Listen… Some of these high fantasy novels are never going to make it to the big screen, and not everything should. Speaking for me, I don’t want to see all the CGI spren (Stormlight Archive) every 5 seconds next to live actors. Its too much, and expensive besides.
Anime though. You can super stylize it and make it look incredible, like The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf on Netflix. That is both one of my favorite fantasy adaptations and one of my favorite anime movies all in one. It looks incredible, as good animes do, and it has the backing of great writing, as the fantasy novels that we love obviously do.
Imagine entering a warren in Malazan looking like a Jujutsu Kaisen Domain Expansion. This would be everything for me. Then they studios throw a budget at the adaptors and marketing team to keep the episodes coming at a consistent pace, unlike many of my favorite animes. I think it could work. What do you think?
What are some of the hidden gems of the fantasy world that’s NOT Harry Potter, LOTR, ACOTAR, The Folk of Air, Shadow and Bone etc.
While reaserching for my newsletter, I came across a fact about Neil Gaiman’s Coraline I didn’t know…
The book almost wasn’t published. Neil’s editor said it was going to traumatize kids, so he asked her to read it to her daughter and see if it was too scary. The girl said she was enjoying it every night, and they got through the whole book and she said it wasn’t scary so the book was published. Many years later, Neil got to talk to her about the book and she said she was absolutely terrified the whole time but wanted to know what was next, so she lied because she was worried that they’d stop reading the book if she said it was terrifying.
Just think about it… the book got published because a kid lied about how scary it was.
If you have some other such strange facts about well known books, I would love to know about them. So do me a favor and put it down below…
Greetings! I am Joe Abercrombie, one of the biggest names in fantasy (11 letters). My first book, The Blade Itself, was published in 2006, and I’m now the author of 12 novels and a few short stories, including The First Law, Age of Madness, and Shattered Sea Trilogies. My website is at www.joeabercrombie.com, and I am found on twitter under @LordGrimdark, though I’m not actually a real lord.
Please do pose your questions now, and I’ll be here from 12pm EST, 5pm GMT to answer the VERY BEST of them, starting with the most liked, and I’ll maybe even come back over ensuing days to answer more, but I reserve the right to equivocate, take the piss, or outright deceive in my responses. I mean I make stuff up for a living…
Okay… I had recently stumbled across an Instagram post talking about Sigma Women, or in their own words “she is literally me”. And the person had AMY DUNNE on their list… I have (and still to this day no reason why) people actually think Amy Dunne is a relatable character. Nick was a cheating douchebag. We all get this. But did he deserve to have a murder framed upon him, made to look like the actual suspect, and forced to be trapped in a loveless marriage by a psychotic woman who killed many men and falsely accused them of rape? People will say it’s a “revenge fantasy” but what kind of fantasy is that? Where you blatantly accuse the one you hate of murdering them and killing yourself to ensure that he looks guilty permanently?
Yep. ‘Make America Great Again’. I absolutely could not believe it when I saw it in a book written more than 20 years ago.
I’ve read a lot of dystopian sci-fi books, and this is definitely the one that feels most real. Everything doesn’t go to hell overnight - instead, people lose more and more trust in the system, and the more that happens, the more the decline accelerates. Everyone isn’t transformed into some kind of hyper-violent murderer by the collapse - most people still want rules and safety. But when an armed gang shows up, or a bunch of people on a psychosis inducing drug, those moments are incredibly tense and dangerous.
Here’s the setup for the 1st book (no spoilers, but in tags in case you like to go in blind): >!It’s the year 2025, and United States is descending into anarchy in the face of climate change and other disasters. We see the world through the diary entries of Lauren Olamina, a teenager living in a walled-in neighborhood …
Everything doesn’t go to hell overnight - instead, people lose more and more trust in the system, and the more that happens, the more the decline accelerates. Everyone isn’t transformed into some kind of hyper-violent murderer by the collapse - most people still want rules and safety. But when an armed gang shows up, or a bunch of people on a psychosis inducing drug, those moments are incredibly tense and dangerous.
Here’s the setup for the 1st book: It’s the year 2025, and United States is descending into anarchy in the face of climate change and other disasters. We see the world through the diary entries of Lauren Olamina, a teenager living in a walled-in neighborhood in the exurbs of Los Angeles. Jobs are scarce, food and water are increasingly expensive, and armed gangs and drug addicts control the streets outside.
Lauren’s father, a pastor and professor at a local college, tries to keep their little community safe, but Lauren feels things going to pieces and is …
I have seen people referring to Straship Troopers as satire but it didn’t give me that vibe while reading. I haven’t seen the movie, so, I don’t know if this take is strictly confined to that.
I enjoyed the book though I couldn’t agree ideologically with many things. And strangely, the lack of action didn’t make it any bit boring as well. I had read previously that its Heinlein’s allegory to WW2 (like Forever being Vietnam war) etc. However, book was a straight story for me, with some fetish on a ‘superior’ military way of life. If anything, the book was encouraging it all the way. I found it more close to Old Man’s War (which I didn’t enjoy) than anything deeper.
Would love to hear your takes.
I was just wondering if there was any place or website that keeps track of new sci-fi novels, novellas, or short story collections released during the year. Also if possible ones keeping track of Self-Published or relatively unknown authors mainly because I would like to support and read newer or relatively unknown authors and often times sellers online won’t have a newly released sci fi books option.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_a_2lWvZCA
A great conversation, including Watts’s five SF books that influenced him the most.
Imagine the hallway scene in Star Wars: Rogue One with Darth Vader slashing through dozens of rebel soldiers when, suddenly, C3PO appears, his eyes glowing in the dark, and says “Sorry Ani but I can’t let you do that” and we see the once harmless and not-threatening-at-all droid basically go Grievous style with a pinch of Ultron/Skynet and beat the ever-living hell out of Vader.
In short, zero to hero but with an artificial being, though zero to full-on overlord isn’t bad either.
It doesn’t have to be like this exactly but I would really like to see something of the sort. If possible, recommend the most emotional, epic finished books (preferably fantasy/sci-fi). If the ones you are thinking of are not but you think they are worth a watch, send them anyway. Thanks.