I don’t want to come across as an old man complaining about kids today, but people seem to be forgetting how much our culture has shifted in the past 20-30 years towards embracing all things “nerdy”. I’ve noticed a lot of people don’t seem to understand or remember how much a lot of things that are commonly accepted or held up as cultural touchstones used to be mocked and ostracized. This causes a lot of dissonance when discussing the impact and acceptance of certain genres of entertainment and media especially between younger and older generations.
For some background, growing up in the 90s and 00s, many things were not socially accepted as they are now. Fantasy, anime, sci-fi, comic books…all these things were often considered weird and cause for social ostracism among many circles. Personally, I witnessed many examples of people being shamed for openly liking all these things. I have known many people who actively hid their interests or gave them up as a way to avoid social …
Hi r/Fantasy! It’s good to be back. I am – as discussed – Lev Grossman.
I grew up in Massachusetts. I started my writing career as more of a “literary” writer, but then having met with disappointment and indifference, I discovered my real voice with the Magicians books (The Magicians, The Magician King, The Magician’s Land). The Magicians books were magic school books, but in a more adult/disillusioned/hopefully funny vein, by way of Brideshead Revisited, which then tipped over into sort of post-Narnia books. They were my first successful novels. I was 40!
I’d been supporting myself as a journalist, working at Time magazine, where I wrote about technology and also did the book reviewing. The Magicians books were made into a TV show at Syfy, which ran for five seasons, whereupon I finally quit my day job. I wrote a movie called The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, based on one of my short stories, which is on Amazon Prime. I wrote several other …
I am struggling to find something to dig my teeth into lately and wondering what great books or series I may have missed.
Edited to add: Thank you everyone for all of the amazing recommendations! I honestly did not expect as many comments as I have received so far! Fortunately I have read many of the books and series suggested but I still have a very weighty list of books to look at now. Now I have to figure out how to prioritize the list! I’m looking forward to reading them.
I’ll commit to reading at least the first 100 pages of anyone’s that commits to reading the first 100 pages of mine and gives me a premise, why they love it, and why they can’t convince anyone to read it.
My book: The Complete Morgaine, by C.J. Cherry.
Premise: An alien species that are basically elves discovered the technology for time and space portals in the distant pass. They had fun messing around with everyone else until someone went back in time instead of forward, and broke the continuum.
Humanity figured this out retroactively in the now broken timeline, and sent a team of scientists on what was functionally a suicide mission to go from portal to portal, closing each one behind them as they go, that the technology may never be used again. Some people were currently using the technology and were not a fan of this. In the present day, there’s only one of the team left, and she’s desperate, lonely, and terrifyingly determined. We follow her and a …
you know how tv shows used to have a last week on /insert name/ before each new episode?
i need that to be a standard in book series. especially fantasy ones.
i have the memory of a goldfish, and i cannot for the life of me remember the details of what happened in the last books, which leads me to finding myself having to read the first four books because a fifth one is coming out.
it also helps when you just wanna re-read your favorite book out of a series that might not necessarily be the first one. a recap of the most important details and events that went on in the previous volumes would help you pick up right where you want to and not be so lost.
i know there are recaps of books available online, but that’s not the case for every book out there. there are so many books i want to read but can’t because they’re sequels in a series and i don’t have the time or energy to re-read the previous books to make sense of them.
According to The Guardian, 2023 alone saw a 65% increase in book bans. Florida under DeSantis is the worst offender with a 148% increase. Many books like Lord of The Flies and To Kill A Mockingbird have been banned by local school boards. As of December, Escambia County removed more than 1600 books from library shelves.
Who among you became lifelong readers from the Sweet Valley books? As an elder millennial, this was my Harry Potter, along with Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books. I have not reread any since I was a young adult, but in the age of social media and conscious efforts toward diversity and inclusivity, I don’t think these books would have aged well. Regardless, the books were a fun escape, and solidified so many teen tropes upon which shows like 90210, The OC, and Gossip Girl are based on.
I am reading A House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher right now, and I am having trouble getting into it. The MC keeps talking about the WiFi not working at her mother’s semi-rural North Carolina house and not having a reliable cell signal. That part is believable. I grew up pretty rural in the US not far from there. But people who live in areas without reliable cell service have landlines! Especially people the age of this character’s mom.
I have a feeling the lack of bars is going to be a crucial plot point, and I don’t know if I should even keep reading if it’s going to annoy me this much! 😆 It’s really taking me out of the story.
Those were good times.
Has anybody done “English-fluent future dolphins” in any serious capacity in the last decade?
Hello and good day to you. In reacent time i start to be interest in punk genre (cyberpunk, steampunk…), but never find biopunk, with sound most intresting in my opinion.
Any suggestion or tips.
(Also sorry for my english, im waiting on a plane and im tired to use google translator.)
I’m wondering what kind of SF books are out there that fit the title. I don’t necessarily mean books that are written from an alien perspective or have the commonly asked for “truly alien aliens,” although the question is partly inspired by posts made on the latter. What I mean is have you read a book that made you think, “wow, this author’s mind operates totally differently than mine or even other authors’.” Someone whose thought process clearly deviates from what we are used to (while still being well-written, hopefully). I guess at a certain point it would become incomprehensible to a normal mind, like if we were to read a book written by a superhuman AI targeted towards other super intelligent beings, but I digress.
I could see someone saying someone like Greg Egan since his books are pretty mindblowing, but while he’s obviously extremely intelligent and mathematically minded, I wouldn’t say his way of thinking feels …
What are some books for you that absolutely don’t let go of your brain, years after the last page is turned? For me it’s:
Blackfish City - Sam J Miller
Use of Weapons - Ian M Banks
Maelstrom - Peter Watts
A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer - Neal Stephenson
Breath - Tim Winton (sorry off-sub)
These aren’t necessarily amazing works of literature, but just the same, they stick.
I’m watching Aliens right now just thinking how many more movies he could’ve done instead of entering the world of Pandora (and pretty much locking the door behind him). Full disclosure: Not an Avatar fan. I tried and tried. It never clicked. But one weekend watching The Terminator, its sequel, The Abyss, Titanic (we committed), subsequently throwing on True Lies the next morning. There’s not one moment in any of these films that isn’t wholly satisfying in every way for any film fan out there. But Avatar puts a halt on his career. Whole decades lost. He’s such a neat guy. I would’ve loved to have seen him make some more films from his mind. He’s never given enough credit writing some of these indelible, classic motion pictures. So damn you, Avatar. Gives us back our J. Cam!