Assuming such could be done without massive intentional political baiting.

Favourite WoT cover art series?

Not a bad idea, if a little "look at my metaphor of modern culture!"
I think a future where we've left earth for some reason, only to see such bizarre gender-role animals like ants or lions take over the planet and have utterly alien culture to us we hate them would be cool

E-Book Weeaboo ones easily

...

>"look at my metaphor of modern culture!"
Why does so much sci-fi devolve into this? It's really annoying.

Because most writers are dumb and can't write well. Alternatively, most readers are dumb and see what they expect in fictions not designed that way. Also some authors are just really political, or mad (see Heinlein)

The only type of science fiction than can really isolate itself fully from politics is the really original or weird stuff. Something like Blindsight can be read ten times and drip no less political stance than a biochemistry textbook.

I think politics doesn't need to be omitted from scifi though. The last two Three Body Trilogy books, Dark Forest and Death's End, have an underlying theme of western democracy VS modern Chinese autocracy politics, especially in the context of great hardships, namely world threats and space travel. However, none of the books really waste time having characters argue over it, instead leaving a lot of the thinking up to the reader. Which is just how it should be, enough politics to provoke a discussion, but not so much it begins to detracts from the scifi.

>Assuming such could be done without massive intentional political baiting.

Even unintentionally with the political climate the way it is I imagine it would cause a shitstorm. Which is a shame because it's an idea that I think deserves treatment, especially if the pro's and cons of each society are made explicit yet dealt with in an evenhanded fashion.

Oh, I agree. I just didn't want the author writing it with the intent to point and laugh at one of the caricatures. Basically what you said.

Post the worst Fantasy novel you guys have ever read. I shouldn't have been surprised from a guy who copied Terry Goodkind

The Slow Regard of Silent Things. If you thought The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear were bad just wait until you read this. Rothfuss even had the gall to say that if you didn't like it you just didn't understand his story

>Fantasy
Thomas Covenant the unbeliever

>scifi
Dhalgren

>The Slow Regard of Silent Things
I dislike poems. Poems belong in the past with theaters and Shake-a-spears.

If I'm interested in a series then I keep reading it. If I lose interest then I take a break or just drop it completely. I see no reason to take breaks on something unless I'm not enjoying it that much.

Awful scifi books I've read:

Children of Time, Adrian Tychwanksky
The Sirens of Titan, Vonegut
The Shape of Things to Come, Wells
Children of Dune, Herb

meh

The Eye of Argon was bad but I felt sorry for the author

This is probably the worst one I actually finished. Since gaining actual taste I tend not to finish terrible books.

Do you know any good science fiction novel about of past human civilization?

I still can't believe someone published that

>kinda got tired of warhammer some five years ago
>get interested in it again since a new dawn od war game is coming out
>look up how many new horus heresy novels have been released since the last one i read (angel exterminatus)
>twenty, plus a bunch of shorter stories, and a new primarch focused series
nice
time to get reading again
see you nerds in may

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPwPwSQE9bs

What I find ironic is, Paolini is held up as some kind of example of innate talent yet his case is actually an example of the triumph of hard work to overcome mediocrity. His book was shamelessly derivative and his writing stuffed with purple prose, yet he soldiered on and spent over a year promoting himself all over the country until he finally met somebody important. People resent Paolini for being published despite his writing being so bad, but the truth is he put in a lot of effort to get published. Just not in writing his book.

The thought experiment itself might reveal the feasibility of the persistence of either sort of society.

Anything that involves something so fundamental to our current structure of society is inevitably going to end up being baiting. I don't think the reaction in the current political climate would differ in any other. Thomas Moore's 'Utopia' and Huxley's 'Brave New World' play with fundamental ideas and both are baiting. Perhaps the novelty might make such a work more baiting?

In any case, pros and cons are culturally relativistic. It would be very difficult to be evenhanded. Maybe that makes the whole endeavour unfeasible, though I would like to see a good attempt at taking such ideas to their logical conclusions.

I thought he was published because of his parents

Paolini is writing a scifi novel right now.

It was "published" by his parents who owned a very small-time vanity press. Then he went around to libraries and schools and wherever else he could get a venue and promoted his book until he ran into somebody who was personal friends with Alfred Knopf. He had to rewrite the book to get it published under the Knopf label for legal reasons.

>girlfriend fucking LOVES Eragon
>quite literally forced me to read it

It was hard. Harder than reading her garbage YA novel, even.
Yet she's not read a single wikihow about how to give blowies ;_;