/sffg/ - Science Fiction and Fantasy General

Female warriors ruin books.

Tonight I read The Holiness Of Azadarac by Clark Ashton Smith (1931), a tale of time travel in a secondary world, Averoigne, that is modeled on a region in 12th and 5th century France. At the outset, a renegade Christian bishop plots to intercept a young Benedictene monk who has fled his mansion after obtaining proofs of his pagan practices and demon worship, including that of Iog-Sotot (Yog-Sothoth). The narrative concerns what happens to this nephew after he is caught and transported back seven hundred years at the same location. This is a tale of the tension between the pagan and Lovecraftian versus Christian morality. It is also of a light and playful tone, as CAS plays with the cliches and archetypal characters of medieval literature; the venial cleric and his henchman, the young and naive monk, and the machinations and heaving charms of a femme fatale sorceress. Overall it's an entertaining short story that feels like it's told with a nod and a wink, worthy of two thumbs up.

On another note, I've begun a treatise of CAS that incorporates these little summaries and demonstrates his chameleon nature, an article which has doubtless already reached levels of autism.

It's magic

Autism is a good thing in this instance, user, godspeed.

IS CYBERPUNK DEAD?

As an actual book genre, probably. As an aesthetic, no.

>reddit's author of the year as the OP

You need to go back.

>complaining about gender politics in sci-fi

It's like i'm on reddit or reading goodreads reviews.

>or reading goodreads reviews
Because that's what it is.

what would be some good works to start with Clark Ashton Smith, if you don't mind me asking?

idk read the Penguin Classics volume? pretty good selection, find out what you like and go from there

I think there's a volume called Time and the Gods that includes several of his fantasy collections (including, confusingly, Time and the Gods)

Does anyone do audio books?
I find them great when I'm commuting and at work.
Listened to all the Discworld books and finished the Wheel of Time books last week. Started on the Malazan series but it's a really slow start. I'm at the later half of the first book and it still feels pretty slow. Enjoying the Bridgeburners parts though.
Might put it on hold after the first book to re-listen the City Watch books again.

vini vinci

any WoT fans here?

>Does anyone do audio books?
yes
i use audible for what i can't find via piracy

I'm reading from the Penguin collection The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies. This has short stories from a few of his different settings and styles, fantasy, horror and macabre. I think a lot of his work is public domain or available cheaply in e-book. There was a Fantasy Masterworks volume a decade ago which was more comprehensive and focused on his fantasy output. If you're in America maybe there is old Ballantine/Lin Carter editions at an online vendor near you (beautiful art, but probably falling apart at the binding, with amber pages.) There is a lot of self publishing going on as well,

His Zothique (dying earth), Averoigne (France), and Hyperborea (pre-historic) and Poseidonis (Atlantis) stories are of special interest to fantasy readers. Jack Vance and Gene Wolfe fans will be interested in the Zothique cycle. I know there are themed volumes that focus on these. Nothing has to be read in any order.

If you want one short story recommendation, The Tale Of Satampra Zeiros was the first thing I read.

I found audiobookbay has most of the popular stuff.

>It's dull
This, at least to some degree. Why even include the characters if it's just going to be a pair of walking tits? Jolenta in BOTNS is a fine example of this, did her existence actually contribute to the book in any way?

Some of the other females, Thecla, Thea and Dorcas are at least somewhat decent characters.

>Thecla
Whore, put out to Severian out of loneliness. Not a pure waifu.

>Thea
Whore, the consort of a greedy upstart.

>Dorcas
A naive loli, even though she's chronologically old enough to be everyone's grandmother

All your choices are terrible.

>out of loneliness
Yeeeeah, about that.

>Thea
Literally no way to actually know since she's so underdeveloped as a character.

>Dorcas
Agreed. But at least she's better than Jolenta which was the point I was trying to make.

Hey buds, couple questions:

Are the Witcher books by Sapkowski any good?

If so, what are the best translated versions I can buy?

Maytera Mint from BotLS is a well-developed female Gene Wolfe character.

Anyone else read this? I just finished it (it's the only Vance I've read) and I thought it was kinda shit. The writing is just not very good; shallow main character with no real sense of agency, dead end plotlines, and it all read like a list of bullet points with no descriptive segments to tie it together.

As for the linguistics itself, I'm a linguist myself and I can say it's all wrong. The central concept is based on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which has been disproven. I don't really hold it against him cause they didn't know it was wrong back then, but as a modern reader I kept rolling my eyes when he would mention things like "if you teach people a language with 'harsh' sounds, they'll become violent". Furthermore there's some basic terminology he got wrong, like his use of the term polysynthetic to describe a language that clearly doesn't fit into that category.

Anyway I'm just rambling now. Would like to know what people think, and if the rest of Vance's work is like this too.

Shaeönanra did nothing wrong. Also, any TUC excerpts yet?

I didn't see what's considered so feminist about this book to be honest.

How is letting immortal rape monsters out of their cage a good thing?

nonbinary genders

Stay in your containment thread. That one user with a hard on for Stephen King is pathetic

>Are the Witcher books by Sapkowski any good?

To be honest, they really aren't that good.

>telling people IN the "containment thread" to stay IN the containment thread
Not to bright are we?

>Not wanting to lick the abs of a fit as hell warrior woman
Plebs need to leave

Because the Gods feeds on us. Mog-Pharau is the only way to attain REAL salvation.

>severian mentions mate, popol vuh and the margay cat

wait
is he supposed to be a dirty huehue? does he also eats sopa de macaco?

Yeah but the book only uses the gender thing as starting point to create a whole world with his politics and conflicts, it doesn't try to present a perfect society just because there're no men/women.

Thank you, it merely brings together the other summaries so far along with a couple of extracted passages and sentences highlighting points of interest, along with some retro book art - its at wordpress CS7850 for those interested.

The Gods Of Pegana (Dunsany does the ground down myth building that is commonplace now, but unheard of then) or The Book Of Wonder.

Nice bait. In the spirit of discussion, I'll say this: books aren't written to appeal to you. They're works of art that are received by a highly variable audience. If you don't like it, that's fine. I suggest for your own peace of mind, don't take a step further in life with the idea in your head that artists must conform to your worldview. They never will.

And females are odd creatures. You're either female or you've never seen one if you disagree. In either case, good luck in the future.

Should I read Le Mort d'Arthur or something else arthurian before reading this one?

/r/The_Donald

Did I strike a nerve? No, I don't support Trump, and I didn't support that stupid bitch that ran against him either. You are definitely female.

Nah, Once and Future King has everything you need.

Any good western books where the main character is thrown from our world into a fantasy world?

The Wizard Knight

Can anyone recommend books with real interesting/memorable characters?

Also if anyone has any writing advice in general I would like to hear it. I wanted to try writing but im not quite sure where to begin.

>image.jpg
Retarded applefag phoneposter.

I've been powering through the maddness of angels series. I really like the writing style and the urban fantasy setting. It's not too far up it's own ass, too.
I'm a huge sucker for things using the written medium interestingly. Especially in the narrative, the I/We pronoun switching is pretty good. I still havn't gotten over the footnote usage in the Bartimaes series.

Aunt Olivia from Peace is unironically the most interesting woman in /sffg/ literature.

Severian's continent is strongly implied to be Latin Subhumerica.

I refuse to believe this. There's no way that Operation Glomperstomper doubled this shithole's traffic.

>writing advice
Gene Wolfe says to memorize and learn absolutely everything about a really short piece of writing by somebody whose work you admire and then over a weekend try to rewrite their story exactly without looking at it. When you're finished you can compare and contrast how you and your favourite writer say the same thing.

>actually going around in other threads complaining about me
I'm almost flattered. You pretentious faggot.

>Operation Glomperstomper
This is an amazing name.

That sounds like a pretty interesting exercise.

As if that's relevant. Didn't know redditors could get this mad without being directed to do so by tumblr. Seeing as how you probably look somewhat like pic related, you should really work on your attitude, honey, or else you won't get a man.

>mobile poster
>/co/mblr shit
>not a retarded ledditor
Wew lad.

I'll leave you with your thoughts.

>image.jpg
>apple phone
>phoneposting
>he says while posting like the normalfag ledditor he is
MY SIDES

Literally fanfiction.

as much as your post is literally an ascii drawing of a penis

Nothing wrong with writing fanfiction user, at least you are writing.

My post was always a penis on a metaphysical level.

>s-stay inside
>don't come o-out

>Veeky Forums is a safe space

I gave up on Prince of Thorns years ago at the nuke but it actually gets fun almost right after that

helps that they explain away some of the edgelord stuff

>Are the Witcher books by Sapkowski any good?
Short Stories yes
Early novels a bit
Later novels fuck no

That's mainly down to translation though apparently, so if you are a speaker of a language close to polish they're probably better.

Thomas Covenant if you want someone going "lol this obviously isn't real so I'm gonna just rape people"

Please leave, tumblr.

How do we kill the /co/mblr cancer?

FJCK OFF TUMBLR

>f j c k

Yeah, no. Let me know if you do find one like that though.

>people arguing about whether they're reddit or tumblr instead of arguing about malazan and prince of nothing

This new thread was a mistake. We need to go back.

What is /sffg/ reading?

The monarchies of God and CAS right now.

You're probably better off reading a manga with a story like that. Either way, Thomas Covenant is by far the best that there is as far as fantasy books go. Nothing even comes close. The only other stuff I can think of is Lovecraft's Dream Cycle since people are transported to another world there too, and those stories are amazing.

But world-within-a-world stories tend to be garbage bin tier. Just look at Harry Potter, Narnia and all that noise.

Taiko. Guess that's not exactly fantasy, but it might as well be.
I was frantically reading The Expanse to catch up to my friend (who was watching the show) so we could talk about it. But once he finished S2, I pretty much lost all desire to go on reading. It just doesn't seem that interesting.

Luna: New Moon

Too early to tell if it's good

>Moon: New Moon

Top title.

Children of Hurin

>I'm literally the only guy on Veeky Forums who has a Veeky Forums pass
wow

Mine's won.

At first I didn't even notice since Veeky Forums is usually pretty dead this time of night anyway. Only when I went to a more active board did I notice some threads on page 1 haven't gotten replies for over an hour and then had to find out what was going on.

How does this relate to having a pass?

Different guy

Captcha's are broken right now for some reason.

I actually was rolling without my pass on (I'm lazy and switch devices) but I couldn't solve any captchas so I went and enabled.

For a good half hour I thought I was just shit at solving the captchas before I realized how dead Veeky Forums was right now.

Not gonna lie. It's kind of spooky.

It's going to suck when my pass runs out, I barely notice having one.

WAKE THE FUCK UP /sffg/

So, who is the pulp master? Howard or CAS?

Is Sins of Empire any good?
Are there any Naila or twoshot PoVs?

I'm reading Luna: Wolf Moon.
It's okay.

just reading the house on the borderland lads

You spoilered the wrong thing redshitor.