I love the genre, but looking at timelines in major fantasy series like LOTR or Wheel of Time always trips me up. You often see histories where an Empire has lasted for 3,000+ years, or a “Dark Age” has lasted for a millennium, and the technology or society looks exactly the same at the end as it did at the start.

In our real-world history, 3,000 years took us from the Bronze Age Collapse all the way to the iPhone. Empires in reality rarely last longer than 250-400 years before collapsing or evolving into something unrecognizable. So when I see a “Kingdom of X” that has stood unchanged for five millennia, it just feels wrong to me.

Is there a widely accepted “Watsonian” (in-universe) reason why technology and society freeze in these worlds? Is it just that Magic suppresses Technology? Like, why would anyone invent a steam engine if a wizard can just teleport? Or is the existence of long-lived races making cultural evolution slower because the …

A grim, ambitious fantasy that tackles war, trauma, and power with absolute seriousness… and somehow still made me bored.

Rin is a protagonist I never connected with and rarely enjoyed following; three books with her felt less like an epic and more like a test of stamina. The prose doesn’t help, especially the dialogue, which is so heavy on “she said” and “he said” that it reads like a first draft that never quite found its rhythm.

Yes, the themes are dark. Yes, the historical parallels are important. But importance doesn’t equal engagement, and this trilogy often feels like it wants credit for being harrowing rather than actually compelling.

2.⁵⁄₅ — worthy, weighty, and determinedly unfun to read, almost in spite of itself.

Hi everyone, I’m Shen Tao and my debut standalone epic fantasy, The Poet Empress, was published today! (Jan 20, 2026)

I’ve seen it described elsewhere as “grimdark”, “historical fantasy,” and “anti-romantasy” although those are not officially-endorsed terms. :)

The short blurb is that in a world with poetry magic but women are forbidden to read, the daughter of a rice farmer-turned-court-concubine must learn to read in secret—and write a poem to kill the cruel and otherwise unkillable son of the emperor. It’s a story of survival, court politics, and duty, and of course the power of words.

Bramble cover of The Poet Empress

Gollancz cover of The Poet Empress

The red edition is the North American version from Bramble (Tor) and the blue version is the UK and ANZ version from Gollancz/Hachette. For the multilingual among us here, there is a German edition from Ullstein publishing Jan 29 and various other translations coming later.

Content warnings can be found at: …

Most post apocalyptic books just keep the destruction and chaos going forever. Hundreds of years after bombs fell and people are still living in a deserted wasteland, unearthing twinkies from ruins. Which books have a setting that has started rebuilding and has working cities and infrastructire and even nation states? Stuff like early Fallout and post Alexndria Walking Dead.

Feel like its a common thing in SFF to have the hero become some king/general of a huge army in the penultimate book. Thats ok, although if the story relied heavily on underdog trope it can suffer.

But then theres the stories where the protagonist starts to believe their own hype, that just makes me hate them. Even if they maybe should feel great about themselves, just something about it ticks me off. I start to actively–futilely–root against them.

Dune is probably the best subversion of this trope, showing the true horrors of a god king, are there any others? Not necessarily like dune, but stories where the protagonist is punished if they ever get too full of themselves?

When I say big. I mean ASOIAF, Wheel of time, Cosmere, first law, One Piece big, Malazan.

Many big series seem to come and go, but it feels like a while since a truly huge maginificent bomb fell in any medium.

I just love good series that have not released yet and to burn with the fanbase.
What will be the next big thing?

Publishers Weekly last month reported that ReaderLink, the largest full-service distributor of hardcover, trade and paperback books to booksellers in North America, will stop distributing mass market paperbacks at the end of 2025.

“Having worked at a bookstore since 2016 and reading different things that we get from publishers, I wasn’t surprised. I knew that it was coming,” said Anne Paulson, manager/bookseller at Cherry Street Books in Alexandria, Minnesota. “It’s been on the table for a while now. Yeah, I feel sad, because they’re more affordable. It may take brand new books out of people’s hands who could maybe not otherwise afford a brand new book. You could pick up a paperback in line at the grocery store.

ETA: archived article link

ETA #2: one librarian’s take in the comments on recent changes in the wholesale mmpb book market:

https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1qiyvub/comment/o0w10bv/?context=3

The digital age has opened remarkable doors for book consumption. Readers can listen to audiobooks during commutes and download entire author collections to single devices with just a few taps.

Yet despite this convenience, physical book sales are surging as readers choose to step away from screens and pick up something tangible. Joan Grenier, owner of Odyssey Books in South Hadley, said customers are seeking authentic community connections. “People are looking for that experience in their community and to know their booksellers by first name and know something about their family…it’s a rootedness that, I think, people are looking for,” she explained.

So, every time the subject of e-readers comes up, no matter what context, no matter what is being talked about, there will be 40 replies saying, “It’s much easier to move with an E-reader.”

It’s such a common reply, it’s become a trope it itself.

Even in real life, someone will see me with a kindle, and – without knowing anything about me – they’ll say to me: “It’s so much easier to move with a kindle”

Like, okay? How often are most people actually moving? Is this a commonality among all book readers?

Here’s the thing: I HAVE actually moved three times in the last two years, funny enough, and the books were the LEAST annoying part of it. It was actually fun, getting a new chance to arrange them. Now KITCHEN stuff, THAT was annoying. I hate moving kitchen stuff. Can I have an e-Kitchen Aid?

But I absolutely have no problem moving books. Knick-knacks are annoying. Random pantry stuff is annoying. But books pack …

There’s this subset of horror sci-fi that has always fascinated me, but I’ve never been able to find enough of it. I’d describe it as follows:

The universe is lonely and dark, with no known species apart from humanity. If there are, they’re either extinct or disturbingly incomprehensible and hostile. Tech is highly advanced but life is hard for most people (cyberpunk elements?) and humanity has not expanded very far, eking out a fragile existence across ludicrous distances. Space is a desolating, unexplored and crushing frontier, in it only exists cold, hard vacuum or mind-shattering horrors. There’s nobody to hear you scream. Apocalyptic themes aren’t necessary but very welcome.

The Alien movies and their extended universe pretty much have all the features I’ve mentioned. Other examples are the Revelation Space series (Chasm City was my first read and I loved it, the rest of the series not so much but it was enjoyable.) The Gone World, Ship …

So I stumbled onto Bobiverse by Dennis E. Taylor and when that ended I found Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir and now I just finished Kitty Cat Kill Sat by Argus/Forrest Taylor.

It’s a lot about technology, about building and salvaging stuff, some space battles and a lot of aliens. The all have a kind of dry humor and are hopeful of the future. Are they any more stories like this out there in the universes?

The central theme being an unknowable force, an alien or cosmic entity, or even a mysterious creature. But it needs to be legit unsettling. I’m going to mix in a bunch of inspiration and what I’m looking for hits somewhere in between all these:

Blindsight (book)

The X-Files (show)

Annihilation (both book and movie)

Event Horizon (movie)

The Thing (movie)

Under the Skin (movie)

Solaris (book)

Signs (movie)

Thanks for your suggestions!

A little more than a year ago, I asked this sub for a list of recommendations. I wanted some books with witty characters, and from responses, I managed to compile quite a list! It took me a long time to read (almost) everything that people suggested (and I’ve done some other reading besides), but yesterday I finished the last book on what I called “Witty List”.

Here’s a rating of the books I’ve read. Strap in, this is going to be a long post.

Note: for every book, I give two ratings: how I liked the book overall, and how witty I found it. This is because some books on the list are actually very good, but I’m not sure that I and the person who suggested it have the same definition of “witty”. Also, note that I use mostly Goodreads-like rating system where 1 = “I didn’t like it” and everything higher ranges from “it was OK” to “I loved it”.

Books are roughly in order of reading.

“Dungeon …

Hey all, been hankering for some weird and wonderful future depictions of humanity. Whilst lots of examples certainly exist, there always tends to be some pesky bog standard humans around to act as an audience surrogate of sorts. I’m wondering which authors have attempted to tackle futures where homo sapiens as we know them today have entirely made way for transhumans or posthumans.

I’ve just been updating my old bookmarks folder, mostly cool little blogs that review old science fiction books. Hope it’s useful to some of you!

Luminist (Downloadable PDFs of most of the old science fiction pulp magazines): http://www.luminist.org/archives/SF/

Blackgate: https://www.blackgate.com/category/editors-blog/

Strange at Ecbatan: https://rrhorton.blogspot.com/?m=1

Science Fiction & Other Ruminations: https://sciencefictionruminations.com/

Featured Futures: https://featuredfutures.wordpress.com/

Worlds Without End: https://blog.worldswithoutend.com/

Dark Worlds Quarterly https://gwthomas.org/

Classics Of Science Fiction: https://classicsofsciencefiction.com/best-science-fiction-short-stories/

Rob Hansen’s Fan Site: https://www.fiawol.org.uk/fanstuff/index.htm

Mporcious Fiction Log: https://mporcius.blogspot.com/?m=1

Sci-fi At Dark Roasted Blend: http://www.scifi.darkroastedblend.com/2008/01/wonder-timeline-sf-retrospective.html?m=1#Time_1930s …

PREVIOUS RECORD HOLDERS:

‘Titanic’ (1997)

14 Nominations (and 11 Wins)

‘La La Land’ (2016)

14 Nominations (and 6 Wins)

‘All About Eve’ (1950)

14 Nominations (and 6 Wins)

‘Gone with the Wind’ (1939)

13 Nominations (and 8 Wins)

‘From Here to Eternity’ (1953)

13 Nominations (and 8 Wins)

‘Oppenheimer’ (2023)

13 Nominations (and 7 Wins)

‘Shakespeare in Love’ (1998)

13 Nominations (and 7 Wins)

“I think the simplest answer is you’ve seen the Unreal gaming engine enter the visual effects landscape,” Verbinski said. “So it used to be a divide, with Unreal Engine being very good at video games, but then people started thinking maybe movies can also use Unreal for finished visual effects. So you have this sort of gaming aesthetic entering the world of cinema.”

“I think that Unreal Engine coming in and replacing Maya as a sort of fundamental is the greatest slip backwards,” he said.

He pointed out the types of visual effects made with Unreal aren’t necessarily bad. “It works with Marvel movies where you kind of know you’re in a heightened, unrealistic reality. I think it doesn’t work from a strictly photo-real standpoint,” he said.

“I just don’t think it takes light the same way; I don’t think it fundamentally reacts to subsurface, scattering, and how light hits skin and reflects in the …