/sffg/ - Science Fiction & Fantasy General

They sound like the titles of school shooter manifestos.

I don't know if you can really beat Dying Inside as far as titles go.

Man Made Dark is the only one that isn't genuinely one of the worst I've ever heard

Man Made Dark should only be the title of a pulp sci-fi book from the 60s about a racist white guy getting turned black and experiencing discrimination, changing his worldview.

I think it works because it can be interpreted as man-made darkness, or something along those lines, which can work in some stories.

I haven't realized it can be interpreted as a man who is made dark. Fucking hilarious.
I meant it as man-made darkness.

How about these as alternatives (don't know what your story is about, only going from your titles)
>Existing in the Nothingness
>Void Released
>Darkness Behind the Eyes
>Gushing Black
>Emptiness Expanded
>Whirlpool at the Heart of the Void
>Erebus Wept
>A Day with Nyx
>Seeing with the Black Moon
>The Sun Deep within the Black Hole
>Gravity of Nothingness
>Escaping the Void
>Night Always Falls
>The Darkness of Day

Tell me what you think of those. Do they fit your story?

So I watched the 1985 Vampire Hunter D anime after reading that it was inspired by Book Of The New Sun, a claim which I dismissed as being spurious, but one I wanted to check the veracity of anyway. The setting is BOTN-like with a mixture of old and future tech, and the protag is similar to Severian in his awkward and moody attitude and black clothes + long sword. Overall Vampire Hunter D is much more gothic in tone, however, and the treatment of religion is limited to the prominently worn crucifixes. So I'm a little sceptical about BOTNS being an influence here.

>Darkness Behind the Eyes
>Gushing Black
These two would fit into the story almost perfectly. Especially Darkness Behind the Eyes.
Well done, mate.

>tfw you're about to start the sword of truth series

Wish I had done this as a teenager.

Really need to expand the mental library for my own literary works.

Now watch the sequel.

These sound like names to make Rockbands.

No problem mate. Glad you enjoyed them. You're going to make that book cover expensive with all the black you will be putting on it.

We should all write a novel together.

Is red rising a YA meme book, an airport novel, or is it actually good?

It would be shit.

I always like seeing similarities in works. I saw Castle in the Sky recently and was stunned by how often I recognized similarities in other works (admittedly mostly video games).

I thought /sffg/ hates writing.

>he thinks people waste time making memes for shit books
It good. But you have to put up with the YAesque opening, with the finger in the air/hand on chest BS. When the hanging passes it's all up from there. You will call in sick to work to finish it(I did).

Being a NYT bestseller and having that quote on the cover makes me want to burn it. I'll see if I can find a summary somewhere, I could use a laugh.

>finger in the air/hand on chest
What meme is this?

We do. That is a wannabe author trying to steal our nubile ideas and stamp his name on it.
He would probably have some of you sad saps proofreading his actual book.

Hunger Memes probably

From Hunger Games. I wanted to drop this book so hard, but the shill made me promise that I would read past that, and it was wonderful. Now I need that promise from you.

>The novel, set on a future planet Mars, follows lowborn miner Darrow as he infiltrates the ranks of the elite Golds.
Oh, fuck me. This is why I don't read much sci-fi, so often it's shit like this. I'm sorry, but I don't want to read about real-world problems in my escapist entertainment. Especially when it's something as screamingly obvious as class division.

Oh right, that dumb salute. I only saw the movie for HG, but unless it's radically different, I'm sure I'd hate the book too.

>implying you have any ideas worth stealing

It was written by a Republican you assuming ass.

For a while we had a lot of "writing is hard, I should just kill myself" blogposts that were getting seriously annoying. This isn't the correct place for generic writing advice, Veeky Forums has threads for that. It has to somehow be SFF related to make it even mildly interesting here.

How is this relevant? I didn't talk about the author at all, you assuming ass.

Thriftbooks is great but what is this shit:
>Wednesday, June 14, 2017 at 11:10 AM Arrived USPS Facility ATLANTA, GA
>Tuesday, June 13, 2017 at 5:03 PM Departed Shipping Partner Facility, USPS Awaiting Item GLENDALE HEIGHTS, IL
>Tuesday, June 13, 2017 at 10:55 AM Arrived Shipping Partner Facility, USPS Awaiting Item GLENDALE HEIGHTS, IL
>Monday, June 12, 2017 at 2:20 PM Picked Up by Shipping Partner, USPS Awaiting Item ATLANTA, GA
do they always send their shit back and forth before just sending it on? is that why it takes so goddamned long to get deliveries from them?

>implying you have any ideas worth stealing
>he says while copying my ideas when I'm not wordart posting

Don't people usually like sharing their ideas? As long as actual writing isn't being discussed, what's the problem?

Been on a bit of a Lovecraft kick recently. I just learned about a story called The Black Brat of Dunwich, which seems to be a retelling of The Dunwich Horror that casts Wilbur in a heroic light. Sounds interesting, but I'm wondering if it's any good. Anyone here read it?

>Infinity Concerto
>Majipoor Trilogy
Just grabbed these from a used book store for around $4.50, did I do well, /sffg/?

Can I get a quick rundown on Anthony Ryan?

>SIASL
>Mary Sue Martian screws hot geniuses and murders fools with magic
>Harsh Mistress
>Polyamorous moon frontiers and their pet AI can do no wrong, bomb Earth for the libertarian paradise they always wanted
>Starship Troopers
>Johnny Rico bombs bugs and contemplates old civics lectures
>Time Enough For Love
>where to even start
>Friday
>it stops being rape if you decide to enjoy it
STICK WITH JUVENILIA
at least he didn't rec Glory Road

That's just Wordart. Don't let yourself be cowed, he doesn't belong here and the mods don't punish writeposting no matter how much he whines.

he turns out to be OK with class divisions just not with the upper caste shirking their duty

If that's accurate, I don't think I'll ever look into Heinlein's books again. Not that Starship Troopers impressed me much.

no, look into Heinlein, just pre-SIASL Heinlein. There's plenty of good stuff there. Double Star especially is an underappreciated gem, but Citizen of the Galaxy and Door into Summer are IMO his best.

Oh, and Tunnel in the Sky.
>tfw no Zulu waifu to start an accidental frontier colony with

I still don't care. Sure, that's a bit different than what I expected, but the end result is the same: The author expositing about how they want the world to be. If I want to get into philosophy, sociology, and politics, I'll read some philosophy, sociology, and political text books, I don't want this shit in my entertainment. Even when it's something I agree with completely, and usually it is, I still don't want it. Like, hey, Heinlein, I thought this book would be about guys killing giant alien bugs with kickass powered armor. But nope, he just can't shut the fuck up about philosophy, sociology, and politics.

Eh, I have enough on my backlog already, I honestly doubt I'd ever get to Heinlein anyway.

What about it makes it more than what it seems to be? Because the premise makes it sound more in line with hunger games than Heinlein, or pkd

Why bother reading? Nothing wrong with escapism, but I feel like video games, movies, etc are much better media for that outlet

Because I like to have variety in my life? Though I will admit that out of books, video games, movies, TV, and comics, books are near the bottom of the list for me. I'm not saying this happens in all books, just a lot of them. But there are still a bunch of books I've enjoyed. Like the Craft Sequence books, which I need to get back to.

Now that The Unholy Consult is finally upon us, can anyone recommend some essential Bakkercore to whet the appetite?

>the end result is the same: The author expositing about how they want the world to be.
no it isn't, RR is mostly about killing fools with spears. Golden Son is mostly about killing fools with spaceships. Morning Star is mostly about killing fools with bendyswords.

Maybe it's just me, but I have yet to find books that are good for just escapism. Everytime someone recommends me a book that's good for that, it just ends up being shit because there's a better analogue in another media. Sff books tend to be very time consuming, and the value in terms of raw entertainment is not very high when considering time spent. Books like Malazan, Stormlight Archive, Kingkiller Chronicles, are perfect examples of this. They might be entertaining to some degree, but there is way too much time spent on them, for not enough entertainment. I'd rather play games because there's a visceral experience there. If I read something, there has to be more than just entertainment because it's too fucking time consuming

>Like, hey, Heinlein, I thought this book would be about guys killing giant alien bugs with kickass powered armor.
There's your problem. Someone lied to you.

audiobooks breh

find a good author, get their works, then listen to it all while you're weeding your yard or declogging your shitter

I feel you. Like, I always prefer manga to anime, because with manga I can get the same story with only a fraction of the time. I tried to watch the first episode of Naruto Shippuden on a suggestion, and I wanted to tear my head off before it was over because it was sooooo slooooow and I knew I could've spent the same amount of time blazing through five chapters of the same material.

I've thought of this before, but I don't think it would work, because I just know I'd get more caught up with whatever it is I'm doing and start tuning out what I'm listening to. It's already happened to me when I'm trying to listen to YouTube videos.

Actually, I think these two things are related. One problem with the human brain is that it's a lot faster at receiving information than it is at sending information.

Each series you've mentioned is full of padding for people that want to get lost in a fantasy world. There are better series out there however.

He's good at writing one PoV, and should stick to whole books on a single PoV. Blood song is the best example of this, and the books after this have a severe drop in quality because he can't maintain the same level of quality across multiple PoVs.

This is true in his dragon safari book too, but not as bad as in the blood song sequels.

Not him, but could you name some please?

What are books you've liked?

Some of my favorites are
The Amber Chronicles by Roger Zelazny
The Vurt trilogy by Jeff Noon
The Sleepless series by Nancy Kress

Eh, nevermind. I don't think our tastes are overlap.

It's not about real world problems, the setting is inspired by Brave New World with Roman aesthetics and is written as an action adventure in a sci fi settings.
It's not more political than your average sci fi novel (eg Dreaming Void or whatever).

>Brave New World
>It's not more political than your average sci fi novel
Thanks for reminding me why I shouldn't bother with sci-fi.

>Is red rising a YA meme book
The memiest

Is your reading comprehension grade school level? All your replies in this thread were dumb as fuck. Like you don't even really have a point, you just read one garbage book thinking it was something else and now you reject all sci fi on the basis that it might be "political" in a not defined way, even when people who read the books say that's wrong. Why are you even here if you are too stubborn to listen to answers to your questions?

He said the book's setting is inspired by Brave New World, not that the book is similar to it. From what I gather, the classism is just a background thing.

yeah i usually ask for someone's books before making recommendations

You sound like you have ADHD

No, I just want to manage my time efficiently. The fact that I can do that to begin with shows the opposite of adhd

No it's pretty indicative of ADHD, where you have this minimum threshold of how much information needs to be bombarding you at any given moment to be "worth your time". It shows you can't concentrate on things and need constant stimulation.

I think that's the problem with fantasy. Authors spend a lot of time with world building padding, but it needs to be tied in with the narrative. LOTR did this the best because it barely told you anything about the world that wasn't immediately relevant to the story/characters. You didn't hear about how gandalf was actually an angel because that doesn't serve the story.

You unironically sound like a huge common denominator pleb

Are you even replying to the right person? I don't need to be bombarded constantly with simulation. I'm literally making a value judgement based on time spent v reward, which is a fucking normal thing to do as a consumer in a capitalist society. I didn't say I constantly need entertainment. In fact, I'm pretty sure I implied that I read for more than just entertainment

Don't say that because you're gonna get called a pseud!

>t. pseud

Pretty sure he's talking about the vidya.

Because if I'm focused on getting entertainment, then I'll play vidya over reading. It's not me saying that I'd rather vidya than read

>Too dumb to understand botns

>Each series you've mentioned is full of padding for people that want to get lost in a fantasy world
It's hard to be immersed by shit authors

What about Bakker do you like? The GRI? The warring? The hateful characters? The weird tolkien/dune inverted story? Or the cuckoldry

Unironically this. I feel like there's so much i'm not getting. What should I read to fully understand it?

>What should I read to fully understand it?
BotNS again. And again. And again.

But Vance, Borges and The Holy Bible wouldn't hurt either.

>trying for the 3rd or 4th time to start my novel over again from scratch
>only half a single-spaced page of progress per day
>It's actually more poorly written than what I had before

why does this get harder the more I try? Arn't I supposed to be getting better at this?

Write short stories about your characters / setting and do a fix up to make a novel out of it.

Is there a single decent novel that did that?

City by Clifford D. Simak I suppose is the only one that comes to mind immediately

Foundation Trilogy

That aside. I have my my plot planned out. I've been planning this for too damn long to start over with short stories. I need to get it out of head

Well then just fucking write it instead of just "rewriting the first chapter" like every stupid wannabe writer who somehow can't fathom that you're supposed to edit and rewrite AFTER you've finished the novel, or at the very least a substantial part of it. You guys are honestly just the worst. EDIT AFTERWARDS unless it's just your subconscious telling you that your idea and plot is shit.

Fellow "writers" just make me so mad Jesus Christ.

My last draft made it nearly halfway through the book before I realized that 90% of the early-game plot was too retarded and autistic to salvage

It's not harder or worse, you've just gotten better at spotting bullshit.

Congrats on your progress.

but my old work looks better

Be happy you can think of a plot faggot.

Thinking up a plot is easy, literally anyone can do that.The tricky part about writing is trying to do justice to the ideas you came up with.

It's hunger games.

I have never been able to think of a plot.