/lit/ - Literature

...wow

>>10153954
I know why you do this, but I will not give you the satisfaction of creating an anti-blindshill meme, thus not immortalizing your book.

>>10153954
Shame that echopraxia fell short, oh well, hopefully the third one will wrap it up and be worthy of the first book.

Just finished this and now I'm genuinely embarrassed to own it. Absolute fucking garbage. I've never binned a book before and I think this will be the first. I would sell it if I didn't have a conscience.

>>10153752
>Guy Gavriel Kay
Sure, I can give it a shot

Any other recommendations?

>>10154015
Yeah it's incredibly shitty. No surprise that Hollywood picked it up very quickly and made a pleb pleasing, lowest-common-denominator shitfest.

My favourite character is Nynaeve and I love her!

>>10154018
Jonathan strange and Mr Norrell. Even with the magic you will like it.
You also sound like a humanist cunt, so try Buried Giant.

>>10154048
>Jonathan strange and Mr Norrell. Even with the magic you will like it.
Oh yeah good suggestion. It doesn't even have much magic, really.

So do you use sepia, green, black or white? What font?

>>10154061
Green. Terminus.

>>10153607

I thought he was a good example of what happens when you give a dumb kid with no real experience in anything lots of power

>If I say my story is character focused then no one will be able to question why there's a lack of a main plot!

Never Let Me Go is classified as YA right?
It annoys me that I actually have to say I like a YA novel now

>>10154230
Embrace your plebness, anon. Pigs are happiest wallowing in filth, after all.

Where is the sequel to The Traitor Baru Cormorant? Google gives me nothing. Is the author still in a depressed coma? He hasn't posted on twitter since 2016.

I've finished to read this book and this is very nice.
It's not a neo-feminist book, I assure you. This is a book about power: no matter if one is male or female, power corrupts anyone. It's a good dystopian science fiction book.

>>10154015
Wanna see it get even worse?
Check this baby out.

>>10154413
it's gonna come

>>10154230
Now imagine that a YA writer was just tossed a literal Nobel prize. Imagine if I had told you a year ago that Bob Dylan would be the biggest joke of a Nobel Prize for Literature awardee for only a year.

>>10154005
I think you're being unfair
I think considering how he wanted it to be distinct from Blindsight, and given the success and overall excellence of BS, there was quite a challenge to be faced
He certainly had a major thematic shift

>>10154048
>>10154051
>Jonathan strange and Mr Norrell
I started it, but the beginning was quite slow and boring. Will it get more interesting?

>>10154723
Not to you

I wish something like as Tolkien with mages, elves, orc and all this shit, but that it also has a political focus rather than all kings was just and the heroes holier than Jesus himself. Is there something like this?

>>10154413
He has posted, are you following another account maybe? The first draft of the sequel is finished but it was like 1000 pages long, so it needs some editing. It's called The Monster Baru Cormorant. I don't know when it's going to be ready.

>>10154444
Looks interesting, thanks for the suggestion, anon!

>>10154773
Bakker

>>10154525
it is like eating puke while starving, its disgusting but tasty

Is this book about two young people in love persevering despite the horror of the world and the evil people in it? Will it fill that void?

Pls respond, it hurts

>>10155198
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11764721-good-intentions

its glorfied porn basically but the story elements are fantastic.

Why do I get a feeling that every science fiction or fantasy book ever made was designed for a female audience in mind?

>>10155248
Because you're a retard?

>>10155248
thats not even remotely correct.
if anything the opposite is true.

What has fantasy taught you guys?

The Red Knight is pretty good

>>10155298
that life is pointless and nothing interesting ever happens.
you will die eventually and nothing will change that.
you will never fall in love with someone and actually have a deep connection to that person like you wish because its either one sided by you or no one else can feel love or devotion like you do.

>>10155248
Heinlein's juveniles, Asimov's Foundation books, anything by Arthur C Clarke, is among the most male oriented fiction I've read. It's all problem solving protags, men of logic and invention as well as action. Heinlein particularly wrote coming of age plots where young men learned to be more assertive, independent and worldly - with just the same audience in mind.

>>10155330
Are you saying women can't solve problems, be logical or invent? What the fuck?

>>10155310
Muh Arthur
Muh knighthood

Still a fun book

>>10155334
exceptions prove the rule.
that being said its not that women arent capable of it. its just that theyre biologically wired to be more emotional and act on feeling rather than logic.
denying the differences of the two races is futile and a disservice to the human race. not everything needs to be a social justice cause, anon. instead of throwing a hissyfit just celebrate the differences.

Winds have carried tropical debris, Saharan dust, and ash from the Iberian peninsula fires to the UK, producing this red sun effect that straight out of Zothique, BOTNS and Dying Earth. Pic related, taken from Cardiff castle.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-41635906

>>10155354
central london

>>10155347
>theyre biologically wired to be more emotional and act on feeling rather than logic
Unless you have proof of this you're just another retard from /r9k/ and /pol/.

>>10155334

Yes, I am saying that

>>10155347
>the two races
Gender is not a race, moron.

Your novel is shit, and it's never going to be published.

>>10154823

You're welcome!

>>10155374
>>10155354
>so many arabs are in London that it's literally becoming Arabia

>>10155521
Your geography is a bit off mate
>Cardiff
>Scotland
>In London

>Sahara
>Iberian Peninsula
>In Arabia

>>10155527
You heard me.

>>10155298
That certain races are entirely evil and others are entirely good

Such a pity. I really liked this series for it's mix of militariy and political conflict in a sci-fi setting. Yet this is what heppens when you keep one character at the centre far too long, she becomes a mary sue, her enemies become literally nazies, and the whole book becomes boring as fuck.

Any contemporary series to replace it with? I have read most of the older series in this vein, so looking for something fresh and maybe not so well knwon.

>>10155374

>>10155567
>Yet this is what heppens when you keep one character at the centre far too long, she becomes a mary sue

It's funny because I noticed the same thing reading the John Carter books, he goes from "superhuman" to "godlike". ERB had the sense to switch to another character at that point though.

>>10155567
Yea obviously, there is only so many risks you can take until you get a b ad roll and die
In a fictional book/series it gets ridiculous when the writer makes the protag get captured a dozen fucking times, survive constant battles or fights or ambushes, etc

Then again why are you reading a book with a woman protag or implicit leftist values

>>10155709
Is that dhalgren?

>>10155709

lèl

are the Eisenhorn books actually good, or are they just good compared to other WH40k literature?

>>10155298
That if you know the future you can't just tell people what happens you have to speak in cryptic, intentionally misleading statements for no reason.

What the fuck is Dan Simmons's obsession with Jews?

Is it a Mormon thing?

hey /sffg/, I started a short story a little over a year ago as a trial run for a novel I wanted to write. Now it's a nearly finished novel but I still want to tell the story it was supposed to be a trial run for.

The issue is I'm already using three of the main characters in this book and while alternate universes do exist the mythology kind of diverged and they're more or less incompatible now

what do?

>>10155823
Most people aren't xenophobic.

>>10155848
try that again without using buzzwords, and provide sources for your assertions

>>10155836
Change the characters' names dipshit.

>>10155823
It's more of an "American Christian conservative" thing but yeah.

>>10155836
Include it as "what if" at the end of the novel. Or just publish it separately

>>10155854
Get off the internet and experience the real world once in a while.

>>10155868
you sound like you spent a lot of time in college hahaha
fucking nut

Reading The Night Land soon.

What am i in for?

>>10155823
>"So how do we beat this alien monster?"
>"Ya gotta remember the six million! Oy vey! How could you forget?!"

>>10155892
Cosmic horror and manliness.

>>10155823
>>10155823

Is he actually a mormon? Fuck, he was one of my favorite authors too.

>>10154821
Thanks anon. I must have had the wrong account. Much love.

>>10155709
I am glad donkey-kun has joined me in the meme game.

>>10154525
but but but it's a literal modern classic!

>>10156124
these books are all utter dogshit
why would he recommend them

>>10156142
>heroes die
>utter dogshit
just lay down and sleep forever you fucking waste of skin

>>10156147
The first book is kinda ok but the rest of the series is abysmal

>>10156124
Who thinks the early Dresden Files are worse than the later ones?

>>10156206
Urban fantasy is a goddamn cancer

>>10156214
It's no worse than the rest of the genre.

What does /sffg/ think about the Chaos Queen series?

>>10156206
Well the first two books are garbage. Butcher only gets his footing around book 3. I haven't read past Changes, so I can't comment on the quality of the later books.

>>10156214
Dresden Files is the only one I've read and it's pretty decent. I've heard horror stories about other series though.
Also this
>>10156222

>>10156244
RIP anon's audiobook

Name some overlooked sci fi or fantasy classics.

The more obscure, the better.

>>10156337
David Mace's Firelance. It's basically a nihilistic Red Storm Rising about a nuclear super-battleship on a final mission after WWIII.

>>10156171
the first book is the least good of them all for christ's sake

>>10156337
Viriconium. It's on /lit/'s general fantasy link but at the very bottom and quite overlooked. In the same vein as Gormenghast

>>10156337

>>10156353
delusional
They were basically unreadable

>>10156337

Anybody read Alexander Key?

A lot of his stuff is out of print.

>>10155901
I dropped it at about 30% through Olympos, does something like this actually happen?

>>10155347
>denying the differences of the two races
>two races
>races
kek literature

>>10156337
Stapledon's non-Star Maker novels
Sirius, A Man Divided, and the Darkness and the Light are all GOAT. Sirius is the only novel that's made me cry and I don't even like dogs.

>>10155752
Yes.

>>10156461
Does it actually contain bestiality, or is my scifi encyclopedia engaging in hyperbole?

What's your favorite type of megastructure?

>>10155401
literally type "differences between sexes" into a search engine

>>10155411
Gender is not sex.

>>10154865
bakker isn't interested in the politics, he's interested in the gay alien rape and other homoerotic undertones

How long do you usually wait before rereading a book?

>>10156645
The phallic monolith

>>10154015
The part where he's forced to become a literal slave doing tech support destroyed my fucking sides.

>>10156678
Depends on the book. Blood Meridian was 3 months then 4 years. BotNS 6 months. Heart of Darkness, a couple of days.

>>10156670
>Gender is not sex

It is to anyone who willfully rejects that concept outright as an attempt to control discourse (newspeak).

>>10156373
shut your filthy mouth

>>10156670
The difference is that most people have sex and you don't LMAO

>>10156281
Just finished reading the 2nd book, would have greatly preferred the audiobook but oh well.
Next book in 2018, can't wait

>>10155298
That women can't write

>>10156670
To be fair, you have to have an extremely high IQ to understand the meaning of being biologically wired to be more emotional and act on feeling rather than logic. The cleverness is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical physics and an understanding of FTL travel it will skate past the typical poster's eyes. There's also the feeling of intelligence, nihilism and wicked humour enmeshed in anon's characterisation and his personal philosophy draws heavily from /r/incels literature especially the Camus inspired influences dialogues on the nether regions of feminine penises, for instance. The fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of being more biologically wired to feel emotion based on Harvard Economics professor Dan Morgan's thesis statement on 'Easy on the Carrots, Bugs,' and the difference between humans, rabbits and the Lions, Tigers and Bears is not only extraordinary but completely futile and that they state something irrevocably meaningful as a cryptic reference to Turgenev’s Russian epic Fathers and Sons where typhus symbolises the fumigating cause of social justice causes and a personal affront to society. As a consequence, people who dislike anon's opinions are idiots and wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the fact that science can be achieved without the need for science or any validation from the rationalist purview of Imamnuel Kant. I’m smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as anon's genius post unfolds itself upon their phoneposting screens. What fools.. how I pity them.

And yes, by the way, i DO have an emotional and act on feeling rather than logic tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It’s for the ladies’ eyes only- and even then they have to demonstrate that they’re 50 points lower than my IQ of 300 (btw that's the MAXIMUM SCORE for HUMANITY) beforehand. Nothin' personnel kid.

What are some books with a girl (male) romantic interest?

>>10156855
Neither can you so I guess you're a woman.

>>10156855
>anon can't write and is a woman
Haha, you might as well turn yourself into a transexual mormon at this point retard kun

>>10156860
But wait, wouldn't that give Anon's argument more weight, since it wouldn't just be a dude angry at women?

>>10156865
>tfw I started an argument that women are mentally retarded and now that I have possessed all the ((characteristics of mental retardation)) I must now samefag
Go go cuck rangers!

>>10156865
No it would mean he/she is a retard/self-hating retard.

I wrote Ready Player One
AMA rebblit!

>>10156879
How often do you suck dick?

>>10156883
More times than Bakker.

>>10156890
How many cocks fit in your ass?

>>10155310
I agree, the first one its exellent.
It only get worse tough, and the power creep its to much.

>>10156940
Take every 80s pop culture reference in the book and multiply by the number of upvotes my last reply got.

>>10156945
On a more serious note, I never read the fucking thing, just saw excerpts posted here. What the fuck is it about, 80s references not included? What is the plot?

>>10156959
Finding an easter egg in a VR game to get a prize (a massive fortune). The references are part of the plot.

>>10156978
This sounds godawful. Is it?

>>10156987
Honestly, the premise doesn't sound terrible, but it reads like a laundry list. Hey you remember Blade Runner, right guys?! Wow, we just name dropped something! If you're going to make references, you might as well be clever about it and a bit less on the nose. I hear it's getting a movie; I feel like a snob saying this, but it seems like it was made for cinema first.

Might be a bit to Pop-author for some but i enjoyed it.

>>10157008
I hate it when people make references just to seem le smarty. If you want to reference something do it gently and with a purpose, have it make sense. It makes sense that the kids in Stranger Things have a Dark Chrystal poster on the wall. It would be annoying if they referenced it every 10 minutes.

>>10156859
I'd be interested if there was at least one that wasn't just trashy smut (rad smut like PJF is fine.)

>>10154444
That's the same writer, who wrote The Handmaid's Tale, witch is a great book, I don't no this one, but is it in the same tone?

>>10157063
Would you happen to know the names of these trashy smut books? Asking for a friend.

>>10157065
I wouldn't call HT great but it's pretty good. Atwood ain't leGuin tho.

>>10157072
I was just assuming if there was any they would be trashy smut aimed at women. There's plenty of gay erotica websites though.

>>10157011
He's somewhat like Margaret Atwood in not wanting to admit that he's writing SFF, but he's nowhere near as insufferable as Atwood.

>>10156337
I do but nobody ever reads them so there's no point :(

>>10156337
The Bargain by Jon Ruddy

any books like old mans war with romance?
ive read metal boxes and i quite liked it but now that im done i need to fill the void somehow.

>>10157074
Why would we not want the trashy smut aimed at women? that's the best smut

>>10157149
Fuck Scalzo yo.

FUCH YEAH! The russian edition of baru cormorant is out!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5yI0iyoBUc

>>10157357
Already got mine for $7 ;^)

>>10157363

>>10157365

>>10157368

>>10157372

>>10157375

>>10156645
McKendree Cylinder

>>10157065

No. "The Handmaid's Tale" is wrote by Margaret Atwood, while "The Power" is write by Noemi Alderman. These are two different books and the Alderman's story is the same opposite of "The Handmaid's Tale".

>>10156645
classical ringworld. I love the idea of a piece of land so humongous you don't even need space colonization and you could still keep going basically forever

>>10157382
Nice, I like the artwork. Spasibo, anon!

>>10157422
>>10156645
I agree. The fact that you could have a lifespan of thousands of years and still not scratch the surface is the main appeal.

>>10157319
honestly i havent read his other works.
only old mans war and i did not like the second book. only the first and the third.
but i did like those a lot.
whys scalzi so despised on /lit/?

>>10156093
Twasn't I.
Mirin that font mimicry though.

>>10155347
Careful, there. People around here don't hesitate to use the /p word.

>>10157483
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2017/10/02/2017-word-counts-and-writing-process/

>>10157628
oh wow

>>10157628
>Trump: I don't think about you at all

I feel so horrible guys. Not in a nihilistic kind of way but just emotionally put down beyond belief.
Can someone recommend me something comfy that's about true friendship and with people overcoming great odds? Nothing Hallmark tier though. Something genuine.

>>10157734
The Lies of Locke Lamora

>>10157483
I don't dislike him for political reasons because I'm not a butthurt retard. I dislike him for his writing which is mediocre and for trying to do what Adams and Pratchett did without understanding what made those 2 so good in the first place.

>>10157744
Is that not basically YA? I remember reading something like that about it.

>>10157734
Read some Redwall. Even if you're feeling suicidal, these books will make you feel better.

>>10157749
not at all
the way the author deals with relationships is a bit juvenile but that's about it

>>10157382
fuck you russians, why do you always get the good shit?

>>10157869
There is also new edition of Moby dick coming this weak with cool illustrations.
https://fantlab.ru/blogarticle51558
But the price is kinda high - around $15.
Average paycheck in my town is $280.

>>10157903
WHITE
WHALE
HOLY
GRAIL

>>10156515
It's heavily implied, but he doesn't actually describe the dog giving his sister the knot.

>>10157363
This looks amazing

>>10154015

Yeah, when his best friend at the end turned out to be a fat black handicapped woman I noped right the fuck out.

Starting this. Anyone reads books 2 and 3? Are they as good as book 1?

>>10158256
Two is not as good. Three is a step back in the right direction

>Tfw no good books to read that would interest me

>Sequel to book is [Title of book one]:2

Dropped harder than a fistful of burning coal.

>almost all litrpg is LOL you're in mmorpg now or HAHA you are in VR game
>none of them are shit like sufficiently advanced magic where the only litrpg elements are autistic stat progressions without any grinding or boring shit like that

>>10158421
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35073163-super-sales-on-super-heroes

its pretty decent. the only actual litrpg elements are tied to the heroes super power and they tend to be grouped up at once rather than coming up all the time.

>>10158430
>there's an audiobook
SWEET

>>10158441
i actually recommend the audiobook.
its pretty well recorded.
tell me what you think about the book when your done anon. book 2 is actually like 60% done and gets the audiobook on lauchday.

must i?

>>10158463
YES

>>10158463
Dude flipping tropes LOL

>>10158463
nah

>>10158463
>The Blade Itself

Picked up.

>>10156405
>I dropped it at about 30% through Olympos, does something like this actually happen?

The main villain is revealed to be a giant alien brain monster that feeds off the negative spiritual energy from whole planets, so it can lay eggs and fire off its children into space to do the same to other sentient species. It's pretty much a giant ripoff of Lavos from Chrono Trigger, except it needs to scuttle around to places like Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen in order to suck up all the bad feels from the soil. Anyway, one of the main characters is told by some technowizard that in order to defeat the monster, humanity needs to remember all the bad things that ever happened, The Holocaust being one of them. Since you read Ilium already, you already know about Savi and the Space Jews.

American Protestants have this bizarre magical fixation on Jews for some reason, so I guess that might be it. It's an okay book, but it just got comical after a while. Naturally, the parts about the Trojan War were the parts that shined.

I want a book where the plot twist is that the antagonist never existed and the protagonist and his friends just wasted their time.

To anyone who has ever recommended this:

Kindly choke on a cock

>>10158463

It's good. Was compelling enough that I picked up book 2.

Rereading Bakker here. I read up to White Luck Warrior nearly 5 years ago. Just going over it again since there are now 2 new books in the series to read.

Currently on The Thousandfold Thought and loving life. Heard the writing turns to shit in the last book though.

>>10158773
It has some pacing problems, mostly because Unholy Consult and The Great Ordeal should have been one book. Unholy Consult struggles a bit to stand on its own. It’s a wild ride though.

>>10158703
What's so bad about it? Have seen it rec'd here before.

>>10158701
Spec Ops: The Line: The Novel

>>10158447
Holy fucking shit, I LOVE the main character.
Now that is one god damned asshole I can relate to

>>10158833
im glad you like it anon. keep on listening it gets really good. and it breaks some super hero stereotypes in a very nice way.

A couple weeks ago I asked if anyone was interested in reading part of what I'm working on but was too shy to delivar. Here's a half-serious except from the first draft. Would greatly appreciate any kind anon's criticism/cyberbully

>>10158885
You jump into infodump way too abruptly. And what the fuck is an “air of conversation”?

>>10158904
>You jump into infodump way too abruptly
I thought this might be the case. The previous few pages are spent building up a bunch of questions that the info dump answers. I was aiming for a style somewhere between Clancy and Rechter.

>And what the fuck is an “air of conversation”?
A placeholder until I can think of a better phrase lololol

>>10158800
It has no redeeming qualities other than mood and atmosphere (considering it was written in early 20th century).

Plot is flat, characters are flat, the pointless framing device is pointless and flat, and even the mood gets boring by around the halfway point.
It's shit and I wouldn't recommend it unless you're very, very interested in some historical perspective on fantasy or something.

>>10158851
>the fucking guy literally made some 4 foot girl into 5 foot 4 and changed her A cups into double Ds

>>10158885
Please use empty lines, or at least indents, more

>>10158985
keep going anon. and pay attention to andrea. the fun has only begun.

>>10158701
The bible!

>>10158703
/sffg/ strikes again

>>10158959
Hmm, quite the testimonial from you anon. I'll add it to my list of books to find.

>>10158703
Did you read the unabridged version?There's a reason we always tell people to grab the rewrites.
>>10158800
The dumb framing device has the entire book written in vomitworthy ye olde proese. Beyond that, a solid 50% of the novel is standard adventure story climbing over rocks, battling monsters and subhumans stuff. However, he goes further by having the protag autistically take inventory of how long its been since he slept, how cold and hungry he is, how much his feet hurt, every time he stops to rest. When he does reach the damsel in distress, he has to go back the entire wsy he already came, very slightly abbreviated. The romance between them is often cringeworthy (spanking her for giving him extra rations, rubbing her feet, calling her his "baby slave").

That said, the atmosphere is unparalleled. It's beyond 'dying earth' into fully dead earth, the eldritch creatures and mutated horrors are great. I found many of the sequences very moving - the halo of light saving them from the whirring sound, trying to get past the House of Silence, the final 'funeral' scene.

There's a good novel in there, it just needs a lot of trimming, and then a little time to expand. More info on their past lives!

>>10157074
Do women even like traps? Actual full-blown traps?

>>10159233
Smut reading women like gay porn.

>>10159240
But not indiscriminately. Just as they wouldn't be into two neckbeards going at it; they aren't into that, are they?

>>10159255
I have found a woman vincentcc who is into futanari. I had thought that was an exclusively male fetish my entire life, so anything is possible.

>>10156645
my dick lol

who here thinks that aSoIaF is a good series?

>>10159503
Fat pink mast sunset saw her squatting etc etc

>>10157448
>>10157422
The fact that it's physically impossible to make is a bit of a turnoff for me. Though technically you could make something just as big by linking a bunch of rotating McKendree Cylinders together in a 1 AU radius ring around a star. Perhaps you could call it a McKendree torus? Or if I'm the first one to propose it then an Anon Torus.

>>10158463
Best Served Cold and The Heroes>First Law

>>10159519
taking shit way out of context

SoIaF is one of my favorite series. I started reading them in 2002, before they were extremely popular and before the tv series.
But I also like Stephen Donaldson, and YA like KA Applegate's Remnants so I'm in the minority here.
I just like reading stuff I like.

>>10153931
So far the first two volumes of Bova's short stories have been a fun read. Only other thing I've really heard of by him is Sam Gunn, are those worth reading?

>>10158421
LitRPG: What if Isekai was worse?

>the first book is glorious single pov
>the second book is multiple pov
I am livid!

>>10158703
I read "The Night Land Retold" recently and I enjoyed it a lot more. I was actually able to finish it. Someone went through and modernized all the prose and redid the romance with less wifebeating. It still gets a little boring around the halfway point, but I'd recommend it.

>>10159888
huh?

>>10160128
Isekai ("another world") is the Japanese term for all the stuff where somebody dies and is reincarnated in another world where they have superpowers and all the girls want them and so on. Re:ZERO, Kumo Desu Ga, Assertion of a Bookworm, Tanya the Evil, Konosuba, etc. Sometimes it's also just a regular fantasy setting like Slayers with no reincarnation but the characters are aware they have stats and stuff.

LitRPG is similar, except instead it's just a nerd grinding rocks in a VR-MMO and jerking themselves raw over how many points they have in potion crafting or whatever and they're going to get back at those girls in middle school who weren't interested in their Warhammer toon. Basically it's Sword Art Online and Ready Player One with even more nerd pathos.

>>10158703
I've never in my life recommended this without giving a stern warning about the style.

>>10159147
>The romance between them is often cringeworthy (spanking her for giving him extra rations, rubbing her feet, calling her his "baby slave").
Speak for yourself bro.

can we talk about this short story? what it got right, or wrong, and how it stands as a story?

>>10155314
Nihilism 101

>>10159919
Like omniscient narrator or just shifting fixed viewpoints?

Any decent recent hard sci-fi that is entertaining? Already read the expanse and now I need something else. I might settle for a bit older but usually the further you go back the more you go into "weird" punky territories where you end up with outlandish descriptions for tech that is already smart phone tier today.

I like how in Ringworld the different species have very different inherent psychologies.

>>10153931
Is there a Fantasy / sci-fi Authors you guys could recommend me that's as good at making use of absurdist humor as Stanislaw Lem?

>>10160379
What a vonnegutian post

>>10160461
I mean.. not really? They're all more or less human with exaggerated features either way. The Cat being overly aggressive and backstabbery and nessus being overly cowardly and cunning.
It's basically a D&D party with Louis being the Paladin, Speaker to animals the warrior and Nessus the thief.

>>10159919
Yes I was upset about this after Blood Song and it’s sequel too

>>10160472
>being this mad about not maxxing Luck
Teela Brown says you should reroll IRL.

>>10160458
Joel Shepherd's Spiral Wars series maybe? It's about the crew of a space battleship going rogue after a conspiracy kills their beloved captain and then they get involved in a even bigger conspiracy about berserker AIs.

>>10154525
Is that some western isekai?

>>10154525
Some asshole actually recommended that trash to me

>>10160469
>invisible hand
Should be the "free market"

>Main toon has some crazy plot armor
god damn it why do they do that?

Do you know any better guides to writing scifi than Card's?

>>10159503
I do. Good as in above average but not great.

>>10160461
Wow, it's almost like in real life!

>>10158256
2 was worse than 1. Didn't read 3. Wasn't a good enough series to wait so long for a new book.

>>10158463
Book 1 is only okay but the series gets better and better, so if there's enough there to hook ya stick with it.

>>10159503
First three books were very good to great
Fourth book was decent
Fifth was poor

>>10158995
Shadow to Pancake

God damn I love these characters. I don't think I've ever loved characters in any books I've read so far as much as I love these

>>10160472
WTF would you consider NOT human in psychology? It would seem that you would think anything is human in psychology if it were sapient.

Discuss.

>>10161108
good to hear anon. many people are put off by the cover and chalk up the book to some harem bullshit or smut without giving it a try.
the only bad thing about the book is that the second isnt done yet and it leaves you with an empty void when youre done that you cant quite fill.

>>10161110
I don't believe such a structure would be sound or habitable.

>>10161110
It doesn't appear to have any advantages over a Dyson sphere, or even a shell given how much construction material is required. Also why the fuck would I waste entire planets worth of material building the uninhabitable areas?

>>10161124
Also it's not stable for the same reason the ringworld isn't. And I bet the habitable zone is fucking tiny, since it's continuously exposed to stellar radiation. Most of the earth wouldn't even be habitable if it were tidally locked, this is basically the same thing.

>>10161118
Just checked it, yeah, latest post said 50% marker, but I don't know how fast the author writes, this is my first book from him.
But the audiobook and the narrator is completely fantastic, he truly brings life into the characters.
Surprised how he could have afforded such a narrator, he does have a patreon with ~200 payers, and he's self publishing? So no publisher backing the costs

>>10161118
isn't the author some furry faggot?

>>10161130
selfpublished yes.
i do not recommend the other books though. they arent bad per se but they are stereotypical "isekai you are trapped in the game and if you die you die in real life, oh and you basically have your own harem of womemn and 3 goddesses" and its stats everywhere.
they where his first books and he said in a blog post he learned from his mistakes and wants to do better. super sales clearly is better and im willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and patiently wait for the next book.
as far as i know he has some monetary means to self publish but i dont think theres a publisher involved. also people love super sales generally. there even was a controversy about how all teh characters besides mc are female and feminists got angry but he just told them to fuck off basically.

>>10161146
i honestly dont know but having one anthro character in a book doesnt make you a furry now does it?

>>10161148
I'm glad he strayed from the "trapped in a game" shit that plagues litrpg, that shit is not fun to read and not even entertaining, it's why I prefer shit like Sufficiently Advanced Magic, Forging Divinity (from the same author), and this book. There's no mmorpg garbage in it.
I don't want to read about some asshole trapped in a game, I want the in-book universe to be a world that has some of the elements

>>10160545
Exactly the book I'm referring to

>>10161120
>>10161124
It WOULD work.
It WOULDN'T be passively stable.
It WOULD be habitable.
Habitable Dyson Spheres are NOT possible.
And it would take a LOT more than than one planetary mass to construct it. More like all the mass for several light years around including stars.

>>10159759
disagree.
First Law ending is cathartic.
BSC and Heroes are predictable because after FL you get his deal.

>>10161156
i absolutely agree. both series you mentioned are also on my to read list. right after i try out disciples of the horned one which a friend recommended to me.

>>10161110
Why not stick to a ringworld? Seems more robust

>>10161158
I'm pretty sure it would collapse inwards or outwards or just tear itself apart depending on the speed of rotation. To make more than a tiny strip of it habitable you'd need to build a gaseous shield of varied density in order to mediate the amount of sunlight hitting each segment ... even if that's not true, why the fuck would you want a structure that isn't passively stable? This is just the stupid fantasy of some guy who fancied having his own name on the wikipedia list of megastructures.
>What sort of shape hasn't been done yet?? A disc!

>>10161158
http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/deep-space/a10996/could-we-build-a-disk-bigger-than-a-star-17060295/ good article on it

Wouldn't a ringworld appear fpat to inhabitants? Why are they always drawn with a strong curve?

I want to start reading fantasy.
I've only read depressing hogshit like camus in school and thought reading wasn't for me until recently.
What books should I start from? Is LOTR good? I've already seen the movies and feel that the whole plot is spoiled.

>>10161224
Lotr is drier than camus

>>10161110
I am an actual astrophysicist and there are so many wrong things with this.

First of all, unless the structure is 100% solid, things that are at a different radius from the sun will rotate at different speed. Google vorticity or solide-like rotation if you want more.
Second, if you have a disc that is thick enough to have a strong gravity so that people can stand on it, then people will not be able to stand on it. The gravity force will not be "toward the middle of the ring's thickness" but toward the center (hole) of the ring. You can see that by doing an integration of the elementary gravitational forces over the whole volume occupied by the ring. in the case of a sphere, these elementary forces add up to a force that is in the direction of the center of the sphere. It's different for the ring.
Third, you wouldn't need a wall to prevent the sun from "stealing" the atmosphere, because the atmosphere follows the same laws of physics and if it's rotating fast enough around the sun, the fictive centrifugal force will prevent it from drifting toward the sun. Just like it does for the rest of the ring, or actual planets.
let's stop counting, but the sun is not stationary. It's actually moving pretty fucking fast.
You can't force the sun to bob up and down, because you would need something to counter the force every time it changes direction, because this kind of movement can't be sustained. That's called the first fucking law of motion, come on.
Ok for the difference of temperature as a function of the distance to the sun, but NOT for the reason you're thinking. The distance from the sun only changes the angle at which the sun rays penetrate the atmosphere. Toward the outside of the ring, the rays would penetrate at a very low angle, exactly like at dusk or dawn. This would make the atmosphere absorb most of the heat (instead of letting it travel to the ground). Closer to the inside of the ring, things would be pretty much the same but the angle would be a little higher. In both cases, it would look like a permanent sunset (with the sun a bit higher the horizon on the inside of the ring). Please not that in order for this difference in the penetration angle to be significant, your ring would have to be extremely wide.
You wouldn't need to harvest the materials from all the planets of the solar systems to build the ring, but from tens of thousands. Or only hundreds, if you also harvest the stars themselves. Just look at the picture. The mass of the ring is at least 70-100 times that of the sun, and the sun is 99.9% of the solar system. If you harvest everything in the solar system except for the sun, you would have one thousandth of a sun's worth of material to go with, and you would need hundreds of sun's masses instead.

>>10161226
conan books then?

>>10161215
You might see a horizon, depends on radius and atmospheric transparency. It would still be pretty easy to notice you're on a ring. See pic related.

>>10161233
Maybe if you like toxic masculinity

>>10161234
We don't really see planets though, and theyds be closer than some of those sections.

>>10154201
Just finished book 2, really picks up in the 2nd half of book 1 or so. Was afraid the MC would become overcompetent as he got older and get generic, but it did the opposite and didn't make any big time skips along with almost all the super powered adults turning out to be power mad lunatic manchildren. Really fun series, actually burst out laughing often, though my standards for comedy aren't that high. Good anime sword fight action too. Otoku best doll.

>>10161238
It seems I came to the wrong board to discuss this. You don't need to reply anymore.

>>10161243
You do see planets though. Mercury and Venus are clearly visible. You wouldn't be able to miss them if they were a continuous line of light coming up from the horizon.

>>10161254
Im sorry for shitposting you, anon

>>10161256
Also I just looked it up, the Niven's Ringworld is over ten times as wide as Venus's diameter. That picture above is probably reasonably accurate.

>>10157483
>whys scalzi so despised on /lit/?
He isn't. It's the /pol/lies that come to shit up lit and don't actually read books that has a problem with him.

>>10161298
>You have to come from /pol/ to find >>10157628 pitiful

>>10161298
i dunno from what ive read from the blogpost hes really just a pathetic individual.

>>10156697

>>10161230
Underrated post anon. Made good reading.

I took me 3 continuous hours to read this thread.
I am finally UP TO DATE.

So I just finished this and so far I like it. I have a feeling I won't get any kind of satisfying answer at the end of the series but I'm going to read the others anyway.

Thoughts, anons?

>>10161314
You mean he's human? And like all humans he is trash?

>>10161110

>Would require the destruction of all planets in the solar system for material.

>Thousands of km thick, built from dense matter 'cos gravity.

>Over 10,000 earths wide. Shit, we ran outta material...

>Night day cycle by building additional dyson sphere, or 'bobbing the sun,' presumably by strapping rockets to it.

>Wall prevents suns gravity from stealing atmosphere but does nothing about boil-off. Better make it thicker for more gravity.

lol

>>10161173
Yeah, those 3 are the only ones I know in that specific subgenre that are actually good. I actually would like to find more but the it's fucking over-saturated with mmorpg and "trapping in game" bullshit

>>10161366
theres the daniel black series but that isnt really litrpg tough i suppose you could see it like that minus the stats.
its mostly empire building and women diddling.
im not sure yet how i feel about it. i think i can form a better opinion once the series done.
theres really precious little good litrpgs. add on top that i like romance in my novels the selection really shrinks. since most either have none or are either erotica or full blown smut.

Has there been a good gothic horror story written in the last 10 years?

>>10161374
nope. most horror books nowadays are either bad psychological horror or lovecraft ripoffs.

>>10161376
I wouldn't mind a decent Lovecraft rip off but most seem to just be "and then a shoggoth showed up" or it starts building a nice atmosphere but goes full on lazy surrealist rambling.

>>10161230

Gravity acts towards the center of mass, so you'd just have to make it thick enough so people can stand without slipping.

I call it a Dyson cylinder.

>>10161396
Then you will have no sunlight ever. Because the sun has to sit at the center of mass of the cylinder, too, and its rays and the net gravitational force will come from the same point.

>>10161362
Maybe some kind of giant elastic band would work.

>starting to unironically believe cthulhu or something similar exists in the ocean

anyone else have this issues with books, it's the first time it's happening?

>>10161110
Absolutely retarded.

>>10161408

Nah, 'cos you bob the sun up and down with electromagnets and build it wide enough that the sun's gravity doesn't have much effect on people on the surface. Problem solved.

>>10161440
i have something similar ever since i read:
http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-3007
i have this dark sinking feeling that i cant get rid of. its honestly very disturbing.

>>10161464
lol

>>10155330
I'm retarded but can someone please tell me what "Heinlein's juveniles" means? I'm assuming they're novels for a juvenile audience, but why is it always Heinlein's juveniles in particular and no one else's? Never seen that term applied to any other author.

>>10161226
I've been reading Michael Moorcock's early Elric stories. They're good entertainment and have a very modern feel despite being written in the 1960s. Stories like The Dreaming City, When The God's Laugh.

If you find a volume of Robert Howard's Conan short stories there will be some good stuff in there like The Tower Of The Elephant.

Fritz Leibers Fafhrd and Gray Mouser short stories are less nihilistic and grimdark than Elric and less serious than Conan, but solid short stories about two friends who go on adventures, with lots of sword fights.

Conan, Elric, and F+GM, three of the icons of the genre - you should find out your preferences here and go from there.

books about falling in love with a monster girl.
go

meant >>10161497 for >>10161224

It just refers to the publishing house/line he wrote for, Scribeners, which was marketed for Young Adults in the 50s. They are on the formulaic side but better than mere hackwork, and Heinlein clearly put a lot of himself into them. Starship Troopers was intended for this line but was considered inappropriate.

My favourite of these stories is Red Planet.

>>10161501
Me fucking your mom: the screenplay the novelization

>>10161511
jokes on you im an orphan.

>>10161495
Google juvenilia.

FUCK YOU PULLMAN

is "the shard of fire" by k. j. parker written by the same kj parker as sharps, folding knife etc?
I've only read the prologue and 1 chapter but the style is completely different (not in a good way)

>>10161600
i'm a kj parker fan and i've never heard of it. quick google brings very few results, looks like some self published crap or something.

>>10161610
ah, good
I'm a parker fan too and that's why it surprised me when I saw it on mobilism

>tfw so lazy rereading Shannara trilogy for the hundredth time because recently got 25th anniversary hardback and nothing else was convenient

>>10158256
>>10158256
The Lies of Locke Lamora is the best of the series by far. Red Seas Over Red Skies starts out cool but then does a 360 in the genre. It's still cool but not what I really expected. The ending was kind of phoned in. The Republic of Thieves gets back in the right direction but has an epilogue that sets up the next books that he has left to write. It left me with a feeling that the second and third books were just filler for the real overarching plot. Still worth the read though. Lynch has fantastic dialogue and great style that I haven't quite found in other fantasy books yet. I started reading the Mistborn series and even though it's awesome, I feel like its missing some of the literary style that was in Lynch's books.

>>10161750
>. Lynch has fantastic dialogue
I thought it was pretty overbearing. All that banter between characters made me feel like I was reading the script to a Marvel movie

Daily reminder that while The Lies of Locke Lamora is an decent read, the sequels dive into the shitter with horrendous pacing and boring characters.

>>10161764
I like the books. I have a thing for rouges and even though the series isn't perfect it's the best I've read so far. Most of the modern ones get real edgy. You guys know of any good thieving or heist books?

>>10161807
I almost forgot. Thank you.

>>10161818
Not shitting on it either. That's my only complaint, really.

Where the fuck do I go to get a download for the night land rewrites?

Got a whole day off tomorrow and I'm really interested in the story.

>>10161109
I mean the larger point is that Aliens in fiction largely tend to be mono-everything. the fucking tripods are all super cowardly, the cats all love war. Vulcans are all super logical and so on. It's only humans that are diverse, with some being brave, some cowardly, some cunning, some emotional and some more logical.

In TV it gets even worse with aliens almost always having a uniform clothing article that the whole race wears, there is only one language on the whole planet and they all think the same.

He praises the aliens for having different psychologies from each other, but I'm saying: yeah, they all have one psychological trait bumped up to max that applied to the whole race and that's something that happens in 90% of stories with aliens.

Why did I really enjoy this but really hate Half a King?

>>10162225
Half a king is YA and doesn’t do so much lolol flipping tropes shit

>>10159503
Imagine being you in that editorial meeting and having to be all like "damn, George R. R. Martin, you fuckin' fine, all profound with your hackneyed historical allegories and distorted political realism. I would totally read your books, both my pen name and the real me." when all you really want to do is reread Lolita in your corner office. Like seriously imagine having to be you and not only sit in that chair while George R. R. Martin flaunts his disgusting prose in front of you, the embarrassing metaphors barely concealing his utter lack of literary nuance, and just sit there, page after page, chapter after chapter, while he perfected that novel. Not only having to tolerate his monstrous fucking drivel but his haughty attitude as everyone on the board tells him he's SURPASSED TOLKIEN and DAMN, GEORGE R. R. MARTIN WRITES LIKE *THAT*?? because they're not the ones who have to sit there and watch his overt perversions contort into types of fetishization you didn't even know existed before that day. You've been reading nothing but a healthy diet of Joyce, Pynchon and Wallace for your ENTIRE ADULT LIFE coming straight out of a boarding school in Europe. You've never even read anything this fucking disgusting before, and now you encounter the pinnacles of his work, every stool that was looser than the one before and her cunt that became the world, as he recites them while gesturing suggestively at you, smugly assured that you are enjoying the opportunity to get paid to sit there and revel in his "painstaking (for that is what he calls it)" writing, the writing he worked so sporadically for in the previous decades. And then the editor in chief calls for another discussion, and you know you could discredit Martin’s entire bibliography before the SJW and diversity hires could put you down, but you sit there and endure, because you're fucking you. You're not going to lose your future publisher’s career over this. Just bear it. Hide your face and bear it.

>>10159503
I liked the first couple books.

>>10161110
I hope you're not Alderson because >>10161230 eviscerated him.

>>10161512
Doesn't that just make it isekai?

>>10162326
>healthy diet of Joyce, Pynchon and Wallace
>outer /lit/'s mainstays
>outer /lit/
>healthy
Suspension of disbelief: evaporated.
Also, seeing as we're seemingly half /pol/ and all female now, shouldn't this read something like:
>be me
>(((editor)))
>fantasize about white genocide while GURM defiles page after postmodern page

>>10162366
>be me
>be editor
>author brings in their new book
>white people ruined everything
>world is a mess, literally destroyed the environment
>protagonist is a old sassy black woman who fights against the evil white people with some underage degenerates
>yaas queen
>final chapter of the book “fuck drumpf and fuck white people”
>”Wow Ms. Jemisin, your fans are gonna really love your next broken earth book!”

>Hey, dude. It's a great book. I did read in a day - GRRM

>on the cover of every fantasy book that's been released the last 15 years
>"Great book, quite revolutionary" - GURM
>"I like it" - Neil Gaiman

>>10161841
Try libgen.

where the new thread at bitches

>>10162685
Wherever it wants to be

Why would House Frey be allied with House Bolton considering the only members are Roose and Ramsey and they have very little heirs to offer in some sort of marriage pact alliance? I find this all incredibly odd giving how Walder Frey has so numerous and is basically a southern Craster. Do you think Walder has at least giving Roose children to sacrifice to God knows what so he can attain whatever power he seeks? An interesting thing I noticed is how Walder has a lot of girls and too few sons kind of like Craster.

>>10162685
Locked and loaded.
New thread:
>>10162691
>>10162691
>>10162691

>>10161495
They're books specifically written for teenage boys. I believe the term is basically a holdover from 1950s publishing that essentially means "Young Adult". I've seen references to "juvenile fiction" before e.g., Dragonriders of Pern.

"Heinlein's juveniles" has become something of an epithet because Heinlein is popular enough to have a substantial, if mostly informal, body of criticism and that is how certain of his novels are classified.

>>10161551
Juvenilia is something written by an author as a juvenile, not for juveniles.

>>10156337
The only other person I knew to have read this book was my librarian in school.

>>10163448
Oops

>>10161186
It's spinning at orbital velocity. The inner portion has to be structurally strong enough to not fall "down" into the star, but the outer portion is fine.

> the fuck would you want a structure that isn't passively stable?
Why the fuck not? Nothing is stable, not even planets. Eventually Earth's interior will cool, the magnetosphere will shut down, and the crust will absorb the atmosphere; to say nothing of impactors and supervolcanoes. Granted you get several billion years of solid habitability from planets, but why even discuss this topic in a scifi content if you shit on any idea that isn't a planet?

Just have active stabilization. It's not that big of a deal, relatively speaking.

>>10161230
Regular old physicist here.

>The gravity force will not be "toward the middle of the ring's thickness" but toward the center (hole) of the ring.
Come on man, it's rotating. In the habitable middle region the centrifugal force would cancel out the radial gravitational component.

> because you would need something to counter the force every time it changes direction.
Gravity of the disk.

>Toward the outside of the ring, the rays would penetrate at a very low angle... This would make the atmosphere absorb most of the heat
That is a presumption that the star's oscillation amplitude is relatively small.

>tens of thousands
Actually much much more. The disk has a higher mass than the star itself, several times more. Everything is physically possible but it's nonetheless ridiculous because the amount of energy it would take to transmute several neighboring stars completely into heavier elements and then get them spinning around a small star like this.

>>10162016
>I mean the larger point is that Aliens in fiction largely tend to be mono-everything. the fucking tripods are all super cowardly, the cats all love war. Vulcans are all super logical and so on. It's only humans that are diverse, with some being brave, some cowardly, some cunning, some emotional and some more logical.
I have to stop you right there. This is the same reasoning as saying white people's faces have more diversity because other race's faces all look alike. It's not that they aren't diverse, it's that they are so different that you can't pick up on the subtle differences.

To an alien all humans would seemingly act the same way.

>>10161110
My favorite aspect of this is that you could traverse from one side to the other in a submersible. Imagine being a civilization on one side finally creating the technology to do it and exploring the opposite side.