/sffg/ - Science Fiction & Fantasy General

Start reading real literature

"Real" literature is no different than "real" art.

You don't, the fact is that you were stupid as a child and could get swept up in cliches with ease.

I just re-read tamora pierces works every few years and enjoy the nostalgia.

Whats the literary equivalent of this?

>inb4 GoT

Not enough GRI

Wuts ur problem mate?

Malazan.

Thoughts on Neil Gaiman?

>The Malazan Empire simmers with discontent, bled dry by interminable warfare, bitter infighting, and bloody confrontations. Even the imperial legions, long inured to the bloodshed, yearn for some respite. Yet Empress Laseen's rule remains absolute, enforced by her dread Claw assassins.

>For Sergeant Whiskeyjack and his squad of Bridgeburners, and for Tattersail, surviving cadre mage of the Second Legion, the aftermath of the siege of Pale should have been a time to mourn the many dead. But Darujhistan, last of the Free Cities of Genabackis, yet holds out. It is to this ancient citadel that Laseen turns her predatory gaze.

>But it would appear that the Empire is not alone in this great game. Sinister, shadowbound forces are gathering as the gods themselves prepare to play their hand....

Doesnt sound too far off. Im impressed

Want to start reading The Wheel of Time books.

Should I start with this or book 1?

Book 1. Why would you even ask that? I have never even heard of a series where reading prequels first is a good idea.

I get the same feeling sometimes. It's great hat there is so much coice these days, but it's quite hard to find the good options.
What I sometimes do is look up award winning books and start from there, for example: who won the nebalu awards. Those are mostly decent to good books imo.

Well a prequal is what happens before the main story user. So if everything in it is set before events of book 1 then it is logical to read it first.

im starting with book 1, myself.

Do you guys read paper or e-books?
I want to read more fantasy, but ordering them from amazon is quite expensive and time-consuming.
Might consider getting an e-reader. Are in your experiences most good fantasy works available in epub/pdf/etc. format?

Name a better science fiction novel.

I prefer paper but ebooks are more convenient.

That Russian torrent site is pretty good for finding epubs/ pdfs.

I forgot the name again though, fuck.

rutracker?

I prefer epub or Kindle. I have a hard time actually getting comfortable reading physical books because of shit lighting in my house and actually holding the books and all. Plus I multitask a lot so I usually do shit on my second monitor while I read.

Except they are all in Russian.

Is that the goddess Kali?(white washed version)

You trust in chartanon-sama, he doesn't steer you wrong.

Any cool book with an "ace of aces"

Somebody who's the true undisputed king in combat?

Not some Icarium guy who gets knocked out every other page, but a true ace.

>Are in your experiences most good fantasy works available in epub/pdf/etc. format?

Yeah you can find pretty much anything in epub, an ereader easily pays for itself.

No, the other one. It's lib something but hosted on a Russian server apparently.

I forget where it's from, it might just be a random villain artwork.

...

Malazan, unlike GoT, is high fantasy right from the start so the battles are decided by extremely powerful mages. It's somewhat similar to FFT in that aspect too.

Is there a classic fantasy equivalent?

Are math nerds the ultimate weapon of destruction?

Is anything on that chart like The Iron Dragon's Daughter?

That was such a weird book, I need more of it.

That's the one.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Weird

Always falls just short of brilliance, but a nice enough read. Reminds me of Beagle and DWJ.

The whole concept of prequels exist under the expectation you already know the story. You wouldn't watch phantom menace before Star Wars, would you?

His writing is a little silly from time to time but his ideas and symbolism are right up my alley. He's one of my favorite writers, mainly because I consider Sandman among the best works of fiction made.

Book 1. New Spring is only good if you're (preferably deeply) familiar with the series lore.

Just about done Darkness That Comes Before. Do I go onto book two, or do I move onto Sword of the Lictor?

>broken empire trilogy

Has anyone here actually enjoyed this shit? I read the first book and the edgelord main character just made me hate it. I have no problem with reading about rape and all other sorts of shit, but this was still bad.

I need good URBAN FANTASY books

sci/fi fantasy works I like:

-first book of the Black Company
-Book of the New Sun
-Ligotti short stories
-Laird Barron short stories

...

thing is, I'd like something that's not YA or Harry Potter influence. Grimdark if it needs be. But good. Like Hellblazer / Hellboy / BPRD in comics, something like that. Lovecraftian influence is fine.

someone told me to read The Devil you Know once, apparently the author wrote for Hellblazer at some point, Im not that far into the comic so I might check it out in the future

Delano wrote that, it's solid.

China Mieville's The City and The City and some of his other work.

I read them all. I could feel there was edge but it was more a honorless doing anything to win. It sat really well with me.

I hate that shitty marxist can't do character writer

this
We need an intro to fantasy/classic fantasy chart

lord of the rings and Dune
there. done.

I would put Wizard Knight in there also.

Solaris.

How does Blindsight compare with Journey to Arcturus? I've heard it's a pretty good philosophical-fiction book.

>Blindsight compare with Journey to Arcturus
Blindsight is an actual story, with the author's insight into biology and evolution (Watts has a PhD in Zoology or some such thing) peppered throughout. I frankly think that it's a bit overhyped in these threads, but it's pretty good. It's certainly worlds better than A Voyage to Arcturus, which is a gnostic parable with only the barest sketch of a story.

Anyone?

Any recommendations for Vandermeer?

>Any recommendations for Vandermeer?
Read Annihilation and then don't read the other two books in the Southern Reach trilogy (not because they're bad, they just don't add anything). Also, go read Veniss Underground and then come back and tell us how it is. It sounds real weird in a way that could break good or bad.

anybody know any good books/films/tv shows involving virtual reality? specifically VR games.

also any sort of future where people spend most of their time inside e.g. on their computers or at TV and barely socialise.

Snow Crash.

>anybody know any good books/films/tv shows involving virtual reality? specifically VR games.
Avalon, eXistenZ

>also any sort of future where people spend most of their time inside e.g. on their computers or at TV and barely socialise.
Veeky Forums, real life

I started watching avalon but I honestly couldn't stand the awful CGI. Is it worth pushing through?

Yeah eXistenZ is a good suggestion, I need to rewatch it though,

is it worth reading? im into FFT setting a lot

see I've heard loads of people just dismiss it as "fantasy dragonball Z" but honestly that sounds great.

Seconding Snow Crash, a fun classic.

An example many (myself included) consider to be not good is Ready Player One. However if you withstand the cringe-y parts the book end up being quite fun. It also plays heavily and bluntly on old pop-culture nostalgia, which is probably the reason it's gotten an enviable movie deal.
It's a book people here don't usually recommend but it delivers on everything your post asks for, despite it's deficiencies.

What's a fantasy subgenre that has persol super powers without being capeshit or shounen?

>I started watching avalon but I honestly couldn't stand the awful CGI. Is it worth pushing through?
Yea it gets real good near the end. Also who cares about awful CGI, it's a computer game after all.

okay I will definitely have to read snow crash then. I really regret starting infinite jest because I have so many other books I want to read.

And on the topic of RPO yeah I have heard it is bad but to be honest I am researching for a novel I am writing, so it is probably good to see what a shit version looks like.

What do you guys think about Shadow of the torturer? I've heard it's a good sci fi book and i want to read it, but i've never understood what's so good about it. Also, my favourite sci-fi authors are Mieville (especially Embassytown) and Lem. Do you think i would enjoy it?

Book two is the best book in the series imo

Is the only way for a book to get a fandom these days to publish it on the internet? I never see people talk about books outside of Veeky Forums except for the people obsessed with Worm

hello can you recommend me a fantasy book that has a kind of dark setting that involves assassinations?prefer medieval era or similar

Yes. Self publishing is the new meme to get attention from an actual editor

>Worm

What the fuck is this shit? I see it pop up all over the internet.

Every modern fantasy book.

In the first book, they were living in a human-scale world. In all the others, they were in a more woodland-scaled world; huge animals like horses were just left out, and the size disparity between e.g. cats/foxes/badgers and mice was reduced.

This is the reason I follow the way of the dinosaur. The only contemporary authors I make any attempt to keep up with are John C. Wright and China Mieville.

The old pulps. Conan, John Carter, Tarzan.

>open thread
>browse down
>I share these blessed hallowed generals with the scum of the earth known as phone posters
I bet yall are reddit too.
Please do us all a favour and kys.

It's one of the best works of SF ever written. What makes it good, basically, is that the author built an insanely intricate Dying Earth setting and then has a character from that setting narrate his story in the first person. Basically everything in the story (i.e., that the character, Severian, talks about) generally has, at least: a "surface" meaning written on the page, and a "real" meaning in the sense of what's actually happening in this almost indescribably bizarre world. There's usually also a "higher" meaning resulting from the main character being manipulated by godlike nonhuman beings/angels, frequently with some sort of real-world religious significance.

None of the above is spelled out in an explicit way whatsoever within the story however. You sound like you might not speak English natively; you may want to get a little better before you tackle it.

So do the Gorean books ever get smutty?

I read the first one expecting it to be "Robert E. Howard writes an 18+ John Carter fanfic" but I got the fanfic and not the 18+ and I'm fairly disappointed.

Thanks user. You guessed it right, English is not my mother tongue, but there should be an Italian translation if i remember correctly, I'll read that one.

I know a guy who ALWAYS does everything in chronological order. Watches Star Wars starting with A Phantom Menace, watches Marvel movies starting with Captain America, plays Metal Gear starting with Snake Eater etc. That guy pisses me off so hard I want to scream whenever we talk about any series.

I have a slight preference for paper (mostly due to the feeling of progress I get when the read part of the book becomes thicker, and the unread thinner), but lately I've been mostly reading on my Cybook Odyssey, since importing books is too much of a hassle and translations are never as good as the original prose.

Anyways, whoever realized that an ebook reader should have BOTH a touchscreen and physical buttons was agenius. Amazon's "you either get buttons or a touchscreen" is utter retardation.

>Amazon's "you either get buttons or a touchscreen" is utter retardation.

That's only for older Kindles and the paperwhite.The voyage and the oasis both have touchscreen and buttons even though they're quite expensive.

Is a web-published capeshit book.

According to tvtropes it's about a girl nicknamed skitter who can control bugs and is really clever about how she uses it: making spiders sew her a bulletproof outfit, suffocating villains by filling their mouthes with centipedes, etc.

Don't take my word for it, but a translation might not be a good choice either. People have been finding new hidden meanings in the book for decades, a translation is certainly missing things that the translator didn't notice. It's one of those books that you can read ten times, and discover new things every time.

I'm not sure about this PagePress idea. What's most important to me about physical buttons is tactile feedback, whick is missing from the pressure-sensitive system used by the new Kindles. I'd have to hold one in my hands first to pass a verdict.

Yeah, contemporary writers often lacks class.

A New Spring would be incredibly dull because you have no idea why any of the characters are or why the story is bothering with them. It's only interesting after you know who they are and what they will do.

>Prose Odyssey

Absolutely fucking plebeian.

Pick a fantasy book at random that was published after 1990 and you have good odds of getting what you want.

Maybe stop being a mangina and getting offended by a fucking book character?

BACK THE FUCK OFF!?

Your friend is a fucking faggot

Not him, but I remember not liking Elric because the character was just a huge cunt.

guess he should have written a white-knight story that gets the girl and called it fickle empire trilogy.

That's just an image from Google. I'm currently reading Lem's Star Diaries.