/sffg/ - Science Fiction and Fantasy General

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t.pleb

and masterbaters

Is Asimov's Foundation series worth reading through? How foundational (heh) is it to science fiction, and is it still relevant as a vision of a future society?

A different question is whether the prequel to Canticles of Leibowitz is any good, or still in print even? Because CoL is probably my favourite sci-fi book of the limited number I have read.

Canticles of Leibowitz should still be in print since it's on that SF Masterworks line.

It's "Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire" IN SPACE! It's not "essential" but it is among the best works of SF out there. It's still relevant enough not to feel utterly dated.

>Is Asimov's Foundation series worth reading through? How foundational (heh) is it to science fiction, and is it still relevant as a vision of a future society?
Foundation is really not that good. It was probably some of the best around in its time, but it has long since been eclipsed. I would argue that Frank Herbert and Arthur C. Clarke have had more staying power than Asimov. Their stories have "aged better," if that makes any sense.

The famous book you are probably trying to refer to is "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Decline and Fall, not Rise and Fall. For some reason nobody ever seems to get that.

In Gimp?

Yeah, it is, I read it on that line, but I'm talking about the prequel that was made decades later.

"Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman."

Is it better or as influential as Dune?
I have a nice hardback copy, so I'll read it at some point.

>Is it better or as influential as Dune?
I disagree in general with the guy who you're replying to, but Dune is definitely better and more influential than Foundation.

Thanks user.

Truly excellent OP picture, I'm feeling life in my penis for the first time in years

Ada a cute

>Their stories have "aged better," if that makes any sense.
Makes perfect sense. Star Trek definitely did not age well at all. Seems to me blindingly "rear-view mirror" in its conception of the future.

Is The Lies of Locke Lamora (first book that is) actually good and standalone?

Think anons are pretty a little harsh. It's not aged BADLY and while it's certainly a very golden-age vision of the future the narrative and characters are enjoyable with an intricate enough plot to lose yourself in.

Also i love how the actual foundation start off as little pussy bitches and by the end are massive weighty empire dudes, it's a fun ride

My mistake about the name, it happens when one types without care.

>some reason
Cyclical nature of Empires makes Rise and Fall a far more common trend associated with them rather than Decline and Fall

>Is it better or as influential as Dune?
I think it is hard to compare them side by side when it comes to influence because 1950s and 1980s had different audiences for sci fi and different trends, so if by influence you mean influence on the genre, I'd say they both did a fair share Dune certainly had more mass appeal and is the more recent product so it's still echoes in the genre, foundation non the less was an important step of the sci-fi as a genre.

As for better, it's mostly a matter of taste, for an average reader Dune would likely win the contest because it's nearly 3 decades closer to this day and age than Foundation.

Wolfe/Mieville tag team when?

Star Trek (as in the original series) may not seem very relevant anymore, but I think The Next Generation has actually held up quite well. It hasn't had to "age" as long though. I don't know about DS9--it takes itself more seriously, but the 90s version of "serious TV" just looks foolish compared to more recent shows.

Yeah, I think "the rise and fall of empires" is enough of a trope as to be fixed as a common phrase, but it's just funny to me how much that would change the meaning of Gibbon's work. "Rise and Fall" would have been a totally different book than the Decline and Fall he actually wrote. I think maybe "Decline and Fall" sounds more redundant to modern readers than Gibbon intended, so people automatically correct it to "rise" when they recall it. I guess that's a problem that is bound to plague books far more people have heard of than have actually read.

China Mieville legit makes me hard. I like to imagine him as some kind of nazi-punching literary super hero.

>Is Asimov's Foundation series worth reading through? How foundational (heh) is it to science fiction, and is it still relevant as a vision of a future society?

I bought the first trilogy of that series but couldn't get into it. The concepts are interesting but the prose is just bad. When I look at Asimov in my bookcase, and around it I've got PKD, Wolfe, Davidson, Banks, Chiang, Stross, Gibson, Stephenson, hell even that crazy glorious bastard Hodgson... there's really no contest. Asimov feels dull in comparison.

It's not foundation to sci-fi in terms of enjoying the genre. It's not like "start with the Greeks".

Wolfe is so lovable.

>Star Trek (as in the original series) may not seem very relevant anymore
I think it's fun, if pulpy, sf television, It's not the "birght future that all humans hope for", mostly because people lost hope, but as far as SF TV goes, there are worse things to watch.

>The Next Generation has actually held up quite well. It hasn't had to "age" as long though.
Some episodes/seasons, sure, but many is a complete and utter joke by modern standards, taking itself oh so seriously while riding oh so white horse, all the while looking sillier than TOS ever was.

>I don't know about DS9--it takes itself more seriously, but the 90s version of "serious TV" just looks foolish compared to more recent shows.
I think DS9 didn't so much take itself more seriously, again compare it to early TNG and tell me that it's it that's the one taking itself too seriously, but it explored and tried to present star trek in more detail making it a more coherent universe rather than a series of episodes roughly set in the same continuity, and I think it works to this day. Very few other TV shows manage to provide quite as much in a way of discussion on matters of faith, warfare, diplomacy, etc. Tho without a doubt some parts of it are questionable in the extreme, nice thing about it - most people disagree on which parts those are.

If you compare it to modern Dramas, it sure falls behind, but if you compare it to modern TV SF it's still leagues ahead of most of it. Granted if you want more "serious" SF, you should probably be reading not watching.

Hugo award list:

Best Novel

The Obelisk Gate, by N. K. Jemisin (Orbit Books)

Best Novella

Every Heart a Doorway, by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com publishing)

Best Novelette

“The Tomato Thief”, by Ursula Vernon (Apex Magazine, January 2016)

Best Short Story

“Seasons of Glass and Iron”, by Amal El-Mohtar (The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales, Saga Press)

Best Related Work

Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016, by Ursula K. Le Guin (Small Beer)

Best Graphic Story

Monstress, Volume 1: Awakening, written by Marjorie Liu, illustrated by Sana Takeda (Image)

John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer

Ada Palmer (1st year of eligibility)

Every Major Award was won by a women.
No straight white male will win a major hugo in the next 5 years at least.

I don't see how Dune can be easier to get into, it is one of the most mind-numbingly boring books I've read. The Foundation trilogy is split into vignettes that are much simpler to digest.

Female or male?

Dune is well-written and the story is immerse. If you read it as a teenager or slightly older, as I think most of us did, you just want to jump right in. Imo anyway.

Foundation has less... "heart"

You realize the Hugos are a popularity contest? It's just a result of the demographics.

Obelisk Gate was amazing though. Can Stone Sky go for the triple?

It's possible I read it too young, but I read and loved LOTR around the same time and people complain about it here often enough.

>and the story is immerse
immersive*

Well I love LOTR too and read it as a teenager, so I'm with you on that one.

>If your dog ripped up your slippers or skirt and you picked it (the ripped article) the dog looks guilty as fuck.
That is not likely and neither is it scientific. I think they tested that once with dog owners by telling them their dog has done something and they went "Yes I can tell, that's his guilty face!" when in truth the dog has done nothing.
What is far more likely that the dog acts guilty because of the way the owner reacts. If you stand there, visibly angry/annoyed and speak with a certain tone of voice, your dog will react accordingly. If you put on a happy face and say "You cheeky fuck how dare you, I will fucking feed you to the chinese you useless cuntdog" but in a really happy active voice your dog will get exited as fug because it's often the same as the "you wanna go for walkies?" voice.

>Now he explained that the dog is decades old
But he already spoke before he got that old. when the dog was just a few years above how old these dogs usually get and he spoke perfect english. Also later they have to deal with a different dog and teach that english is very little time.
>He remembers quotes from movies yes, but forgets the movie later
Not really. Not only does he quote the movie he also remembers the plot as does he when Atticus tells him stories. (sometimes he gets so influenced by them that he adapts their ideals and mannerisms)
I could deal with the dog knowing some speech. the problem is that the Dog is smarter than your average american.

Dune definitely has a turning point age-wise. I tried to read it when I was too young and couldn't stand all the made up words and shit. I picked it up again two years later and loved it.

Are there any contemporary writers publishing ornate, atmospheric, Lovecraftian fantasy/horror?

A lot of people point me in the direction of Laird Barron or China Mieville, but I find them pretty campy and only concerned with surface level elements of the genre (i.e. tentacles, madness, magic-as-science).

>Are there any contemporary writers publishing ornate, atmospheric, Lovecraftian fantasy/horror?
>ornate
Oh yes

I'm reading this right now. It's kind of amazing. The prose is a little ridiculous, but it's really quite something.

...

Oh I totally missed the "contemporary" part

Sorry, ignore my post then

I liked Obelisk Gate and at least it is sort of a quasi-Sci-Fi, but almost every other award was given to a straight up Fantasy.

And no bullshit about how it is a genre award, The Award is a fucking rocket ship and they had a real astronaut give out an award this year.

The Hugos are a SCI-FI award.

Palmer's stuff is actually better than NKJ, but NKJ is more general appeal.

Is Warbreaker a good start for someone who hasn't read any Sanderson?

My introduction to Sanderson was Way of Kings and I enjoyed it a lot.

Warbreaker is good not only because it's one of his best books but also because it's quite standalone. My recommendation to people who want to read Sanderson is to read Warbreaker, Emperor's Soul and possibly his short stories and then move on to other authors. If you want to read all of his Cosmere crap I've heard that Mistborn is a good staring point.

>Acts of Caine
yes motherfucker yessssss
too bad it's done (I think)

This autist who has read the entire canon and considers Shakespeare strongly overrated thinks it's a masterpiece: cosmoetica.com/B264-DES204.htm

No one expects a straight white male to win any awards any time soon, nor will their works be pushed by any major publisher/ distributor.

Yet so what, if a book is good it's good.

I'm still curious what would have been nominated if the Chuck Tingle Electric Boogaloo 2 didn't get nominated.

I haven't read the sequels but The Fifth Season was actually quite good considering what a train wreck Hundred Thousand Kingdoms was.

Seanan McGuire is everything wrong with SF today.

I hope Palmer doesn't turn into Girl Rothfuss. She seems better adjusted than him so maybe we can look forward to more Good Books from her in the future.

>Seanan McGuire is everything wrong with SF today.
Why, what's Every Heart a Door like?

>I hope Palmer doesn't turn into Girl Rothfuss.
She published 2 books in a year so no fear of that. And a third one is coming in December.
Or did you mean something else?

>The Fifth Season was actually quite good considering what a train wreck Hundred Thousand Kingdoms was
The Moonblood books are good too IMO. I agree on 100KK. The rest of her output was a pleasant surprise.

I tried reading this and found the writing tedious and protagonist insufferable. It's all this nauseating, saccharine sweet sentimentality. I get the impression Hodgson would have been a deviantartist were he alive today.

>You mean something like this?
>Or something where physical transformation is long and drawn out for fetish reasons?
I can take either heavy transformation or heavy aftermath as long as they're women and they're miserable about it.

>and considers Shakespeare strongly overrated
He's not wrong.

What author (straight white male or otherwise) do you think got shorted though? Mieville is the only one I can come up with this year.

I haven't read it. I do know that Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant is a tumblr landwhale whose constant presence on award lists has more to do with pathetic fandom politics than any discernible talent.

>no Unholy Consult

Debut author writes a good book, gets massively feted, crawls up own ass to die. Like I said, Palmer seems less pathetic than Rothfuss though.

>Seanan McGuire is everything wrong with SF today.
I read he October Daye series but I always thought of it as maybe a step or two above generic urban fantasy, didn't know she'd won awards and shit.

>Debut author writes a good book, gets massively feted, crawls up own ass to die.
As long as she finishes the current series she can crawl up whoever's ass she wants.

She also seems to rather enjoy soaking up the attention. But yeah, actually finish a good trilogy and you deserve it.

>As long as she finishes the current series
This

Why is first person so hated?

Makes it easier for the author to self-insert

What's some good 'ship based' (Star Trek-esque) science fiction? Not looking for media tie-ins.

The Russians and Germans sind sehr gut when I want something more character/psychology/idea driven rather than a huge array of bland characters acting out a pantomime over an overdone background. I fear that what most people think of classic literature are classified by the bore that is English and French classical literature.

has Bakker ever been up for a Hugo?

Mieville's shit sucked this year.
That aside people always focus on the "books."
The VAST majority of awards are for shorter work, this is representative of Sci-FI as a whole.
The short work that has been nominated and winning is utter garbage the last 2 years.

Do you guys know any magazines that publish novella length genre stories? Everything I write is too darn long.

I haven't read Mieville's latest. Someone who truly reads enough to make intelligent nominations of contemporary work must be borderline autistic; I rarely read anything newer than at least a few years so I don't get caught up in meme shovelnovels.

I suspect that's why the short entries have been so shit. It's basically an incestuous writer's workshop -- I don't know anyone even online who keeps up with the latest in short form published SFF, myself included. I don't even see discussion on fandom blogs. It must just be a circlejerk of a few dozen people.

Thought this was relevant. It's from the Tor.com submissions section.

As a male caucasian writer with a fondness for classic fantasy conventions, it's kind of bittersweet to observe the changing attitudes of genre publishers. On the one hand, I get it; the industry standard is stagnant and in bad need of revision. On the other hand, isn't the exotica of eastern cultures something that only exists in the eyes of white people in the west? If I were black or asian and proud of my heritage, I'd feel more patronized than included.

>I'd feel patronized
You're thinking like a white man. They don't feel patronized, they feel like they're collecting what's owed them and twerking victoriously on the ruins of their defeated enemies.

I don't care how they feel, I'm just tired of generic Tolkien ripoffs.

>not appropriating their cultures for your own entertainment
kek look at this sjw faggot

How many people are actually imitating Tolkien, though? Castles and swordplay don't make a Middle Earth story.

Are generic Tolkien ripoff even that common now? In the 80s, maybe. Mostly we've got ASOIAF ripoffs and Sanderson ripoffs. ASOIAF is identifiably a reaction to Tolkienesque fantasy but that doesn't make it a "Tolkien ripoff". It just means that it's part of a body of (yes, Eurocentric) literature that naturally evolves on its own over time as new authors write new books. The cabal at Tor wants to do away with it root and branch not because it has no value but because they don't like white men and their culture.

I liked Last Days of New Paris but for some reason they decided to nominate the plotless avant-garde one that didn't quite work rather than the fun pulp

>Are generic Tolkien ripoff even that common now? In the 80s, maybe. Mostly we've got ASOIAF ripoffs and Sanderson ripoffs.
I'm tired of those too.

It's much easier to write than third so some authora so choose it for easiness rather than what the story demands

Bridge of Birds is better than any actual Asian fantasy I've read so you might be onto something.

See? A shame they probably won't let europeans write asiatic fantasy.

They do it all the time, it just sucks mostly

Has anyone written a fantasy "reacting" to GRRM? Besides Vox Day, which I've actually heard isn't bad but I haven't read it.

Maybe eurofantasy really is completely played out, but I doubt it.

>Has anyone written a fantasy "reacting" to GRRM?
What would that look like? An ultimately upbeat, optimistic portrayal of noblesse oblige?

The Diamond Age has a pretty strong Chinese flavor, and KSR wrote The Years of Rice and Salt. Versus a bunch of stupid wuxia/isekai shit.

A seemingly upbeat, optimistic portrayal of noblesse oblige that gradually reveal underlayers of morbid commentary. Since, you know, AsoIaF is a subversion of fantasy conventions on the surface but ultimately a standard heroic fantasy.

>How many people are actually imitating Tolkien, though?
None. And to my knowledge there are also no current writers that imitate his sources and older fantasy, it's not like Tolkien is the first one to write European fantasy.
That's pretty much just a "no whites allowed" sign, marxists can endorse any culture except the Western one. I wonder what the KGB guys who are still alive feel when they watch their subvertion of the capitalist West result in complete self destruction but with the USSR long gone and communism dead making it pointless. What an ironic end to the cold war, mutual destruction did happen but not a single nuke was used.

I'd like to think publishers will tire of the trend eventually but I fear you're right. As someone with vague ambitions of making a (modest) income selling European fantasy stories, it's really demoralizing. I'm going to be working at Starbucks until I die, taking orders from managers who openly celebrate the rapid decline of culture.

>Has anyone written a fantasy "reacting" to GRRM?
Any fantasy that isn't grimderp is a "reaction" to that goober's writing. Granted plenty of writers took what he did and made it even worse, but he's still responsible for the grimdark crap that thankfully seems to be dying down.

I am that short fiction autist you alluded too, sort of.
I read mostly on anthologies and have a few subscriptions too SFF mags.

You are right about the workshop idea, SFF has shifted a lot away from the short stuff use too be people read everything.

But as in all things it is coming around again with the rise of published novella length works in print and restructuring of some of the SFF mags/E-mags I hold out hope that we are just in the dark before the dawn for short SF work.

I really believe that the heart of Sci-Fi lives in short fiction.

I'm looking for some more science fiction that's less about plotlines and characters and more about general narratives, settings, and ideologies. I read The Dispossessed and really liked it. Is the Left Hand of Darkness similar or no? Any other recommendations?

Hey all. I am almost completely new to sci-fi (read Martian Chronicles in HS and also some Borges if that counts). I am involved in writing a movie now and am interested in exploring scarcity, oppressive governments, and fringe groups. Somebody on the team told me to read Foundation.

I am somewhat intrigued by China Mieville's use of marxism. What do you guys think of him? Also if you have any recommendations of books that explore religion in any interesting ways, that would be cool too. thx

>What would that look like?
A focused, concise single book novel that's not grimdork fedoracore.

>grimdork
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