/sffg/ - Science Fiction & Fantasy General

Durdane Edition

Vintage Treasures: The Durdane Trilogy by Jack Vance
>blackgate.com/2015/09/12/vintage-treasures-the-durdane-trilogy-by-jack-vance/

Speculiction...: Review of The Durdane Chronicles by Jack Vance
>speculiction.blogspot.com/2014/05/review-of-durdane-chronicles-by-jack.html

Pointless Philosophical Asides: A Long Post About Jack Vance's Durdane
>philosophicalasides.blogspot.com/2009/11/long-post-about-jack-vances-durdane.html

Fantasy
Selected:
>i.imgur.com/r688cPe.jpg
General:
>i.imgur.com/igBYngL.jpg
Flowchart:
>i.imgur.com/uykqKJn.jpg

Science Fiction
Selected:
>i.imgur.com/A96mTQX.jpg
>i.imgur.com/IBs9KE8.jpg
General:
>i.imgur.com/r55ODlL.jpg
>i.imgur.com/gNTrDmc.jpg

NPR's Top 100 Science Fiction & Fantasy Books:
>i.imgur.com/IJxTQBL.jpg

Previous Threads:

Other urls found in this thread:

theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=874#22
sfwa.org/2017/05/nebula-award-recipients-announced/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

first for WEAPONS

I've been buying a lot of paperbacks recently for summer reading. What books are everyone reading this summer/what ever season your country is in right now?

third for wolfe-kun

I'm going to attempt to tackle The Culture, and after that maybe Wolfe. After the random chaos of last summer it's nice to have some big series/chunky stuff ahead of me

I just started The House on the Borderland and am having trouble visualising the "chasm" they encounter before they come the lake and the house. Is it just a big sort of split in the Earth, appearing seemingly out of nowhere?

>Alp is a warrior from 9th-century Earth who, at the moment he should have died, instead is kidnapped into the future. There he finds himself participating in a sort of live-action Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game. The game, controlled by an enigmatic Game Machine, is a recreation of the history of Earth's great Steppe empires; and winning the Game is Alp's only alternative to being exiled back into the past, and the death that awaits him.

Why have I never heard about this before?

Tonight I read Clark Ashton Smith's The City Of The Singing Flame (1931), which as good an account of inter-planetary travel as I have ever read. The narrator is a weird fiction author who is hiking in Crater Ridge, California, where he reaches two unusual-looking rocks. When he steps between them, he is transported to another world of an amber sky, violet grass, monolith-lined pathways, and a city of large red stone in the near distance. The story is written in the form of journal entries that are found by a fellow author. Clarke depicts an alien world full of unusual beings and phenomena that is evocative of irresistible yet foreboding promise for the narrator, most of all the singing flame which is the seductive centrepiece of the story. There are many Lovecraftian tropes in here, but CAS's prose is unlike anything from Lovecraft; more visual, exotic, pleasingly rhythmic and felicitous. Five dinosaurs out of five and two thumbs up, everyone should read.

>Finished WoT two months ago
>Still not over it
Yeah quality dipped in the middle but man oh man, what a ride. I need something else to obsess over, any suggestions?

Malazan
Prince of Nothing
Sanderson's interconnected Cosmere Series

Because it's by an awful writer?

Malazan is a safe bet, and I should probably get around to reading Mistborn instead of biting my nails waiting for Oathbreaker to come out. Thanks!

Daily reminder to only read wolfe

I'm enjoying fourth mansions, getting this lathe of heaven vibe from it. What are some other trippy scifi books?

Right now I've got the first three Lt. Leary books by David Drake from the library. After that I'm planning on reading the Iraq+100 story collection.

Seconding Sanderson's stuff. I'd recommend starting with Stormlight, or possibly Warbreaker.

What's The Waking Fire like?

I liked Blood Song so much I read it multiple times and hated the followups so much I barely made it to the end of them.

Did Anthony Ryan get any better at multipov or is it awful?

Prince of Nothing is fucking spectacular so far, lads. Almost through Warrior Prophet, and I'm loving the voyage to squash heathen scum with a sociopath, an overcompensating homo, and a fat wizard.

Am I supposed to take the gritty parts seriously, though? They just end up making me laugh.
>plot point of Cnauir being a homo comes up in the first book
>seems to get dropped
>he's banging chicks
>figure his tribesmen just called him a fag for the bantz
>suddenly realize he buttfucked Moenghus
I lost my shit.

more like prince of reddit.

...

Ryan took a page from Sanderson's protege (powder mage), and made a world of blood junkies looking for a fix.
They shoot up/swallow the blood of dragons (diluted of course) to gain certain powers (like Sanderson did with mistborn).
It's about a team being sent into the interior to find a long lost, thought to be extinct dragon, whose blood is supposed to be the best fix of all.

NOT EVEN WORTH IT TBQHF

You found one of my favorite adjectives. Consider it backlogged.

what does this even means

good description. will read

Take it in stride m8.

You have only scratched the surface.

But is it good?

Felicitous? CAS is that, he likes using unusual words, a bit like Gene Wolfe, and this might be infuriating in other authors but after finding the meaning you appreciate his word choices. More than Lovecraft, I think he cares about the sound and rhythm of sentences. I believe like Gene Wolfe, these stories are meant to be reread, too - but it's not as time consuming because he isn't a novelist.

The Penguin Classics volume is where I'm reading from. I'm still a neophyte to this author, but I'm beginning to suspect that he was a superior prose stylist, and a more visual writer than HPL. There is also some very interesting prose-poetry in here which has made me consider the possibilities of the form; single page pieces evoking distinct moods of elegy and pathos, by way of the imagery of fantasy, history and classical illusion. I know that we have aspiring authors in here and practicing writers in here, and this I say to you - write prose poetry and short stories first of all.

Wolfe hu'akbar

>Felicitous?
Yeah, you got me. I'd be stoked if I could get the timescape cover.

Fucking kek this Powder Mage chapters
>Get released after court marshal
>Get recruited into the best mercenaries immediately after
>End up killing 5 people 20 minutes later


Fucking hell

>meta meta meme is over your head
Just go back to redshit.

Good is subjective. If you still want to read the (as another user put it) "dragon safari" after that description, then go head.

It gets even better.

Wait til the dickgirls show up.

Wings of adam are faggets. Pumpkin soup loving faggot.

>not wanting nubile tanned skinned traps
I bet you're a prize loving faggot. You probably wanna fuck that faggot at the end of the great ordeal.

nigger, this thread IS reddit

I just finished binging on The Wheel of Time.
It ran in a few places, but easily one of my favorite series I've ever read.

>make post in thread about finishing wheel of time before reading thread
>see this post
my friend.
I'm probably picking up Malazan unless I find something else, but I heard that Malazan's characters die left and right and while it can thematically work, I just personally don't like that happening too often.
>sanderson's stuff
I actually picked up wheel of time because I liked Sanderson's other works, and since he was brought onto the series, i knew it would be good. Read first book, fell in love with Jordan's writing, read a few more books, realized the guy died before ending the series, felt sad that he died before.

>They shoot up/swallow the blood of dragons (diluted of course) to gain certain powers (like Sanderson did with mistborn).
God fucking damn it.
Every fucking time this happens. I get a few ideas, decide to read a book, and the book does it already, frequently better than what I had in mind.

I managed to do the impossible and get like 6 of my friends on the WoT train, and there was one glorious night a couple days after I finished it where 3 or 4 others had also finished it, and we spent like 4 hours flipping shit about EVERYTHING that happened in the series because of a general rule of not talking about the current book/arc before other people have read it.
>THE GREEN MAN AND THE EYE OF THE WORLD
>AGINOR MAKING MOIRAINE WAIL AS IF SHE'S DYING

>THE BATTLE AT FALME
>FUCKING BLOW THE HORN MATT, HOLY FUCK YOU BASTARD

>THE TROLLOCS WILL RENAME THE TWO RIVERS THE DYING LANDS
>MATT BECOMES BEST BOY AND THE ENTIRE SIEGE OF THE STONE OF TEAR

>HE WHO COMES WITH THE DAWN
>I DID IT! I CUT HIM OFF FROM THE DARK ONE!

>RAND HUNTING RAVHIN FOR MURDERING HIS GIRLFRIEND'S MOM
>NYNEAVE ENSLAVING MOGHEDIEAN
>RAND BALEFIRING RAHVIN SO FUCKING HARD HE'S NOT EVEN MENTIONED FOR 3 MORE BOOKS

>LORD OF CHAOS
>DUMAIS. FUCKING. WELLS

I could go one but fuck man, that was a great night.

>Rahvin balefired so hard he's not even mentioned for 3 books
made me laugh.

THE FUCKING ZOMBIE TOWN WHERE IF YOU DIE YOU BECOME ONE OF THE DAMNED

THE BRAGGING CONTEST BETWEEN MAT AND RAND OVER WHO DID THE COOLEST SHIT
>RAND'S CLEANSING SAIDIN (which i had to reread because I completely missed the whole Shador Logoth hating the Dark One somehow)
>MAT'S RESCUING MORAINNE

BIRGITTE GETTING STABBED AND DYING AND THEN GETTING RESURRECTED (KIND OF) BY THE HORN OF VALERE(sp?)

>Siuan dying
>Gareth dying
>Gawyn dying
>Egwene dying
>COUNTING OFF WHO'S DYING NEXT
>LAN (almost) DYING
>THE DARK ONE MENTIONING LAN DYING BUT THEN HOLY SHIT WHAT HE'S ALIVE BECAUSE HE'S FUCKING LAN

RAND LIVES
>although i wonder if he has more kids they'll be his other body's blood, that could be kind of weird
>BUT HE LIVES ANYWAY

Wild ride indeed. I won't spoiler this because it's an over arching plot throughout the books, but I was really fond of how they handled his characterization with Lews Therin, and his overall demeanor throughout the books and his eureka moment on top of Dragonmount .

I really just liked everything about how Lews Therin was handled.
And how he was fucking right the entire time about Taim.

I made it a specific point to tweet literally everything Lews Therin said to Rand in all caps just to let all my friends know how fucking ridiculous this shit was. I'm half convinced the only reason I manged to get them to read it is because I got drunk one night and flipped shit about this crazy man inside the MC's head who kicked Satan in the dick but turned insane as consequence.

>YOU SAID IT'D BE OVER, YOU SAID WE COULD FINALLY DIE

>WHO IS THIS MAN IN MY HEAD! WHY IS HE MAD!

>MY BODY! MY BODY! I CAN'T MOVE MY ARMS!

>KILL THEM ALL. DESTROY THEM. GUT THEM.

>THIS PLACE... THIS PLACE SCARES ME...
Lews Therin was fucking great.

But I never used reddit and I'm one of the top contributors of memes in this general.

On the subject of tweets, i found this transcript of an interview with sanderson, to get some more stuff fleshed out if you want / haven't seen it yet.

theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=874#22

Everything has been done before faggot, it's all about presentation these days. An idea is shit unless you have a presentation to sell it.

I am curious about 'everything'.
I mean, I heard it before, and i know what you mean, but surely not *everything* has been done.

I'm planning on making a town famous for their watermelon juice...

>All those powerups suddenly

Going to read Lyonesse and Wolfe. Maybe Le Guin also.

TOP

MEMES

Wait someone else has read Durdane? How odd, I only just finished like two weeks ago, never seen it mentioned. How did you find it OP?

Personally I enjoyed the first two books, but the whole presence of the Asutra/Ka conflict kind of ruined the fun for me.

Going to read mainly sci-fi this summer. Some books by Heinlein and some by Vance. Also I'll finally take time to read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. And then some non-sffg books, probably local classics.

>run a Heroes of Might and Magic/Age of Empires/Civilization campaign
>convert it to a different fantasy setting
write book upon book about an empire's rise, domination, and world conquest/fall

Why haven't you?

So, I've checked the results of yet another Nebula season sfwa.org/2017/05/nebula-award-recipients-announced/ and they made me very sad. Basically, the Great Assault of SJWs on SFWA can be considered successful. Almost in every category the winners are women. In the novel category the only worthy nominee was Nine Fox Gambit written but yet another special snowflake gook.

And that space lesbian technofantasy space opera lost to the generic fantasy of Charlie Jane Anders. And these awards to Anders, McGuire, Amal El-Mohtar (the one who managed to kick Vox Day out of SFWA) shows the constant degradation of the winners of anglospheric awards. The only exeption was Ann Leckie just because she is simply a good writer who completely obliterates other graphomaniacs who now prevail in the genre.
Now, to win in the SFWA elections you absulutely don't need to be a good writer, in fact, it can even harm you, to win you need to be sociable and visit every -con possible. Also it's very preferable to have a fantasy with zombie-vapiric or (trans)gender flavours. The actual literary value of the work interests nobody.
We need to lock up every degenerate considering himself a sf-writer in a shed and than burn it and start all over again.

>Tfw only super popular reddit shits get wikis with extremely detailed explanations

Is The Island of Dr. Death any good? I haven't read any Wolfe yet.

Any scifi or fantasy where the focus is more on exploration?
Maybe something like rendezvous with Rama.

I'd start with Fifth Head of Cerberus or Wizard Knight if new to Wolfe.

I'd sooner trust you cunts for recs.
Christ that's sad.

>And that space lesbian technofantasy space opera

What this one?

Sounds funny pol sama. Also make sure because of a nuclear winter many, many decades ago, they need the chemical found in grape juice to survive. So they drink copious amounts of thw stuff.

>bump limit reached in 2-3 days
What's the matter? I check in here every couple months or so and last time I did a thread was alive for a week or more.

He probably checked your goodreads account. You got a stalker.

Somebody started linking the threads on reddit, then a bunch of redditors showed up and started whining about /pol/ every thread.

heh

Hull zero three
Metro 2033
Roadside picnic

K R U P P
R
U
P
P

Nine fox gambit

That is disheartening. Can't the reddit-crowd just leave again?

Red Mars. The exploration and settlement aspect is really all it has going for it.

Thanks, ill give all these a go.

It's summer. They try to say the summer meme is not true, but the last 2 summers this general was sanic fast, reaching the 310 posts within 1-2 days.

If the meme is not true, and it's the same IPs, then they have more time to shitpost.

Robinson's philosophy which he regularly puts into his books (colonization is bad mkay) is fucking weird though

>no trigger discipline
Pussy

>Veeky Forums is a pol run mogolian textile weaving board
>anyone not liking pol is from reddit
Why don't you neck yourself Mr /pol/ite? If this was a scheme to gather (you)s then it's time to play in traffic on the freeway.

It didn't seem that way when it was published.
I remember there was a resurgence in environmentalism at the time.
It was when all sides of government where I live first started talking about it as policy for the sake of the environment itself, rather then rectifying a growing problem.

If only there was a way to count the amount of unique posters.
Gee, what I'd give for Jackie Veeky Forums to put that in...

That's 'The Island of Dr. Death and Other Stories'. And yes, it's very good. If it doesn't make sense on first reading that is not a problem, it just means that you have a sub-150 iq.

To be fair, is anybody writing good science-fiction right now? Anybody under 70 years of age?

...

Last thread was 98 posters, we usually have 100+. This shows that either :
a.) regulars went on vacation and an influx of reddit too it's place
b.) college students, and high schools are out, they have more time to shitpost

...

I unironically don't recognize this man. Who is he and does he write anything worthwhile?

Is that Sanderson? I've never actually read a word of his writing.

He fucked Jordan's wife while finishing his series.

Peter Watts. Probably best North American sci-fi writer of the last 10-15 years. Blindsight and his short stories are pretty good. Criminally underrated.

Probably should have been 5-10 years, Rifters trilogy was only really a 7/10

what science fiction books is he writing?

The best scifi books of recent times are:
Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee
Too Like the Lightning
Both of the Firefall books by Peter Watts
However, most old scifi book is better than the modern stuff, authors like Lem, David Keyes, Haldeman, Alfred Bester, Isaac Asimov,
Vonnegut, Harlan Ellison, Dan Simmons, Strugatsky, PKD, Gibson and Orwell - these are all amazing authors.

Rifters should have stayed as a claustrophobic story about deep sea psychos. It rapidly lost steam after the first book even if Behemoth was an interesting idea.

Put the Three Body trilogy on there and I think we've got four contenders for the /sffg/ modern picks.

Any suggestions to make it a round five?

We need more books. Someone recommend please.

I entirely agree, but then Watts himself said he felt a lot of fan pressure to expand the and show the rest of the world. Sometimes sexy is what you don't see though. Packed full of interesting ideas though, even if the story got a bit, well, weirdly shit.

*books, are

Modern sci-fi is just a bit shit really. We need to unearth some modern gems.

>unearthing anything
I'm a lazy fuck though.

I'm not even lazy, but where the fuck are we meant to find new shit. I follow a few authors, and I did my best to crack into the Chinese craze, but I've not found anything substantial or really worth huge amounts of praise.

What with the fantasy-bird-witch bullshit winning the Hugos, what little I faith I had in the mainstream awards is gone. Where else is there to look?

You say that but too like the lightning and ninefox were nominees so clearly there's some sense still there

What's wrong with Jeff Vandermeer, Paolo StupidItalianName and Hannu StupidScandinavianName?

JUST
>Childhood friends Patricia Delfine and Laurence Armstead didn't expect to see each other again, after parting ways under mysterious circumstances during high school.

>After all, the development of magical powers and the invention of a two-second time machine could hardly fail to alarm one's peers and families.

Errrr well primarily I've never heard of them. What's good? Also their real names u nonce