a friend of mine just showed me all the lord of the rings movies, and now I am very confused by all other incarnations of orcs I have seen.
The metaphor of orcs in lotr seems pretty clear to me. They are industrialization incarnate. Elves who got twisted by sauron’s war machine, people turned into tools. The urakhai are an extension of it, not only are they tools, but they are tools which are replaced, made so far removed from the original that they aren’t even ever children. They are expendable, they are miserable, they are twisted and corrupted beings who twist and corrupt and destroy the world around them. Destroy what is beautiful and use it as fuel.
Its a pretty fascinating original fantasy monster, and one I REALLY like… which surprised me because I have not liked any version of orcs I have previously seen. Mostly it’s the tusks, which I am just not a fan of in character design, but every other version of orcs I have seen always goes for either the …
Hey all,
To celebrate my birthday, I’m running a free book promotion on a couple of my titles.
First is Sufficiently Advanced Magic, my most popular book and the first in my Arcane Ascension series. Sufficiently Advanced Magic is a JRPG inspired progression fantasy novel. Our protagonist, Corin Cadence, seeks to learn magic and ascend through a titanic tower to discover the fate of his brother, who disappeared into the tower five years earlier. The series has a mixture of magical academy content focusing on learning magic and dungeon crawling sections in the tower (and other dangerous locales). It takes place in the same setting as two of my other series, but this is the most popular place to start reading my books. If you enjoy JRPGs like Final Fantasy, Fire Emblem, Trails, SaGa, etc. you might like this one.
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The next free title is How to Defeat a Demon King in Ten Easy Steps, my comedic love letter to games like Zelda …
Partially inspired by this thread about men’s fashion in fantasy by u/NoSleepAtSea from some weeks ago.
Fantasy fiction has a plethora of cultures, and sometimes we see descriptions of strange and different clothes. I’ve noticed, though, that there are some underlying assumptions that almost never change. It has to do with nudity taboos.
In the modern western world, women are expected to cover the genitals, buttocks and breasts. Men are expected to cover up pretty much just the wingwang.
Fantasy fiction assumes that this set of nudity taboos is universal and rarely deviates much from it. Sometimes women must cover up their legs, shoulders and cleavage, but that’s about it. (And then there’s the rare baroque innovation, of which the Stormlight Archive left-hand taboo is the most famous example.)
I have almost never seen women in fantasy having to cover their hair, which was and is very common in history. Even in Zamil Akhtar’s Gunmetal Gods, very …
For a few months, I’ve been saying to myself, “What if Tolkien, but with well-written women?”
Then my SO introduced me to Willow. This 1988 film is a feminist masterpiece.
It passed the Bechdel test early on.
The MacGuffin princess, rather than being a damseled adult, is an infant. In addition to their heroic acts of sword mastery and magic, the heroes protecting her have to feed her milk and change her diapers.
(SPOILERS AHEAD)
There are two mishaps with love-magic, which always brings a story into the realm of Questionable Consent. In one, a mischievous brownie named Rool accidentally made himself enamored with a cat (he appears to have caused it no harm).
In the other mishap, love-magic made the swordsman Madmartigan temporarily enamored with his enemy, the beautiful warrior Sorsha. He was pretty creepy when he saw her sleeping, but didn’t kiss her until he’d won her over. (James Bond, please take note.) Then, when the magic wore off …
I’m looking for book recommendations that follow the guideline I described in the title. I have read countless fantasy books where the main character has magic and is persecuted by bigots who fear and hate this person’s magic. I have never read the opposite, a book in which the main character has no magic and is oppressed by a system that values magic. So I’m asking for recommendations. :)
Please, before you recommend, I need to clarify something. I know VERY WELL that there are countless stories where the villain has magic and uses their magic to harm those without. But usually, in those stories, the non-magic people are still SYSTEMATICALLY oppressing the magical, and usually this villain is just getting revenge - and often he is stopped by a protagonist who has magic and who has also been oppressed by the non-magical. That’s not what I’m looking for. I’m looking for a book where the non-magical are systemically oppressed, enslaved, or otherwise …
Hi all, this is a throwaway I use for fear of retaliation.
Booksellers at Barnes & Noble are really suffering right now. Other than the usual frustrations of being booksellers in the year 2021 we have also been the subject of constant abuse from customers. All we’re asking is please be patient with us. Here are somethings t be aware of and please spread the word: 1) if we could have every book ever made in stores we would. We’re not Amazon, we can’t have dozens of every small press title ready to go and in your hand in two days. 2) Shipping delays have affected us too. We want your order to come ASAP but we don’t control the shipping lines or the warehouses and we’re not given any real means of tracking your order either. 3) we’re short short staffed. Like everywhere else. We’re paid minimum wage and people are going anywhere else quoting after two weeks and they can’t even hold onto managers. We’re doing our best but a lot of us are new and still getting used to the job and we …
I understand why authors might want to make their characters stand out a little. But when every character in the book has a one in a million name? It’s always the whole squad of characters. It kind of takes me out of the immersion, like their names are just costumes instead of real people. If that makes sense…
Like, come on, it makes sense for a few people to have unique names, but everyone in the whole book? You really expect me to believe your name is Amadeus, your best friends are named Opal, Fauna, Mirabelle, Jaysen and idk probably Cosmo and Wanda.
Personally, I understand not wanting to give everyone a common name. I see the downsides of that too. But really. Just me?
Edit: As many have pointed out, it makes total sense for characters to have uncommon names in fantasy and sci-fi books. I hadn’t even thought about that when making this post, I was more thinking of realistic fiction books that take place in modern times.
Also, this was not meant as an attack …
In short: Improving your process so that you add what you learn from a book to what you already know is a far better use of your time than trying to learn how to finish a page more quickly.
Of course you’re thinking, “Yeah, no shit, I know I’m reading to get to the ideas, I’m not looking at ink on dried pulp for its own sake”. But the amount of self-help literature and threads here on reddit that purport to be able to teach you to “speed-read” show how much interest people still have in acquiring this ability. To me, it’s analogous to trying to become better at travelling to where you want to go by becoming a marathon runner. Perhaps you can actually become better at running long distances, but have you heard of this fancy new invention called the bicycle?
The bicycle of reading is Information Technology. Ancient Sumerians did not need courses to learn memory techniques; as soon as some priest started tallying bushels of wheat on a slab …
Let me get straight to the point, 90% of Self-Help books are just to make the book longer.
I get it, the author is not going to make a 30-page book on the stuff they have learned over the years but still.
Like holy, some self-help I read just has so much padding and fluff that it makes it hard to find the valuable information that you need. That you bought the book for.
I don’t know, it just pisses me off.
This book was absolutely brilliant.
It is quite rare that book can be so intellectually profound and thorough that it can pervade every aspect of life. 1984 is a brilliant dystopian which pushes readers to question the very nature of reality. The society the book depicts is one with a totalitarian government like no other with oversight in every area of life, even one’s own thoughts. The brilliance of this novel is not necessarily the story or the setting but the questions it poses. The book beautifully illuminates and questions reality many layers deep. It questions the nature of individual freedom vs slavery. The prevalence of individualism vs collectivism. The existence of subjective reality and objective reality.
This was by far one of the best books I have ever read and has changed my fundemental view of self and reality. I would reccomend this book to anyone who thinks deeply about the universe and the nature of existence and wishes to understand themselves and …
The story deals with unfathomable distances, incomprehensible timescales, and godlike technological powers; yet the characters are so human and instantly relatable.
Fantastic read, and I wish there was a sequel.
I’m currently re-reading Hannu Rajaniemi’s Jean Le Flambeur trilogy (The Quantum Thief, The Fractal Prince, The Causal Angel) for the thirtieth time, and I’m more amazed by it every damn time I read it. The sheer depth of worldbuilding is staggering–it’s so deep, in fact, that a wiki exists to help folks keep everything straight. I’m a sucker for trans-/posthumanist fiction, and this series represents by far the best, weirdest, and (surprisingly) most possible transhuman future I’ve ever read: the ubiquitous nano- and infotech, the universal usage of quantum cryptography, the conflict between various posthuman cultures/species…it all makes a ridiculous amount of sense. The stories all move very quickly and often turn on twist after twist after twist, most of which I never saw coming, and travel all over the Solar System. I recommend them VERY highly!
If you’ve heard of Larry Niven at all, the chances are you’ve heard of Ringworld, probably his most famous SF novel (though Footfall was quite the blockbuster in the 80s). I’ll make the case, though, that his best novel is The Mote in God’s Eye, and The Flying Sorcerors a dark horse competitor for that #1 position.
The Mote in God’s Eye was co-written with Jerry Pournelle. At this point I’m going to digress and also recommend Niven’s collection of short stories N-Space. As well as being a fantastic collection of short stories - including a couple of little Mote prequels - it’s also interspersed with forewords (some from other writers - Tom Clancy is a fan?) essays, and monographs by the great man himself. And reading these little essays provides a fascinating insight into the mind of an SF genius.
Larry Niven’s stories derive from two things: imagination and logic. He has the IMAGINATION to come up with fantastic ideas, like a sun …
Looking for books that make me think rather than simply entertain. Books I will still be thinking about long after reading.
thinking in the vein of Chiang’s 72 Letters where Preformationism, Spontaneous Generation and other 17th century postulates end up being correct, or his Omphalos where astronomy and biology are examined when Young Earth Creationism is a banal and observably true fact. Also Hannu Rajaniemi most recent novel Summerland where luminiferous aether and the vortex theory of the atom are true and the Victorian spiritualist scientists empirically confirm an afterlife under that physics paradigm.
I tried to read Anathem earlier this year and recently picked it back up and now I am a little hooked. The world building is incredible once it finally clicks as to what the hell you are reading.
!I’ve always been fascinated by languages and linguistics and watching Stephenson play with words and somehow remain consistent is great.
The obvious parallels between Catholic monasticism and the avout, their rituals, constantly dividing orders, it’s all great. Had my life been a little different I’d have been a Benedictine, so yes, this is a great journey so far.
I realize this book was written well before 2016 but some of the descriptions of the slines seem like a certain subset of citizens in the US. Prescient or humans are that predictable?!<
Edit: spoiler tags obviously didn’t work.