/sffg/ - Science Fiction & Fantasy General

[Anonymous No.23794763]

One billion years edition.

>Recommended reading charts. (Look here before asking for vague recs)
https://mega.nz/folder/kj5hWI6J#0cyw0-ZdvZKOJW3fPI6RfQ/folder/4rAmSZxb
>Archive
>>>/lit/?task=search2&search_subject=sffg
>Goodreads
https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1029811-sffg

Previous Thread: >>23782220

[Anonymous No.23794795]

First for my love

[Anonymous No.23794826]

Anons I'm trying to practice my english reading (I'm ESL). Recommend me some /sffg/ books to read. I'm searching for something that thrills me from start to end (if possible), not so easy to read, wroten originally in english, and between 150-250 pages. I have not read much of sffg.
/sffg/ books that I read and liked:
Jules Verne: 20k leagues under the sea, Journey to the center of the earth.
Isaac Asimov: Short stories 1 and 2
H. G. Wells: The time machine
Tolkien: Hobbit, LOTR.

You give me: A book you like that fits my criteria
I give you: A fren that will post its thougths in /sffg/

[Anonymous No.23794828]

Maybe it's too early, but I'm 9 chapters in and this really is not as engrossing as the first book in the series.

[Anonymous No.23794831]

Which book amongst these ones should I pick?

[Anonymous No.23794848]

>>23794826
Michael Moorcock
Fred Saberhagen
Maybe some pulp like The Shadow, Doctor Savage etc, all pretty short books with simple yet engaging prose.

[Anonymous No.23794850]

>>23794826
Piranesi. About 250 pages and standalone.

[Anonymous No.23794851]

>>23794848
>inb4 bakkerfag forgets to takes his meds (again) and starts malding because he hates moorcock (he will write it as moreCOCK because it's really funny) while posting some conan pics

[Anonymous No.23794868]

>>23794795
>hot brown milf
WTF I LOVE SANDERSLOP NOW?1?

[Anonymous No.23794894]

>>23794848
Is this self-conclusive?

[Anonymous No.23794900]

>>23794831
Once and Future King if you really hate the Irish.

[Anonymous No.23794911]

>>23793345
I think most people don't care about the story itself unless the "moral" part unless it touches on something they don't personally like. Necromancy is very divorced from reality and I don't know if it would affect readers so much unless the book itself insists on how horrifying it is, or the character is incredibly affected or the characters manipulated via it are presented in gruesome detail etc. Either way, I find it ridiculous to look for morality plays in literature unless it's specifically geared that way. At most it gets weird if the writer transparently advocates for something like cannibalism, I guess.

[Anonymous No.23794924]

Autumnal fantasy recommendations?

[Anonymous No.23794939]

>>23794826
Problem is you'll be hard pressed to find a genuinely well-written genre novel to actually improve your English. Gene Wolfe will probably be too hard. Maybe something from Vance's Dying Earth?

[Anonymous No.23794958]

>>23794939
I'm another ESL (even third or fourth), and I listened to Vance, Shea and Wolfe as audiobooks. Nifft the Lean was the most difficult, The Shadow of the Torturer was the easiest to understand, Dying Earth in the middle. Maybe it has something to do with narrators, but that's it.

[Anonymous No.23794959]

>>23794900
I couldnt get through once and future king, dropped it after 50 or 60 pages. Shit was written for children

[Anonymous No.23794960]

>>23793345
>Does anyone think that people actually care about the “Moral” of a story or just the story itself?
I mean, it's a part of the story. Problem is people fall into the trap of their own confirmation bias and that clouds their judgement.

[Anonymous No.23795036]

>>23794831
it doesn't matter because you should read all of them at some point

[Anonymous No.23795063]

>>23794826
I am Legend by Richard Matheson
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by PKD

[Anonymous No.23795072]

>>23794826
Zelazny is both gripping and pretty simple to understand. Each book in the Amber Chronicles is about 200 pages.

[Anonymous No.23795097]

>>23794831
conan

[Anonymous No.23795207]

>>23794795
why is everyone in stormlight brown
I thought mormons didn't like darkies

[Anonymous No.23795214]

>>23794958
are you a jeet?

[Anonymous No.23795392]

>>23794763
Where the fuck do you go to find out about NEW releases?

[Anonymous No.23795430]

>>23795214
Nah, a Slav.

[Anonymous No.23795445]

>>23794763
Can someone explain this joke to me I'm from /tv/ and I haven't read a book since 1996.

[None !SFFG.n1h7M No.23795500]

>>23794763
Edges, Inverted Frontier #1 - Linda Nagata (2019)

Edges is the first book in a series and the seventh published book in the setting's universe. The Nanotech Succession setting is similar to Alastair Reynold's Revelation Space series in that the setting is mostly a mosaic of more or less standalone books. Reynolds said on his blog that Nagata's VAST (1998) was one of his inspirations. Despite this being the first novel I've read from Nagata, I've read some of her short fiction, the similarity to Reynolds is obvious. I don't have any doubt that it would be far more so if I read her books that predate Revelation Space. However, Reynolds has been far more commercially successful. I saw a comment on the same blog entry by Nagata that he gave her a sales bump, so there's that. Mutual support and influence between authors is good.

Edges has characters from the previous book, though that seems mostly to have a connection. There are references to prior books, but as far as I could tell they seem to be nostalgic trivia. I don't see that should be any sort of impediment to starting with this book, as I don't believe they have much in common. I admit that I did put off because of this reason. If it wasn't for the suggestion that I read it, who knows when I would've got around to it.

Due to the events of the previous books, some of the characters believe it's possible that they're the last surviving community of humans. What was once most familiar has now become unknown and where they originated is now the frontier, an inversion of the usual. What become of Earth? Does it even still exist? They want to know. Now they have the opportunity to find out, even though it means leaving everything they've known behind forever, including themselves for some of them.

I wasn't expecting this to be a journey novel, but I wasn't disappointed. It isn't a generation ship book because that implies there's more than one generation. The humans in this are able to freely switch between being physical and digital. There's no problems with cold sleep and other methods of dealing with the passage of time. Edges could be described as Greg Egan's Diaspora if it were less science and more fun. This book is basically a thousand year cross-galactic space trip. That makes it seem somewhat more lighthearted and comfy than it is, as their vehicle is an alien spaceship that exclusively has genocide on its mind.

For the vast majority of the book I was ready to give it 3.5 rounded down to 3, but the last quarter or so really livened up the narrative and made several promises of what was to come in the following books. I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt that it'll follow through on them and explore what could be some rather fun and interesting times. I'll be reading more from this series, but it's not a high priority, so not until sometime next year. If I like this series enough I'll read her earlier books in the setting.

Rating: 3.5/5 (4)

[Anonymous No.23795552]

>>23794826

Jack Vance has some really good work and his style's very much that of constant "fix-up" novels in a way so you can can pick up a book, read, and then put it down. He's also notorious for his vocabulary so get a thesaurus.

Other good candidates for improving your english:

>Clifford Simak (old time newsman that wrote SF, the 3rd of the "Grandmasters" of SF), >Asimov/Clarke/Heinlein//Bradbury. The big quartet of the Golden Age that still cast a large shadow. Bradbury's especially good with vocabulary and language.
>Ursula le Guin is also a good rec
>Poul Anderson, Frederick Pohl, Damon Knight, Theodore Sturgeon, Cordwainer Smith, C. M. Kornbluth, L. Sprague de Camp, and Fritz Leiber all utilize language to a greater extent. I've had to google some words on occasion.
>Roger Zelazny is a hell of a prose stylist that really makes you feel a dream sequence style of story. Worth reading to get familiar with more modernist styles.
>Gene Wolfe is heralded as a "writer's writer". Philip Jose Farmer also is called that.
>Joe Haldeman's works are often under 300 pages and he's pretty respected.
>Budrys' Rogue Moon, Clement's MIssion of Gravity, and de Camp's Lest Darkness Fall are all good short novels written by classic old-school writers.
>The Gormenghast books by Peake are good. They are a harder read though.
>Anything by the old Weird Tales pulp mag writers usually winds up being good. I'd say that, for your purposes, Clark Ashton Smith>Lovecraft>Howard.

>Famous Short Fiction SF Writers.
You've got Asimov under your belt. Grab the Science Fiction Hall of Fame trio of books and Dangerous Visions. Look at the Ballentine/Doubleday "Best of [Author]" books too.

Personal recs for short fiction guys:

Fredric Brown, Damon Knight, Robert Sheckley, James Tiptree Jr., John W. Campbell, Murray Leinster, Jerome Bixby, Richard Matheson, Stanley G. Weinbaum, Cordwainer Smith, C. M. Kornbluth, Henry Kuttner, Ray Bradbury, and C. L. Moore.

If you want more, there's lots of good options. John Wyndham, Michael Moorcock, Jack Williamson, Harry Harrison, etc. All have shorter works that fit your criteria.

Hell, Dan Simmons' Hyperion fits your bill since you can treat is as a big fix-up novel.

>>23794831
Forever War if you haven't read that.

>>23795072
Zelazny's great. I don't think anon should start with This Immortal though since that one can filter some people.

[Anonymous No.23795662]

Are there any good fantasy books written by jews? Also please don't bring up the bible

[Anonymous No.23795664]

>>23795662
Quran

[Anonymous No.23795688]

>>23795552
>This Immortal
i read it long time ago and i don't remember well but i think that book is dogshit

[Anonymous No.23795704]

>be Suldrun, princess of Lyonesse
>everyone hates you for not being a boy
>everyone wants to rape you. priests, tutors, dukes, prepubescent boys. everyone.
>imprisoned in an outdoor garden for defying your father's order to marry a rapist spawn of the devil
>but ho! a prince has come to save you
>it all blows up in your face and the prince is presumed killed
>try to hide your resulting pregnancy
>rapist priest rats you out, you try to get the baby to safety
>your only loving figure, an old wet nurse, is tortured nearly to death to reveal location of baby
>you ack yourself on a garden tree because holy shit your life sucks
>but ho! the prince lives! you plead to him from beyond the grave to rescue your baby
>it all blows up in your face and your baby is captured a 2nd time by a fae who was cursed to be raped repeatedly and hates the spawn of her violation and swaps her baby for yours

Jack Vance what the hell are you cooking here

[Anonymous No.23795713]

>>23795704
Is that the entire Lyonesse series or does it continue after that? Thought about reading it but now maybe I won't

[Anonymous No.23795733]

>>23795704
>dude christianity sucks, also here's my rape fantasy every 10 pages
Great stuff

[Anonymous No.23795828]

>>23794763
I fucking love huge doors in fantasy settings, leading to either crypts, cities etc. Would you call that a trope?

[Anonymous No.23795849]

>>23794795
I want her to step on my fabriels if you know what I mean

[Anonymous No.23795985]

>>23794831
Read them all.
>amongst
Your ESL is showing. No one says this.

[Anonymous No.23795986]

>>23795688

it's weirdly written. I read the LoA edition which was the version he originally wrote and not the one that came later. (Call me Conrad was his original title)

[Anonymous No.23796087]

>>23795662
I'm pretty sure the author of The Flight to Oz is a kike, why else would he be praising Israel on every other page and bringing up both Muslims and Nazis as examples of ultimate evil in a story that has nothing to do with them. On the other hand, I'm not sure I would describe that as a good book. But I sort of enjoyed it, the author's severe autism and soapboxing non-withstanding, or partially because of it.
A hard military SF story about a crew of astronauts getting stranded in the literal land of Oz interspersed with weird right-wing zogbot political rants. Probably qualifies as bizarro fiction.

[Anonymous No.23796115]

Post the best/worst slop that you enjoyed
Gundam but American speaks to me on a level prose can never touch

[Anonymous No.23796149]

>>23795828
I'd call it a door, personally

[Anonymous No.23796251]

>>23795500
your """reviews""" are SHIT. fuck off

[Anonymous No.23796264]

any comfy web novel hidden gems?

[Anonymous No.23796273]

>>23796264
I don't do web novels. But there was one posted in the previous thread I've seen talked about here before.

[Anonymous No.23796299]

>>23796264
Even if a webnovel hidden gem existed, an AI slop posting nigger wouldn't have enough IQ to appreciate it.

[Anonymous No.23796302]

>>23796299
Considering that most web novels are written by AI, I think he'll get what he's looking for.

[Anonymous No.23796328]

>>23796264
Zombie Knight Saga and lotm are the only webnovels I like.

[Anonymous No.23796342]

>>23796264
I don't know about comfy, but here's two I found interesting to read through
both have a female MC
Cartaflore
Somewhere Someplace

[Anonymous No.23796480]

>filler worldbuilding
>filler worldbuilding
>filler worldbuilding
>weeping faggot
>filler worldbuilding
>filler worldbuilding
I finally got around to reading the meme book (had it sitting on my shelf for years). I get why people like it but damn it could've been at least two hundred pages shorter.

[Anonymous No.23796505]

>>23795704
man the new covers are ass

[Anonymous No.23796514]

>>23796480
Yes, it is very watered down. The amount of weeping faggot moments will increase til the end of the series (the 7th book).

[Anonymous No.23796517]

>>23796480
I love that cover. I wonder if it's an original work or something edited from a real manuscript.

[Anonymous No.23796593]

>>23796514
I was honestly thought there would be more gay stuff based on these threads lol. What I was not expecting were the long drawn out "prostitute plagued by self-doubt" sections and Bakker's need to constantly remind the reader that there's a lot of tents in the holy war encampment.

>>23796517
When I ordered the book, I thought I was getting that cover but got the dumb one that's just a photo of a guy's face. I was pissed.

[Anonymous No.23796607]

>>23796593
You've only read the first volume, right? So did I. Apparently the really gay stuff comes later, although I wasn't expecting Cnaiur to exist in the first place. Esmenet was dumb as a brick and took too much page time and I was kind of annoyed that the last few chapters got me really hyped for the following volume I'm never going to read anyway.

[Anonymous No.23796665]

any ideas for nudging someone away from schlocky female YA/literotica style fantasy, ie. maas and shit? my initial thoughts were le guin, but i haven't read fantasy in quite some time and her books might come across as too "old" or boring maybe. susanna clarke? i really enjoyed piranesi but it's lacking in fantasy tropes and is perhaps too abstract. there has to be some contemporary female fantasy that leans towards the literary side of the genre, without losing all the trappings, surely?

[Anonymous No.23796693]

>>23796665
Spinning Silver

[Anonymous No.23796721]

>>23796665
Le Guin, just tell her she's a feminist icon

[Anonymous No.23796724]

>>23796665
The Curse of Chalion

[Anonymous No.23796816]

I feel the urge to get this fancy illustrated omnibus of Earthsea. The only Earthsea book I read was the Tombs of Atuan back when I was a kid, but you know Earthsea is a classic I should read regardless. I wonder if I should get the version in my language or pay twice more for the original English one. Dunno about the quality of the translation.

[Anonymous No.23796880]

>>23796665
The Fractal Prince is more or less centered around a lesbian and it sounds like what you want maybe. i didn't like it much, it's the worst of the triology in my opinion but maybe for that reason a girl would like it better

i would also say leguin but she will probably get bored

>>23796816
i bought that to my sister for her birthday, i read half of it myself and desu i don't remember any of the ilustrations. but it's good to have all the books in one place. it's the spanish version

[Anonymous No.23796894]

>>23796880
>centered around a lesbian
actually now i remember that's one of the main plots but the other is even worse, it's follows a princess diplomat or something and it's even more boring and dumb

[Anonymous No.23797131]

>>23795207
>why is everyone in stormlight brown
it was literally just to pick something different
>hmmm... most fantasy written by ethnically-European writers, based on European culture, history, and myths, has mostly or entirely European characters
>welll... what if mine DIDN'T?!?!?!
>it's a fantasy world, so it could be AnYtHiNg!
>so what if I picked something random and unexpected just to be random and unexpected?

>I thought mormons didn't like darkies
Mormons today are almost all infected with the same kind of boomer mindset that sees a bunch of white people somewhere and legitimately thinks that it's a problem or a shortcoming of some kind
they like white people well enough when there's zero pressure on them
but if they know that their reactions are being closely watched by others, whom they have an obsequious boomer need to gain the approval of, then just watch how quickly they start throwing in random quirky foreign elements and brown people and even more female characters

[Anonymous No.23797245]

>>23797131
>Being this schizo unironically
Time to kill yourself?

[Anonymous No.23797305]

>>23797245

[Anonymous No.23797391]

This is killing me. There's a series of novels which involve I believe a female protagonist (but it might have been a shared lead between a man and a woman) that are basically romance fantasy. My memory of this is that the books are relatively "old" meaning they're not from the 2010s and might not even be from the 2000s. I think there are two or maybe even three 'sets' or 'cycles' in the series not necessarily all set in the same time with the same characters.

There was some decently convoluted worldbuilding that to my memory involved something like but not necessarily angelic lineage or reincarnation or something along those lines. The overall plot was about a war between light and dark that needed to be prevented. I want to say that the series had something to do with fire as well, either the main character had it as a power or it was one of the titles in the series or something.

I want to say that I understood it to be fairly well known in the genre, but maybe I completely made that up.

Does anything about any of this sound familiar to anyone or am I just schizobabbling?

[Anonymous No.23797402]

>>23797305
You should kill yourself NOW!

[Anonymous No.23797423]

>>23797131
>hmmm... most fantasy written by ethnically-European writers, based on European culture, history, and myths, has mostly or entirely European characters
??
this would only be relevant if an author was trying to write fantasy based on European culture or myths, and Stormlight is explicitly not.
it's not earth. it's on a planet where all the continents are clustered around the equator and southern hemisphere. it'd be weird if there weren't a ton of brown people.
in Mistborn it's the opposite because ash has blocked most of the sun for 1000 years so the darkest you get is a grayish tan
he's not a great writer

[Anonymous No.23797447]

Just finished pic related, the third book I've read by Cherryh. 90% of the text is the anxious inner monologues of the characters, and the rest is Top Gun overlaid with a bad mystery. Why did Cherryh get so much praise? Was it just because she was active in the sf convention circuit?

>>23794894
That book is a standalone collection of short stories, but there are other books in the same setting.

[Anonymous No.23797458]

>>23797447
I tried reading Cyteen and couldn't.

[Anonymous No.23797492]

>>23797447
>>23797458
I read cyteen and its sequel regenesis years ago, and really enjoyed both. In retrospect, I have the very positive impression they felt to be meditatively engaging reads.

[Anonymous No.23797508]

>>23795662
https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/290/why-there-is-no-jewish-narnia/
Basically there's Gaiman (who is a Mischling like myself) and maybe Grossman, and then the bench starts wearing out.

[Anonymous No.23797513]

>>23794981
not to be pedantic but i didnt find it to be that hard to understand really
i mean i guess it could be bruteforce, in the start i had to look up A LOT but with exposure the meanings got ingrained in my mind.
It was literally all i did to learn to read, to this day i didnt touch a book of grammar nor did try to work on my pronunciation.
I probably should start working on both though, since i want to start writing as a hobby
it helps that english is pretty close to portuguese

[Anonymous No.23797525]

>>23795662
Robert Silverberg

[Anonymous No.23797587]

>>23794763
My review of Foundation

[Anonymous No.23797590]

My review of Foundation

[Anonymous No.23797610]

>>23796607
>I wasn't expecting Cnaiur to exist in the first place
Yeah, I only read the first volume. I also was not expecting the middle of the book to be centered around Not-Conan being super mad about a guy using his 9000 IQ to trick him into gay sex and killing his dad. I liked all the mysterious evil lurking in the shadows parts, but it seemed a little anti-climatic at the end, even for a book that's just set up for the rest of the series.

[Anonymous No.23797632]

>>23797423
>and Stormlight is explicitly not
but why isn't it
this was the point of the question that you completely missed

[Anonymous No.23797649]

>>23797590
Accurate. Although it gets better when Mallow really leans into being the asshole.
The Bel Riose / Cleon II arc, which is collected in the book "Foundation's Edge", delivers on the promise of "what I expected".
As far as the Mule, that's where you can probably quit and go read "Dune" instead.

[Anonymous No.23797652]

>>23797632
your premise that fantasy means something based on European culture etc. is bizarre and flawed.
it only becomes a subversion of expectation (eg., your question) if there is an expectation, but there isn't

[Anonymous No.23797746]

>there's zero expectation for a white guy from Utah writing in English to write fantasy that draws from European history, culture, folklore, and people
ah, I see we're dealing with dishonest retards here

[Anonymous No.23797930]

bravo erikson. he still has it.

[Anonymous No.23798000]

>>23797930
>malazan

[Anonymous No.23798046]

>>23798000
Coltaine is that man. Raraku's oasis

[Anonymous No.23798184]

Is there any contemporary fantasy that actually plays it straight without any of le heckin subversion tropes? The only contemporary authors I've read that did not have this plague is Tad Williams (his new Last King of Osten Ard series) and Piranesi.

[Anonymous No.23798201]

>>23798184
>Piranesi
>not subversive

[Anonymous No.23798205]

>>23795704
>ogre captures a redhead loli
>drinks a potion that shrinks himself to her size
>plaps her all night long
i admit, i got a boner

[Anonymous No.23798255]

>>23798205
>redhead loli
any other books with that feel?

[Anonymous No.23798275]

Why are fantasy books not very interested in religion excluding Tolkien while scifi books are all mostly about religion?

[Anonymous No.23798283]

>>23798275
Escapism is a big part of fantasy while research, theoreticals and the exploration of concepts is a big part of sci fi

[Anonymous No.23798291]

I just read Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany, a pretty cool book. You can see how the concept of 'language as a weapon' influenced Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson and Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang. It wasn't as unique and entrancing as Delany's Dhalgren though, and it has the quality I notice in a lot of mid 20th century sci fi where it's like they hit their target page count then just abruptly wrap everything up so it can be sent to the publisher and they can get paid.

[Anonymous No.23798292]

>>23798275
I would put it down to religion as reality vs religion as philosophy. In fantasy, God is someone you can physically go and touch, there's an objectivity to not only the existence of God but your interactions with God. God is physical. In science fiction, God has the same manner of existence as he does in our world, whatever interaction you may or may not be happening is personal and cerebral. God is spiritual.

[Anonymous No.23798334]

>>23798255

[Anonymous No.23798452]

>>23796665
The baker's boy

[Anonymous No.23798455]

>>23797447
Hellburner is great, filtered. The only criticism I have is that a) it's basically a retread of Heavy Time and b) the conflict resolution is too tilted towards deus ex machina (albeit occurring about two-thirds of the way through the novel) in both cases.

[Anonymous No.23798469]

>>23798275
Which two or three scifi books have you read if that's your take? The only ones I remember that were explicitly about religion were Dune and Stranger in a Strange Land and that pulp space series by the writeguy of Narnia.

[Anonymous No.23798485]

>>23798469
>The only ones I remember that were explicitly about religion
The Lord of light, Hyperion, anything war hammer or Valis. Religion tends to be an important theme in sci fi while most fantasy tends to skip it all together

[Anonymous No.23798496]

>>23798275
Bakker has a plenty of religion.

D&D Clerics have religion

A Feast for Crows has.

[Anonymous No.23798508]

>>23798485
A handful of books and fucking warhammer is not "all mostly"
In the meanwhile most fantasy is based on mythology, most of which is just old pagan faith.

[Anonymous No.23798518]

>>23798508
>old pagan faith
That's also religion ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Anonymous No.23798521]

>>23798508
>all mostly
I said on top of my mind. I can guarantee you that I can pick any sci fi book and religion is a recurring theme even in books like foundation
>most fantasy is based on mythology
That is thematic, religious themes in themselves are usually secondary or aesthetic

[Anonymous No.23798539]

>>23798521
>That is thematic, religious themes in themselves are usually secondary or aesthetic
What's the difference? If someone wrote about a thinly veiled Jesus running around having mundane adventures in Jerusalem with no mention of God, wouldn't it still be classified as religiously themed?

[Anonymous No.23798548]

>>23798539
>What's the difference?
One explores concepts about religion and its role in society, the other slaps a priest costume to a mage. It is a pretty sizeable difference

[Anonymous No.23798552]

>>23798548
The role of religion IS all about wearing robes and mumbling spells and larping it has some effect. There is no difference.

[Anonymous No.23798564]

>>23798552
>The role of religion IS all about wearing robes and mumbling spells and larping it has some effect. There is no difference.
Shit take, opinion discarded

[Anonymous No.23798587]

>>23798334
Heinlein really liked redheads almost as much as Philip k Dick liked jewish women with big breasts

[Anonymous No.23798593]

>>23798455
Cherryh filters most anons, that's the proof it's good

[Anonymous No.23798603]

>>23798593
What a terrible heuristic.

[Anonymous No.23798627]

>>23798291
>Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany
I read this many years ago. It was a fine book but since then I only remember some parts of it. Something I recall is the club where the protagonist looked for crew for the spaceship. How it was filled with all kind of purposely mutated humans. Like the pilot or captain they hired was this guy who transformed himself into lion (more closer to an actual animal than anthro iirc). On the ships there were also like three "ghosts" that worked as navigators or pilots. I also remember that there were like a couple spacefaring aliens species known to humans but because they were so alien it was impossible to translate their languages. I thought that was interesting. But I have to agree with you about the ending because I don't remember anything after the big revelation. I don't think there was some kind of climax. It just kinda ended.

[Anonymous No.23798672]

>>23794831
>>23795097
I've recently finished Conan, and really I would not recommend any complete collection. The quality really jumps up and down, with numerous really cool stories interspersed with copypasted zineslop that Howard obviously purely clock-punched in.

[Anonymous No.23798674]

>>23794826
Going to second Jack Vance. Most of his books are < 300 pages, there's minimal filler and his vocabulary was impressive. He also also partial to contriving his own words occasionally so you can also get the practice of trying to figure out what a word might mean purely from context.

[Anonymous No.23798679]

>>23797447
>Was it just because she was active in the sf convention circuit?
Correct.

[Anonymous No.23798688]

>>23798627
I remember the way replicators could produce any cordon bleu gourmet meal you wanted so that a cheeseburger cooked by hand was paradoxically a much more rare and exclusive meal

[Anonymous No.23798692]

Holy shit, i how did i forget what a slog this book is. Decided to reread the whole thing since a new book is supposedly coming out soon. It a lot better in my memory than it actually is, 60% of the book is background description with barely anything going on, good damn, even wot is less of a slog than this.

[Anonymous No.23798815]

Is hyperion written by a right wing religious zealot conservative? It is really offputting lads

[Anonymous No.23798832]

>>23798815
Simmons is a chud, steer clear

[Anonymous No.23798836]

>>23798815
wtf? picked up

[Anonymous No.23798835]

You guys should stop everything and read Cradle instead.

[Anonymous No.23798839]

>>23798835
why

[Anonymous No.23798901]

Wow Simmons hates muslims? WTF I will never read anything from that bigot again

[Anonymous No.23799281]

>>23798901
Baste

[Anonymous No.23799303]

>>23798901
Based

[Anonymous No.23799318]

>>23798692
Huh, funny enough I randomly searched JV Jones last night because a long time ago I saw his books and thought they looked like comfy 90s fantasy kino. Is it just that book that's a slog? is it still worth reading him?

[Anonymous No.23799334]

>>23798201
When I say heckin subversive I mean Marvel-tier audience winks like
>Wow you're such a hero, bro. *winks*
>morally good hero is actually... LE BAD!
>Le female ass kicker is actually perfection
>what if Gandalf but le bad?

Piranesi is dream-like at its worst and that's regarding the world itself. The rest of the story is essentially an amnesia mystery with its many suspects, villains, hidden memories, etc.

[Anonymous No.23799363]

>>23794831
Once and Future king is SHIT. Terrible. Go with Gormenghast or Conan I guess.

[Anonymous No.23799367]

>>23799318
>his
The author is a woman. The first two books are honestly better, they had a pretty clear goal and were better paced. They're not really comfy, the world is depressing and cold, and shit is only going to get worse. There are multiple povs, but the 'main' guy constantly gets shit on. I think they're a decent read, though they were a lot better in my memory

[Anonymous No.23799370]

>>23799363
I couldnt get through the first part, heard the writing gets a lot more mature, but i dont feel like skipping or reading until i get to that point.

[Anonymous No.23799408]

I think that the reason cyberpunk hasn't worked since about 1995 is that things are made just to be cyberpunk, rather than because they have anything to say that requires the trappings of that genre. I had this thought while I was in the book store yesterday and saw a novel based on the anime based on the video game based on the tabletop game Cyberpunk 2077. Trash. It also made me think of The Difference Engine, and the fundamental failure of steampunk to ever get off the ground is that despite being set in a pseudo-Victorian world with steam engines rather than computers is that The Difference Engine is still a cyberpunk work as it's about a singularity. I reckon that was really Sterling and Gibson's intent, but what they spawned - like what Neuromancer spawned about a decade before - was a generation of failed readers that hacks that could only copy aesthetics and create pulpy trash instead of having anything worth saying and, therefore, worth reading, to push science fiction as whole forward.
Thanks for reading my pretentious post. I think the point of it was to explain why, for years, the only recently released book to gain any traction has been The Darkness That Came Before. Love it or hate it, and whether it was worth saying, Bakker still had something to say when he wrote those books. He wasn't simply writing genre fiction for its own sake. I think that's why the genre, and therefore this general, is dead.

[Anonymous No.23799465]

>>23799408
>saw a novel based on the anime based on the video game based on the tabletop game Cyberpunk 2077
Best start believing in nightmare corporate dystopias... You're in one!

[Anonymous No.23799485]

>>23799465
heh

[Anonymous No.23799562]

>>23798184
>Is there any contemporary fantasy that actually plays it straight without any of le heckin subversion tropes?
no because that would be boring to modern audience. same audience that, mind you, hasn't even read the classics let alone more of genre literature so those old and tired cliches would actually become boring to them.

[Anonymous No.23799578]

>>23798901
I've read the Hyperion Cantos and The Terror
And I just think it's neat that in both stories a middle-aged white man fucks the ever loving shit out of a 18-20 year old brown girl

[Anonymous No.23799600]

>>23799408
>to push science fiction as whole forward
No one likes thought experiments anymore because all they tell us is that the government sucks and we can't do anything about it

[Anonymous No.23799611]

>>23798815
Hyperion and the sequel are massively anti-christian. Still good science fiction tho

[Anonymous No.23799649]

>>23799611
no it isn't. it has some things to say about the Simmon's (who is Catholic) fears of what the church could become if they focus on the wrong things
it flirts with some provocative ideas about the origins of Christianity and humanity's urge for religion, but ultimately concludes "does it matter? does it change anything about the message or faith or good ideas?" and the answer is a firm "no"

[Anonymous No.23799665]

>keanu reeves
>china mieville
has anyone read this shit?

[Anonymous No.23799731]

Read Sharp Ends by Joe Abercrombie. Thought it would be good after the slop that was Red Country, he peaked at Best Served Cold and was in a steady decline but fuck me...what is this?
>Javre and Shev
Utter shit
>Gloktawank
Good
>Logenrape
Cool I guess but I feel like the unreliable narrator wasnt that bad to justify him being like he was but its still belivable
>Craw
Pointless and dont rly like him anyway
I just wanted to say again Red Country is shit too what a rape of Cosca's character
Is Age Of Madness any good or do I move on from this?

[Anonymous No.23799748]

>>23798815
>Be more on the conservative side
>Have to constantly endure newer sci fi being very far left all the time, but endure I do because even with the eye rolling shit about white men being bad/women being good and better leaders somehow there are at least good stories too
>This little retard can't deal with one book being written by someone he doesn't agree with politically
It annoys me that people like this exist out there. But then again at least he's been spared from the Endymion books by doing this. How you go from a great sci fi world to some annoying preachy thing is anyones guess.

[Anonymous No.23799757]

>>23799748
>Simmons is religious/conservative
Finally, a reason to read litrpg slop

[Anonymous No.23799775]

>>23799611
>massively anti-christian.
How do you arrive to this conclusion? Father Duré is arguably the most sympathetic character so far with Sol. I haven't finished FoH yet and haven't touched Endymion but Simmons seems knowledgeable about catholicism and he uses it to oppose a vapid useless religion like Zen Gnosticism

[Anonymous No.23799779]

What is your guilty pleasure sci-fi/fantasy, anons?
I've been going through the "Bobiverse" books lately, and while they're pretty much Reddit incarnate I like the concept too much.
>21st century guy dies, is frozen and his mind is made into a template for a series of Von Neumann probes
>Goes about a bunch of adventures and getting more advanced and weirder as time marches on
>Is basically a civilization of himself by the end of the third book
>Is a moron obsessed with sci-fi so keeps trying to make his VR avatars Star Trek shit while exploring
It's kind of dumb how he Tony Starks up a bunch of crazy super tech while out on his own though, and it's convenient how all the aliens are roughly around our level of tech to the stone age too.

[Anonymous No.23799781]

>>23798815
I generally find it bizarre when people are unable to look at the work on its own merits. It doesn't have to in any way reflect modern day morality or ethos. Just because there's racism in a novel and you like the said novel, it doesn't mean you're a racist. Some genuinely seem incapable of grasping that separating step.

[Anonymous No.23799789]

>>23799775
I'd say Father De Soya is pretty sympathetic in Endymion. The church want to kidnap and likely murder a young girl just because she's a vague threat, and while he's been sent after her he always tried to find the most peaceful and "good" way of accomplishing his tasks. He's pretty much there to show that the insane cruciform infected church isn't completely overrun with monsters.

[Anonymous No.23799806]

>>23799731
>Is Age Of Madness any good or do I move on from this?
You already read 6 and half books, whats 3 more. Personally i didnt like it, most of the characters are unlikable cunts, girl bossing and mary suing dailed up a bit from bsc and red country and the biggest thing that annoyed me personally, it dropped plot points from previous books, just resolved them off screen

[Anonymous No.23799811]

>>23799806
I might just reread BSC it was that good. Or maybe Glokta chapters in BTAH.

[Anonymous No.23799814]

>>23795704
It all works out eventually. Just wait til you get to the wizard duels.

[Anonymous No.23799817]

>>23799779
First three Artemis Fowl books.

[Anonymous No.23799829]

>>23799600
This is the real reason cyberpunk fell off. It resembles the present day too much, and it makes people depressed.

[Anonymous No.23799833]

>>23798275
>interested in religion
That's a strange way to put it. There are plenty of Fantasy books that feature religion prominently in the story, but as to being "interested in religion", as in trying to explore religious themes, that's not really what fantasy is about.

[Anonymous No.23799838]

>>23796816
I have the 1970s watercolor editions of Earthsea, but I also bought this illustrated volume because it is very pretty to look at.

[Anonymous No.23799840]

>>23799833
There's also the fact that fantasy settings should normally have their own religions and myths. Focusing on real world religions in some of these settings would be weird and kind of boring.

[Anonymous No.23799850]

>>23796665
I think she (I'm assuming it's a woman) would be more receptive to female authors. So I'd recommend her Trudi Canavan's Black Magician Trilogy, which is YA-adjacent, but without a lot of the shlocky romance and teen drama shit. It'd be a good way to ease her into more traditional fantasy. If she does read it, and likes it, recommend her Godspeaker trilogy by Karen Miller, which is straight up epic fantasy, but with some soap opera-esque melodrama woven into it that she'd probably enjoy.

[Anonymous No.23799852]

>>23799840
>There's also the fact that fantasy settings should normally have their own religions and myths.
That's true of high fantasy, but not low fantasy. A lot of low fantasy actually deals with real world religious apocrypha and legends.

[Anonymous No.23799979]

>>23799665
What the fuck. Keanu Reeves writes?

[Anonymous No.23799988]

>>23797930
I fucking hate this style of cover art so much. I'd rather it were just one solid color and nothing else, even that would be better.

[Anonymous No.23800020]

>>23799988
Blame Romantasy trash for it, the readership for that crap eats up covers like this and they buy books an order of magnitude more than epic fantasy readers these days.

[Anonymous No.23800042]

>>23799988
Give me the Czech cover any day.

[Anonymous No.23800051]

>>23800042
Fuck that looks nice. Why can't we have nice things like that over here?

[Anonymous No.23800065]

>>23800042
I'm not sure if they've re-published the entire series yet, but they apparently had plans to do them all with these new covers.

[Anonymous No.23800128]

>>23797391
Deverry cycle, Katherine Kerr

[Anonymous No.23800146]

>>23798275
Sci-fi writers are often trying to make commentary on the human condition, where society is going, the nature of reality, etc. The genre was created during an era when religious life was disintegrating and society no longer had any religious consensus, so naturally spiritual questions were a big deal for anyone looking to explore deep truths. Fantasy writers by contrast were mostly just writing escapism.

[Anonymous No.23800201]

>>23799979
He has an entire comic book series that he writes.

[Anonymous No.23800203]

[Anonymous No.23800309]

Is there any reasonable point to read de Camp and Carter's works about Conan or those are solely for fans? Maybe a couple of the best of them? Name the best if you read.

[Anonymous No.23800370]

>>23796149
When is a door not a door...when its a window

[Anonymous No.23800378]

>>23800370
either that or a skylight

[Anonymous No.23800382]

How do we feel about the works of Brian Lumley here? I'm eyeing Necroscope as the next fantasy/scifi/horror book to pick up and read.

[Anonymous No.23800398]

>>23798255
the powder mage trilogy, I fail to see the importance of making the sidekick a redhead loli (literally mentioned how she looks younger than she is) other than the author being a coomer

[Anonymous No.23800399]

>>23800042
>>23800065
Damn. I hate the U.S. market so much, dude. Ass ugly covers all around. Is there actual statistical proof that covers with a human posing on it sell more than kino book covers?

[Anonymous No.23800426]

Any news on this gentleman?

This is my monthly post asking about his whereabouts

[Anonymous No.23800429]

Does anyone know any SF (or fantasy if something similar exists, why not) books where robots have their own planets/societies?

[Anonymous No.23800452]

Okay, I read the blurb and some reviews. Apparently this guy is living alone in the woods and then starts brewing beer, then a female gobbo moves in. Does he fuck her? I mean, if you were living alone for 10 years without the touch of another, you got to be pretty pent up, right?

[Anonymous No.23800454]

>>23800399
Women buy more books than men, so your question is basically "do women have bad taste?"

[Anonymous No.23800458]

>>23800452
>Okay, I read the blurb and some reviews. Apparently this guy is living alone in the woods and then starts brewing beer, then a female
Stopped reading there.

[Anonymous No.23800471]

>>23800458
You want gay gobbo sex?

[Anonymous No.23800477]

>>23800471
I want no sex gay or straight

[Anonymous No.23800480]

>>23800452
>goblins
Overrated

[Anonymous No.23800518]

>>23800042
Holy shit that is so much better. And you can actually tell what it's depicting. The Teblor/karsa, the flood, the mountains.
All important and major parts of the book

[Anonymous No.23800531]

>>23800426
He's busy fucking your mom.

[Anonymous No.23800551]

>>23798901
Does he hate muslims or islam? I love muslimas

[Anonymous No.23800576]

>>23800551
ew

[Anonymous No.23800606]

>>23799781
I really couldn't care less if there's 3 gay couples in every book.
But rather than feeling like they're being inclusive it usually comes off as a marketing tactic to bring in the kind of idiots who aren't likely to criticize anything.

[Anonymous No.23800632]

>>23800606
Every character in a story is a deliberate choice by the author to promote a worldview. No character is gay unless you are deliberately promoting homosexuality, unless of course the character's sexual predilections are a flaw that the author is emphasizing.

[Anonymous No.23800634]

I think CRADLE SUCKS!
Two books in and I feel like the MC hasn't earned anything and is just being dragged along the story. I'm tapping out

[Anonymous No.23800658]

>>23800378
a skylight is a window at a funny angle

[Anonymous No.23800687]

>>23800634
he cute

[Anonymous No.23800806]

>>23794763
Bakker is unironically good. Don't let the cheesy names and lore exposition in the intro stop you from reading his masterpiece

[Anonymous No.23800821]

>autistic faggot doesnt realize that forcing something constantly only makes people not want that thing more
Ill never read anything bakker writes, if retards like you cling to it

[Anonymous No.23800834]

>>23800821
I'm not the bakker poster, I just came here to admit he was right

[Anonymous No.23800836]

>>23800834
based

[Anonymous No.23800894]

>>23794826
Asimov's The Naked Sun was a favorite from the outset, but I particularly admire and enjoy his Foundation and Earth, where science fiction analogues of suburbia and exurbia--Aurora and Solaria--are revisited 20.000 years hence, with weird and vivid results from the comfort of a sensationally high-technology yacht, of sorts, and a witty chick with with galactic scale superpowers. About as fun when it comes to authorial license is Niven's Ringworld, particularly his Puppeteers, an alien species so vividly imagined, in detail, that no cinematic team, on whatever budget, could do them justice. As for The Time Machine, I'll never tire of it, and regard it as top canon material.

[Anonymous No.23800900]

>>23800821
You're missing out on gay kino

[Anonymous No.23800937]

>>23800821
(unironically) based psychological reactance poster

[Anonymous No.23800968]

>>23800834
Yes, we know, bakkertard. You make this exact post at least twice a day.

[Anonymous No.23801022]

>>23800821
I saw someone post a paragraph from one of his books and I can tell you you're not missing out. The prose was abysmal.

[Anonymous No.23801210]

>>23800128
This could be it but it doesn't quite seem right. I'd have to read it to see. Closest I've found so far though thanks. It might help point me in the right direction.

[Anonymous No.23801339]

>>23800042
it's not fair

[Anonymous No.23801485]

>>23796665
not really sffg but interview with the vampire

[Anonymous No.23801581]

>>23800426
Last anyone heard, he was busy being depressed teaching the Canadian equivalent of community college, trying to kick an addiction to pain pills, and screeching most furiously about Trump. His publisher dumped him after TUC came out, and made sure that other publishers were made aware of his unprofessional behavior regarding fulfilling his contracts and trying to astroturf a fanbase.

[Anonymous No.23801615]

>>23801581
>His publisher dumped him after TUC came out, and made sure that other publishers were made aware of his unprofessional behavior regarding fulfilling his contracts and trying to astroturf a fanbase.
OOF

[Anonymous No.23801616]

>>23799665
sequel to BRZRKR comics?

[Anonymous No.23801629]

>>23801581
>unprofessional behavior regarding fulfilling his contracts and trying to astroturf a fanbase.
QRD?

[Anonymous No.23801647]

>>23796264
I've really liked Wander West in Shadow on Royal Road. The author also recently started writing again and will start writing the next book after this short story he's working on.
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/39018/wander-west-in-shadow

[Anonymous No.23801648]

what differentiates fantasy from regular fiction?

[Anonymous No.23801675]

>>23801581
>the Bakker poster is actually Bakker himself and his publisher found out and got him black balled from the industry for it

[Anonymous No.23801704]

>>23800429
Why would robots live on a planet when they can just create their own world's through simulations anon? Hyperintelligent concious AI's would probably give 0 shits about the outside world and just engage with mental games that are way more interesting than the real world

[Anonymous No.23801722]

>>23801704
You must have been so powerful. You will be powerful again

[Anonymous No.23801739]

>>23800382
Horrorkino, his works filter the average horror fan because Lumley likes to write competent protagonists, usually they will have some kind of power and/or weapon that gives them leverage to fight the monster. He said Robert Howard and Lovecraft where his main influence and you can clearly see other pulp influences like Fritz Leiber and Ashton Smith

[Anonymous No.23801749]

>>23801648
dragons and bikini armor

[Anonymous No.23801756]

>>23800454
Good point. That settles it, actually

[Anonymous No.23801806]

>>23801616
Not them, but thanks for this post. Just read BRZRKR because your attached looked so good. Lit on the earliest civilizations are my favorites of the historical (fiction) reads. Completely unexpected, and very good.

[Anonymous No.23802025]

TFW reading a web-novel, then author bludgeons you with
>“Asha, Asha Lordanou. She and her pronouns.”
line

[Anonymous No.23802043]

>>23800051
>>23800399
>>23801339
Women are most readers now, and they usually like ornate intricate patterns in everything so that may be one reason.
Janny Wurtz gave some more, which I found interesting :

I have a lot of range of experience here.

When I started painting cover art (and when my husband did) - the USA did full range portrait or figure style art. The UK tended to do landscapes - all painted. Digital art did not exist then.

The reasons given for this difference was market...UK, where life was more crowded, they claimed readers wanted to feel the other worldliness as an open landscape maybe with a castle or tiny figure.

The USA readers wanted to see character based.

Then one editor (Jane Johnson) shifted the metric - wanting to put Fantasy into a more 'adult' look - since many readers (she said) were tearing off the covers so that others wouldn't see them reading in the genre...so she struck off in a new direction to make the books 'appeal' to a more adult audience, since so many books were not for younger readers anyway.

Then came digital art...and one publisher in the USA threw everything upside down...suddenly they realized they did not have to PAY for an artist at all. They could hire a design firm to do a simple cover design mostly based on typography - and use in house people doing photoshop (and therefore saving anywhere from 3000/7000 bucks per cover) to mere hundreds.

The design firm cover became 'the thing' and the photoshop cover also...remember all the 'figure in cloak with sword' books or the 'blue on black' or 'red on black' designs - you could even see the same figure swiped digitally over and over again.

That moved into a little more sophisticated art - still design firm oriented - where you got 'icon' on background plus typography....way cheaper, and way faster to produce. Some former cover artists did this stuff by the multiples.

Now you have the 'tapestry' style cover - a pretty design on a plain background with typography. - ditto...often this approach for books written by women.

It is all down to cost/bottom line....whether it makes the books more 'adult' in appeal or whether it makes everything look the same - I find the lack of atmosphere and originality terrifying.

And yes: the 'we don't need more than a thumbnail image' for the ebook played into it also. Algorithim sells books, not so much cover design.

There are exceptions to all of the above, and I expect, the next huge loss in the richness of originality will be AI, and I don't want to hear the argument/art made by machine that regurgitates art that was created - does not open new ideas or make Anything new.

Creativity has already suffered from cost of living, the swallowing of lives into the world of corporate jobs, and the bottom line of monetization at the expense of venturing into the creative unknown.

Michael Whelan lately announced he had done his last commercial cover painting. There is the loss, right in front of you.

[Anonymous No.23802077]

>>23800429
ware tetralogy by rudy rucker
the cyberiad by stanislaw lem

[Anonymous No.23802082]

Yeah so its basically just relationship slop for women mixed with a cuck fantasy

[Anonymous No.23802120]

>>23801581
>trying to astroturf a fanbase
Damn, his publishers browse /lit/?

[Anonymous No.23802132]

Finished this and I loved it. Should I read his other two books as well?

Can't wait for the Gosling-kino adaptation.

[Anonymous No.23802152]

>>23802132
>>>reddit

[Anonymous No.23802190]

>>23802043
>Algorithim sells books, not so much cover design.
i remember when goodreads used to recommend you actual similar books to the ones you had in your shelves, similar publication years, genre, cover-art etc now regardless of what you read it will recommend you horrible self-published amazon slop published in the last 4 years. it's disgusting.

[Anonymous No.23802297]

Love Best Served Cold. Any other low fantasies like it?

[Anonymous No.23802303]

>>23802297
Everything else joe wrote?

[Anonymous No.23802308]

>>23802303
I assumed that went without saying that I have read all of his stuff.

[Anonymous No.23802347]

>>23802308
Have you read the rigante series? It has some light mysticism though that gets dailed up as the series progresses

[Anonymous No.23802607]

Anybody here read much Warhammer 40,000 stuff? I'm looking for something that goes in-depth in regards to the Tyranids.

[Anonymous No.23802694]

>>23797391
>>23800128
>>23801210
Okay I worked out what I was thinking of, I think, but I have a feeling I might have blurred a bunch of things together which is why it sounds like a few different things. I was thinking of the Symphony of Ages series.

[Anonymous No.23802823]

>>23801806

[Anonymous No.23802877]

>>23802694
>Symphony of Ages
I see goodreads had Kerrs books as a "you might also like" suggestion.

Glad you killed that brainworm.

[Anonymous No.23802884]

I am about to finish Fall of Hyperion and the next book I have on my table are the sequels of Foundation which right now fell totally underwhelming compared to the Hyperion universe.

[Anonymous No.23802987]

>>23802884
>Foundation
Speaking of foundation, is the show worth watching? I havent watched a good scifi show since hbo canceled raised by wolves

[Anonymous No.23803042]

I'm half way through Children of time and it's kinda disappointing.
Ok the human part is boring, that's expected, but the spider part is pretty underwhelming as well.
I feel like the scale of their civilization is so small. Why does everything happen around the Great Nest? How many cultures do they have? Their cuisine? Their philosophy? Their technological progress is unclear as well, appearantly they haven't invented gunpowder yet. I found their world lacking in details and originality
It's getting hard for me to continue reading the rest. Is this really one of the best scifi of this century?

[Anonymous No.23803069]

>>23803042
Any good books about foreign alien cultures?

[Anonymous No.23803078]

>>23803069
piers anthony is 33% about how different weird alien species have sex

[Anonymous No.23803085]

>>23803042
>Is this really one of the best scifi of this century?
I've never even heard of it.

[Anonymous No.23803091]

>>23803078
I was thinking of something like Dragon's egg, I don't really care about sex mostly about speculative evolution (genetically and culturally)

[Anonymous No.23803103]

>>23803091
don't try to imply there is something unwell with piers. its you not him.

[Anonymous No.23803121]

>>23803085
It's #7 on a poll of a big SF subreddit.
These fags hype this shit up for me

[Anonymous No.23803149]

>>23803121
>Culture series
Has anyone read this? What kind of a name is "Iain"?

[Anonymous No.23803155]

>>23803042
>Even if you are not into sci fi, you can read it as a simulation of what will probable happen if two species ( one human and another spider based) both having sixth sense and both having developed civilization independently on different planets and how they would perceive each other and try to understand each other. the development of a spider society to a civilizational level is also described, their culture , their language , their mode of communication is all wonderfully described and is completely believable.
This is what Amazon says, maybe you haven't reached that part yet

[Anonymous No.23803166]

>>23802132
>Should I read his other two books as well?
Read The Martian. Skip Artemis.

[Anonymous No.23803168]

>>23803149
what type of name is L'Jarius

[Anonymous No.23803177]

>>23801581
would someone just make up something on the internet?

[Anonymous No.23803190]

>>23803168
Sneed
L'Jarius Sneed

[Anonymous No.23803196]

>>23803155
that's just standard PR wording. They do have a unique way of communicating but besides that everything else looks like human culture with a different coat of paint. The most disappointing part for me though is the scale, their world feels so small

[Anonymous No.23803213]

>>23803196
I would just push through and see if things evolve. If it is shit don't bother with the sequels I guess, the premise sounds interesting to me

[Anonymous No.23803220]

>>23803196
its sort of cool how the women eat the men after mating but as the society becomes more progressive the spider women eat their mates less often

[Anonymous No.23803237]

>>23803220
IRL male spiders adapted to mate with YA virgins who didn't figure out the "eating your partner" part yet

[Anonymous No.23803248]

>>23803220
yeah and they slowly realize how both genders have the same mental capabilities and the Fabian started to demand more men rights. It's fine but I wish it isn't just "feminism but reverse"
>>23803213
I'm trying but the human part is boring as sin, it's the weakest part of the novel for sure

[Anonymous No.23803389]

>>23800687

[Anonymous No.23803397]

>>23803389
Why does she find being impaled funny?

[Anonymous No.23803494]

>>23803397
PERSPECTIVE, BITCH

[Anonymous No.23803500]

>>23803042
it's just difficult to find anything "best of" these days since there's a metric fuckton of shit and all seems to cater to specific niches

[Anonymous No.23803519]

>>23803494
I dunno anon, being impaled through the gut doesnt leave much of perspective, its all pretty grim from there

[Anonymous No.23803651]

>>23803121
>Frank Herbert on top
That should tell you everything you need to know

[Anonymous No.23803681]

Why are female MCs better than male MCs?

[Anonymous No.23803786]

To me, children of time was like ender’s game, in that no one recommended it to me, I just happened upon it and gave it a try, and the process of
>‘could this be-?’ =>
>slowly growing suspicion growing to certainty =>
>it has to be, please damn it do it =>
>oh shit he really did it. fuck yes!
-reveal was next level glorious.
I read it a long time ago, when it was just another forgotten black box sf novel in the dusty sf section, years before any hype, just quietly being a book to itself.
I still remember I had a lot of fun reading it.

[Anonymous No.23803806]

>>23800634
Just finished book one of Millennium Mage and it's better than Cradle in every single aspect

[Anonymous No.23803924]

>High in the heavens, on the mountain’s peak and shrouded in the windy mists of deadly ice stood the golden Goliath. Chains of metal bound him to Mount Atlas, fused from the stone to his forearms. The pattern of the links gritted bones as they travelled under his skin, fingers tightening. The titanic grip drew blood of ivory, every drop lost in the white carpet of snow below his imposing eight-foot figure.
This is where I dropped the book. I have no idea what the fuck is going on anymore

[Anonymous No.23803933]

>>23803681
never have never will bitch

[Anonymous No.23804047]

>>23803681
They're markedly worse in most if not all cases, sorry. Only thing worse is a male character written by a female author.

[Anonymous No.23804101]

>>23801704
Why not, it's way more interesting than your autistic robots.

[Anonymous No.23804109]

I really enjoy reading the books (and the overall lore) of the Elder Scrolls series of games. What sort of books have similar themes, narratives and aesthetics to it?

[Anonymous No.23804117]

>>23795500
>>23796251
I see /sffg/ hasn't changed at all

[Anonymous No.23804171]

>>23804101
>Why not
Even humans nowadays preffer digital scapism, imagine what an AI that can generate and building a humanlike society just looks incredibly stupid as long as they have a power source guaranteed

[Anonymous No.23804209]

I’m so mind-broken by HBO that despite being American, all the characters in fantasy books I read have a British accent in my head, and sometimes I give them regional UK dialects as well.

[Anonymous No.23804218]

>>23804109
What specifically do you like about it?

[Anonymous No.23804257]

Does Moorcock write good prose? I'm looking for stuff similar to BotNS, but the writing has to be of a good quality.

[Anonymous No.23804268]

>>23800806
>Bakker is unironically good
Why?

[Anonymous No.23804271]

>>23802297
Most of David Gemmel's Drenai series. His stories have balls.

[Anonymous No.23804420]

Le Guin said Gene Wolfe was the Melville of SF, so now, my question to you, who is the James Joyce of SF ?

[Anonymous No.23804475]

>>23804257
read John Crowley

[Anonymous No.23804487]

>>23804257
No!

[Anonymous No.23804532]

>>23804420
>James Joyce of SF ?
Bakker, obliviously. He uses stream of consciousness technique and writes about shit.

[Anonymous No.23804577]

>>23804475
why

[Anonymous No.23804642]

>>23804577
you asked for something. I am trying to help you nigga

[Anonymous No.23804645]

>>23804642
but why Crowley?

[Anonymous No.23804658]

I miss Mike ;_;

[Anonymous No.23804792]

>>23803681
Because modern "men" are so emasculated they might as well be women, and this extends to their fiction.

[Anonymous No.23804865]

>”He is officiously subservient, and greasily obsequious.”
We get it Robin Hobb, you own a Thesaurus.

[Anonymous No.23805212]

>>23804865
ChatGPT has destroyed an entire class of "authors" who just like to use fancy words

[Anonymous No.23805260]

>>23802607
For in depth Tyranid stuff there's two ways you can go about it, detailing an actual Tyranid invasion or going into the Genestealer Cults that precede it. For the Cult side of things Fehervari's Cult of the Spiral Dawn has them as great antagonists, or Tchaikovsky's Day of Ascension for a slightly more sympathetic view.

For actual Tyranid invasions probably one of my favorite scenes involving them happens in The Last Hunt. Its bolter porn to be sure, but good bolter porn and features the White Scars which have become a fan favorite (almost to the point of backlash, but I don't think we're there yet).

[Anonymous No.23805279]

Which is the best entry point for clark Ashton smith? I've always wanted to read more by him, his prose is fucking good.

[Anonymous No.23805405]

>>23804420
there are some sf novels that are directly inspired by Joyce.
Dhalgren by Delany
Barefoot in the Head by Brian Aldiss
The Illuminatus! Trilogy. Robert Anton Wilson
James Blish too

[Anonymous No.23805527]

>>23805279
Lost Worlds

[Anonymous No.23805645]

>>23796665
Octavia E. Butler, Xenogenesis or Patternist series. Both are from a female perspective. First one is weird alien sex / breeding stuff, second is mind-meld scifi that is set in historic and current age. The writing is decent but the stories are really unusual.

[Anonymous No.23805710]

>>23794831
the ho bitch

[Anonymous No.23805743]

>>23804865
Hate this shit. No one speaks like this.

[Anonymous No.23805765]

>>23805743
It's like you never heard politicians and lawyers speak.

[Anonymous No.23805806]

Empire of Silence - daddy issues privileged brat, becomes Russel Crowe Gladiator, discovers Covenant from Halo.

Red Rising - oppressed dwarves think they're genz Communist freedom fighters, join hunger games, becomes Ender's Game.

Both shit, is all new popular sci-fi this bad ?

[Anonymous No.23805818]

Sandersonfags, I kneel. Marasi should have won the Waxbowl. I guess she's going to hook up with Allik in the next book which is fine I guess.

[Anonymous No.23805824]

>>23805806
starfield confirmed to me that scifi is dead

[Anonymous No.23805869]

>>23805806
Modern scifi writters missed the mark on the point of the genre and decided to turn it into a less charismatic fantasy. When I read that the bookstore recommended Red Rising as Game of Thrones in space I instantly dropped the book

[Anonymous No.23805889]

Currently reading this and laughing my ass off at the sex stuff. Especially the stuff with the minister of transportation on Comporellon, damn Asimov was some akward dude

[Anonymous No.23805938]

>>23805806
It's what happens when you have character-centric stories. Old SF was generally about concepts and ideas.

[Anonymous No.23805940]

>>23805869
>Game of Thrones in space
Wouldn't that also describe BattleTech?

[Anonymous No.23805943]

>>23805869
>>23805938
I suspect that's also why modern science fiction readers cannot enjoy genre classics. There's no drama to get them engaged.

[Anonymous No.23805971]

>>23805824
Starfield is bad but Sarah Morgan is a cute hag and has a big ass

[Anonymous No.23805978]

>>23805943
i blame teen TV dramas

[Anonymous No.23805999]

>>23805943
>>23805938
Ender's Game is character-centric and dramatic to the point of melodrama. It's practically shonen manga.

[Anonymous No.23806017]

>>23805943
It has become a genre for low IQ geeks like fantasy. Hard sci fi is completly unsellable so the authors just chased the money

[Anonymous No.23806041]

>>23806017
it's not just hard scifi, any kind of scifi that isn't a space opera about a ragtag group is unsellable today. authors like Dick, Ballard, Aldiss and Simak could never exist in today's scifi market

[Anonymous No.23806046]

>>23802877
Thanks for the assist anon.

[Anonymous No.23806112]

Does anyone know the name of that book series with a girl protag in some fantasy scifi world where abrahamic religions are proven correct and she can see the value of a person and women are less valuable then men by her measurements?

[Anonymous No.23806180]

"cool hooded figure"s are too prominent in fantasy

[Anonymous No.23806215]

I love scifi set in absurdist as fuck settings that's also played 100% and with sincerity.
Seems like that art is mostly lost in modern authors though, much like sincerity itself.
I myself am also unable to write anything like that, despite understanding the core of what makes it tick. I just don't have it in my soul.

[Anonymous No.23806220]

>>23806215
What exactly do you mean? Care to give an example?

[Anonymous No.23806225]

>>23806220
A lot of Philip.K.Dicks stuff, Counter-clockworld off the top of my head.

[Anonymous No.23806227]

>>23806215
Watch Brazil the movie.
It's like black comedy 1984

[Anonymous No.23806237]

>>23806215
>100% straight*

[Anonymous No.23806245]

>>23802082
>cuck fantasy
I will now read your book

[Anonymous No.23806281]

>bought the whole series right away because it's cheaper and more convenient that getting the books one by one
>few chapters into the book one I realize I don't like it and don't care to finish it
Has this even happened to you? For me it's The Black Company.

[Anonymous No.23806293]

Is there a single "good" hard scifi novel or is the whole genre trash?

Blindsight is about as close as I've gotten but the writer tries very hard to write about his skill level and I wouldn't go as far as to call it good. It's interesting conceptually(vampires not withstanding) but just okay as a whole.

[Anonymous No.23806307]

>>23806293
Have you read Greg Egan?

[Anonymous No.23806312]

>>23806281
I have many books in my native and semi-native languages which I didn't read, because I switched to e-readers and English originals after buying the books. Like the whole Drenai series by Gemmell.

[Anonymous No.23806314]

>>23806312
what the hell is a semi-native language

[Anonymous No.23806315]

>>23806293
There must be but I didn't have much luck with the genre either, too much "I know physics!" authors.

[Anonymous No.23806340]

>>23806315
What else would it be?

[Anonymous No.23806360]

[Anonymous No.23806397]

What does astroturfing means in the Context of Bakker?

[Anonymous No.23806409]

>>23796264
The title sucks and I'm not sure the author knows where he's going, but fuck do I love reading about this fucking loser. Chapter 2 is "he's literally me frfr" tier, reminds me of that greentext about that guy trying to be Ryan Gosling.
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/90222/crippling-debt-isekai-fantasy-slow-burn-progression

[Anonymous No.23806584]

>>23794831
the forever war is terrible. so much hype for so little. you see, the war took forever because of both relativity AND because of a CULTURAL MISUNDERSTANDING, AND BECAUSE OF ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY THEY WERE REDUCED TO FIGHTING WITH PRIMITIVE WEAPONS.

[Anonymous No.23806597]

>>23806293
Not sure what you mean. Any sci-fi that is not hard is trash by definition. Doesn't mean everything hard is good, of course, but at least it's a useful filter to narrow down your search for actually good science fiction.

[Anonymous No.23806615]

>>23806293
Three Bodies is good but it drops the hard scifi bit by the end.

[Anonymous No.23806631]

>>23806293
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

[Anonymous No.23806869]

I like reading books but mangas as well
you guys think a kindle is a good option?
Or would a oled tablet be better?
I really can only buy kindle because for some reason i dont know, kobo is like 3x more expensive here

[Anonymous No.23806885]

>>23806597
>Any sci-fi that is not hard is trash by definition.

[Anonymous No.23806890]

>>23806869
If you're into manga or PDF files you need something better than Kindle or other basic-level readers.

[Anonymous No.23806935]

>>23806890
What do you mean?

[Anonymous No.23806962]

>>23806935
OLED tablet would be better. E-ink is great but it's not made for reading manga, comics or really anything with a lot of images, especially colored ones.

[Anonymous No.23807129]

The hype for The Darkness that came Before, is a meme? Right?
I'm a few chapters in and it's endless "made up place with unrememberable stupid fantasy name, character with stupid fantasy name, used fantasy magic name, to do thing which angered fantasy gods name, but it's ok because talisman with made up stupid fantasy name kills sorcerer's, but not ok actually because this is yet another different type of sorcerer/magic system with fantasy name from yet anotherr fantasy culture".
None of this is explained or shown or built into the story with depth, or detail or soul, or context. It's just endless gibberish
How the fuck do people read this?

[Anonymous No.23807178]

>>23807129
trick is to keep reading, anon

[Anonymous No.23807316]

>>23807129
>I'm a few chapters in
>None of this is explained or shown or built into the story with depth, or detail or soul, or context. It's just endless gibberish
do you also ask your husband when a movie starts what's going on and who the characters are?

[Anonymous No.23807331]

>>23796480
Oof. Bakker filtered another.

[Anonymous No.23807403]

>>23807402
>>23807402
>>23807402
New