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/lit/ - Literature

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14499540 No.14499540 [Reply] [Original]

Who is the Tolkien of sci-fi?

>> No.14499541

Steven erikson

>> No.14499542
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14499542

>> No.14499544

Mary Shelley

>> No.14499546

>>14499540
probably Isaac Asimov (however you spell his name)

>> No.14499549

>>14499542
Is this even any good? Ive owned it for 2+ years and read the first 20 pages but it doesnt grab me, is it worth it?

>> No.14499550

>>14499540
C.S. Lewis, Space Trilogy

>> No.14499559

>>14499542
is there a book like this but without jews in it? can i find and replace liebowitz with something normal, like smith or something, or will that ruin the book?

>> No.14499630

Asimov or Phil k Dick

>> No.14499668

>>14499549
yes it is very good. one of my favorite books.

>> No.14499669

>>14499540
George Lucas obviously

>> No.14499673

>>14499669
Shit this is a good one

>> No.14499888

>>14499540
gene wolfe

>> No.14499912

Wouldn't it be Herbert?

>> No.14500400

>>14499540
obviously Asimov

>> No.14500455

>>14499559
Leibowitz, a Jew scientist, converts before the book begins you nut

>> No.14500548

>>14499544
literally this

>> No.14500556

>>14499540
Frank Herbert, Dune was to Sci-fi what LotR was to fantasy

>> No.14500564

>>14499540
easily Frank Herbert

>> No.14500566

>>14499546
This

>> No.14500804

>>14499549
It's slow, but worth it all in the end. A bit heavy on the Catholicism, though it's integral to the book. I would recommend trying to finish it.

>> No.14500998

>>14499540
Jules Verne

>> No.14501229 [DELETED] 

>>14499669
star wars is science fantasy

>> No.14501240

>>14499540
Jules Verne

>> No.14501243

i'd say asimov

>> No.14501255

HG WELLS YOU FUCKING MORONS

>> No.14501268

sci fi is pretty bad in comparison to fantasy. asimov couldn't write characters and dialogue, herbert's writing is boring, jules verne wrote for children.

a LOT of genre fiction is a complex world with boring people in it. but the complexity of the world is only in SCALE. if you actually stop to think about it, most of these worlds are just lifted from human history.

i've never seen someone write a city properly - because genre fiction readers never made it popular enough for me to naturally find it on the top lists of anything - but imagine how in reality just a small city, maybe 5000 people, is actually incredibly complex. what all those people are doing, how their economic, leisure and spiritual activity balances itself with a political structure and a legal system and how its enforced. and this is the problem fiction always has, it's just shitty literature for kids. very thin and simple ideas hidden underneath a wall of jargon and undertones of sexism and even fascism.

how often is there sci fi about just a regular person stuck in a world doing normal things, which is what WOULD be the normal situation for all of the unnamed characters. oh you mean to tell me normal people aren't interesting... or you don't have the talent to write them in an interesting way? your perfect mary sue superhero in the making character im supposed to connect with, not the guy selling seedlings in a market stall and worrying about a fox eating his chickens while he's away. or maybe just a spaceship technician who fixes cabling and does spot welding, and he needs to find a way to make some extra money to send back planetside to his wife's family because her parents are going through medical problems.

the reality you'll find with most sci fi is that it's the lowest common denominator stuff. skinny nerds writing themselves as heroes in worlds where nothing makes sense if you perceived the world from a different point of view. now you see the gimmick that pynchon started to cover up this bad writing - just have 12 main characters so the reader doesn't nothing.

>> No.14501276

>>14499540
Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky

>> No.14501308

>>14499540

In what sense? You require an author that

>Is a scientist and understand scientific principles(these... not always align)
> Writes several novels that synthetise several concepts in science and applies it to answer a crippling question of his/her era
> His work is so important that one century later people can only make derivatives

Tolkien had the advantage that writing phantasy puts everyone minor or less in the same time period with the same cultures, in sci-fi the whole point is to never be in the same period and make the most wild assumptions about culture so you have as many space elves as there are insect hiveminds but rarely both, without a common mythos no sci-fi writer can have the same impact as tolkien.

Isaac Asimov made some advances, and Philip K Dick too, but you don't find spacemen nor replicants in the same work just, and maybe, some of the fundamental challenges that they induce in society.

Today, we have written so may sci-fi novels that you might actually see the rise of a Tolkien like character, now people are not actually being original but are consuming and analyzing all the past sci-fi works and throwing as many sci-fi concepts they can into a single world, so you can have your people in ciberbrains inside genetically engineered catgirls which are part of a harem of an AI that manages a nuclear thermal rocket so it can sell their interactions as porn inside the interstellar network , but everything is fine because the non-aggresion principle was never broken since they are not human to start with.

60 years ago it might have been about pleasure spaceships in cyclers, genetically engineered catgirls, AI managed spaceships, an interstellar network as internet, anarchocapitalist societies in space, and artificial humans, with maybe 1 or 2 concepts at the same time but not all of them at the same time, that's why I say you might start to see a Tolkien like because now we have consolidated tropes and concepts that can be played with and used for worldbuilding

>> No.14502405

Frank Herbert in every way, right down to having a son who continued their work. Although Chris respected his father's legacy while Brian was just looking for a cash grab.

>> No.14502418

>>14499540
Frank herbert

>> No.14502428

>>14499540
Asimov is for bugmen. Tolkien had soul, so PKD is the correct answer.

>> No.14502464

Tolkein drew from thousands of years of folklore and mythology. That stuff doesn't happen in sci-fi

>> No.14502494

Lovecraft

>> No.14502508

Jules Verne

>> No.14503613

>>14499559

Leibowitz is a Jewish engineer who converts to Catholicism before the events of the book. The story and the author are very pro-Catholic.

>can I find and replace liebowitz with something normal

Seeing a Jewish name would be so upsetting that you couldn't handle it? You are no better than the SJWs I'm sure you hate.

>> No.14503694

>>14499540
Tolkein had the more complex worldbuilding but Diana Wynne Jones was the better author imo

>> No.14503750

Arthur C Clarke fits the best. Tolkien excelled on so many qualities of a fantasy novel. He had excellent world building, dialogue, action scenes and plot in general, as well as being an easily readable author. Arthur C Clarke almost equals Tolkien in all of these except for the world building. Any choice, whether Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein or the rest, will have someone who wasn't very good at some of the things that Tolkien was miles ahead in. Simply put, he has no equal. He only has authors that are a few pegs below him in quality.

>> No.14503903

>>14502428
PKD is peak bug though
asimov was at least based enough to get surveilled by FBI niggers

>> No.14503958

>>14503903
PKD was also surveilled. Primarily because he kept phoning the authorities to babble. So he brought it on himself. But still...

>> No.14505385

Jack Vance

>> No.14505461

>>14501268
>Verne wrote for children
So did Tolkien

>> No.14505521

>>14499540
Olaf Stapledon is perhaps closest. Was often credited with inventing Sci Fi but, as an abstruse philosophy professor had no idea what it was.

>> No.14505528

>>14503613

Some of us are sick of the "poz" anon. Truly sick of it. If you could see clearly you might well be too.

>> No.14505558

>>14503958
>tfw you're so jealous of another writer that you write a letter to FBI about how he's a commie propaganda

>> No.14505604
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14505604

>>14499540

>> No.14505623

>>14501268
>how often is there sci fi about just a regular person stuck in a world doing normal things, which is what WOULD be the normal situation for all of the unnamed characters. oh you mean to tell me normal people aren't interesting... or you don't have the talent to write them in an interesting way?
I have an idea for a character who gets laid off from a plant where he acts as IT guy for the robot workers, loses his wife, and goes ape and starts using his computer skills to steal info that he can sell and sabotage automated factories.
Would this be of interest to you

>> No.14505640

>>14505558
Well... yeah. Still love the guy, but... yeah....

>> No.14505648

Heinlein

>> No.14505659

>>14499540
I'm reading the Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons right now. It has a lot of the same qualities as The Lord of the Rings. Several protagonists journeying together on a quest of dire consequence. Religious and ethical undertones. Detailed world building. A mysterious, near invincible enemy symbolizing evil and death. Intersperses of poetry. I'm nearly done with the first book of the series, and so far I'm impressed.

>> No.14505670

>>14501268
>how often is there sci fi about just a regular person stuck in a world doing normal things

Literally one of my projects. I'm glad at least one other person wants to read that.

>> No.14505673

>>14505659
I wouldn't put the guy on the same level as Tolkien, though. Just saying that the series has similar qualities to Tolkien's greatest work.

>> No.14505685

Does nu-/lit/ seriously not know Tolkein is celebrated for his influence not his quality of work?

>> No.14505820

>>14505685

Are you still angry none of us like Lucy Ellman?

>> No.14505839

>>14505685
Middling works never become influential. Only great art is imitated.

>> No.14506024

>>14505685
It's the opposite for me. I really hate how influential he was, mostly because his imitators miss the soul of his work, and love the books themselves

>> No.14506038

>>14499540

Cordwainer Smith

>> No.14506063

>>14502464
Robert E Howard did it too, with Bullfinch's mumythology

>> No.14506068

>>14503750
>Heinlein
Is the closest imo. Asimov and Clarke had ideas, but they lacked dialogue and in some cases characters too. Heinlein had these in addition to world building. Neat ideas like laws of robotics I suppose were somewhat lacking, but he did invent military sci-fi pretty much

>> No.14506132

can anyone suggest me scifi titles with metric fucktons and I mean FUCTONS OF ALIENS something akin to star wars or star trek?

>> No.14507498

>>14503613
>You are no better than the SJWs I'm sure you hate.

This oft-repeated sentence should not be taken as a meaningful criticism, but rather taken as code for "we're going to surrender to you and give you whatever you want if you keep complaining," since that is what it means in regards to SJWs.

>> No.14507762

>>14499540

Probably Frank Herbert with the Dune series.

>> No.14507863

>>14499540
There isn't a Tolkien.

If by "Tolkien", you mean someone that wrote a series of books, and because of those books' influence, (intentionally or not) created the general template for fantasy. Most post-Tolkien fantasy literature is partially derived from Tolkien.

Nobody in Sci-Fi came close to creating a dominant template for Sci-Fi literature. The closest might be something like Star Trek, which isn't even literature, but is probably more influential than any series of books. The closest individual book would be Dune. And it's film adaption, Star Wars. (well, kinda). But even Dune doesn't come close.

Of course, there are many writers who wrote many, many books, and had a lot of influence that way. Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, and the big three (Arthur C. Clarke, Heinlein, and Asimov) come to mind.

>>14499559
>This is your brain on /pol/

>>14505528
>Doesn't even know what a "canticle" is
Dude, it's a Catholic song of praise. And they obviously aren't going to be praising some non-Catholic guy, who couldn't even be a saint.

>Sick of the poz
If you are interpreting a Catholic saint, with a Jewish name to be "poz", then maybe the "poz" lives mostly in your interpretation of the world, and less in reality.

>> No.14509087

>>14507863
There are Tolkiens for sub genres within scifi I suppose, PKD for nu wave, Heinlein for military sci-fi, asimov for hard sci fi, etc. There isn't one over all due to sub genres not easily dominating others like in fantasy

>> No.14509146

Sci-fi isn’t a genre

>> No.14509415

>>14509146
Your mom is my genre