I am sure that this sub receives quite a few of these posts, but I just wanted to share my experience. To make a long story short I have recently moved, lost my job, and got myself out of a very toxic relationship all within the matter of a month. I decided to give the Stormlight Archives another go, and this has become my solace during these difficult times. I just wanted to say thank you!
Hope everyone stays healthy and happy!
Maybe it’s because I’m getting old(er) and jaded, but I’m losing interest in teenaged Chosen Ones who awaken one day to learn they’re secret estranged royalty, the last of a bloodline of powerful wizards, the world’s greatest thief, etc. I think Chosen One stuff is sold to us (at least partly) as a power fantasy and a source of vicarious wish fulfillment, but, idk. I guess that sort of thing is becoming less immersive for me as the reality of my mediocre life sinks in lmao.
Russian literature does this a lot: the protagonists are clerks, and judges, and bureaucrats, addicts, alcoholics, melancholics; in a phrase, they’re ordinary, relatable people, with mundane problems, flaws, and ambitions. I’d like to see more people like this in Fantasy as well.
Using military and war-themed books as an example, I’m looking for stories about the rank-and-file crossbowmen instead of the mighty champions and the brilliant strategists. They’re …
Hey, everyone!
To celebrate the Kindle launch of my third Arcane Ascension book, The Torch that Ignites the Stars, my first two Arcane Ascension books are free on Kindle for a short time.
You can get the free books here:
Sufficiently Advanced Magic On the Shoulders of Titans
Note that these are links to the US store. I know the book is free in some other regions, but I don’t have a full list of regional availability for the free copies. Sorry for an inconvenience if it’s not available in your area!
And the new book here:
The Torch that Ignites the Stars
For those of you who are not already familiar, my books are heavily inspired by Japanese gaming, drawing inspiration from series like Final Fantasy, Zelda, Ys, Dragon Quest, and Fire Emblem.
This series in particular mixes JRPG style magical school content with dungeon crawling. Some of the closest game comparisons would be Trails of Cold Steel and Fire Emblem: Three Houses. In terms of the dungeon crawling, think …
Hello Everyone,
My first epic fantasy novel, Weapons of Disharmony, is free as a Kindle ebook for the next couple of days. You can pick it up and check it out at no cost on Amazon.com.
It tells the story of two rival nations and their fragile treaty in a world with titans, legendary magical weapons, and mages that use all sorts of spells to fight. Part of the story follows a number of powerful characters such as a legendary swordsman, The Bone Knight, and his journey with a powerful sword made from a bone.
I hope you enjoy reading it! I’m working on a sequel at the moment. Pretty excited about all of it.
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Edit: Added to description
‘Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because I’ve never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year old school girl. Oh well, it doesn’t matter. I feel like writing.’
Edit: apparently Anne-Frank was better at spelling at 13 years old than me as I made a mistake in the title. It should be ‘struck’ of course. Sorry for that!
I was re-watching old interviews with Iain on YouTube this evening with a bottle of red and thinking about how much he meant to me as a writer of science fiction. I’m still not sure The Culture has been surpassed for me, though I sometimes wonder if it’s because I read him as a teenager and so he holds a formative place in my memory of SF as a whole.
What are your recollections of Banks and The Culture now that quite a bit of time has passed since his untimely death? Even if you are a lurker, I would appreciate it if you share your comments in his memory.
I’m trying to track down an old Jeff Vandermeer blog post in which he asked his readers for suggestions as to the weirdest, most avant-garde SFF novels they knew, and he got an amazing variety of responses. I think I came across it in the early 2010’s (and it influenced my reading list for years to come) but it may have been from a few years before that. Unfortunately, I’ve long lost the bookmark, and whatever search terms I’m trying don’t seem to turn it up. Help please and TIA!
EDIT: I found it, and it’s an incredible resource. Highly recommended: https://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2011/04/27/whats-the-craziest-or-most-experimental-science-fiction-or-fantasy-book-youve-ever-read/
As a sci fi author (and an avid reader) there’s certain tropes I just can’t get on board with.
Particularly this idea of entire races adhering time one religion/mindset/ideal. I see this in books, movies, video games, etc. I actively combat it in my own writing and try to give everyone their own identity.
Another one I’m not huge on is excessive technobabble. Yes if engineers on a ship are talking I want to feel like they know what they’re talking about, but if the words feel fake or made up it completely pulls me out of the immersion.
We don’t see this in sci-fi as much as other works but I also hate the chosen one concept. I think if you can put an interesting spin on it then it can work but most of the time feels cheap.
Lastly time travel. It can work (I’m a huge Blake Crouch fan and I thought he executed it VERY well In Dark Matter) but a lot of times it’s so surface level and ends up resulting in plot holes.
How about you guys?
This is in response to this original post: https://old.reddit.com/r/printSF/comments/k9xpvx/jeff_vandermeer_blog_post_query_on_weirdest_most/
I went through the comments on the original page and collected all the recommendations I could into this one spreadsheet, hope this is helpful.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16EFAkcQ70LkldcKurX1jMiyMMPcuQxNU/view?usp=sharing
A lot of weird stuff here, a great deal isn’t strictly sci-fi and fantasy but all very interesting.
Feel free to let me know if I missed anything.
Hi, am looking for sci fi books which have a more hopeful spin on them, after being fed up reading a lot of very pessimistic books! I’d like to read a fun sci fi story yet also feels meaningful at the same time! Any suggestions which fit anything I’ve just said would be very much appreciated!
Might seem like a very specific request but I’m looking for something along the lines of books like The Martian, Annihilation, The Terror, Wool etc. Or think shows like Lost and Attack on Titan. Basically people surviving in a single location, fighting for their lives from some kind of enemy, supernatural or human or otherwise.
Bonus points if it takes place in a cold, snowy environment but doesn’t have to be.
While most movies show characters behaving stupidly when they want to show them suffering setbacks or pulling off impractical plans to succeed, this scene shows a bunch of characters doing everything within their power after putting some thought into it to mixed results.
Llewellyn considers the possibility that someone might ambush him in his room, and makes a plan to retrieve his stash from another room. Even then, he ensures he doesn’t take the very adjacent room. When returning to his room, he asks the driver to drive by the rooms to check if his blinds were closed in the exact manner he left them in, taking the fact that they are not as a sign that someone was either there or had been there.
Now, what does Anton do when he arrives at the motel? He takes the room adjacent to Llewellyn’s, studies it and then plans his assault accordingly.
Yet, both men succeed only partially- Anton does kill the mexicans and confirm he is hot on Llewellyn’s tale but misses …
I wanted to this for a long time. I got the idea to watch all of the Best Picture Winners from some random reddit comment early in 2016 and immediately started to buy all the movies i didn’t already have in my collection. Had to shop around a bit, because not every movie was available here in Germany, or some where only available as DVD. So i shopped in UK, the US and Asia to get all the titles, even though i had to settle for DVD instead of Bluray for some of the older ones. And i included Sunrise into the thing, as in my opinion the first awards had two Best Picture categories and this was the winner of the one that wasn’t awarded anymore in the following year.
When i finally had them all in the last third of 2016 i decided to put the project on hold because i wanted to finish watching all the other movies in my Bluray collection first. With a 2900+ title collection this takes a while, so the Best Picture marathon had to wait until September this year.
I had to reduce …