I know this is extremely controversial opinion. And yet for me it’s something fundamental.

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But think about it. What is fantasy like? For me, it’s like being a kid again, when you know nothing about how the world works and you are curious to find it out, and the process of discovering the facts and the knowledge and the experience is what makes it beautiful. And then you grow up and become an adult and everything becomes known and boring.

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It’s also like installing a new game, (and preferably when you’re a kid) where everything is beautiful and wonderful to you. You don’t see the codes and the graphics and the bugs and the development. You get lost in it.

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Fantasy, for me, is that. It’s throwing you to a new world, and trusting you to find and discover the world, and be amazed and exited by every creature and plant and person and race.

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Nowadays, many preferences has turned into info dumping and …

Ive been thinking about this for a while and i cant unsee it now. In most fantasy the dragon is either basically a god, some ancient cosmic force that speaks in riddles and hoards gold for no biological reason, or its a glorified pet that the chosen kid rides into battle. What i almost never see is a dragon treated like an actual apex predator that exists inside an ecosystem, and the more i think about the logistics the more questions i have.

Like the feeding alone. A creature that size, if we go by square cube law it would need an absurd amount of calories just to not starve. Were talking entire herds of livestock on a regular basis. One dragon settling near a village wouldnt be a cool mysterious threat, it would strip the entire region of sheep and cattle and deer in a season and then either move on or starve. And nobody ever shows the aftermath of that, the famine, the empty hills, the farmers who are genuinely ruined not because the dragon burned anything but because it ate …

‘I worry about what they will say of me. Historians can make what they wish of the past. In a thousand years’ time, will I be remembered as the man who protected mankind from a powerful evil? Or, will I be remembered as a tyrant who arrogantly tried to make himself a legend?’

Now, this is how you write fantasy.

Okay, so I confess: after the latest strings of fantasy books I’d read being more or less a hit or miss depending on the day (apparently), I did not go in with high hopes for this one.  I mean, yes, I have heard great many things of this book, and also yes, before you come at me: blame my healthy apprehension for anything being too highly regarded and I immediately become of the mindset that it might not be the second coming as people keep saying it is. Also, coming over from Islington’s books, I really did not have much hope in the way of falling in love with the characters all that much.

And well, when the tears fell down my cheeks at the end of the …

I meant to post this the day before yesterday, on 21 June, but then forgot! 🙈

That day marked a sad milestone: we were then as far removed from the publication of A Dance with Dragons than Dance was removed from the publication of A Game of Thrones.

The first installment in George R. R. Martin‘s series A Song of Ice and Fire was published on August 1, 1996. 5458 days later, on July 12, 2011, the latest installment was released.

21 June, 2026 was the 5458th day after the release of Dance.

Something I was wondering today because there’s a big discussion about Brandon Sanderson going on over on X. Basically, Sanderson is known for very simple, kind of dumbed-down prose and he releases at stupidly fast speeds. He makes good worlds, and he’s the magic systems guy. But opinion overall is divided. Sanderson is, at my count, 75 books deep right now (split between novels, novellas, short story collections etc.). His debut was in 2005.

In the sci fi space, Tchaikovsky is known for being incredibly prolific too, but not quite to the same level. He’s a few years older, his debut was 2008, and (at my count) he’s at 43 novels and 14 novellas. But I’ve never seen the same criticisms of Tchaikovsky, that I see of Sanderson (very simple prose, kind of dumbed down, scared of adjectives etc.). In fact, he gets award noms & wins left, right & center, he gets critical attention, he gets strong reviews. Sanderson moves units, but every time he comes up …

I interviewed Rebecca Thorne about her new book Moss’d in Space, and during the conversation, she said she wants cozy sci-fi to become a sub-genre like cozy fantasy is. I love the idea of more sci-fi books in general, but also especially with a cozy feel to them.

I have to assume that some are already published, and I either don’t think of them as “cozy” (which is subjective) or I just don’t know about them.

So I guess my question is, what are some “cozy sci-fi” books?

I’ve found a few self-published ones, but they can be pretty hit or miss for me.

My favourite book is The City and The City by China Miéville and I’ve explained the plot to my 10-year-old. So for Father’s Day, he divided our house into Besźel and Ul Qoma and gave me a Breach badge. Then he and my partner dressed in opposite colour clothes and made a little mystery about a stolen dress I had to solve.

The moral of the story is that you should tell your kids the plots of your favourite scifi books.

Hey all,

I was having a discussion with some friends about Ghost in the Shell, specifically the first season of the TV series Stand Alone Complex, with one friend complaining that it was “cyberpunk, hold the punk”. We haven’t finished the series yet, but so far I think this is a valid critique of what is basically a very roboty police procedural with not much substantive commentary. It got me thinking about what is at the other end of the spectrum, though: what is, in your opinion, cyberpunk that focuses more on the “punk”? Something more interested in the human resistance and struggle in the digital dystopia than the technology that pervades it.

For reference, I’ve read Neuromancer and the Kovacs trilogy, but I’m otherwise pretty inexperienced with the genre in print. Thanks in advance for any recommendations or insights!

I dropped Android at Arms by Andre Norton. It not an epic story, but it started off mysterious and interesting. There’s a prison escape, android body doubles, blaster fights, and betrayl! It was all go go go until about half way through and then it’s just pages and pages of campfire talk. I couldn’t make it through to the other side.

I just finished reading Hard to Be a God yesterday, which is the second of the Strugastskys’s novels that I’ve read (the first being Roadside Picnic).

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Outside of the social commentary and thought provoking aspects of their writing, the thing that stands out the most to me is their ability to write gritty settings that feel tactile and real.

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There were passages in Hard to Be a God that made me feel like I needed to take a shower, to clean away the musk and grime that oozed out through the pages. Roadside Picnic was similar with the town of Harmont and The Zone with its rundown and dilapidated feel.

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I don’t really know what I’m trying to say other than I think the Strugatskys are exceptional at writing realistic settings that feel lived-in and that pop off the page. It’s really incredible stuff.

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I’m really looking forward to reading more of their work. I found a used copy of The Doomed City …