/sffg/ - Science Fiction & Fantasy General

So new york 2140 is about society and social structure crumbling so much that men longer have to control their base instinct? If an erection is caused, he can bodily grab the offender and may it known to them the effect they have on one's self?
Is this novel GRI APPROVED? Is there wanton rape and sexual satisfaction going on in these pages?

The Lies of Lock Lamora is dog shit. Horrible pacing. Enough good writing to keep you interested but plot development and story pacing was pretty bad. It drags on in the beginning through middle then rushes the climax with uninspiring and shitty devices/premises. After all the stroking it gets online I was extremely disappointed when I finished it.

Looking for books written in first person. What are the best ones out there?

Does Horror or Weird Fiction go under /sffg/?

If so, any recommendations or charts for such?

Thinking about picking up House of Leaves

Armstrong's diary desu

The first that comes to mind and what I would warmly recommend is Fforde's Shades of Grey.

Also I am currently reading the 'sci-fi' book Handmaid's Tale, and it's more fun than I would have imagined.

Why isn't To Kill a God on any of your charts?

Some people probably don't think it should - there was a shortlived /hor/ thread around last Halloween - but I've got no problem with it. Never actually read HoL though.

youtube.com/watch?v=N4ZDBOc2tX8

has anyone watched this course? what did you think of it?

we'll take it

>no Cyclonopedia for 2008

I did a while ago, it was pretty interesting. Especially when the guest lecturer talked about why Harry Potter has such wide appeal.

link?

I'm enjoying it as well.

Even though I already know I'm just going to write embarassing shit (I have so few contacts with people IRL and so rarely read in my native language that I forgot substantial parts of my grammar, like the use of two whole tenses lol), I hope to have fun. :3

Just started a feast for crows. Definitely different from the others, but I have read too much to stop now. Tell me it gets better.

It is in this episode, starts at 34:18 or something.
youtube.com/watch?v=DXSjRqTZeCs

So guys, here's a thought: what if Rothfuss will never finish the Kingkiller Chronicles because Kvothe is an author inset, and now that Patrick is married and has 2 kids, he can no longer relate to his character and his shenanigans? I mean, it's kinda hard to write about wishful thinking scenarios when you've been relieved of the impending wizard status, especially when your character is in his late teens and suffers from some really bad case of edge that fatherhood has cured you of.

Only part of the plot that could still hold up is Kvothe's eternal money struggle.

How long was your ban? Was it permanent? Are you ban evading right now? After all the shit you caused I thought a long ban was in the works...

>Recommending a book is a bannable offence

A Dream of Spring and The Last Dangerous Visions will both release before Rothfuss gets off his arse

He was editing the op charts and putting his book in them to receive financial gain, with his $10 a ebook scam.
He got on everyone's last nerves, mods nuked him, and he is back it seems.

Conspiracy theories belong on /x/

Kys. You pull those shit again the mods will nuke you?

I was never nuked by the mods not even once, and I was never Stevian

...

So never then. Cause GRRM is dying before book 7 ever comes out, maybe before book 6 at this rate, but we'll still probably get book 6 published posthumously since enough of it is probably written to do that.

I think all the success went to his head and now he doesn't want to be an author anymore, just a part of the fantasy celebrity scene like George is. Only unlike George he doesn't have nearly the same amount of clout so it's just kinda sad to see him posturing like he's one of the big names in fantasy.

No.
I just meant I get hard when asked questions.

Consider Phlebas was my favourite orbital mega-structure. The whole culture series was a massive influence in my current taste for science fiction.

This is pretty much the only place on Veeky Forums where people won't look down on you for reading genre fiction so you might as well try to find other fans here.

I've watched a few of Mr Sanderson's lectures. I'm not an aspiring writer, but I learned some insight into how an author can approach writing genre fiction. In broad terms, Brandon emphasizes the need to please the reader by establishing a tone/convention/promise earlier on in a work, and then fulfilling it in the course of the book.

He also suggests ways to generate inspiration and plot ideas for books. This can be a process of outlining a setting, its culture and geography, and then a series of characters and their traits (each with an interesting 'hook'). The idea is to identify a source of conflict between character, setting, and a plot framework (revenge, rags-to-riches, coming-of-age, romance, travelogue, buddy movie, etc.) For me this was the most interesting part of the course. It turns out that coming up with interesting ideas is very easy.

Brandon then imagines how the overall plot can be treated by the 'box' or window of prose. He discusses the merits of different perspectives and literary devices with reference to several popular books.

The whole course isn't necessary, but it seems comprehensive. The most interesting parts relate to plot generation and an analysis of several literary conventions and tropes.

>listening to LOTR audiobooks on commute
>"Helm's Deep" chapter is missing
>have to listen to talk radio for an hour

anyone have other good /sffg/ audiobook recommendations?

thanls

I'd love to see him turn it around and make all the author inset stuff go wrong, make the character into a completely useless twat who everyone fucks over. Reverse the trope, you know?

That seems to be the consensus about what's going to happen among my friends. I agree.

It sounds like Rothfuss is in thrall to the materialism, sensualism. and vanity that success has afforded him. A man with his education (was it ten years an undergrad?) and publisher support ought to be able to write a book. This isn't Finnegan's Wake, it's genre fiction. Maybe he should take Brandon Sanderson's online course, or unhook the computer, turn off the smartphone, and buy a typewriter.

I hope that's true but I don't believe Rothfuss is that smart.

>audiobooks

Dracula by oBram SToker

There was a good eoro viersion of othe adibokok to hitchiker guide to the lfaxla glaaxy

>not making the most of your time at work
I hardly even put effort into my job anymore. I just listen to stories.

>at work

The Night Angel Trilogy and Lightbringer series in graphic audio is wonderful.
Also try Library at mount char audiobook.

Like audiobooks but not a big fan of the graphic audio stuff. Sound effects and shit, dunno.

You never listened to a movie on the radio as a kid?
It's just like that. Instead of descriptions saying that it's raining, you have actual rainfall. It's fun to turn your mind off and enjoy.

>movie on the radio as a kid
How fucking old are you?

predictably was a total cop out.

Can I get a quick rundown on the emperor's blades?
How much magic is there?

Reasonable amount. They're called 'leeches' and draw their power from some source which varies from person to person. Usually something physical but one character feeds on fear.

Of course it was, skullsworn were the worst part of that series. Why would I want a whole book about them.

28

What can we do to stop people entering SF with Dune? It's not even that good. How many more must be bored away from genre books by Frank Herbert and his leaden prose? Why do people still read Herbert anyway?

why the hell is darkness that comes before in gay rape

Not until we can convince people to stop trying to get into fantasy by reading Tolkien. Not that Tolkien's prose is bad, but he's not all that relevant to the genre anymore and people should stop acting like he's some kind of gatekeeper to high fantasy.

This is great

>tfw repeatedly tell sister how boring Dune is, but she randomly picks up Children of Dune and tries to read it

I'm not sure how you can claim that he's still not relevant anymore when all the mainline fantasy books of today can still draw their roots to him. that's not necessarily true with Dune because there are other authors like asimov, pkd, heinlein, etc

>all the mainline fantasy books of today can still draw their roots to him
This hasn't been truce since at least the 80s.

>he hasn't read bakker's books, but feels he is in authority to comment about them

It's not going to stop until faggots such as yourself stop saying everything is tolkeinesque. Many MANY fantasy books use nothing of dwarves, elves and w/e Tolkien used.
And if you are going to suggest that Tolkien was the first person to ever use the hero's journey then you need to leave this thread and kys asap.
Your ignorance is polluting the nubile minds we have passing through on a regular basis.

so taking away anything with orcs/elves/giant trees/dwarves (warhammer, dnd, etc), let's look at those that derive similar foundational world/myth building techniques that tolkien pioneered for fantasy:

sanderson
grrm
erikson
abercrombie
de lint
bakker
king

and it goes on

The "roots" you're talking about are often so far removed so as to make it irrelevant. A good example is Malazan Book of the Fallen. Big series started in the late 90s, mainly inspired by D&D/GURPS and the Black Company novels (which were also not inspired by Tolkien), in fact Erikson never even read Tolkien before writing his books. Yet if you want to get super technical, D&D owes a lot of its original ideas to Tolkien (though it molded them into its own over many years of development and refining), so you could say there's a tenuous link between Erikson and Tolkien via D&D. A link that's basically only trivia because it has no real bearing at all on Erikson's writing.

And that's basically the state of the fantasy genre right now. You have a lot of authors like Erikson who were mainly inspired by the fantasy of the 80s and not Tolkien, or people now drawing lots of inspiration from other sources like games. Tolkien is at best only tangentially related to modern fantasy, and not in any way that's really relevant.

those are just aesthetics. dumbasses like you associate tolkien with just elves and dwarves perpetuate this superficial bullshit that anything with elves and dwarves is autoshit.

i think that actually shows my point. someone like erikson couldn't possibly exist without tolkien. creating such a vast and interconnected world with multitudinous storylines? that's tolkien.

and there's nothing wrong with that. people get offended too easily saying that fantasy needs to move away from tolkien because of dwarves/elves or whatever, and that's fine, but it's also necessary to reexamine the sort of cultural/memetic influence that tolkien had

I just finished the Belgariad series.
I actually thought the Inheritance cycle was better, even though Paolini copied plot lines

Is The Mallorean series worth reading as a follow up?
Or any suggestions for epic-ish fiction novels along the lines of The Belgariad or Inheritance?

Elves and orcs are critically important to Tolkien's setting, but Tolkien's elves also have very little to do with standard fantasy elves and orcs beyond extremely broad aesthetic similarities and recurring elements

With dwarves yes, they don't have any particular reason to exist both in and out of setting

Fuck now I need to know. Does Veeky Forums have GETs?

they're important to his setting, but the existence of elves/dwarves are not important to the writing process.

tolkien basically sat down and was like "homer? arthur? norse mythos? i'm going to make my own"

and then doing it from scratch in a biblical manner. elves/dwarves are just superficial in the sense that he himself was influenced germanic/norse mythologies and brought them in. the fact that dnd/warhammer immediately started deriving that from tolkien is a short term influence that, i agree, is inconsequential in the longrun

i've read all of them, and i can assure you that it's about far more than gay rape

it's kind of shitty that people shove him down with those books (and pretty much every book in that image), because he's leagues above them

No body said gri was bad. Gri is something to cherish and hold dear. Also it's not "gay rape" it's "gay, and rape, and incest". The three are usually separate, but sometimes they do combine. But when we say their is gri in bakker we mean all 3 can be found separate... Not kellhus teaching the absolute to his most devoted follower.

I wonder who got

>that anything with elves and dwarves is autoshit.
But they are autoshit.

Yeah but that 80's fantasy wouldn't exist without Tolkien. Ditto with video games. Or without Tolkien, they would be much different.

When does it get good?

But tabletop's being influenced by Tolkien isn't inconsequential, because those things went on to have influence of their own, and they wouldn't exist as they did/do without him.

We owe the lightbulb to Benjamin Franklin, that isn't to say that LEDs are Franklinesque.
We don't owe shit to Tolkien, someone else would have come along and made fantasy a thing. For centuries we sat around fires telling stories, you think that would have changed because of technology? If anything modern fantasy is Grimm Brothersesque.

well if you're going to be that reductionist, then we might as well say that all fantasy has roots in the bible

but that's pointless. there is a direct lineage from tolkien to modern mainstream fantasy in the force of worldbuilding. i don't know if that makes modern fantasy tolkienesque, or makes him the father or fantasy, but i think it's a retarded claim to say that he's irrelevant

Bible is just a gilgamesh ripoff

He is irrelevant as far as modern fantasy is concerned. We are nof borrowing from Tolkien, we evolved away from him.

If the bible is to be believed, we are children of incest. First with Adam and Eve, second with Noah and his ark harem. Does that mean since my roots are in incest I should fuck my mom and sister until they are bred?
We acknowledge that Tolkien did a lot for the fantasy "movement", but continuing the belief that every piece of fantasy today still draws from Tolkien is absurd and disrespectful to people that tried their hardest to create their own world.

If I'm to go out on a limb, I will say you are a nostalgic faggot who is butthurt that your most favorite author "evah" is slowly fading away from the acknowledgement pages. You are disgruntled that people here hardly speak of that snorefest. I'm 90% certain that you are the same faggot who said he was going to reread LoTR a few threads back, and probably cried when no one responded. They didn't even care enough to tell you fuck off. You sad fuck.

>He tried to remember what other appliances he had owned, but already memory had become vague; he gave up and returned to the living room. The TV set had receded back a long way; he found himself confronted by a dark, wood-cabinet, Atwater-Kent tuned radio-frequency oldtime AM radio, complete with antenna and ground wires. God in heaven, he said to himself, appalled. But why hadn't the TV set reverted instead to formless metals and plastics? Those, after all, were its constituents; it had been constructed out of them, not out of an earlier radio. Perhaps this weirdly verified a discarded ancient philosophy, that of Plato's ideal objects, the universals which, in each class, were real. The form TV set had been a template imposed as a successor to other templates, like the procession of frames in a movie sequence. Prior forms, he reflected, must carry on an invisible, residual life in every object. The past is latent, is submerged, but still there, capable of rising to the surface once the later imprinting unfortunately - and against ordinary experience - vanished. The man contains - not the boy - but earlier men, he thought.

you have yet to present any arguments to the contrary besides literally saying the same things over and over again

yes, modern fantasy has evolved since tolkien, but i don't see how that diminishes his relevancy because the foundation for that evolution is still present. people are still world-building in the same way, with creation myths, political histories/cultural histories, and legendary tales. they're still writing hero analogues. they're still confronting apocalyptic events. they're still interweaving these stories with either esoteric or mechanical systems of magic. there's still doing globe-trotting adventures. some are still even pseudo building their own languages.

but you'll keep repeating your retarded "HE'S IRRELEVANT" autism because you literally only see tolkien as the dwarves and elves bitch

and i've read lotr twice, and frankly don't give that much of a shit about it. i thought it was fairly good; a slightly above-pleb book, but i don't orgasm over it. i don't give a shit that people don't talk about tolkien in these threads because he's been talked to death. not only have there still been movies and video games coming out based on lotr, there are literal academic scholars revolved around him.

i mean i get it, you don't like lotr. great, no one cares. doesn't mean that you need to go around trying to reject reality to justify that dislike

Both of you get a room.

Gri, yes, but you're also forgetting about the rampant pedophilia

>dude tolkien invented worldbuilding lmao
Setting aside that idiocy, that's not what people mean when they talk about being derivative of Tolkien and you know it. Stop being so fucking pedantic.

its almost 1am and I'm desperately looking for a new sci-fi (or fantasy) audiobook narrated in the first-person.

most recently I finished the first two Takeshi Kovacs books which were GREAT but they switched narrators and I'll end up just reading the third. Also listened to the Three Body Problem trilogy and Armor by John Steakely this year...tried Prince of Thorns but wasn't strong enough to keep my interest.

forum.mobilism.org/viewtopic.php?f=1293&t=1785803&hilit=Laird Barron swift

I thought the guy who did the Red Queen's War trilogy was great. Sean Olhendorf is his name as there is an alternative production for some reason.

5th may. Something of a glut.

Thank you friend-o

Can someone explain to me what was going on in the ending of CotC? People are dancing, Dorcas is screaming and it just ends.

I didn't even understand the first book.

He didn't invent worldbuilding, but he he created a specific type of world building that set an example for modern fantasy, you dumbass. Look up any academia about Tolkien and his worldbuilding and you'll find countless articles.

And the conversation is about his relevance, not derivatives fucktard