/sffg/ - Science Fiction & Fantasy General

What's a good starting point for P. K. Dick?

The Man in the High Castle

Really? I'm not much of an alt-hist fan.

Here OP. You might find something here.
I know a lot of people liked the books I was recing for months, because I'm seeing people recommend these same books now.

Fair enough. My next suggestion would be The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

Very intriguing sounding novel, thanks I'll check it out.

If you want to start with some of his short stories read Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is a good place to start with his novels IMO.

I started with Flow My Tears, The Policeman said and that worked for me.

>the state of contemporary fantasy
we're done for

>books from the 70s
>modern
what

Yes. There's a difference between modern and contemporary you know.

When will we be able to artificially make a sun?
How do we go about compressing nothing into a billion heat furnace?

>not including Dune

>compressing nothing
what do you think starts are made of?
literally just blow a big enough balloon and you've got yourself an active star

The chart supposed to be books that a modern person would enjoy. Books that when read wouldn't be dated. A lot of old books can't be enjoyed by modern audiences because they rely on either pop culture references from the past, or use theories that have totally been debunked and reads like some retards wild rants.
A good ageless book doesn't depend on pop culture references or certain things that an be debunked in the future.

It's been three months since I bought Bakker's trilogy, and I'm almost done the Thousandfold Thought.

I'll probably jump into the Aspect Emperor, but I'd like to find something a little less substantial to take up my nightly readings. Is Conan fun, or is there something else more lighthearted you guys would recommend?

Thanks for reading my blog

Because dune is dated. Same reason I didn't include shit of the rings. They are both dated as fuck.

Roadside picnic is a book that is ageless. It was written decades ago and is still enjoyable.
The Russians are probably better novelists than Americlaps if this continues.

Dune is not dated.

>shitty libraries
>torrents are few and far between
I really can't afford paying for every fucking book I read. How do you do it lads

Buy used you fucking nonce.

Why do faux nerds not love Dune but love Star Wars, Tolkien, Whedon and all that crap that falls into that category? I find it odd how Dune and Star Trek are untouched by them, Star Trek TOS even odder considering it should be a modern leftists bible and did what TV shows are doing now decades ago without it feeling forced...Will normies not touch Dune because of Lynch?

>Conan less substantial than Bakker
Conan may be too hard for you user. I suggest reading some of Ian Brandon Sanderson's works

What's some /sffg/ with well done inter-species relations and diplomacy? If the list is too long, as I suspect, I like things less Tolkien-like (massive) and I don't like multiple view point characters either.

I also like first contact stories.

>tfw watching dune and wondering what could have been

Haha, that was a pretty epic post, friend.

>Not seeing the intrinsic value of the time capsule-like quality of books
No wonder genre fiction isn't taken seriously with an audience like this.

Lord of the Rings isn't dated. If it was then people like Terry Brooks would stop selling yet here he is still selling Shannara novels

I'm Orson Scott Card and am actively posting RN. Try and stop me, bitchboi.

Can someone share Nemesis Games and Babylon's Ashes (expanse 5 & 6)?
Can't find them on libgen and neither amazon nor overdrive make them available in my region as far as I can tell.

>dated
Brainlet

Read the pile of unread books you've accumulated over time. And don't pretend like you don't have one.

>Ian Brandon Sanderson
Come on that's just mean. Sanderson doesn't deserve to be related to CWC like that

I'm just glad the only thing normies know from Dune is the stupid spice meme with the cat rolled up to look like a sandworm, glad they haven't turned it into trash like Game of Thrones or Harry Potter.

I just Re-read 'Sins of Empire,' the fourth Powder Mage book, and I'm still just as pissed as the first time. I feel like there's a thousand threads started and dropped all at the same time- it wanted to have a mystery-like element, but it failed horribly. It wanted to focus more on politics, but the entire time I kept asking myself 'why hasn't this society fallen apart decades ago?' and never delved deep into how anything functions at all. The Secret Police concept was awful and undeveloped. Taniel's resurgence and his motivations essentially murder his character from the first three books all over again. He hated politics, he hated ministers and governments, he had no care as to how or why any of it worked and he just wanted to fuck his teenage voodoo waifu. Now he's an expert spy living a triple life and running a Palo intelligence network to uncover Power Stones? What in the fuck? This is a universe where so much interesting shit can go down and I'm reading the first season of fucking Power Stone.

lowkey this

Is dune worth reading? My only encounter with it so far was the movie and some comic book IIRC

What else did you expect from Sanderson's student?

I'd say read the first book and if you like it then continue.

Every time there's a political subplot in Fantasy I groan. Only a few authors can make interesting and enjoyable political plots while the rest have no business even trying

>reading some stuff about Second Apocalypse
is R Scott Bakker a meme? this doesn't sound fun to read at all, seems like everyone and everything in that world is hopelessly doomed and everyone is an unlikable dick.

>Mfw was the first one to notice Brandon Sanderson sounded suspiciously like Ian Brandon Anderson in the last thread

Nice to see it is taking off

but they're ALL SHIT

>the book is bad because the characters are unlikeable
this meme needs to die

>If God is dead then fantasy is His grave.
I’ve spent thirty-five years, now, searching for the secret of meaning, chasing research across disciplines and arguments through millennia. What is it? Why does it seem to be slowly boiling away? My short fiction and nonfiction on the subject have been published in Nature, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, and The Journal of Consciousness Studies. But epic fantasy has always been my primary vehicle. For me, fantasy fiction is the crash site of meaning. Create a world possessing the structure of Biblical Israel or Vedic India or Homeric Greece and it will be called fantastic. Create an alternate, intrinsically meaningful world, and the world will instantly recognize it as especially false. The very shape of meaning now indicates delusion: and this, I think, should give us pause. So I guess you could say that for me, fantasy is a pretty serious thing—something worth pissing people off about! My nutty ambition was to write the only kind of Bible a human could write in this remarkable and blasphemous age—a far different Book of Revelation, more honest to the complicated edges of the world, equally horrific. A textual crypt for the corpse of God. I knew it was crazy, outrageous even, but I had confidence in my ability to make the wreckage interesting. And with The Unholy Consult coming out this summer, the World at last stands revealed, and I feel like there’s so bloody much I can babble on about...
Wow so Bakker knows he's writing a trainwreck of a series

>being such a little fag that you need to "like" your protagonist

Is that from his reddit AMA a while back. If so it filled with gems like this
>Kellhus is the most difficult to write simply because I'm only a tenth as smart as he is, meaning I usually write ten sentences for every sentence appearing on the page.
This how he described his work
>Usually I describe it as Lord of the Rings meets Beyond Good and Evil meets Sin City... or something along those lines.

Is Bakker Jewish?

It's fantasy which means it's just for entertainment so you need at least a few likable characters. For anything other than fantasy I agree with you guys that a book doesn't need likable characters

yeah, I forgot this is Veeky Forums, where people idolize cowards who only use fiction as vehicles to hide their personal views/ideas in. plotting and writing compelling characters are completely secondary.

Bakker is different user. My novels have depth unlike other fantasy novels

Canadian

How come Gollancz hasn't dropped Rothfuss yet? They probably gave him an advance too.

A character can be compelling while still being a complete shitheel. Ever see Spartacus (Starz)? That show is a goddamn case study for those type of characters.

You don't need to like a protagonist to be interested in what they're going to do. Just because you don't care about their well-being or whether they succeed or not, you still want to see what happens.

You aren't supposed to root for Kellhus, you're supposed to be interested in what the fuck the guy is doing.

even worse

To which works or authors are you alluding?

Your bookfu is shit

Rothfuss announced the 10th anniversary editon of The Name of the Wind a while back

He obviously wants that sweet, sweet faux nerd money that Harry Potter and GOT are raking in. They'll probably drop him if a movie deal doesn't go through or something.

I'm not interested in what Kellhus is up to because I don't like him. He's boring as fuck. I was able to read The Eyes of the Overworld even though I found Cugel annoying. Bakker just can't make good characters

You're retarded. What happens when there's a book from the perspective of someone evil? Someone you absolutely fucking hate? Are you going to close the book because "well, I don't like him, so I better just ignore the whole fucking story."

You're just ignoring a whole slew of protagonists in favor of teenybopper YA "customer is always right" shit.

>Here’s what you can expect to find in the new edition, which will be released in 2017:
>an “extensive” author’s note
>appendices discussing the calendar and the currency systems
>a pronunciation guide
>at least 20 illustrations
>“a better map”
Well he's doing something. No idea why he feels the need to discuss the currency system. Kvothe moaning about his debts was more than enough

>What happens when there's a book from the perspective of someone evil
As long as I like them they're fine by me.
>Someone you absolutely fucking hate
I've never read a fantasy book that made me loath a character so much. If it did I'd be happy since I'd be more invested in the story
>Are you going to close the book because "well, I don't like him, so I better just ignore the whole fucking story."
I only close books when reading about trash like Kellhus. The only thing Kellhus POVs did was make me apathetic.

Now you'll able to delight in knowing exactly how much money Kvothe owes at any given point of the story

there’s a lot of gall in issuing a fancy tenth anniversary version of the first book when he’s spent six bloody years working on the third one

>What happens when there's a book from the perspective of someone evil?
If they're well written I'd probably end up liking them. I'll use WoT as an example since it's easy. I hated every Forsaken except for Ismael/Morridin because unlike the rest he actually lived up to his reputation. The rest of them acted like children which was pathetic

worldbuilding was a mistake

What the fuck did you just say?

Just read The Dread Empire' Fall series and HOLY SHIT.

Everything about is PERFECT. No one has done a "earth gets conquered, humanity fuck no " plot so well. The aliens are aliens doing alien stuff, instead of just humans with fake foreheads.

DAMN.

>Book 3 will not be longer than The Wise Man’s Fear.
>Will book 3 will be the last in the series?
>Yes and no. Book 3 closes this arc of story. Book 3 will not be the final book set in this world. Big distinction there!
NOOOOOOOOO
>Think of any series that was wrapped up. Think of The Lord of the Rings, which has a pretty solid ending: Was everything wrapped up at the end of the third book of Lord of the Rings? No. That’s what happens in any sort of realistic world, in any sort of realistic story with realistic characters. There was some good closure in that book, but what happened with Aragorn, and Minas Tirith, and now that he was back? […] And what about Sam and his kids? What really happened to the Grey Havens? Did Frodo every bounce back from that? What did Gandalf talk to Tom Bombadil about? There’s a ton of unanswered questions—so yeah, that’s actually the mark of a good story, and so I won’t be answering everything, but the truth is, you don’t want me to. You might think you want me to, but you don’t. And even if you really do, I still won’t. Just because it’s impossible.
>but what happened with Aragorn, and Minas Tirith
He had a revolutionary tax policy
>Will book 3 make readers cry?
>Depends on if you’re an easy crier. But I kinda hope to hit you hard emotionally; that’s my job.
>My fear is, what is the larger effect of my book on the world and on the minds of the people who take the time to consume it? Am I contributing in a positive way to the overall kind of collective consciousness of people in the world? I worry about that.
Don't worry Rothfuss no one takes your series seriously

I'll just post the link
tor.com/2017/02/03/patrick-rothfuss-kingkiller-chronicle-book-3-update/

The book happens 10 years after the first trilogy, so it's obvious Taniel would not be the same person. Of course, is that development happened on screen, it would be a lot better. Also, I feel like there are a lot of things that this book sets up that will be explored in the next one, in terms of how Taniel became the Red Hand. Also, also, you can't just have another three books where it's just Taniel loading two bullets into his gun, and shooting two dudes, or one dude twice, repeated over 600 pages.

I resent having imaginary technology or magic systems explained to me

user did you know that if you consume iron and pewter together the strength buff you get from iron lasts longer

You haven't read Dune, have you?

The first one is pretty much a must-read. If you like the parts about Dune's ecological transformation, the Fremen society and the philosophical musings about Paul's gift, you can also read the rest of the Frank Herbert books. Don't touch anything by Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert though.

>only put out two books and a novella
>already hailed as the savior of fantasy and has TV and movie rights
>gets to run around and do random events/go to cons instead of working

The man is a genius. how does keep getting away with it?

I was more referring to how authors try to scientifically or philosophically justify why their ships move faster than light and their characters shoot fire from their fingers.

That's just autism at work

That's because faux nerds don't actually like to read anything more complex than Harry Potter and the Star Wars Expanded Universe books. Tolkien gets a pass because of the success of the movies, though most of the faux nerds still say bullshit like
>tom bombadil is the worst thing since hitler
>why are the boring poems longer than battle descriptions?
>too many named characters omg who is celeborn?

Alright /ssfg/ post a passage that made you drop a book
>Right now, it was time for food. Lift shoved herself forward on her knees and used her awesomeness to Slick her legs. She slid across the floor and grabbed the corner leg of the food table. Her momentum smoothly pivoted her around and behind it. She crouched down, the tablecloth neatly hiding her from the people at the room’s center, and unSlicked her legs.

>tfw some people actually hate the songs in the Hobbit

it's more of a protection against deus ex machina/asspulls than anything. when you have some understanding of an unknown system, then a character uses that system in a way that the reader didn't think of to get out of a sticky situation, it makes the character seem clever instead of seeming like the hand of the author saved them at the last minute.

though it should never be explained to the reader in a textbook sort of way, but better that than an asspull.

I resent having them redressed so often.

If you need to chant to use a spell then the mc being able to cast silent spells with no hand movements is fucking gay.

I didn't even enjoy Dune but I think it's a good entry to space opera, if not all of scifi

Anything similar to this? Something based on historical events, but adds some fantasy elements.

I hate that too. If want the protagonist to be above the rest just give them a useful power.

aSoIaF except it's pretty shit

Latro in the Mist I suppose

Thought this was porn for a moment

Implying Brandon Sanderson isn't another one of Chris-Chan's personas and Chris isn't just pulling this whole tomgirl facade so that people won't suspect he is Brandon Sanderson