/sffg/ - Science Fiction & Fantasy General

I read Jack Vance's 1956 sci-fi novel To Live Forever, AKA Clarges, a book set in an advanced city that has conquered disease and mortality but remains a dystopia. To avoid overpopulation, life-lengthening treatments are administered in stages by the local government, but only for doing good works. The city's inhabitants are thereby obsessed with striving towards progressing towards immortality, the preceding stages of which form the rigid caste system.

The plot concerns Waylock, a man who has fallen foul of this society, having relinquished his right to be immortal by murdering a rival press baron. At the outset of the novel he emerges from exile, having been presumed dead, and strives towards immortal status once again. He is a amoral, ruthless, dogged, and clever, an anti-hero. He is consistently thwarted by a young immortal woman with a grudge against him; and his tanglings with the beautiful antagonist make up much of the novel.

Waylock enters myriad jobs as we see both the winners and losers of his society: immortals, near-immortals, mental-cases, assassins, rebels, beurocrats, lackeys. Vance depicts a people who have attained immortality but who remain in menial servitude; he targets meaningless careerism and the conservatism and complacency of the comfortable. By the end of the book he offers a solution, a way of adding meaning to increasingly long lives. This book is a fast read, and will also have interest to cyberpunk readers with its mind-altering drugs, flying cars, skyways, simulacra, double identities and memory transfer. The plotting is superb, the dialogue is witty, and the ending is satisfying, so the book deserves four out of five dinosaurs.

...

>he doesn't buy books with awful covers on purpose
What planet are you from?

Weird, that plot sounds very familiar, but I'm almost certain that I haven't read this book.

Its anti-hero protagonist reminded me a lot of the one in Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man, 1953. Both Waylock and Reich are captains of industry trying to get away with murder in a futuristic megapolis. There is no telepathy involved in Clarges, but the setting is similiar. Clarges isn't written in Bester's beatnik way either. They're interesting bedfellows nonetheless.

The Heart of What Was Lost, so I can segue into Tad Williams' new Osten Ard series this summer. Since it's been like 8 years since I read Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn

Sounds great dinosaur user, i think i'll read it.

Hmmm, that doesn't appear to be it.
>The plot concerns PROTAG, a man who has fallen foul of this society, having relinquished his right to be immortal by murdering a rival OTHER GUY. At the outset of the novel he emerges from exile, having been presumed dead, and strives towards immortal status once again. He is a amoral, ruthless, dogged, and clever, an anti-hero. He is consistently thwarted by a young immortal woman with a grudge against him.
It's driving me crazy now.

Is the setting an overbearing and byzantine dystopic bureaucracy? I like those.

There's a few scenes where the protag is applying for jobs, remonstrating with dignitaries, or arguing a point of law with flustered officials It's definitely a man VS his society type of book. It's not as byzantine or oppressive as Emphyrio's government, but there is state sanctioned murder at a certain age, and archaic traditional punishments.

The early worldbuilding can be some work. It's easy once you figure out that they have achieved immortality by producing simulacra and keeping them in a vat. When a man dies, his memories are 'empathised'/transferred into one of the simulacra of their ideal body - so the immortal class are always young, too.

A note about 3body.

it was written in chinese, and it shows. It's almost autistic in its translation.

it doesn't really have characters, it's a narrative. you don't get to know anyone well. The story is what's interesting.

The translation is only part of it. Cixin's work in China is famous for it's almost sole male demographic and emotionless Asimov-like writing. Even in the native, it's not a novel full of worldplay. That's why Ken's translation should be praised for the more powerful sections of Dark Forest and Death's End, for actually making the read a little pleasanter.

Does Brandon Sanderson have downs syndrome? I hope for his sake that he does because then he has an excuse for looking like that.

The end result of too much mormon inbreeding.

lmao

New Peter Watts book when?

...

I'm close to being done with feist's riftwar cycle and I'd like to know who is closer to his style between eddings and hobb? I haven't read anything from either of them before.

For the Echopraxia sequel, could be a long few years.
He's working on some shorter stuff or so he said in our e-mails, especially the Sunflower cycle. Could be expecting a Beyond the Rift II next year easily.

Speaker for the Dead
Senlin Ascends
The Wastelands (Dark Tower)

I like all three too much to focus on one book for a long time.

Is the weeb agenda finally making their move?

3 TUC "arcs" were on ebay earlier, idk if they were legit. Didn't buy one.

>Yes, one makes sense and is gradual the other is shoehorned in to appeal to women

Could you go into more detail please?

how is it possible to be that uncritically devoted toward some work of fiction unless you're in the neighbourhood of twelve? Fucking fandom I swear.

When reading stuff like this I have to remind myself they are children and don't know any better.

question is why was the last sentence deemed unworthy of an exclamation mark?

tip top kek

Battletech/Mechwarrior has some rules for it and there are a few (water-)planets where a navy is actually feasable, at least during the succession wars and their absence of any kind of warships that are able to bombard planets.
problem about navies in science-fiction-settings is usually that you can easily spot ships and bombard them from orbit so why bother? submarines and underwater bases make sense though.

how's the dialogue in the malazan book of the fallen series? i don't expect it to be stellar, but i'm quick to drop a fantasy book if the dialogue is too cringey.

youtube.com/watch?v=4Qj_P8nAocU

Regenesis Cherryh.

I haven't read it, but irrc the wikipedia article cites the dialogue as one of the things people like about the series

Fantastic. It's actually one of the funniest fantasy series I've read, several of the books have made me laugh out loud. It's also a very grim series at times, and the fact Erikson can do those extreme highs and lows with his characters is pretty amazing.

Looking for either

1. good audiobook
2. french novel for beginers

Would you recommend this someone who's not the biggest fan of fantasy, but who still like authors like Le Guin and Wolfe? (also, not a huge Tolkien fan.)

>somebody asks for classics
>person shows up and goes "HUH WHY ISN'T ANYBODY POSTING STUFF FROM THE LAST 20 YEARS?!"

Ten years ago I used to think the same thing about retarded /b/ memes (you see, I was a sophisticated goon). Then I heard grown men giggling about mudkips in CS 1.6 voicechat and knew the truth.

No. It's an above-average contribution to the "large number of pages" sort of fantasy but if you generally don't like getting lost in fantasy worlds you're not going to like it enough to not regret starting it.

As someone who's only read the first two, it's been pretty pulpy so far – swashbuckling and a plot at a breakneck pace. There's an interesting setting, but the characters tend to know far more about it than the reader, and if there's ever infodumping it's in service of the plot.

I fucking hate people like that
>Ask for X
>They give you Y
>Get butthurt when you call them out on it
>HURF DURF STOP BEING SO ENTITLED* I GAVE YOU AN ANSWER

*They use multiple different words for it
Fuck it bloods my boils

Order of Windrunners
The first Order of the Knights Radiant with the ability to bind Surges Adhesion and Gravitation.[10] The combination of these two Surges resulted in the powers known as the Three Lashings.[11]
Order of Skybreakers
The second Order of the Knights Radiant with the ability to bind Surges Gravitation and Division.[10]
Order of Dustbringers
The third Order of the Knights Radiant with the ability to bind Surges Division and Abrasion.[10] They could apparently burn things.[12]
Order of Edgedancers
The fourth Order of the Knights Radiant with the ability to bind Surges Abrasion and Progression.[10]
Order of Truthwatchers
The fifth Order of the Knights Radiant with the ability to bind Surges Progression and Illumination.
Order of Lightweavers
The sixth Order of the Knights Radiant with the ability to bind Surges Illumination and Transformation.[10] They could create illusions and had the inherent ability to Soulcast.[13][14]
Order of Elsecallers
The seventh Order of the Knights Radiant with the ability to bind Surges Transformation and Transportation.[10] They had the inherent ability to Soulcast.[14]
Order of Willshapers
The eighth Order of the Knights Radiant with the ability to bind Surges Transportation and Cohesion.
Order of Stonewards
The ninth Order of the Knights Radiant with the ability to bind Surges Cohesion and Tension.[10]
Order of Bondsmiths
One of the Orders of the Knights Radiant with the ability to bind Surges Tension and Adhesion.

>this is good world building

>this is the face of fantasy literature
>autistic, hard-wired magic systems are "in vogue" right now
>you stopped caring about that shit somewhere in your teenage years

At least it makes sense, unlike "lol i pull some shit out of my ass because its convenient for the plot"

Who gives a shit if it makes sense? Yeah, you can make an argument that your worldbuilding should have internal consistency, but that's a far cry from
>oh, fuck, I better fucking CODIFY every single magical interaction in my setting as if it were a science
Which it is, because then it's not magic. It's science. And it's an easy way to distract from writing compelling characters and legitimately interesting settings.

why who does that desu?

It's still magic even if it makes sense logically, ie no inconsistencies, everything is like a system.
Unless moving things with your mind isn't magic because there is a very solid system for it

It's solid. A lot of times they'll artificially insert exposition, which annoys the shit of me. But the banter between characters is good

Consistency is nice, but so is esotercism and mystery. There should be a nice balance. Sanderson leans too far by making it into a hard science

I did like warrens/holds and decks/tiles but it's not exactly a fair comparison.

What do you do when you have two characters you care about and want them to interact but every story you build around the two of them together is shit?

Anyone excited for the Black Company tv adaption? How will they fuck it up?

Find a conflict between them. Re-do character outlines and redraft if necessary. Divisive topics; class, politics, women, religion, philosophy.

Don't build a story around them together. Make a story around each of them separately and keep banging them together like a dude unsuccessfully trying to breed two lobsters. Tie the two stories together at the end and call it a day.

>Black Company tv adaption

really?

Stick with it, first book is weakest of the trilogy though

dunno how I missed that

pic related is cast as lady

well that's.. something. Was Eva Green busy?

I don't want them to be in conflict. They're supposed to be two dysfunctional people who only just qualify as socially and mentally fit for society through the destructive interference their best and worst qualities have on each other.

So I'm 300 pages into Way of Kings, and I've got to say, the concept of Spren is just really, really silly. I know it's fantasy, but I think by this point I'd take extreme grimdark over ridiculously kidish concepts like these.
>Jost's eyes grew angrier at the mention of his nahn. He held up his quarterstaff. "You're going to fight me or not?" Anger spren began to appear in small pools at his feet, bright red.

Like how am I supposed to take this seriously? Oh man, he's so angry that anger spren are bopping around, what's gonna happen?!

It just feels like every time see the word spren used in a different context I feel less inclined to keep reading. "They laughed, and laughter spren appeared." Or, "he won, and victory spren appeared". Then there's the waifu spren plotline, which is just straight up anime. So anyway does the concept become cooler as the book progresses or what?

Quite good. Erikson does a great job with duos and groups.

>Doesn't want anime
>Reads Sanderson

What the fuck are you doing? Sanderson writes anime. Every series he has written is anime. If you didn't want anime, why would you read Sanderson series?
Regarding Spren, they're fleshed out to be more like Fair Folk in practice, they've got their own dimension and varying degrees of society. the ones that pop up spontaneously are dumb, base ones equivalent to plants or animals, whereas there's a variety of sentient ones as well.

Holy shit. I read tunnel under the world and it was about advertising too. What is with pohl and consumerism brands?

It's from Lord of light

>magic should be filled with deus ex machina that insults the reader's intelligence, and allows the author to be lazy with his writing, thus always ensuring a way out
I'm glad you "magik is so randum kek" fags are dying out.

Nah, you just haven't read Mistborn; if you've seen the stuff about Shards and the like you know that there is a level of esotercism and mystery.

Lightbringer, GraphicAudio version.

>Breeks
>Not just edgy shit

>So I'm 300 pages into Way of Kings, and I've got to say, the concept of Spren is just really, really silly. I know it's fantasy, but I think by this point I'd take extreme grimdark over ridiculously kidish concepts like these.

I'm going to blow your mind:

Spren are little gaming abstractions from MMOs, those little twinkling lights that color-code things when you hover over them to make clear something that can't be made clear visually.

So an 'angerspren' or whatever is like hovering the cursor over a person and seeing the orange or red little 'hostile' in the box that appears.

I'm going to blow your mind again:

All of Stormlight takes place in an MMO (endless battlefield divided into sections, stupid rare magic items people compete over, war divided into arbitrary factions that each fight not to eliminate the enemy or fix anything, but to keep the battle going so that there can be competitions over rare items that spawn randomly)

Have any of you read Michael Moorcock's essay 'Epic Pooh'?
It's mainly a screed against Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (and several other fantasy works, but mostly LotR) which he compares to the reassuring and childish writing of A. A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh.
Moorcock chiefly criticises what he perceives as Tolkien's conservative disposition and his preoccupation with comforting the reader rather than challenging them intellectually.
Thoughts on this? Here's a link to the text if anyone is interested: revolutionsf.com/article.php?id=953

>MoorCOCK

Mind status: blown

There's nothing cuter than reading an authors short work and seeing all the little ideas they showed into their bigger novels diluted.

God I fucking hate Moorcock. He really is the Alan Moore of fantasy. What a cunt.

>It's still magic even if it makes sense logically, ie no inconsistencies, everything is like a system.
That doesn't sound too MAGICAL to me. ;-)

imgur.com/a/ZrhIe

Just because it makes sense doesn't mean it can't still be magic

Why is "To Kill a God" not on it?

Most of these changes are fine, but you removed Lud in the Mist and Titus Groan, which were two of the strongest entries. You could certainly scratch the Chronicles of Amber in favor of one of those.

Magic in and of itself doesn't make sense. I'm perfectly fine with placing limitations on magic, but doing what Sanderson does really robs magic of what makes it special IMO. It's like the hard sci-fi version of fantasy.

My god Moorcock was a twat. On the first page of the essay he praises J.K. Rowling while insulting Chesterton. He quotes two passages from The Lord of the Rings with different tones, and then claims they have the same tone. Then he comes within a hair's breadth of calling the books fascist.

The essay goes on to jump from topic to topic with no clear structure beyond Moorcock calling writers he doesn't like bad and calling writers he does like good. Then in the last paragraph he has a strawman argument that people are calling Tolkien as good as Joyce and that hey, that's not true. It lets Moorcock shake his head sadly at the dumbing down of today's generation.

As I mentioned a few threads back, I sympathize with the goals of New Wave science fiction, but its leadership in Moorcock and Ballard don't have anywhere near the skills to practice what they preach.

>The Witcher

>This is hands down one of, if not the best book I've ever read.
*only

Tolkein wasn't even vaguely fascist. He was a hardcore Legitimist, sure. I guess to Moorcock anything that appears even remotely right wing is instantly "fascist".

I bought "The Eternal Champion" on ebay because the cover art looked neat

Did I make a mistake?

>Not understanding the importance of eucatastrophe in mythology

Hey, /sffg/, I always wanted to write fantasy stuff, nothing really all that original or great, but I always get stuck on some details and find myself acting like an autist and trying to get something right in the details. In this case, it's fucking castles. Would any of you know a book to recommend, that goes into great detail about castle building?

Osprey

Yes. I couldn't finish the one book of Moorcock's I tried to read. Too fucking boring. And I read the entire Malazan series.

Sorry, what?