I’ve been doing my first re-read of the Fellowship of the Ring in about 20 years, and while its been fantastic thus far there is one thing I’ve seen that has made me chuckle a few times, and at points taken me completely out of the story.

Simply put, Tolkien loves to describe his black riders as, well, black men.

Now, I view this as an utterly innocent use of the phrasing, and I read no ill-intent in it. But it does produce some hilarious effects that, as a black man reading this for the first time since I was a boy, have really made some of the phrasing a lot more hilarious. Its amazing to see how the innocuous word-choice of yesteryear becomes some pretty charged text in a new context.

Here are a few samples of my favourites;

“‘What about the smelling, sir?’ said Sam. ‘And the Gaffer said he was a black chap.’”

-

“‘‘Now what in the Shire can he want?’’ I thought to myself. We don’t see many of the Big Folk over the border; and anyway I had never …

I’ve just finished Memories of Ice by Steven Erikson.

I could talk about how the book explores the themes of compassion, duty and perseverance through pain.

I could talk about the emotional triumphs and crushing defeats that the characters face throughout their journey.

I could talk about the incredible third act that brings together all of the loose threads of the story for a thrilling climax.

But instead I’m going to talk about zombie Velociraptors with long swords for arms and how Erikson took that shit as seriously as humanly possible and it fucking worked.

This book is filled with ridiculously over the top stuff happening so often but it’s written with zero irony and with such gravitas that we have no choice but to go along with it.

Are there any other books or concepts that on paper, sound utterly ridiculous but in execution, the author makes it work?

Robin Sullivan has given booktuber Daniel Greene insights into how authors within and outside of Audibles’ Plus program are being paid. She is concerned about the new plan Audible are rolling out after Sanderson had tried to talk to them about being more fair to authors and their royalties.

Reportedly, this new model will be a literal “boon for ‘some’ authors, and a net negative for most authors”, as quoted by Sullivan herself in an email she sent to Daniel. What was announced loudly by Audible was that royalties were going up from 40% to 50% for exclusive works to Audible and from 25% to 30% for non-exlusive to Audible (still FAR below the industry standard on both counts). However, the quiet part is that the method accounting for the authors income via an Audible ‘Credit’ buy will now mean their income is much lower. The exception are those works with an established readership in the ‘All You Can Listen’ (AYCL) program. …

https://preview.redd.it/dqxwhdsm1aff1.png?width=5400&format=png&auto=webp&s=ac4242704f5a06549030512c2b7ac981df2acb7d

I have made a flowchart with almost 100 books in hopes you will find here your next read or introduce yourself to fantasy literature.

Hope y’all like it. Cheers.

Click here for better view experience.

Okay, this is literally the only place I can think of that might understand what I’m talking about and not tell me to take me meds.

I have this, I dunno how to frame it, obsession? Fascination? Whatever, it is, it’s basically with Maps in the beginning of books, especially fantasy books.(I was looking at the Gardens of the Moon map and it triggered me again)

So what I love doing is looking and staring at this totally unfamiliar map with its unfamiliar names and I get a thrill knowing that soon I’ll be able to recognise these and that these random places will mean something..

The unfamiliarity thrills me like it’s a mystery I know I’ll get to the bottom off. I feel a satisfaction at this knowledge.

As I begin to read, I usually check the maps to concur with the travel etc and where someone is from and that feeling that each time I go back to check the Map it means more to me now.

Until after I’m finally finished I can look at the map fondly, cos …

https://www.comingsoon.net/movies/news/2010188-james-cameron-teases-wild-fantasy-movie-the-devils

I was just reading about it.. Wow this is news to me. Should be fun to see how it gets adapted.

When I’m in the living room, and everyone’s either watching TV or glued to their phones, it’s all normal.
But the moment I sit there quietly with a novel, I suddenly become the problem.
“Talk to us.”
“Why are you always in your own world?”
“Why are you stepping back from everyone?”

I don’t get it. If I were watching reels or texting silently, no one would say a word. But somehow, reading a book = being distant?
Let me live, please.

I’ll go first. I remember at least twice a month that in Where the Red Fern Grows the main character traps a raccoon by placing something shiny in a hole that is big enough for it to put its unclenched hand through but not big enough for its fist to get out. The raccoon will supposedly hold on to the object, psychologically trapped so that the main character can find it later.

I thought about that this morning when I was getting ice from the ice dispenser, because I was able to fit my hand in between the gap but when I was holding the ice I couldn’t get my fist out. I was just like that raccoon!! Lol

I want to know if anyone else has had this happen to them from a book they read in their childhoods or otherwise. :)

I posted in another thread about Marina and Sergey Dyachenko’s Vita Nostra, an absolutely trippy book about a school where the students are punished and drilled into learning how to alter reality. It’s been compared to Harry Potter if magic were real, but the two works are just so different that any comparison would be facile.

The thing is that I found the book really thought-provoking. However, I would not recommend this book to most people. It’s simply not a book that most people would enjoy. Do you have any books that you refrain from suggesting to people because you know no one would appreciate them?

Can you help me find more sci-fi murder mysteries where:

1) It’s established that in this world or society, murder should be impossible

2) A murder has nevertheless occurred, and the book is about its investigation

I’m not interested in books that are just an “impossible” crime setup, but don’t have the wider context of murder being impossible - I want perfect societies where nobody would want to kill; dystopias where state control prevents crime at the thought level; cities of immortals; societies of telepaths incapable of aggression; virtual realities where death isn’t real etc etc.

Philip K. Dick’s Minority Report (procognition prevents murder), Alfred Bester’s Demolished Man (global surveillance) and Neil Gaiman’s Murder Mysteries (murder doesn’t exist as a concept) fit the bill.

John Scalzi’s Dispatcher series (people come back to life when killed) is a perfect example. Adam Roberts’ Stone …

For me it’s The Sparrow. I’ve read a lot of great, memorable sci-fi and it isn’t even close to being in my top 10 but I find myself ruminating on it about once a week in the years since I read it. At this point my brain has made an unbreakable connection between seeing a field of cows and thinking about The Sparrow. Honestly, I wish I thought of it less!

I’m specifically looking for a series to tackle to. Dune is my favourite book (series) of all time and I just finished the second book of the Hyperion Cantos. At this point, I’ve come to realize that sci fi is the genre for me. After I’ve read the Endymion books (the second duology of Hyperion series) however, I’m not sure what should I read next.

I need suggestions for sci fi book series similar to Dune and Hyperion, dealing with large themes like religion, philosophy, human behaviour, politics, mysticism, morality and technological advancment’s effects on humans while also introducing an immersive world to dive to with interesting and unique ideas. It’s probably obvious that I’m more into soft sci fi but I am also open for harder stories.

I am an avid reader. It’s a guilty pleasure lol. I’ve read Red Rising, the Sun Eater series, and War of the Worlds. I thoroughly enjoyed them and was recommended this book. And, after putting it off for a while, I just finished The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester in about 3 or 4 days, and holy hell—this book punches like a shot of whiskey to the skull. It’s the literary equivalent of a back alley knife fight in zero G, all chaos and adrenaline and raw, unfiltered rage. Gully Foyle isn’t a hero. He’s not even an anti-hero. He’s a rage-fueled animal dragging himself out of a metaphorical gutter and into something godlike, leaving blood, fire, and broken systems in his wake. This is The Count of Monte Cristo if Dumas had taken acid and grown up during the atomic age.

The writing is insane—in the best way. Bester doesn’t give a damn about hand-holding. He throws you into a future that’s bizarre and half-explained, where people teleport with their minds, corporations run the show, …

So, not trying to spur an angry debate or anything, but I’ve recently read a few novels by trendy authors who have received numerous awards (among them several Hugos) and… I couldn’t be more disappointed. Their science fiction is actually some sort of “nothing-interesting-happens fiction” that doesn’t suit me at all. No sense of wonder, no ideas that have any appeal… And it’s not like their prose is worthy of a Nobel Prize either, so… I just can’t see the point.

I miss writers such as Robert Charles Wilson, who seem to be kind of forgotten in today’s sci-fi scene. Can anyone recommend a few recent sci-fi novels in that vein?

Some other sci-fi stuff I’ve enjoyed over the years:

I can think of Dragon’s Egg by Robert L. Forward, basically any book written by Iain M. Banks, Embassytown or The City & The City by China Miéville, Dune, Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds, Altered Carbon by Richard K. …