Douglas Adams’s novel, The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, turns 42 today.
Published on 12 October 1979, the novel was based on Adams’s radio series of the same name which had aired eighteen months earlier on the BBC. With the radio series a huge success, Adams was convinced to turn the series into a book. Adams only adapted the first four parts of the radio series into the book, saving the rest for the sequel, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (published a year later), although, as was his wont, Adams made major plot and character changes between the different versions of the story. The same held true of the excellent BBC mini-series (which aired in 1981), the video game (1984) and feature film (2005), which all feature significant differences and twists to the same basic premise.
The novel sold extremely well, shifting 250,000 copies in its first three months on sale. Unusually for a British comedic SF novel, the book was a hit in the United States as …
Hello~ I’m new to posting here, so please give me a heads up if I’m doing this wrong!
So, I stumbled into this sub mainly because I was searching the term ‘Wuxia’ in Reddit search. I am an avid reader of fantasy (both Eastern and Western) so I’m kind of embarrassed that it took me so long to realize that there would be a fantasy sub, of course. But I’m really happy to see all the discussion going on, and browsed through some posts that caught my interest.
What I soon came to realize is that there seems to be plenty of confusion over the genres in Chinese Fantasy, with Wuxia and Xianxia being the two terms most often thrown about. So being Chinese myself, I thought it might help to shed some light on these mysterious terms and what they mean.
Let’s start at the beginning: what is Chinese Fantasy? As a general rule, one could consider any Chinese novel with fantastical elements in it Chinese Fantasy. The genre …
Having an Assassin character is starting to almost feel like a cliche, they are expert killers, dangerous, know all the best shades of black with an outstanding sense of style.
What they do not seem to do is kill people, well, innocent people trying to make the world a better place. Having zoning issues with the local mayor, not letting you build your pig farm in the middle of town, just hire an assassin to clear the way. They certainly seem to do a lot more of killing of bad guys. In fact it is almost a pre requisite. Almost like you need your decent and moral assassin to show how not evil they are.
What has been your experience with assassins? Hired killers or decent people doing what is needed? Remember we are talking about the main character here, the protagonist.
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Quick Edit: - Just to make it a bit more clear, I was intending to be facetious. I know why people do it, I am implying they might be served better by making characters a little more grubby white …
This post is the product of a funny interaction I just had with my wife. Our dog was sitting on the couch, on top of a pile of blankets. I commented something to the effect of “Look at King Thor, high upon his dais.”
She asked me what that last word (dais) meant, and I replied and she said “why do you even know that lol and why wouldn’t you just say “throne” or something?”.
So that’s it- just a silly interaction that led me to post this silly question. Sorry if this is against the rules.
EDIT: **I chuffed to bits by everyone’s comments! Truly happy people enjoyed this.
Just came here to say this. I just finished the Liveship trilogy and am now reading the Assassin trilogy. Not only is she a great writer with an excellent command of English, she knows how to tell a story. I cannot put her books down!
I’ve seen a few “best opening lines in fantasy” posts, but none asking the opposite. So then, which opening line do you simply dislike, if not straight up despise? Whether it’s just too clunky, or gives off a completely misleading feeling, or is just plain dumb, feel free to share.
The last couple of years, I’ve gotten in the habit of reaching out to authors to let them know I really enjoyed their work and they wrote something that really stuck with me.
I’m sure the Stephen King’s and the JK Rowling’s of the world get a lot of mail, but I’ve actually gotten responses from some amazing authors that aren’t necessarily world famous. A few authors that gave me very nice responses are:
Does anybody reach out to authors to give them thanks? Do you ever hear anything back?
So yeah title basically sais it all. If I had to pinpoint, Id say the forever war is even more what im looking for since its more gritty and, I dont know how to describe it, grounded..
I like the no bullshit description of the harsh reality in forever war.
Ive also read the successor to old mans war and i hear there are two more forever war books.
Should I start with these?
Other suggestions for titles that create a similar feeling?
edit: thanks everyone for the great suggetions. my backlog is filled!
edit2: holy shit. it just keeps coming…
Specifically looking for one that doesn’t just discuss different theories, but where the characters actually go out and use science to figure out, or maybe just happen upon some fundamental fact about the universe. Bonus points if what they find out is super creative and/or something I wouldn’t have considered before. Other than that, here are some examples of stories I have particularly enjoyed to give you some sense of my taste:
I was lucky enough to have won an Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book through a GoodReads giveaway. It’s a 700 page near-future sci-fi story mostly about climate change.
In a near future that feels all too familiar, people all around the world are dealing with rising sea levels, rising temperatures, and COVID is still a problem. There is a diverse cast of well written characters including a Texas billionaire, a Sikh warrior, a pig hunter, and the Queen of the Netherlands, to name a few. The story begins with a bang, and then whimpers until over halfway through the novel. It’s right about the halfway point though, that you finally find out what this story is really about. The second half builds up, but only really get’s going (in my opinion) about the last 100-150 pages. While there were some fascinating ideas, and info-dumps about things I’d never heard about, I thought this book was bloated, and the pacing was not on par for my personal reading …
I have a bunch of traveling to do soon, moving countries during covid, and I will have a lot of just down time or time on planes. So I’m looking for easy-read and fast-paced reads in the genre of space opera or something kinda adventury set in space.
I’m just looking for something that picks up really fast, keeps your interest the entire time, and doesn’t take a ton of brainpower to comprehend, and if I miss some sentences it won’t really matter. Thanks.