/sffg/ - Science Fiction and Fantasy General

>Mieville edition

I recently read his book Embassytown and I liked it overall.
The book did seem to suffer from a lack of agency at first, as there appeared to be nothing happening in the first half of the book, didn't even notice any ominous foreshadowing. So for much of the book instead of action we get a leisurely walk through this sci-fi world where much is shown but is rarely described in detail.
But Mr Mieville has indeed painted an interesting picture, as he tends to.
Not many memorable characters though.

I've been reading through Lord Dunsany's A Dreamer's Tales and they're like a breathe of fresh air; little fantasy stories, parables and fables that draw from myths and folk tales. He is an Anglo-Irish writer who was popular during his lifetime, creating comprehensive secondary worlds and fictional cosmologies in the 1910s/20s, a while before The Lord Of The Rings (1937.)

>after years of being out of print in your country, sci-fi classics by Wolfe, Simmons, Tevis, Brunner, Gibson and a couple others are finally being rereleased in a monthly, hardcover series with ribbon bookmarks and a unified, modern cover design
>the actual text of the novels is in sans-serif font
Fucking monkey's paw.

¿Qué quería decir con esto?

:thinking emoji:

I'm working on an epic fantasy series, a collection of poems and short stories, a study of ethics starting from the pre-socratics, and several tragedies.

Oh, wait, I'm doing none of those things.

No different than those mangaka that try to do two more manga along with their main one and wind up making all three shit and pissing off the fanbase of the main one.

He said multiple times that no one is going to fnish it. It dies with him, he probably got a will stating that. Why do you think the fans are so anxious for him to finish? If he dies and it's incomplete, it stays that way.

Are there many good fantasy/sci fi short story collections? I only own Ted Chiangs and i'm going to order Gene Wolfes soon.

Didn't he give an outline of future plot events to the show's producers anyway? It may have changes, but whoever ends up sitting on the pointy chair in the show is who GURM intends to sit in the chair in the books. If he wants to spend the rest of his life procrastinating and untangling his clusterfuck plot, then whatever, TV producers finished it for him.

No sweat. 75 years after his death the manuscripts and what-have-you goes into the public domain. Just be patient, user
inb4 there is nothing, he did nothing

Yeah, he gave them the basic plot points including resolution so there's no need to worry anymore about reading his shitty books. He's been working on the series since 1991. He can go choke on a burrito and fucking die for all I care.

right i was sent here by a friend so i hope i can a good answer

whats the entry point for scfi-fi and fantasy?
by that i want the basics and the elite.
the best

modern and classic, just give me the best.

i have a two month holiday ahead of me of dont hold back

Start with Malazan.

I started the Black Company series and I'm wondering if it's worth reading all the books. What are the best and worst in the series? I'm not a big fan of the prose so far but I'm more than willing to give it a chance if it improves. I plan on reading the first three books at least since I bought the Chronicles but what about beyond that?

Nothing will go into public domain ever again, user. Not until Disney goes bankrupt and stops bribing the US government to change copyright laws. Steamboat Willie killed the public domain.

Did you bother reading the info at the top of the thread, especially the flowchart? Maybe reading isn't for you, little guy

Have any of you lads read the dread empire's fall?

I'm really enjoying it.

I found the black company overrated as fuck and damn boring. Croaker was the only characters than I gave a fuck, I read three books and gave up, the setting did nothing and the magic was too anime/high powered for my taste

The grim company was funny as fuck

I get the feeling it's held in high regard because it broke from conventions in its day, but so far it's kind of juvenile and cheesy in parts

I remind it as a slog desu, picking and wandering to other shit a few times.
What conventions did it break? Perhaps I'm to harsh to in retrospective, but it really didn't click anything.

I really liked the relationship between Kayne and Jayk. The Halfman had me in stitches half the time too.

Posts like this are proof that having big copy/paste autism OPs full of links are pointless. Retards don't read the OP.

>the magic was too anime/high powered for my taste
Funnily enough The Black Company is probably the only book I've read so far where explaining how the actual fuck the magic works would have improved it.

Why has no one read this

>grim company
Aw shit I tought you were talking about the black company, I didn't read the grim company, how is it like?

Has anyone read Rothfuss' reviews on Goodreads? He's like one of those awful facebook moms who can't stop posting about their children. He always shoehorns his kids into the reviews and ends up talking more about them than giving an idea about wtf the books is about. He's the worst.

it's on my list

I looked at his reviews and noticed more that he seems to really hate a lot of children's books.

>Has anyone read Rothfuss' reviews on Goodreads
>Patrick Rothfuss's Favorite Authors
>Felicia Day
>Wil Wheaton
I'm so fucking retarded I couldn't find his review list, but I decided to close the tab after seeing that.

>using good reads at all

It's a good way to get an idea of a book user.
Like how many tumblr like reviews it has (with gifs about doctor who/supernatural), a wild lawrence review etc.
Also anyone has finished the Fitz and the Fool?
The ending man, it's kinda of bittersweet and felt kinda of wonky, I expected better of my gay man Hobb.

I couldn't even read his bio. He reminds me of this cunt from my undergrad days who used to think he was smarter than all the professors and tried arguing with them all the time, always getting BTFO

>Unhewn throne is the only recent one I've read that hasn't had a really noticeable drop in quality after the first or second book.
You a fucking Adare apologist? You support that fratricidial who?

This. Any books on disney destroying the copyright laws?

>Reading pic related over the weekend
>Today I reach the part where he meets the partner
>Realize how lonely I am
>tfw ywn move into a double with a Qt ancom gril
>tfw ywn lie with her on the plains of Abbenay and gaze at Urras
>tfw ywn be the couple that everyone else wants to be
>close book
>curl up in fetal position for a couple hours
Why even try if even escapism hurts

Legend
Book of the New Sun

Both are extremely minimal with it and neither make the mistake of assuming that the kindest way to treat women is to represent them as men with vaginas.

Harlan Ellison is a pretty solid short fiction writer.

Is the book any good though?

>recommending Gene Wolfe for females
lol

He's honestly one of the only authors I've ever read whose worse than Sanderson at righting them. Maybe Goodkind beats him but that's about it.

Which does Veeky Forums prefer: high fantasy or low fantasy?

Whichever is written better.

But hey - some people like tomatoe sauce, and others like barbeque. It's all up to you, really.

So I stuck with this series despite the first book sucking and it paid off.

Probably doesn't quite reach undying mercenaries smooth, but by adding good side characters (Kwon, Marvin and Hoon) and knocking off bad (tfw no gf) ones the series rights itself and rallies. The "son of" follow-on is almost better, just because the son is exactly the same character better practiced and the sidekicks are cherry picked from the first series.

Once I'd made it through the first three or so it was like I'd opened a can of pringles.

SKIRT
SMOOTHED
BRAID
TUGGED

This isn't for an actual book or anything, but say I had a world that was a bit like Dune in terms of the type of sci-fi. As in, supernatural elements existed very subtly, as did weird tech and occultism, but for the most part there was nothing supernatural. Now say that I miss this character I killed off in my story and his daughter is having these visions of if she goes on a great journey she may be able to find some ancient tech (from a faction I already introduced that lives in the middle of the hollow planet on a series of asteroids, having been exiled there because they "built" the planet then were locked inside when the colony ships arrived 10,000 years later and by then they were more evolved and thus the "inferior" people were locked away) that would allow her to resurrect him. She and her brother have already replaced him as the "main" characters but her brother just isn't as strong of a character, I liked having a generic protagonist (even though he really wasn't that generic) and he is too tied up with running his own fleet of ships to be that into the action while still making sense. She isn't, but ... I don't know, I want to resurrect him but I worry that (1) it's hacky, and (2) his place in the story is gone, it's like (to use a shitty example) if Jk Rowling started writing a book about Harry Potter's children, but then didn't like any of the characters she made for this new series so she brought Harry Potter back from the dead to fill in for them. It's a bit like that, and it's a shitty story like HP anyway so it's kind of a fitting example. I would like any advice you may have, however.

That doesn't seem fair. When most people think of women in Wolfe's work they go straight for Book of the New Sun, a story in which all of the women central to the plot not only belong to a culture foreign to our own, but are quite nuts even that context. Have you ever read any of his work beyond New Sun? Aunt Olivia from 'Peace' I think is a particularly interesting character.

A lot more information would probably be needed to make any kind of informed decision here. Dune fucked around with resurrection but the concept was considered world-changingly huge and the person being brought back was a huge deal in each case.

Are you just bringing back your dead protagonist because plot has to happen to somebody and you like him or is the fact that he's Protagonist come again from death actually going to be relevant to what happens from that point onwards? Dune's gholas never felt hackey because both the people bringing them back had sound reasons to do so and because the gholas actually continued to grow as characters and have some agency in the plot.

>Luna: New Moon

This book has like 10 PoV characters and I'm pretty sure all of them are intentionally unlikable.

>This book has like 10 PoV characters and I'm pretty sure all of them are intentionally unlikable.
Sounds avant-garde.

Are the Expanse books any good? How about the show?

Bretty good, show's fantastic

They do vary a bit in quality between each book though with the general trend being slightly worse. There's a poster here who hates Daniel Abraham so expect to be told they're dogshit soon.

It'll be a while before I would get around to reading them but I thought about watching the show either until then or maybe instead. Is the show a good replacement for the books?

I tried to read one and honestly hated it and I am a massive Abrahamfag.

I know this question is pleb as fuck, but are any of Gene Wolfe's books easier to read than Book of the New Sun? I really enjoyed it but at the same time I had a hard time following it.

yeah he's done a lot of accessible ones

Is there one in particular you would recommend?

I've read The Wizard Knight, There Are Doors and Devil in the Forest, and I think they're pretty easy to read.

Cool, I'll probably check out The Wizard Knight.
Thanks for the suggestions m8

Easiest novel would definitely be 'The Devil in a Forest'. He wrote it for his kids and it was marketed towards a younger audience but the quality doesn't suffer for it at all. It's a fantastic piece of historical fiction, a coming of age story and a kind of mystery type thing too. It feels very Chesterton-like.

His short fiction is also very good, some might be pretty damn complicated but even if you pick one of those ones you haven't wasted too much time beating your head against the wall. Most are under 20 pages.

I'm a brainlet so can someone pls spoonfeed me this one thing:
I finished Book of the New Sun, why was Vodalus and Thea digging up a corpse in the graveyard right at the start?

The body they were digging up was right near the Citadel, it would have been somebody at least somewhat important who had knowledge worth eating.

>Then Manwë and Yavanna parted for that time, and Yavanna returned to Aulë; and he was in his smithy, pouring molten metal into a mould. 'Eru is bountiful,' she said. 'Now let thy children beware! For there shall walk a power in the forests whose wrath they will arouse at their peril.'
>'Nonetheless they will have need of wood,' said Aulë, and he went on with his smith-work.

Is he the best character?

any one else read this series?

I thought so, was just worried I missed something more important. Thanks man.

I haven't really read much in a while, what are some good High Fantasy books/series you would recommend?
Something somewhat lighthearted would be preferred but I'm very open to suggestions.

I have been meme'd into trying Way of Kings, and despite my initially brutal opinion of Sanderson, I'm enjoying it a lot.

Craftsman types are nearly always best. They're usually Earth elementals, practical, calm, dependable.

Good for cozy points if you got a dangerous or weird world.

The Wizard Knight

Well, now we only have to call him a retard instead of writing a long response. And I like calling out retards.

Not that user but how exactly were the recommendations in the OP made?
Was there a poll of some sort?

Joe abercrombie's short story series features one who's well done

I was about to shittalk you for reading meme books but then I realized I've read more or less every meme book/series in this thread except Malazan.

How is Lyonesse?
I've read very conflicting opinions about it.
I've never read Jack Vance.

The show and books are completely different. The novels tend to be clearer and more to the point, whereas the show loves to spice things up with unnecessary drama. I don't know. I thought the show was bad and I quit it after a few episodes, then went and read the books (up to the third, then stopped again).

I don't think they're mind-blowing, but they're okay. Not sure it's worth the time investment. But if you absolutely must go with one of the two, go with the novels. The prose of the original authors fairs a lot better when compared to the directing and acting in the show.

You can do much worse than Malazan, still. There's always The Name of the Wind.

>implying I've not read it
Literally not that much wrong with Name of the Wind. Wise Mans Fear is where it got stupid.

When I started it at 16 years it bored me, and I tend to love Vance.

Anyone there liked Legends of the Dragolance?
It was good when I read it, easy flow, interesting characters (poor Tanis and Sturm) and an interestign setting. Shame the expanded universe is so shitty.

>totally shit prose
>completely stupid, yet mary sue MC
>is also a total self-insert
>completely unlikable
>also a ginger
>absolutely no story development for hundreds of pages
>has the audacity to end on a cliffhanger
>emotionally scarred, sexually deviant love interest
>vegetarian dragon (seriously?)
>unreliable narrator meme
>literally just a bad harry potter
>all explainable, given the author is a retarded autist

I can't think of a single good word to say about it. By far the worst thing I've ever read. I'd probably go as far and say it's the worst media I've ever consumed, period. And I've been forced to sit through Big Bang Theory and Gossip Girl episodes. The only people I'd recommend it to are the sort that enjoy harem anime and other dumb shit like that.

The only thing seriously wrong with Lyonesse, in my opinion, is that it get wrapped up too quickly. The last 25 pages of the third book could have been another volume. Then again, that sort of thinking is what produces 12-volume series, and that fourth book would have departed considerably in scope and tone from what came before.

I'm not sure it's a good place to start with Vance unless you're already a hardcore epic fantasy fan. Vance's stories tend to be more tightly focused than Lyonesse -- fewer characters, low stakes, minimal digressions. Lyonesse is also markedly less cynical than the average Vance story too.

Read Dying Earth -> Eyes of the Overworld, The Demon Princes, or The Dragon Masters (for something short) as a better introduction to Vance.

>>has the audacity to end on a cliffhanger
I fucking hate this. Not because I need to know everything but because it's 100% laziness on the author's part. Reread your shit and make adjustments if you can't satisfactorily finish your plot. A pleasant completed journey is leagues ahead of a crazy, wild off-the-wall rollercoaster that suddenly halts.

>I can't think of a single good word to say about it. By far the worst thing I've ever read.
wew lad

I don't even hate it on principle. I can handle a cliffhanger so long as the book up to that point is a satisfying read and full of development. But in the Name of the Wind it's just

>bad guys are introduced
>barely any mention of them for 600 pages
>novel ends as he's about to learn some new info

It's fucking astonishing just how little of a plot there is. Almost the entirety of that is him fucking around and proving with a jackass he is to everybody.

It wasn't a hyperbole. I genuinely can't. Anselm might've posited existence as a good, but in the case of something this shitty, that's only another fault I'd scribble on the list.

Hi Veeky Forums is the Asimov Foundation series worth reading or na? I haven't read anything since high school and I'm trying to cut out video games and replace them with books

Asimov is amazing. Especially Foundation.

Thanks m8 i'll take your word for it :)

The reading order of the Foundation trilogy is Foundation → Foundation and Empire → Second Foundation. (These are standalone)

If you don't like the first Foundation book you should probably drop it but Foundation and Empire is arguably the best.

My personal favourite is Prelude to the Foundation (but that one requires reading Robots series first because Asimov decided to cross over Robots with Foundation later in his life).

Thanks for the image, I saw the 7 book series for sale and that was what I was gonna get, but if robots is essential I'll pick that up too

The image is actually wrong sorry. () denotes short story. Read 'Foundation' before deciding on committing. I also thought that the Robots series was inferior to Foundation. And these are easy to download off the internet if funds go short.

(I, Robot) → The Caves of Steel → The Naked Sun → (Mirror Image (short story)) → The Robots of Dawn → Robots and Empire → (The Currents of Space, The Stars, Like Dust, Pebble in the Sky) → Prelude to the Foundation → Forward the Foundation → Foundation → Foundation and Empire → Second Foundation → Foundation's Edge → Foundation and Earth

*
actually () should denote 'not necesary to understanding' fug

Pretty sure there's an Asimov torrent on TPB that has all of them up and organized by series.