Forcing ideologies Edition. >What sff books you felt blatantly forced subtexts in their pages? >What sff books you read failed miserably at disguising that the author had an agenda? >What sff book snuck past ideologies onto you, and you didn't realize it until much, much later?
>>What sff books you felt blatantly forced subtexts in their pages? Witcher. Although it's kind of hard to call it subtext when blatantly forced. I still liked it
>What sff books you read failed miserably at disguising that the author had an agenda? Sword of Truth is probably the biggest offender.
>What sff book snuck past ideologies onto you, and you didn't realize it until much, much later? Only because I read them at a young age, but Wheel of Time in retrospect has an entirely different view of women in retrospect than I thought.
Cameron Robinson
Ubik
Isaac Cox
>What sff books you felt blatantly forced subtexts in their pages? Orwell >What sff books you read failed miserably at disguising that the author had an agenda? Orwell >What sff book snuck past ideologies onto you, and you didn't realize it until much, much later? Orwell
Kevin Lee
I want to read some Fredric Brown, whats his best stuff?
Hudson Clark
Its large in scale not unlike GoT.
Character and Deities motivations are pretty out in the open. The fantasy elements feel a bit disjointed though. Sort of just mashed together, no real sense of culture, like these countries don't really exist. Almost like it was a rogue like world map with random fantasy tropes abound.
I don't like the giant dragon fly mounts for one, they just seem like rule of cool. And their environment doest reflect their size.
Jacob Gomez
I love Fredric Brown! That picture you attached is a pretty good one, my personal favorite is What Mad Universe. He also wrote this really nice mystery novel called Night of the Jabberwok
Zachary Roberts
This
Ryan Cooper
i have read that many series tend to decline in later books and how couldn't they. It seems imposible to me for an author to sustain the intrest in the series for 7 or more books . Does that happen to Malazan?
Carson Bailey
He's not wrong about the loli thing. The main villain basically takes the main character's pre-pubescent daughter under his wing, and spends so much time thinking about how she's like this other little girl he remembers fondly (the main character as a child), and other such things.
There's one scene where she's sitting in his lap using her magical senses to see his pain and offers to use her powers to cure him, and he tells her not to because he needs to protect her etc. etc, all but saying "I love you". It was uncomfortably erotic reading.
Mason Thompson
>Character and Deities motivations are pretty out in the open. I sure as fuck didn't know what Shadowthrone and Cotillion's end game was until we more or less made it to the end game. I think the books are more oriented towards society than culture. There are clear differences between Lether, Malazan, and the "uncivilized". I wouldn't say so. Book 8 can drag a bit, as his writing was affected by the death of his father. Book 9 and 10 are basically one long book, and I can't say it felt like he ever lost interest in the series.
Josiah Murphy
nah
John Reyes
What are some fantasy or scifi with /straight shotacon/ themes?
Christian Perry
In Prince of Nothing young Xerius gets handys from his mom.
Jordan Clark
Is there a fantasy novel similar to Pynchon ?
Jose Harris
>What sff book snuck past ideologies onto you, and you didn't realize it until much, much later? Three Body Problem series. While reading it felt like it supported the views and actions of the character Thomas Wade (and Zhang Beihai) but only when discussing the series later did I realize that the point of view character who acted on >muh feels and spent the rest of the book dealing with the consequences did the right thing. And that Wade also realized this.
Also this
Ayden Murphy
Already on my list, but thanks.
Jackson Howard
Damn this looks like some quality dinosaur material. Anyone here read it?
They cost me around $20 ;^) Already read the first one and it's great!
Ryan Watson
Lovely
Lincoln Ward
Yeah. There are also illustrations inside.
Luis Reyes
Tried his short stories?
I moved onto Stross but it didn't really sit with me.
James Scott
Is Neal Asher any good? I heard him recommended in the context of Banks fans.
Robert Scott
Is hyperion worth the read ?
Brayden Powell
Only the first one.
Aiden Morales
When are we getting more incredibly tight pussies?
Isaiah Edwards
Try "shadow of the scorpion" and move on from there if you like it. Follow the Wikipedia reading order if you want to continue.
Caleb Diaz
How is that series anyway?
Jacob Ward
It's enjoyable for what it is. The author just tried to impress some girl he wanted to fuck, and fucked up the entire vibe of the series because of it.
Camden Walker
I'm going to write more about this when Count to Infinity comes out and I've read it, but the Count to the Eschaton series by John C. Wright has a lot of thematic parallels to TBP while being written from a wildly different point of view.
Warning that it's also a lot less focused and the author isn't particularly subtle with the subtext.
If there's something you particularly liked about Liu/TBP say what it is and maybe I can make a more specific innovation. I think Greg Egan might be the closest parallel among Western writers in general to Liu.
Wyatt Wood
Only the first two
Alexander Jones
>The author just tried to impress some girl he wanted to fuck Care to elaborate?
Jason Anderson
Some shitty disease where chicks have uber tight vaginas that clamp up and don't let benis in
Christian Collins
>Character and Deities motivations are pretty out in the open You are either lying or you have no clue what you're talking about. There's in fact very few characters with easily understood goals or motives until they are finally brought to fruition. Shadowthrone's motives are a complete mystery until book 10. The Adjunct too is a mysterious, inscrutable woman. And good fucking luck trying to figure out what Iskaral Pust is planning or what he actually believes, the guy is either insane or so very good at pretending he is insane that there's effectively no difference between the two.
>no real sense of culture, like these countries don't really exist Did you only read one book or something? Cause Erikson does culture and society level world building than any author I've read. Nobody else really captures the scale on which these things happen.
Nolan Rodriguez
It's here.
Brandon Lee
Can a Moorcockfag verify this?
>SNK is based on the book "The Eternal Champion", and the characters seem to have references to characters in the book in this way:
>Erekose (Protagonist) = Eren (They both swore "kill them all", and they are gonna die soon for a curse, they want be normal guys)
>Iolinda (Human princess) = Mikasa (They are both very jealous and both accuse the protagonist of sympathizing with the enemy, remember Annie)
>Ermizhad (Eldren princess... yeah her race is called Eldren and The Eternal Lover) = Historia (They are both blondes and have blue eyes, both had a sibling who had the key to unlock the ancient power of the Eldren people, remember Frieda)
>Erekose reincarnates to be the savior of mankind and has dreams in which he can see his past and future lives (as the user of the coordinate can see his previous and future users). In addition he is stuck in a battle between two sides, humanity and the Eldren. The Eldren have an old power that almost destroyed the world and its ruler has decided not to use it even if that means the extinction of its species -the 145th king-
>He is destined to commit genocide of some kind, and at some point says "I swear I would kill them all"
>Erekose sounds like Eren >Erekose loves Ermizhad, an Eldren princess who is described as a blond woman with blue eyes. >John Daker/Erekose carries the burden of remembering every incarnation he has ever had/ the coordinate. >Prince Arjavh is a stand in for both the 145th king and Armin
Asher Foster
The sunken cost fallacy is almost getting me.
Recommend me some shorter weird work so I won't continue Malazan
Oliver Nguyen
Second Apocalypse.
Levi Rodriguez
>There's a scifi story about an alien race that doesn't sleep, and then they meet earthlings and this is basically their thought process. Would like to know the name if anyone recognizes it. Figured one of you guys might know this.
Christian Young
>I think Greg Egan might be the closest parallel among Western writers in general to Liu. Except Greg Egan's work actually makes conceptual sense :^) Not that I didn't enjoy TBP, but I would like to know of other writers with such depth and scope as Egan.
Gavin Thomas
The threads deleted fampai
Jayden Hernandez
Nah I'm an idiot who forgot how to crossquote
Parker Walker
Read the synopsis. Seems cool but also seems like it could be really shitty given the cover art, the fact that it's a nobody publishing house and the fact that there's two authors.
Is the series any good? I mean actually good, not just a cool universe, I mean good prose and characters and a story that doesn't make me want to vomit.
Carter King
Not the story you're looking for, but Exhalation by Ted Chiang might interest you.
Cameron Collins
Does anyone have some nice fantasy with a little girl protag?
Dominic Taylor
The Broken Earth series has little girls as prominent POV characters.
Christopher Mitchell
Who would read more than 6-8 of his books anyway? I doubt anyone will be able to respond tbhq
Easton Taylor
thoughts on clive barker? I like the hellraiser film and thinking of checking him out
Ayden Adams
Books with good plots but shit everything else are very good at being made into movies because the director and the acting add what's misssing, but they make for shit reads. Like Stephen King.
Wyatt Ramirez
>the fact that it's a nobody publishing house Yes because as all know publishers like Tor produce nothing but top quality books said no one ever.
Nathaniel Morgan
Sounds interesting, thanks. There should be more science fiction from the perspective of aliens, without any human involvement at all.
Andrew Perry
I agree but unless you anthropomorphise it's hard to follow. And excessive anthromorphisation just creates a cast of normal humans
David Parker
No, but now I want it. Looks like exquisite dinocore science fiction.
Aiden Miller
>tfw the one-and-done epic fantasy is a lost art and now everything has to be stretched to 500 books
Noah Barnes
The bloat really is annoying.
Zachary Martin
Books in series sell more. The free market strikes again.
Camden Baker
I don't like reading tragic things. Should I read Malazan?
Wyatt Lee
It's much cooler and more satisfying to be able to immerse yourself in a world for 10k+ pages than for just 1k or so. That being said, getting through 10 books can be a bit tedious and difficult at times if you're not a NEET.
Xavier Cook
No, particularly not book 2, 7, and 8, but no character is safe in the Malazan world, and every book is loaded with tragedy.
Nicholas Taylor
Thanks.
Ian Reyes
>It's much cooler and more satisfying to be able to immerse yourself in a world for 10k+ pages than for just 1k or so.
I think that's a dubious claim at best.
Grayson Richardson
I just remembered something. In one of the later Malazan books, Aranict, Brys' atri-ceda and slam piece (I think) meets Quick Ben, and thinks "maybe the 'quick' in his name doesn't refer to his quick wits, but his Quixotic nature"
This tells us two things. One: that Erikson pronounces it "quicks-ote".
Two: Don Quixote is a book in the Letheri Empire.
Jackson Evans
How long did finishing the entire series take you?
Luis Davis
>Epic fantasy >Someone says "For Pete's sale!"
Luis Ramirez
I think I started around the beginning of May, or the end of April, and just finished a week or two ago. Couldn't read much in June though.
Jacob Anderson
I mostly hear "Key-hoe-tay" and "Quick-sotic", including from the same people.
It is very annoying trying to decide how many words with etymological roots in real-world-exclusive concepts one should avoid in a fantasy setting, though. The most egregious can easily be avoided, but at a certain point the vocabulary becomes too limited unless you start inventing replacements and that almost never ends well.
Ian Young
or just don't have characters say "jesus fucking christ" and shit like that no need to go overboard and end up with twenty 2 or 3 letter words
Jeremiah Wood
>idioms can't be translated
Hunter Brown
I don't mean going that far, but for example trying to write a not-renaissance diary and getting carried away with etymonline and ruling out words and terms that originated either from a super-specific literary source, like Quixotic, or that didn't enter use until after the 17th century.
Maybe I'm just autistic...
Logan Roberts
That's pretty fast. Impressive. I started at the beginning of June and I'm not even halfway through the third book because I slagged off and kept playing vidya and doing other shit instead of reading. It's got me a bit worried, especially since uni is soon going to start again.
Austin Murphy
Does anyone have the "Knife of many hands" by R scott Bakker? Someone shared it a while ago... It's from some magazine, can't find it anywhere
Henry Edwards
It's a localization. A translation of a concept from another language/culture/world into something familiar to our world.
Camden Long
Are there some fantasy novels with complex lore and lots of red herrings that give an illusion of near infinite depths? I like stories that I can't wrap my head fully around, like I'm trying to tie a knot that requires 3 hands. Not something that has a nonsensical plot necessarily, but just something that let's you have more questions than answers every time you analyze it. This can both be trash and good, I'd like something that does it well.
Carter Roberts
I spent a few years. Slow reader, usually just for 20 minutes before sleep and not even every night. Studies and other stuff take most of my time, and I don't consider reading to be something I'd do outside of bedtime or travels. Don't remember that at all and I finished the series some months ago...
Juan Rivera
The first three or four Dark Tower books were like that. The last four were quite literally the polar opposite. Never seen a series go from great to shit so quick. You can tell exactly when King got off the coke.
Connor Phillips
Name of The Wind.
Gavin Gutierrez
Some species in the Malazan world are a few hundred thousand years old, and we occasionally get POVs quite a long way back in time, but the main series' events occur over perhaps 10 years. It does contain a lot references to past events, long-gone civilizations, etc. The Kharkanas trilogy is set some tens of thousands of years before the main series.
Wyatt Jenkins
Its in Dust of Dreams.
>"Since then, she'd heard plenty of curses from Ben Adaephon Delat, and had come to conclude that his quickness was less corcerous than quixotic."
Ethan Diaz
BotNS LOTR
Luis Brown
Perditto Street Station and Embassy Town by China Mieville.
Colton Powell
Book of the New Sun
At this point, I'm pretty sure the book changes itself retroactively to fit every request posted in /sffg/.
Henry Edwards
have you ever considered that this gen is mostly filled with BOTNS fans and that people request things with similar aspects for that reason?
Justin Martinez
I'm on a quest to make these jokers to read other shit.
Liam Mitchell
>tfw been here since almost the beginning and still haven't read BOTNS
Christian Jones
>rereading Homer's Odyssey to prop up my Greek lore
Did any science fiction writer ever use this as a basis for their own work, not just referencing but having extended analogies to it, e.g. a protag on a journey home, cyclops (some interesting anthropology at this part, they're anarchists/utopians), lotus eaters (drugs, soma and mass media?) etc etc. It's obviously ripe for cribbing and allusion, but I wanted to know if somebody has transposed the basic story to a space opera, or written something with an Odysseus-like figure.
I'd also like recommendations for greekaboo fantasy lit outside of Gene Wolfe.
Xavier Scott
When the next book comes out, the series beginning with Too Like the Lightning
Brody Cox
>Expected publication: December 5th 2017
Jack James
is dune the greatest sci-fi book of all time?
Anthony Morales
No_
Samuel Ross
It wasn't written by the blessed walrus, so no.
Anthony Cooper
name one (1) book better than Dune
Parker Jenkins
Botns Hyperion Foundation
Ayden Russell
This sucks so hard. First it happened to my Chinese picture-books but now even real books drag on forever for the sake of indefinite sales to neckbeards and autists who think that size=substance (looking at you, Malazan-shitters and Sanderson-fags).
>muh immersion Fuck you, literature is art, not therapy for escaping from your shit life.
Nicholas Hernandez
>Botns >Hyperion >Foundation
I'm actually going to read these just to prove you wrong in my mind