/lit/ - Literature

Any non-shit alternate history books?

Light novel fag here, how old were you when you realized that magical swords were fucken gay?

>>10403694
i ate a whole bag of those once
not bad dipped in chili sauce

Quorn is so great. Too bad I moved to another country and it’s not sold here.

sanderfag a hack

>>10403694
Why would you use the same permutation as in the previous thread? Either use a new one of the normal lower case.

>>10403694 (OP)
Why would you use the same permutation as in the previous thread? Either use a new one or the normal lower case.

>>10403694
Why would you use the same permutation as in the previous thread? Either use a new one or the normal lower case.

>>10403726
just 3d-print nuggies

>>10403708
Man in High Castle bangs, feels nothing like the rest of Dick's work if his weirdness puts you off.

webnovels are NOT novels and NOT /sffg/

reminder that webnovels are novels too

>>10404042
>>10404301
what the fuck are webnovels?

>>10404380
think web comics but instead of a new strip each week theres a new paragraph each week.
i personally dont care much for those so i dont get the bickering.

>>10403694
>Quorn nuggets edition
How is this related to /sffg/?
Please at least make something up.
>Why would you use the same permutation as in the previous thread? Either use a new one or the normal lower case.
I assume she isn't in on the plot.

>>10403837
That's good to know. I thought Ubik was bad but liked do androids dream of electric sheep. I wasn't sure if I'd give him another go.

>>10404387
The pro/anti WN bickering is probably just one dude who wants to spread awareness.

Excerpt, The Flower Women.

---

As he went down the knoll into the valley, the enchanter heard an eery, plaintive singing, like that of sirens who bewail some irremediable misfortune. The singing came from a sisterhood of unusual creatures, half woman and half flower, that grew on the valley bottom beside a sleepy stream of purple water. There were several scores of these lovely and charming monsters, whose feminine bodies of pink and pearl reclined amid the vermilion velvet couches of billowing petals to which they were attached. These petals were borne on mattress-like leaves and heavy, short, well-rooted stems. The flowers were disposed in irregular circles, clustering thickly toward the center, and with open intervals in the outer rows.

Maal Dweb approached the flower-women with a certain caution; for he knew that they were vampires. Their arms ended in long tendrils, pale as ivory, swifter and more supple than the coils of darting serpents, with which they were wont to secure the unwary victims drawn by their singing. Of course, knowing in his wisdom the inexorable laws of nature, he felt no disapproval of such vampirism; but, on the other hand, he did not care to be its object.

He circled about the strange family at a little distance, his movements hidden from their observation by their boulders overgrown with tall, luxuriant lichens of red and yellow. Soon he neared the straggling outer plants that were upstream from the knoll on which he had landed; and in confirmation of the vision beheld in the mimic world in his planetarium, he found that the turf was upheaved and broken where five of the blossoms, growing apart from their companions, had been disrooted and removed bodily. He had seen in his vision the rape of the fifth flower, and he knew that the others were now lamenting her.

Suddenly, as if they had forgotten their sorrow, the wailing of the flower-women turned to a wild and sweet and voluptuous singing, like that of the Lorelei. By this token, the enchanter knew that his presence had been detected. Inured though he was to such bewitchments, he found himself far from insensible to the perilous luring of the voices. Contrary to his intention, forgetful of the danger, he emerged from the lee of the lichen-crested rocks. By insidious degrees, the melody fired his blood with a strange intoxication, it sang in his brain like some bewildering wine. Step by step, with a temporary loss of prudence for which, later, he was quite unable to account, he approached the blossoms.

Now, pausing at an interval that he deemed safe in his bemusement, he beheld plainly the half-human features of the vampires, leaning toward him with fantastic invitation. Their weirdly slanted eyes, like oblong opals of dew and venom, the snaky coiling of their bronze-green hair, the bright, baneful scarlet of their lips, that thirsted subtly even as they sang, awoke within him the knowledge of his peril. Too late, he sought to defy the captiously woven spell.

>>10403694
>newfag anon fucked up the subject field
>didn't alternate the sffg to trigger lit anon
Lurk moar fagget

Is Vox Day a good writer?

>>10404380
>what the fuck are webnovels?
Why don't you lurk more and actually open pics in the general?

>>10403694
what's a novel/series for those moments when someone is rightly angry at you but you're still kind of upset about it

>>10404473
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why Clark Ashton Smith is better than H. P. Lovecraft.

>>10404574
Mediocre, his writing style is very similar to 30's pulp like Conan. I've heard from both /lit/ and affiliated blogs he's a brilliant editor and extremely easy to work with though.

>>10404961
this doesn't say anything about Quorn nuggs so we're cruising just about fine

>>10404968
Is Smith as racist though?

>>10404968
Well, In some ways he is, but I find think CAS and HPL complement eachother well. Clarke tends to vividly describe his demons, ghouls and monsters with his poet's vocabulary, while Lovecraft interestingly avoids outright descriptions, or skirts around the malevolence by hints, rumors and suggestions, and this allows for some more compelling plots. It's a source of wonder for me they were writing for the same lowly pulp rag in the thirties. As for Robert Howard, he's at least a step below them.

>>10405045
it talks about webnovels
take your redhit ass back over there and stop trying to force your stupid memes in our general

>>10405045
>Is Smith as racist though?
Yes, although it manifests differently.

>>10405045
Nowhere near Robert Howard (Lovecraft gets a lot of flack, but Howard is full of African caricatures) or Lovecraft's questionably named pets and 'nautical looking negroids'. The most off-colour remark I vaguely recall being about the Abhramahic religion of a penny pinching curio shop owner.

>>10404574
Beale is a hack who writes like a upper-middle class housewife from the 1800s attempting to write in the most purplest of prose, who is only really notable because he's been cyberstalking John Scalzi and yelling at people about how they're putting chemicals in the hugos to turn the books gay.

I feel a craving for nationalistic or religious zeal manifested in a war against a fundamental ideological or theological enemy. Something like World War series by Turtledove, but instead of fighting aliens a fight for example of humanity against the creatures that go bump in the night.
Please help I want monster genocide.

>>10405111
>they're putting chemicals in the hugos to turn the books gay.
OK smart guy, why are the books turning gay then?

>>10405111
>who is only really notable because he's been cyberstalking
His publishing house is actually really successful especially considering the current state of Sci-fi.

>>10405232

His publishing house mainly exists to launder money that his father stole in a fraud scheme.

>>10405167
This Tweet is potential one of the worst I've ever seen.

>>10405111
>purplest of prose
Are you retarded, do you even know what that means or are just using it as a buzzword?

I only read his arts of light and dark series and there isn't a hint of purple prose there, doubt he used it much in anything else either.

>>10405167
>Fighting Trump's America one tweet at a time

>>10405167
Is Scalzi still having a mental breakdown? he looked on the serve of heroing last time I checked in on him.

>>10404380
Wildbow's work is the best example.

You can find his 1.68 million word work Worm, a grimdark superhero webnovel, here:
https://parahumans.wordpress.com/

Floornight. hard sci-fi by nostalgebraist, is also good and is located here:
http://archiveofourown.org/works/2372021/chapters/5238359

Cordyceps, soft sci-fi by Benedict_SC, is here:
http://archiveofourown.org/works/6178036/chapters/14154868

Does she get better? I'm halfway through the second book, and I can't stand her.

>>10405840
I can smell the shittiness of these from here

>>10405782
impossible to write in Trumps AMERICA
#RESIST

>>10405313
How does that work?

>>10405840
>hard sci-fi
got my interested, what's it about?

>>10405857
these fucking fags must have had a meltdown when trump recognized jerusalem as israel capitol

>>10403709

26. I started reading light novels as well and found them to be a million times better than most fantasy novels, especially since light novels aren't written by faggots and dykes, nor are they pushing that agenda.

>>10406139
>what is yaoi/yuri/shotacon/lolicon
you can't escape degeneracy

>>10406154
Clearly defined degeneracy that sticks to its own category and doesn't demand representation in the others.

>>10406139
Japan is the most degenerate of all countries.

any good fantasy book where the protag faces terrible situations, bonus if he gets a bit mad, like in wot

>>10406181

And yet it's more enjoyable to read than shit here in the west.

>>10406230
of course anime is enjoyable
why do you think it makes such mad bank?

Finished Hyperion and wow are there a lot of loose ends. Good thing the book I have is Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion all in one, so I can just keep going on! Should I start reading the Foundation trilogy along with Fall, or should I focus on finishing the Hyperion works?

>>10403708
Some really good long stories that could be considered books I guess on the forum (alternatehistory.com). Some people there are literally retarded but there are some that really know what they're doing.

>>10405843
>Does she get better?
Nice bait

After I heard so much about recently I've finally red Ready Player One last night and I can't really see why it's so popular.
>Plot
It's kinda thin, it has some decent elements here and there but it quickly then rushes to: "he has no money but he has a lot of money to hide and build a bunker with a top tier PC and VR-rig" The ending also feels kinda.. eh. Basically going out on: "oh and the bad guy got arrested btw which feels anti-climatic as shit.
But for me, the worst is the VR world itself. basically an MMO that is so popular and widely used, people care more about their virtual lives than their real lifes. This I could buy, but SO MANY THINGS that are described are fucking terrible:
>P2Win up the ass
Getting credits in this game is basically as good as any real world currency, They have auctions where you can buy super powerful items and you also need a lot of money to get around as virtual vehicles need virtual repair and fuel.and even teleporters cost decent money fees.
Basically: Once you're on a planet that doesn't allow for grinding gold (like the school planet, I bet there are more without any income opportunities) and you're broke you're fucking stranded there.
>Permadeath
Have I mentioned you can buy super strong weapons for money and just flat out kill anybody you like in a lot of zones? And guess what, if you die you can't come back and get the guy. You get reset to level 1, you lose all your items (which if you're poor you might have saved or farmed for years to get) and are basically fucked. Hell, they can even just steal those very expensive vehicles you bought.
Fucking nobody would enjoy that game. Certainly not on such a global scale.

Also: the whole 80s thing didn't do it for me. I felt like it wasn't really something that worked well into the story and felt more like just a listing of extreme 80s trivia, with people CONSTANTLY just quoting the release year.
>Real people:
A: Hey what about frogger?
B: That game where you hop across a street and avoid cars and falling into water?
>RPO people:
A: Hey what about frogger?
B: The 1981 classic Sega game developed by [Name of dev] from Konami?

>>10406300
Where do you fit on the autism spectrum?

>>10405843
I think so

So a family member got me a copy of an N. K. Jemisin book as a gift, is she actually good or is she one of the diversity awards that people were complaining about with the Hugos?

>>10406300
There is a good representation of an MMO in a Philip K Dick short story, The Days of Perky Pat. It's more about its effect on adults, who become apathetic to their surroundings, rather than the game itself, which is a Barbie and Ken-esque role play game (or whatever the modern equivalent of Habbo Hotel is). But for a 1963 story it feel it anticipates the thrall of such games on normal people in an eery way - just like in Brave New World, the things that we partake in to escape our humdrum lives numbs us with apathy, and prevent us from being proactively good in our physical environments.

>>10406225
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant if you don't mind whiny, self-pitying protagonists. It's actually really good.

Why is it that Dune draws me in that nothing else and is one of my favorite books of all time but LOTR puts me to sleep?

I've tried reading LOTR 3 times, once in 5th grade, one in 9th, and once in highschool and I every time I stopped around Shelob or before then. Am I just a brainlet?

>>10406420
That is really strange because most people who make it through Fellowship have no problem with everything else.

>>10406333
I never got tested but honestly it's hard to buy the whole premise of this super successful VR universe when every time he describes actual gameplay aspects of it you go: "that sounds fucking horrible".

>>10406358
I can forgive a lot in these old stories because, they had to make up a whole lot more than we do these days. Like how in androids dream, they have flying cars but TV are still big clunky retro style TV sets with antenna on top of it.
But Ready Player One was what? 2011? He did all this retro game research but couldn't be bothered to take a bit to find out what makes a good MMO or VR game?
>the things that we partake in to escape our humdrum lives numbs us with apathy, and prevent us from being proactively good in our physical environments.
This pissed me off occasionally too in RPO. Most of the time it was described as this wonderful virtual utopia of escapism and no addiction, yet every now and then he'll drop the "it's not real life" and "true love and true anything can only be found in the real world" and the story ends on him for the first time not wanting to log in like that's a good thing.
And it doesn't come across as a philosophical "Do you think love can bloom, even on a b̶a̶t̶t̶l̶e̶f̶i̶e̶l̶d virtual reality?" or "If this VR causes you to reject your real life to life in it, but ultimately it makes you happy, is it still a good thing or just another opium of the people?" It doesn't make you think about the implications of such a world, but rather comes across like your preachy mom or aunt going: "Anon get of dat computah, it's bad fer ya!"

>>10405163
Starship troopers for nationalistic militaristic zeal if you haven't read it already.

>>10406429
I skipped Tom Bombadil on the second and third run through if that adds anything.

Why is that part even in the book?

>>10405876
There are two main ways. You use the place like a traditional laundromat or car wash or "that one Mexican/Italian place in town where nobody ever goes to it but it's been open for a decade."

Or you use it to take advantage of tax loopholes. Back in the 70s there was a thing called "tax scam records" where a record company would be able to set up a subsidiary which did nothing but lose money. The records they made, if they existed at all, were typically nothing but the bottom of the barrel: unfinished tracks, demos, random crap they'd already released, and so on. The records would be left to rot in a warehouse and then dumped in a landfill after being listed as unsold, and the owners would be able to write off a big portion of the parent company's operations as a tax loss so they could keep their profits up.

>>10406457
Why shouldn't it be?

>I thought I could build, Lews Therin murmured in his head. I was wrong. We are not builders, not you, or I, or the other one. We are destroyers. Destroyers.
Who is the other one?
isnt lews the only one in rand's mind?

>>10406465
No, how does Castalia House launder money? They publish a lot of books, and they don't seem to be running at a loss, and they're not even based in the US.

And exploiting tax loopholes isn't even money laundering.

>>10406444
>muh stizzile trwupers nationalism may-mays

>If you wanted to teach a baby a lesson, would you cut its head off? Of course not. You'd paddle it. There can be circumstances when it's just as foolish to hit an enemy city with an H-bomb as it would be to spank a baby with an axe. War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government's decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him...but to make him do what you want to do. Not killing...but controlled and purposeful violence. But it's not your business or mine to decide the purpose of the control. It's never a soldier's business to decide when or where or how—or why—he fights; that belongs to the statesmen and the generals. The statesmen decide why and how much; the generals take it from there and tell us where and when and how. We supply the violence; other people—'older and wiser heads,' as they say—supply the control. Which is as it should be.

>>10406487
Is your post supposed to refute my post or something? It's pretty much completely unrelated to my post

>>10403694
Is blindsight good or am I being memed on?

>>10406476
>isnt lews the only one in rand's mind?
Until the last few books yes

>>10406154
The difference is the Japanese do not expect everybody to love them for being degenerate. They are self aware enough to realize they are a niche, not mainstream, and so only focus on catering to their niche and do not have pretensions of mainstream appeal.

Western degenerates however seem to believe they are owed a spot on the main stage with normal people. This delusion makes them difficult to get along with, because you get the sense that everything they do is about pushing their agenda of acceptance rather than just being honest about their niche appeal and reveling in that.

>>10406300
>>10406436
Why do you expect this author to conceive and describe a perfect abomination?

It seems akin to saying "Fahrenheit 451" isn't believable because Bradbury didn't include an exact script for an episode of Kardashian TV.

>>10406486
>No, how does Castalia House launder money? They publish a lot of books, and they don't seem to be running at a loss, and they're not even based in the US.

I couldn't positively say without being able to look at their books but it's probably just the old "most of the profit is actually drug money and most of the expenses go to Johnny Kingpin" style of laundering. Basically a good portion of the sales are probably non-existent books being bought with his dad's stolen money. And now with electronic publishing you don't even need to pay for physical books before shredding/donating them to charities.

>>10406639
These are some harsh accusations, anon. Is there any evidence anywhere? If this is true it's your responsibility to help put Vox Day behind bars.

>>10406605
>namefag
>in charge of understanding.
Not at all surprising.

planning on writing a run on the mill YA MC but not a cliche story. Would it work?

>>10405616
>The pallid sun was descending, its ineffective rays no longer sufficient to hold it up in the sky or to penetrate the northern winds that gathered strength with the whispered promises of the incipient dark.

"but that's not REAL communism!"

Still in the beggining of knife of dreams but...
Does the dragon reincarnates like ordinary souls or only to make his duty in closing the bore and then rebirthing in tarmon gaidon?
Also, is lews therin and rand the same person? or they are different people?

>>10406158
>>10406563
you're saying that like most LNs don't have token characters for at least lolicon. Though you are correct in that LNs are not exactly mainstream. However we are discussing LNs, and lolicon has a very high representation in them.

>>10406690
The Dragon only pops up when the world needs him to battle the Dark One. A lot of people say it's the same person, but when you ask them they have different ideas about what that means.
Good editing and partial rewrites could have lifted that series from a 6 to an 8.

>>10406754
oh i understand
it's a bit philophic to debate wether the soul makes you the same person or the memories make you diferent
so it means the dragon spends 3000 years in the world of dreams? or just talking with the creator?

>>10406663
That's a tripfag. Lurk more and stop posting, newfag trash.

So guys I was remembering a book I read about five years ago that was set in a fantasy world (or the near future?) about a society where this one MMO basically determines your standing, income, etc. Dying is heavily avoided because you start off at square one and when it happens to the main character he make a character in-game that's full of charisma points instead of any battle-useful stats, and that helps the plot develop. Anybody recognize something like that?

It was YA, I think, if that helps. Googling "novels based on video games" or "novels about video games" is completely unhelpful.

>>10406940
>hurr muh YA litrpg books xd

>>10407293
embarrassing post

>>10405845
feel free to say that it's shitty without knowing anything about it, but I think it's all quality. Wildbow's following works, Pact and Twig, though, I did *not* like.

He gets paid $4,000 a month by his audience to keep writing.

https://www.patreon.com/Wildbow

Why does editing suck so much? I just want to be done with this stupid novel. It's not even good and its not going to be good for a long-ass time

>>10403709
>>10406139
>>10406154
Do light novels get turned into audiobooks? Recommend me some cool shit, and some degenerate shit. In that order please.

>>10406339
The Broken Earth/Fifth Season were pretty good. Solid and worth a read, at worst.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is abysmal.

>>10407470
light novels? nah mostly they re turned into mangas and sometimes anime.
however. theres fan readings of lightovels.
some of them can be quite professional actually. though its mostly for really obscure shit and hard to find.

>>10407484
FUCK, I have nothing to listen to tonight. AGAIN. God damn it why can't I find fun shit to listen to?

>>10407510
http://debofnight.andcuriouser.com/
be careful not to fall in love anon.

>>10407453
>tfw not even at the editing stage

>>10407512
>http://debofnight.andcuriouser.com/
Lel is this the radio of the vamp rpg? I need to play that game, never gave it a chance

>>10407293
Can't be bothered to save the image
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/z-33xndJvL0/maxresdefault.jpg

>>10407612
>https://i.ytimg.com/vi/z-33xndJvL0/maxresdefault.jpg
Put the link as the file name next time and you'll have the pic

>>10407595
it is and its fantastic.
its like 45 minutes total of unique audio just for the radio.

>>10407421
>48k a year

That's decent just for writing web fiction, though on the other hand you've got no 401k, medical/dental, etc.

>>10407453
>finishin the first draft
something ill never do

>>10407453
editing is easy, the first draft is hard. editing is like finally getting to let loose your inner shithead perfectionist that is always tweaking things and thinking 'i could have done it better.' the first draft is agonizing - there's no science to converting an outline into prose, and it's mentally exhausting

New Black Company book "Port of Shadows" confirmed for next year. It'll take place between Book 1 and Book 2:
>Years into a campaign against the rebels who have rallied behind the White Rose have left the Company jaded and the fact that the Lady seems to have taken particular interest in Croaker since his stay in the Tower hasn't exactly made his life easier.

>Now it looks like The Limper is up to his old tricks and is doing what he can to separate Croaker and the Black Company from The Lady's favor. Now Croaker finds his fate tied to a brand new taken. One claiming to be something impossible but feels uncomfortably familiar. It's going to take all of Croaker's cunning to insure that the mechantions of The Lady and her "loyal" taken, The Limper, don't destroy the company once and for all.

>>10404968
where would you reccomend starting with him?

>>10406696
They have token lolicon if they like loli, but there aren't loli support groups complaining to publishers that not putting a token loli in your LN is erasing loli.

>>10406529
It's very good hard scifi. It's a little oblong at times and Watts has his own very distinct style that no everyone can stomach, but I recommend trying it anyway, it's free on his website.

>>10407615
Not everyone has 4chen ex you cunt.

>>10407799
Don't want. I would it would continue a slice of life of what happened after book 10.

>>10408253
Why wouldn't you have 4chanx? There's no reason not to have it.

https://apps.npr.org/best-books-2017/#/tag/science-fiction-and-fantasy

wew

>>10407804
https://www.amazon.com/Eidolon-Other-Fantasies-Penguin-Classics/dp/0143107380

Best collection for beginners IMO.

>>10408439
These look either awful or extremely bizarre.

I want to read more books about super powered fags fucking each other up. I already read through the only sanderson series whose magic system didn't read like an autistic math textbook and turned me off immediately. anything non sanderson out there that you guys would recommend?

Lads, I'm completely blanking on the name of this one scifi book I read a while ago. It was one where anyone could get any job they wanted by simply applying, and a load of people get cyanide poisoning from someone fucking up a job where they had to prepare apples correctly - they did it incorrectly and the apple seeds containing cyanide were concentrated in juice drink or something. Please help lads.

>>10408518
Peter V. Brett is almost as anime as Sanderson.

>>10408518
I recommended Worm earlier in the thread, it's free and online here:

https://parahumans.wordpress.com/

"Super powered fags fucking each other up" is a pretty apt description of the entire thing. Be careful though, it's as long as the first half of the Wheel of Time series put together (~6700 pages on your average e-reader). The sequel is being written now and new chapters are up every Tuesday and Saturday.

>>10408518
wheel of time
best series after tolkien's

>>10406181
What other books are like wild wastes? Someone said on goodreads that it's pokemon for adults, and I find that quite apt.

Is the sale on super shill anon here?
Sell me on this book. Was this the book talked about earlier where a girl was bullied in the toilet by other girls for no reason other than to set up she was bullied?

>>10408518
If you don't mind having no magic system, try Conan the Barbarian.

>>10408720
You talking about Worm? People in the setting obtain powers sometimes after enduring horrifically traumatic events. The protag triggered after being stuffed in a locker full of used tampons, yeah, and the story starts out with her having drinks poured on her while she is using a bathroom stall. But there's more to the story and the characters involved that is expanded upon later.

>>10408767
Oh that was worm? What about shill on super heroes? What's that about?

>>10408439
Norse Mythology's ok, but ultimately just another retelling of the same ancient stories. I'm there for Iraq + 100, since Blasim's first collection was some of the only horror that's actually affected me in ages. No idea why there's a Minecraft book, unless that's the token "small kids" recommendation. Twenty Days of Turin is solid, but has barely anything fantastical in it. Doctorow just sucks these days, though I remember liking some of his earliest short stories. Pullman might be good, he's been working on it for ages. Don't know the rest, beyond a sneaking suspicion that modern Marvel comics aren't worth bothering with.

>>10408832
ahmed's got a good grasp on black bolt, being a king & the repercussions of his actions
I couldn't get into his novel but I read bb every month

BAKKER QUESTIONS BELOW
There's one thing that still irks me that I didn't get about the last book. So when Kel gets pulled into the sarcophagus he becomes the No-God, right? And the gods didn't see it coming because this had already happened in a sense, and so his immunity to their gaze extended backwards in time? Something like that? But then, who is the No-God from the First Apocalypse? Is it also Kelmomas time traveling? And does this mean that time in this setting is a closed circle? And what do Kellhus visions mean when he's nearly killed with Serwe in the second book given that this is what happened? Did he even have any idea?

what's a good, long-ish fantasy series, i haven't read any since i was like 15

>>10406457

Your brain has been trained by the movies if you think that way.

used to respect eriskon until he started talking about armies consisting 50% of females
i get why you're trying to seem tolerant but don't overdo it you fucking faggot, won't buy a single more book by you

>>10409501
>he likes women
>what a faggot

>>10409667
>he comes up with unrealistic shit and tries to falsify history
>what a faggot

>>10409501
female armys should rely on quickness, light infantry and ambushes
akin to aiel maiden of spears of WoT
otherwise is just fucked up

what are the best Spanish language science fiction authors /books?

>>10409702
why would you ask this on an english language imageboard

>>10409715
dunno

>>10409501
Actually the historical record shows that the only culture without a notable history of women fighting in wars is, ironically, the Norse.

>>10409737
Individual warriors though, hardly ever in organized units except for jokes like that harem Sun Tzu trained.

It certainly can be done, it's not like armies of weak men haven't beaten armies of strong men, but it's a very bad idea if you like having future generations.

>>10409680
>history
>fantasy

i am in page 150 of knife of dreams
will there be any explanation of why the ta'varen can see what each other are doing?

Anyone read The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet? Heard some good thing about it.

Can anyone recommend a recent scifi book for me to get as a present for my uncle. It can be something a bit more "Out there" as he read a lot of the genre, was hoping for something obscure that he won't have.

>>10409743
The Soviet Union used women in frontline combat roles.
The Nazis didn't even use women as factory laborers, because Germany loves losing wars.

>>10410160
And Russia has a smaller population today, right now, than it did in 1940, when it had was just beginning a war against a much smaller country that was also getting pounded from the other side. Truly encourages cogitation.

>>10406457
>Why is that part even in the book?
Because there are more things out there then orcs. LOTR is a larger world in the books then in the movies. Also, Tom is able to upstage Gandalf in the "mysterious powers" category. No one's complaining that Gandalf is upstaging everyone else in the mysterious powers. Give him a tall hat and call him a wizard and look- you've stopped asking questions!

>>10410182
>what is the breakup of the USSR and the resulting decline of living standards leading to declines in life expectancy and lowered non-Muslim birth rates?

>>10410207
One of many factors? I'm not claiming women on the frontlines in Stalingrad is the primary cause of Russia's demographic problems, but then again there weren't that many. You could call snipers a frontline combat role, but they didn't exactly have brigades of women charging trenches.

Look, I'm not claiming units of women can't be effective. I'm just claiming they need to have a ton of justification because even in the chaos of WWII most people realized putting your wombs in front of bullets is eating your seed corn.

>>10409737
I think you're abusing the word "notable."

Oathbringer
reading through Dalanar's past
What happened to his wife

This cements that I'm a little bitch, i didn't even like her that much but now i'm on the verge of tears, both for her and dalanar

On an unrelated sidenote does anybody else has a hard time visualizing what they are reading? I have some sort of low detail picture in my head but all the architecture and most of flora/fauna are abstract concepts to me. I'm beginning to believe that cities and anything else really should first and foremost be described with the feeling they give out from you being there with some bits of distinct architecture here and there.

>>10410291
>does anybody else has a hard time visualizing what they are reading?
Just imagine the world is the seashore at low tide.

>>10409702
The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares

is it okay for my heroine to be basically useless for the first third of a book or will people hate that?

>>10409690
Women aren't quick though, anon.

They're just shittier men who could probably be given pikes and left in the center.

>Cultivation isn't hiding
I wonder what that crazy bitch is up to.

For the guy who requested a War of the Flowers review:

https://pastebin.com/nvErN7xm

I didn't make it through the whole book, because it was boring/bad, but there's my thoughts on the first 60% or so.

>>10410726
well
I believe they can be quicker
while they have less muscle, they also have bones with less density.

>>10409690
Wrong. Women have historically made up half the military in societies all across the world, if not more. Stop male-washing history.

>>10410899
>I believe they can be quicker
>When men gain strength and size, their bodies often develop more fast twitch muscle fibers than slow-twitch muscle fibers. When women gain strength and size, their bodies develop fast and slow twitch muscle fibers almost equally.

>>10404473
Prose is way too purple for me personally, but I can see how others might enjoy it.

>>10410899
>I believe they can be quicker
they're not, I'm not meming or anything, women are physically weaker then men in every area

>>10410910
HAHAHA
joke right?

>>10411042
but since they always weight less shouldnt they be quicker?

>>10411072
Men have larger hearts and their blood can carry slightly more oxygen
look up Olympic records or any kind of athletics, male and female athletes are not in the same category

>>10411094
and woman arent even more inteligent thn men
nature is truly unfair with them

Oh hey... It's another book where the Author follows basic cliches to appease the biggest audience. I am so done with authors who do this with their main characters.

>Orphan
Check
>Boring standard modern name like Harry or Jon
Check
>Brown hair and brown eyes
Check

or

>had parents but were brutally murdered
Check
>Overly complicated and unique name that the Author has to spend a page explaining
Check
>Extremely unique and different features to make the main character stand out amongst the plebs, like flaming red hair
Check

If you see any Author do this, throw the book away ASAP.

>>10411186
>Overly complicated and unique name that the Author has to spend a page explaining

I feel the same whenever I run into some white person name Klayberghyn Robyn Strong Oak McJaxxton.

>>10411290
Orangethorpe McClough would be a good fantasy name

>he is writing a book which mentions or has quotes in an ancient language
>he just makes up
>he doesnt truly create the ancient dead language
you are the cancer that kills the fantasy scene

>curator of the SFF section has an "accident"
>only affected the hands
>I am quick to offer my services
Mwahaha

>>10410706
Thomas Covenant was useless for the first 80% of an entire trilogy. Some people like it and the books sold well but the series also has many haters. Do what you want anon.

>>10410899
>I believe they can be quicker
Well that solves it then

(they're not)

Actually if you want to have womeme fighters make them horse archers. Their horses will move faster because they're lighter, even if they can't draw as heavy a bow.

>>10411072
No, because while all things being equal lighter = faster, the question is power:weight. Usain Bolt is 6'2". Bullet trains move much faster than your Dodge Neon despite being orders of magnitude heavier. Likewise, ants are much smaller than women but women can easily outrun an ant.

>>10410234
Uh you do realize that the Soviet Union was facing a literal war of extermination right?

And that serving does not equal an automatic death? Only like 30% of the Red Army was killed or wounded.

>look on authors blog
>they do fucking stupid shit like mountain climbing and travelling to third world countries
>meanwhile they haven't released in a year or more

>>10407635
no 401k, medical/dental, etc.
Not like those are going to be reliable in the future.

I'm at chapter 20 of mistborn 1. You lied to me sffg, where is the autistic "mathematical" magic system?
I went into branderson with of expectations thanks to you guys. Repent

>>10403694
>read prince of thorns
>OMG LOOK HOW EDGY I AM AM I EDGIER THAN SEVERIAN AND THE KID SUUUUUPER EDGY AND MY FATHER IS EDGY AND EVERYONE IS JUST SUPERDARK AND MEAN

What a fucking shitshow. To the anon that recommended this to me: fuck you.

>>10412206
you got memed hard, son. godspeed to that anon.

>>10406670
I'm a fucking newfag that just got into this thread from the 4chin pagefront and this seems pruple af.

>>10412235
I figured that out by now. I have never seen anything like it
>DUDE
>WHAT IF I LIKE MIX
>BLOOD MERIDIAN
>BOOK OF THE NEW SUN
>THE LAST 2 AVENGED SEVENFOLD ALBUMS
>THE CLIFFNOTES OF SARTRE'S DEVIL AND THE GOOD LORD
>BUT LIKE
>MAKE IT POINTLESS N SHIET
>BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT LIFE IS MAN
>AND ADD EDGE
>LIKE ENOUGH EDGE IT PICKED UP A GUITAR AND STARTED PLAYING FOR U2

I finished it tho, more out of ambition than anything else.

>>10405843
Ahahhaha

No.

Worse, if anything.

The third book sold out hard.

>>10412206
According to my friend who suffered through it, the series ends with the main character teleporting to the center of the earth and using it's magical power to cast a super spell that kills all the demons. And apparently he could have done this at any point in the series?

>>10412148
lol who told you that? Mistborn is basically "chug a bottle of mountain dew with metal shavings in it to power magic that has clearly defined capabilities"

If you want math, try Ninefox Gambit.

>>10405843
She's the reason I stopped reading those shitty books. Female characters are always cancer.

Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask, but can any of you kind anons tell me the title/author of a book I read about 20 years ago?
In it, some rubber ball aliens with divisible brains hold cold-war era earth hostage until the human nations agree to give them their best warriors, which they use to wage private war on a species of centipede aliens, who turn out not to be evil or even the aggressors so the humans turn on the first aliens.

>>10412435
are the human nations composed solely of dumb fucking retard cunts/pretentious gashes who think theyre educated and that their liberation leader is tres downton abbey is classy and sophistique but actually a power hungry evil cock whore who systematically rapes and subjugates a male (sex) slave if not psychologicall/socially then physically via male relatives over an almost 30 year period ?????

>>10412454
I don't think that was it. I remember the Spetsnaz guy stabs the black american specops guy in the ribs when they first assemble on the alien ship.

>>10412404
You inspire me, Patrick Bateman of the American Gardens Buildings on West 81st St.

>>10412457
oh, good. a manly skirmish.

>>10408660
Have to second that, lots of bad people with bad powers doing bad things to one another

I could hurt you, like I do with most people. Hurt you while you’re looping through the same action, so you feel that pain over and over and over and over again. The only thing that doesn’t change is your brain. That keeps going. The pain is always fresh, it never gets easier to deal with, but I’m told there’s a certain point where you crack, and you go around the bend. Takes a few days for most. Then you get to a point where you work through your issues. You don’t want to, but you do, because the only thing you have to occupy yourself with is the pain and your own thoughts… so you get mostly better, and then you crack up again, and you get better, and that becomes a loop of its own… Until well after the sun goes out, they think. Speed of thought, can’t turn it off unless I’m using it on myself, and I don’t think anyone’s immune.

>>10412484
stop i hate faggots who write like this

Does Neuromancer get better?
I'm not really enjoying the beginning, the technobabble feels gratuitous and Case's descriptions and inner monologues drag on too much.

I got 10 Billion Days & 100 Billion Nights at the same time and I'm enjoying it way more.

>>10412276
DON'T read Ninefox Gambit
Awful book

>>10412148
Rithamist probably the most "mathematical" magic systems Sanderson has (without having actual maths).

Since when did we get so many r9ks going on about "roasties" in a fucking fantasy setting?
Since when does it matter if a female is in an army (like they are irl) in fantasy when people are summoning lightning at will in the same world?
Since when did the lgbt crowd have a foothold in our general to say where we could put our vagina wielding women?

>>10412646
>what is verisimilitude

>>10412646
Why are they summoning lightning at will? What is the mechanism? How does this affect the plot? It needs to be explained, as it is a massive departure from the world as we know it, or at least acknowledged, or you're headed into magic realism territory. Same with women in combat (like they aren't irl). You can have it, sure, but if you just have it like it's the most natural thing in the world and it's the real world that's wrong it breaks suspension of disbelief and suddenly you're reading a hundred thousand words some dude wrote again.

>>10412688
THERE ARE FEMALES IN OUR REAL LIFE ARMIES.
>made me respond

>>10412696
behind desks lol

>>10412701
>being proud of being cannon fodder
American army shitskins everyone.

>>10412696
As a meme.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_post-Vietnam_War_Medal_of_Honor_recipients
look at all those females on that list

>>10412711
>Oh boy I got a medal for not being blown into pieces or being blown into pieces
What do you know about war, you retarded cunt?

>>10412710
But the original anon was complaining about women being widely represented in combat, pre-gunpowder, and you bringing up women in support roles in modern armies a million miles away from a battlefield doesn't make women with swords on the front line any less silly.

>>10412718
I recommend that you amerifat landwhales join the army as the shortest route to committing suicide.

>>10412713
What did he mean by this?

>>10412646
r/incels got nuked and the refugees spread all over the place. I think 90% of non-/pol/ will just abandon this boat when r/thedonald eventually gets nuked.

>>10412526
If you don't like the Japan part throw it away and never look back.

>>10412646
>ctrl-f "roastie"
>1 result
Anon...

>>10412741
Oh shut the fuck up there's at least a couple of fags in every thread complaining about FEEEMAAAALES, either characters or authors.

>>10412746
Thus stripping you of free will and psychically compelling you to attribute /r9k/ jargon to them? Because as we all know the only way to defeat a troll is to refute their arguments.

>>10412739
Not gonna lie, I'm a little disappointed. But thanks.

>good female warrior characters

wow it's almost like there's nothing peter can do wrong

>>10406139
>26. I started reading light novels as well and found them to be a million times better than most fantasy novels, especially since light novels aren't written by faggots and dykes, nor are they pushing that agenda.

>reading everybody loves big chests
>started off as monster rape
>turned into gay marriage rants

They're slipping themselves into our shit.

I'm looking for a book where people have encounters with something so beyond themselves, they think it's God.
Whether it actually is God or not doesn't matter that much to me as long as the plot is good.

Got something for me?

>>10412803
The Bible

>>10412803

>>10412803
solaris

>>10412809
Perfect, thank you.
But really, the Orthodox Study Bible has been a fun read and makes me realize just how much about the story you can miss if you just read it with no guidance.

>>10412813
I thought about getting into this so many times but I always give up.

>>10412821
That actually seems right up my alley, thanks.

>>10403694
quorn is pretty good, but why does it have to be marketed as pretending to be meat? they taste nothing alike. especially weird that it markets itself as low quality processed meats

>>10404398
general editions being unrelated to the gen is a tradition, they don't have to be related, it's just a flavor theme so that you can have some fun making the op. the edition also doesn't dictate the content of the thread

>>10412746
This is 4chan. Don't white knight for your sacred cow.

>>10412701
There are women in infantry positions

>>10412859
this is sffg, don't make it about your agendas in general, even if it's something as laudable as misogyny

>>10412869
Women aren't deployed beyond the wire.

>>10412877
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_combat#Specific_countries

>>10412881
>Germany
>Australia
lol
>Israel (but 96% are in support positions)
And remember this is modern war, where you ride to the battlefield in a truck and fight with a pointy shooty button pushy. Children fight in this kind of war. They suck at it, but they can. Pre-industrial warfare, where soldiers' main qualifications were
1. Can march a lot
2. Can swing a physical weapon
saw far, far fewer women in combat, and always with heavy qualifications.

The issue here, which nobody's addressed, is an author giving a medieval army a huge amount of women WITHOUT AN EXPLANATION, just presented as a matter of course. This suggests that rather than honestly dealing with his source material he is taking a modern assumption (men and women are equally capable of combat) and placing it, unquestioned, in his fantasy setting.
>muh magic lightning bolts
Which are always explained, because magic lightning bolts without at least some justification are weird, just like female spearmen.

>>10412905
I basically agree with that. I do think there's a lot of
>OH NO FEMALE AUTHOR
and
>OH NO A FEMALE IN GENERAL
shit going on. I don't particularly enjoying when natural gender roles are defied for no reason, it feels fake

>>10412921
There is, but mostly it's good-natured meme-forcing.

At the same time, if you look at context in the greater SFF conversation, you have big publishers like Tor constantly spouting off on how proud they are to have so many woman authors in their new anthology and meanwhile nobody can remember a thing about them. Forcing their own meme, if you will, about women being better authors, because they're diverse.

I heard about a magazine that was doing an all-woman issue that turned into a nightmare for all the editors and slush readers, all their resources were going towards it, and the slush for the woman-only pile sucked so bad they had to draw female names from the regular pile to fill space. It's natural that that sort of environment creates pushback in spaces like this where you can talk about it without getting fired.

>>10412803
Lord of light

>>10412833
I agree with you
It's a perfectly good food on it's own, which I eat happily alongside meat. A lot of nutters like to remove meat entirely form their life but there's nothing wrong with just going half-vegi like me.

Do any epic fantasy series (besides arguably ASOIAF) have good characters as -well- as deep-ass lore?

>>10413295
There aren't that many epic fantasy series to choose from, you know. Like, how much else other than ASOIAF, WoT, Malazan, and Sword of Truth is there.

>>10413296
Without saying anything about quality...

Sanderson's stuff. LOTR. The Dagger and the Coin series. Kingkiller Chronicles. Black Company (not sure if it's epic fantasy). Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. The Farseer Trilogy. The Prince of Nothing trilogy. The Lightbringer trilogy. The Long Price quartet. The Chronicles of Amber. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. The Inheritance Trilogy (N. K. Jemisin's, though the one by that teenager is technically epic fantasy too). Codex Alera.

>>10413333
Hmm, yes. I think of epic fantasy as long ass series on the scale of WoT. Counting shorter series, there's a bunch of stuff of course.

>>10413296
why people dont write more epic fantasy?

Looking for some comfy sci-fi.

>>10413355
Maybe because it's hard to do well and takes a lot of time for an uncertain income.

>>10413355
Tons of people are about to write epic fantasy though, and they have it all sketched out and it's going to be so great and their elves are actually... just as soon as they get around to writing it!

>>10413410
Anathem.

>>10413426
>writing fantasy for income
these people should go write self-help books
let fantasy for the ones who like to write stories

>>10413446
i hate the generic races
i can only think of dnd with elfs
unless they dont make the generic tolkien elf

>>10413715
Everyone who writes pointy-eared humans without a trace of feyness "elves" deserves to have their first-born abducted and replaced with a baby-shaped mushroom.

>>10412775
>vampires in space

>>10413735
Yes?

>>10413715
>>10413735
>>10412775
Read Wild Wastes

>>10413453
Love this book so much. My favorite Stephenson.

>>10412838
>general editions being unrelated to the gen is a tradition
Not really. I'll grant you it tends to be really loose.
Maybe it would make sense if I had any idea what a quorn is. Edit the image next time.

tfw when you read books and then discover the sequel was never uploaded anywhere

>>10413766
>look it up
>Super Sales on Super Heroes
>all a bunch of smut harem books
Should super sale be added to the smut chart?
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/88988.Harem_or_polygamy_fiction

>>10413774
>Not really
yes it is, almost every gen does it

>>10412838
>general editions being unrelated to the gen is a tradition
BS
They are almost always related to sff in someway. Even the animefags webnovels can be classified as fantasy/Sci-fi when they do an English book translation.

>>10413782
We are using the word "related" differently then.

>>10413410
Gateway

>>10413778
Think of it as an opportunity anon.

>>10413804
to buy it? olool

How much did I fuck up, /sffg/?

don't read books by wimmen

>>10409501
Imagine being this much of a petty idealogue.

>>10411072
You realize speed is determined by muscles right? Movement requires strength. Women have a lower percentage of muscle mass relative to their body weight compared to men, it literally does not matter how much they work out or bulk up, they will never equal the strength of a man in their weight class or even a man who is only one weight class below them. They are at a biological disadvantage. It's the reason women have separate sports leagues and Olympic events and why the physical exams for the military have to be changed to permit them.

>>10414095
in others species usually the females have some quality that makes them not "walking wombs", human females are just too useless compared to other race's females, why

>>10414103
reality isn't a fucking video games retard

>>10414106
???
what u mean

>>10414120
In videogames things with big downsides usually also have a big upside to offset it. In RL some things are just shit.

>>10412570
The only people who I've heard say this are people who can't handle books that don't hand hold them and explain everything beforehand like Sanderson.

>>10414103
>>in others species usually the females have some quality that makes them not "walking wombs"
I mean, that's literally what an ant queen is. She is a totally defenseless birthing machine. That's her role. She has drones to feed and defend her. There's not just one successful model. Women do plenty, they just arne't made for hunting and fighting. Sure they CAN do these things if they have to, just not as well as men can. But in terms of war though, to get this back on topic and less away from the realm of bitter /r9k/ incels, there's plenty women can do in the army in terms of combat roles.

I mean, if your strategy for victory requires every soldier in your army to be physically more powerful than every soldier in the enemy's army, then you're fucked. Women aren't as strong as men but that doesn't mean they are weak. If they can't draw heavy bows then give them mechanical crossbows, which while still tough to draw are well within the abilities of women to use. Have them load, aim, and fire siege machines. Use them as irregulars in mixed-sex units, the overall weaker strength of your force shouldn't matter since you're not giving the enemy a straight up fight anyway, you're raiding their supply lines or ambushing patrols and will almost always outnumber them and catch them by surprise.

And best of all: every woman you put in one of these roles is one more able bodied man you can put in the main force where his strength is better exploited.

>>10403694
The Morningstar Buffalo Nugs are fucking great.

Bought pic related.

Is there a pronunciation guide anywhere? I like to make sure i'm using the correct pronunciations, it is part of my autism.

>>10406139
Neck yourself

>>10414106
>reality isn't a fucking video games retard
You are the fucking retard. What he means (I'm sure) is species, not race. Like how Spiders and other animals, the females are usually bigger than the male.

Also what we are talking about is strong females in a fantasy book. I don't see how a fucking magical race can't have women in their armies. Erickson usually mentions how the females are crossbreeds and they have something else in them(orc, dragon, troll, elder god, etc). They're called heavies for a reason. The only pure human females in the malazan armies were raped, or had to be protected.

>>10409680
Fantasy isn't history you fucking inbred spastic. Stop projecting.

>>10412833
>>10403726
I wouldn't eat Quorn. Why they decided to use a Fusarium species for food is beyond me considering they are known for producing an array of mycotoxins. Fusarium venenatum strains are known to produce trichothecenes. Presumably the commercial strain doesn't but I wouldn't risk it. Not to mention allergens.

I am curious about the taste/texture of the Quorn nuggets though, it would be interesting to try, but Quron is not sold in my country as far as I know.

>>10413781
>https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/88988.Harem_or_polygamy_fiction
>all that self published smut
I thought goodreads was for actual authors?

>>10412859
Stop trying so hard to fit in, mongrel.

>>10403694
Any good recs for some sci-fi with over the top action in the same vein as Jurassic Park?

>>10414163
Crossbows made for killing people generally use a mechanical aid for cocking them, generally either a big lever or something like a cranequin or windlass that you use to crank the bow back. Even a child could operate a big 1250lb draw crossbow, though they wouldn't have a hugely effective rate of fire.

Even the ancient Greeks had mechanical aids, the gastraphetes "belly bow" was designed so that you'd use a sliding rod on the front of the thing to push the bow string back on a ratchet mechanism with your body weight.

Really though the advantage they provide is that like guns: even the most plague-ridden and malnourished peasantry can be turned into a an at least somewhat effective fighting force, unlike bows which require your peasants to be well fed and spend years of their lives building up muscle and bone structure through constant practice, ala the English longbow.

woman are weak as fuck but i think they would be good cavalary archers
let the ones with streghnt stay on the ground

>>10414103
Human females are terrific at social memory and keeping groups together. Also terrific at tearing them apart for the same reason.

>>10414163
>every woman you put in one of these roles is one more able bodied man you can put in the main force where his strength is better exploited.
In fact, this reasoning is why battlefield nurses tended to be overwhelmingly female. Using them in mixed units brings up the issue of sex, which can be pretty rough on group cohesion since we're not libertine bonobos.

>>10414737
but sex is useful to relieve the stress in the war
this is why rape is so commom in wars

>>10414750
Sex relieves stress, which is why you go for hookers, nurses, or rape; sex also produces jealousy, which is why you don't make co-ed military units.

Oh yes, and sex also produces babies, which is why US Navy ships have to sail with reduced complements so much.

Damn, I'm loving this thing.
I hope I can find something like it afterwards, I want more.

>>10414757
>which is why US Navy ships have to sail with reduced complements so much.

fucking looooool if you think that's true.

It's because they're cutting funding and time for basically everything. "Do more with less" has been the creedo for close to two decades now because the Navy has gotten the short end of the stick in Operation Bomb Useless Dirt: Eternal War Boogaloo, because illiterate goat farmers seldom have boats.

Additionally pretty much every branch of the service has major retention issues with both enlisted and officers. A good way to put it in perspective is that the Air Force has problems retaining fighter pilots even with offers of close to a million dollars in bonuses, they'd rather go fly airliners for lower pay than flying jet fighters but also dealing with Air Force Politics and getting run ragged.

>>10414626
Conan the Barbarian.

Is it bad that I'm actually enjoying this series? Granted I've heard it gets significantly worse at the series goes on, but shit It's a lot more entertaining that Sanderson's garbage that I had to stop reading. I'd take Kahlan over Shallan every single time.

>>10414937
> I've heard it gets significantly worse at the series goes on

Understatement of the aeon. I've never seen a series tank so hard. It goes from a fairly decent fantasy series to a pseudo philosophical self-insert author political wankfest.

>>10415010
the main character carves a statue of himself that is so beautiful everybody who sees it converts to objectivism

>>10414430
Nigga who think you understand it better than the fucking scientists? Are you genuinely surrounded by such idiots in your life that you think your knowledge of Quorn dwarfs every regulatory body they passed to get it sold in supermarkets nationwide?

>>10414626

>Read some Sci-FI
>finish book in one night
>Read some Fantasy
>can barely finish a chapter before falling asleep.
Why is this? I mean I love fantasy, but I barely have focus reading it.

>>10415542
It’s just your personal taste
Also I think there’s more variation in sci-fi than fantasy, ignoring any argument of superiority

>>10414893
It's a statistical fact. Around 20% of female Sailors in the US Navy end up pregnant in their first deployment, and that number goes up for subsequent deployments to close to 40%.
Mixing women and men in military deployments is a giant clusterfuck that causes issues for everyone.

>>10415589
I think part of it is that many of the fantasy stories seem very similar. You very often get a case of: "Well that's just the same story with new guys". For sure this happens with Sci-Fi as well, but I feel less so.

>>10415727
To be fair, if you were deployed somewhere, had very limited forms of entertainment and very strict rules in general, but access to the opposite sex, you'd try to fuck as much as possible as you can too.

>>10415781
yeah byt at least use condom
fuck
i fucked my ex for 8 months and never once she got pregnant
just dont release the juice inside the jar

>>10415800
Do you have any idea the kind of people you're talking about? It's literally possible to score TOO HIGH on your entrance examinations to qualify as a Marine, they specifically seek out people with double digit IQ's. The lower the better.

>>10415839
but...why?

>>10415839
It's pretty sad actually. They look for people just dumb enough to buy all the "american hero" shit and then send them off. Doug Stanhope did a bit on it I think.

But it's one of these things you're "not allowed to say". You have to be super respectful towards anyone like they personally took a bullet for you. But if you ask them why they joined up, it's always "Needed money, no degree" and shit like that. You never hear: "I was halfway done with medical school when I realized this is my true calling"

>>10415877
Because they need to be big, strong, and dumb enough to not question extremely questionable orders. People who actually have brains can better contribute in ways that don't involve blowing up dune coons.

>>10415901
>not question extremely questionable orders.
Not even that. I mean I don't wanna sound like some fedora edgelord but it's literally: "Yeah, we're gonna need you to believe that you're risking your life to keep america free and save, if it wasn't for you the terrorists would take over and we would all speak german" and so on. They need someone who FULLY buys into the system. The whole package, patriotism, doesn't question leadership, thinks this is what makes a hero, the whole shebang.

>>10415839
>It's literally possible to score TOO HIGH on your entrance examinations to qualify as a Marine
Is this true?

Any decent recent Sci-Fi? I've read trough the Expanse, tried Ready Player One and now I'm not sure what to go with.

If all else fails, I'd settle for some decent urban fantasy if it exists. Honestly why are decent Wizard stories so rare in general?

Is Persepolis Rising the blunder of the century for Expanse? Reddit seems to like it but I can't get over the fucking time skip

>>10415441
I am a mycologist so I probably have a better understanding of the general biology and chemotaxonomy of the genus the good people at Quorn selected as their commercial strain.

Thankfully trichothecenes haven't been associated with commercial Quorn strains, but who knows what will happen if they decide to switch growth media in their bioreactors one day.

Forget that nonsense. The Brits can eat their Fusarium slurry in their dystopian world, I'll stick to other tried-and-true fungal products.

>>10416126
No. If you score very high, the recruiter will try (with good reason) to convince you to go into a different career field, but ultimately you don't have to.

>>10416126
Don't know about Marines, but Police tend to do this quite a bit. Some more than others depending on location.

>>10414626
The Great Zoo of China

>>10414790
IS THAT ALEX O SMITH OF FINAL FANTASY TRNSLATION FAME

>>10415800
Evangelicals have been working very hard to prevent the armed forces from supplying birth control.

>>10414626
Origin by J.A. Konrath

It's sci-fi/horror and instead of killer dinos you get an ancient demon who is possibly Satan.

>>10416128
If you like the Expanse I'd suggest David Drake's RCN series. It's a action-adventure space opera style series about a young space captain and a older librarian turned spy/hacker. Not exactly the "pseudo hard SF" of the Expanse but more of a Napoleonic age of sale setting where the ships have to send crews out onto the hull of the ships to manually set their sails while they're traveling in FTL space.

Other good SF I've read recently has been Ninefox Gambit, Linda Nagata's The Red (kinda Metal Gear Solid in style, solders vs megacorps with a AI messing with everything), Mechanical Failure by Joe Zieja, All Systems Red by Martha Wells, and the Wolfhound Century series by Peter Higgins. (Which is more urban fantasy in a fantastical not-Russia)

>>10413766
Book 2 was fucked up.
>zombie catgirl that likes headpats and tail scratches has to receive daily bukkae from her master or she will die
I bet he will fuck it too.

>>10403708

>>10417123
This is beyond moronic. Pls green text some more

>>10413766
>>10417123
How is that even classed as fantasy? It's simply porn.

I'm obsessed with robots. Are there any non-Asimov robotic books you'd recommend? (please no aliens, I don't like aliens)

>>10417351
Why not both?

>>10417123
i thought hed he was gonna fuck the gnome too.
the ending is what got me though elven queen suddenly marrying him and everyone just goes along with it.
petra is best girl

>>10417358
Read Electric Sheep our dude.

Sorry but I need to point this out for the lurking /v/irgins, Malazan is the Dark Souls of lit

>>10417425
Yes, sir! Downloading now.

>>10417369
How the fuck does she look?
The rock's first appearance in the mummy? A giant ant? But instead of a head you have a vagina wielding female?

>>10417503
from the descriptions in the book she looks similar to this but you know whit an ant body instead of spiders. vagina seems to be where it would be on a human. just about where the legs would start.

>>10417511
or this might be more accurate with the legs more closely together.
i think its described better in the first book when they go to that guild meeting and she has to put on a dress to hide her torso. if think the book described her as tall amazon in that dress so its fair to assume the only non human parts of her are the ant abdomen with the stinger and the legs.

>>10417518
captcha ate my picture.

>>10417522
>those pincher human legs
Using that vagina comes with a price doesn't it? That's probably where the "mouth" is....

>>10417518
>the only non human parts of her are the ant abdomen with the stinger and the legs.
>dislocates jaw
>heh nothing personnel kid
>organic pliers gripping your throat from her mouth
>you're already dead
>stab

You notice that every female is a virgin? Even the zombie catgirl said she never was with a man.
Also that supple gnome girl is gonna be our first midget porn if the new Elvin "queen" doesn't get dick crazy, it might never happen
What about the fey that can sit on his shoulder? Is he gonna fuck her too? What about the new dark elf Chamberlain?

When is book 3 coming out? Book 1&2 were released months apart.

>>10409814
I'm halfway through the final book and there hasn't been one for now. The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills, man. Also the Pattern provides etc.

>>10417652
>When is book 3 coming out?
>Yosemite City Inn
Where Randi Darren hangs their hat to take a breather.
>their
http://randidarren.blogspot.com/2017/12/wild-wastes-3super-sales-2.html

>>10416820
I just chewed through this and it was surprisingly okay, though the ending was a cheesy cliffhanger. What are some other similar stories

>>10413333
I think you're mistaking epic fantasy and high fantasy.

>>10414726
Archery requires a lot of upper body strength.

>>10417656
i was actually shocked when i found out randi darren and william d arand are the same person. i though they were just firends then i noticed that in the comments sometimes answers would be given by either of them.
also really really bummed jeff hays isnt doing the audiobooks for super sales anymore. he narrated the shit out of andrea and i haven't heard of the new guy he got through podium.

>>10417656
>read blog
>super sales is related to wild wastes
>will now have to read it

>>10417652
eh i dont mind the virginity or harem stuff actually.
i mean its actually fairly rare if you think about it. most books literally are about reverse harems which probably is because most erotica is written by women for women. i mean i cant for the life of me actually list any similar books to wild wastes apart from the heartstone saga.

>>10417683
spoilers:
read only if you dont care.
everything is in the otherlife universe
the world of super sales and wild wastes are computer simulations
protag of wild wastes and super sales briefly meet as described in wild wastes 2 and super sales 2
runner, protag of otherlife is the "god"
in super sales interacting with felix
when felix started to experiment with portals between worlds he was in fact serverhopping

>>10417676
Is podium a self publisher's publisher?
A book I read (trysmoon) was released by podium and I think he was self published before that.

>>10417684
>i mean i cant for the life of me actually list any similar books to wild wastes apart from the heartstone saga.
>https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/88988.Harem_or_polygamy_fiction
You have a bunch now.

>>10417702
podium is generally really good and they do tend to pick up indies more often. i think they picked up jon stryvant for his new audiobooks.
they did some pretty good stuff though like the audiobook for the martian which i found to be excellent.
additionally i did some research on the guy they hired to do super sales 2 and 3 and he apparently worked with R.L. Stine before.
i havent sampled his voice yet but im actually cautiously optimistic.

>>10417706
yeah most of the stuff on that list isnt much like wild wastes. also jesus fucking christ man half the books on that list are basically glorified NTR.

>>10417691
>otherlife universe
Looks like I will have to read all his books now....

>>10417726
its honestly not that bad but noticeable that its his first ever book series. its probably worth a read or listen to the audiobook but you really dont need to read it if you only want to read super sales. theyre all pretty much seperate books and the connections between them are done through that one cameo in super sales and wild wastes. also a reference at the end of super sales 2.
its worth listening though if you can appreciate good voice acting. jeff hays is pretty talented. no idea why he suddenly dropped doing the voice for super sales 2 because william/rand stated he already worked out a schedule with jeff when super sales 2 was released two weeks ago.

>>10417726
also keep in mind otherlife and super sales are not erotica. otherlife has protag building a harem though. and super sales has the mc date two women but thats about it. also theres a batshit crazy yandere in super sales.

>>10417709
>podium is generally really good
So you're saying I can use their catalog to find new books?

>>10417751
sure but they dont list all the books they do on their website for some reason. not even close to it. they seem to only feature their most famous works. you can probably find a list somewhere though.

>>10417745
>also keep in mind otherlife and super sales are not erotica
It's listed in the harem goodreads lists, so I can work with that.

>>10417759
yeah just keep in mind theres not going to any sex scenes. but lots of sexual innuendo and flirting.

>>10416852
I'm fine with both sides. I can go with "Well these are sailboats in space, deal with it" and I can go with the expanses "space is fucking big m8, going anywhere takes weeks and months" with realistic railguns and communication delay and all that jazz, great.

What I can't have is when they try to mix them too much. Be all super realistic, scientific and then the wizard comes by. I think Star Trek was the only show that ever pulled that off.

>>10416528
that's him yeah

Ardee is such a piece of shit. If she ends up Queen I'm going to be triggered.

>>10417947
:^)

>>10416128
House of Suns
Blindsight
Quantum Thief
Accelerando
Three-Body Problem
Spin
Culture series

I've also heard praise for both Too like the Lightning and Permutation city but I haven't read them yet.

>>10416128
>>10418077
You can read one chapter of Too Like the Lightning and pretty much know if you'll enjoy the series or not
Permutation City is a weird one, but if you've got either a decent understand of computing or the patience to go to Wikipedia you'll do fine

New Thread
>>10418549
>>10418549
>>10418549