This Saturday, James E. Gunn, the last living Golden Age science fiction author (no, not the director), passed away of congestive heart failure at age 97.
I had the good fortune to take a couple of science fiction classes with Gunn at the University of Kansas a bit over a decade ago, and I can honestly say I wouldn’t be the author I am today without his influence. He introduced me to countless classic authors I wouldn’t have read otherwise, and exposed me to the fascinating history of science fiction and fantasy. In the first class I took with him, during the summer semester of my freshman year of college, I met the first girl I ever kissed (I was a late bloomer, don’t judge me), as well as one of my closest lifelong friends, who I actually served as a groomsman for at his wedding a few years ago. (The three of us actually led a discussion group for China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station and Iain M. Banks’ Consider Phlebas- students took turns in groups …
Happy New Year everyone!
When it comes to fantasy, it’s hard to imagine that there’s any creature more ubiquitous or universal than the dragon. We have Dungeons and Dragons, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, Skyrim, World of Warcraft,…Shrek. It seems wherever you look, if it’s in the fantasy genre, there’s a good chance you’ll find a fire-breathing dragon. And although it would be a definite overstatement to suggest that Tolkien invented dragons as we know them, I do believe that without him, they wouldn’t be so so familiar to the modern reader. I think it can be argued that Smaug the Golden is both the first great dragon of contemporary fantasy, and the last great dragon of the old Germanic, Slavic, and wider European mythologies. Smaug is the reason that although you may you struggle to picture a manticore, or a cockatrice, every single one of us knows what a dragon is.
However, by starting with Smaug, I’m getting a little ahead of myself. Although he is the first dragon …
I always get a kick out of people’s incredibly specific recommendation requests.
I honestly don’t know, what type of wizard Nicholas Eames is, but what he crafted is a pure masterpiece of hysterical situations and heartbreaking moments.
I’m not exaggerating when i say that i loved every second of it. When i wasn’t reading, the itch was insane. When i was reading it, i laughed, i cried, i adored references, i loved the characters and plot.
Probably my favorite reference is the entire Sabbatha situation. I mean the name + dark tales and songs is genius even if quite obvious. I’m personally not really into 70s rock, but my father… Oh boy, he loves it. And my second favorite reference, Coverdale, let’s just say my father loves Stormbringer album more than anything and we both geeked the hell out of it(he is 40 years older than me and it’s a miracle that we found common ground in a fantasy book).
Even the negatives were not that bad. For example, >!when Clay Cooper survived the ridiculous fall with severed arm and was …
HELLO R/FANTASY
2020 has fucking sucked.
Id like to open the new year with good vibes and books.
To enter, all you need to do is comment below about what book youd like. (within reason, no special editions or folio kinda things)
I am in the USA. if you are not and want to enter, please check with BookDepository to see if the book you want is available, and delivers to your address.
Happy New Year. Fuck you, 2020.
EDIT: I will be picking people tomorrow, 1⁄1 at 5pm EST. The entries will remain open until then.
EDIT2: Holy mother of god. Nearly 900 comments. I typically just put the entry names into a spread sheet and hit randomize and pick the top 10 or whatever. UM. I’ll have the mods switch this post into contest mode… and in the future there’ll be a google form lol.
edit3: running behind, kiddo is not cooperating, but i should still announce winners this evening.
EDIT 4: AND THE WINNERS ARE:
Ok. I know that this post is going to be downvoted to hell, although I never understood why people downvote a post that has a different opinion to theirs, but I will say it anyways.. Reading DUNE did not turn out the way I thought it would.
I liked science fiction ideas in general ever since I was a kid. It was mostly due to the influence of films and thriller novels with light sci-fi plot lines with the exception of Andy Weir’s The Martian which I loved. But I wanted to pick up some classic sci-fi works for quite some time.
So, this year, I decided to give DUNE a go as I wanted to read this novel before watching the movie that was supposed to come out this December. I started the novel in August.
It was going fine until the first couple of hundred pages, but soon the reading experience turned into a tough one. The world building was too complex, and the descriptions seemed to be too much.. of things, traditions, cultures, and whatnot. Additionally, I was having trouble …
I was doing some reading about the history of Shrek (long story), and learned that it was a children’s book written ten years before the movie came out.
Not only that, but it was written by William Steig–who you might recognize as 1. A super prolific children’s author (Dr. De Soto, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble), or 2. The most-ever published author and illustrator in the New Yorker (in 73 years he worked for them, he produced 2600 drawings and 117 covers).
In short, the guy who wrote Shrek! in 1990 had some serious literary chops.
Curious, I picked up a copy. It’s great, and not what I was expecting. Here are the best parts:
Just finished ‘and then there were none’. That has to be the most ingenious and best mystery book I’ve ever read. I have been sitting here for half an hour trying to compute what I just read. I cannot express in words how bloody amazing it was. You all must read it! Christie really is the queen of mystery. 🤯🤯🤯🤯😭😭😭😭
For those of you who aren’t aware, it is a mystery story where 10 strangers are invited to an island, on which they become stranded, and they start getting picked off one by one. I also thought it was so incredibly chilling, more so than most of her other books too. The way she wove the web of mystery, skullduggery and suspense was masterful. The nursery rhyme also added a sense of impending doom to myself as the reader. Really clever utilisation of dramatic irony. And the ending was just like a punch to the balls! I am not surprised in the slightest that this is the highest selling mystery book of all time!
Edit: thank you all so much for the other recommendations. Once …
The big ones coming out of copyright tomorrow include The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald), Mrs. Dalloway (Woolf), In Our Time (Hemingway) and An American Tragedy (Dreiser). Other authors with books coming out of copyright include Kafka, Christie, Huxley, Lewis, Dos Passos, Wharton and Maugham.
Longer list here:
https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2021/
Mrs. Dalloway and maybe a rereading of The Great Gatsby for me.
So, I’m really struggling with these books and I wonder if anyone else had these problems.
Leviathan Wakes: I thought this was quite the page turner. The book does not have brain-tingling advanced SF concepts but the writers have a good sense of pacing and plot structure.
The writing is merely adequate and the characterization is rather thin. Half of the time, I had trouble keeping apart the characters Amos and Alex, and that’s a problem when your crew is only four people. Detective Miller is a walking cliché. The characters are archetypes.
Caliban’s War: Remarkably similar in structure and plot to the first book. What the series is missing the most is interesting futuristic ideas. This is mostly a tale of space rockets and tough guys. It’s also a tale of characters, but they stay very flat. Holden is annoyingly naïve, and Naomi lacks personality; she’s just there as Holden’s love interest. It’s also a tale full of plot, but the plot is copied from the first book.
Abaddon’s Gate. …
The first discussion post, for part 1, will go up 1/10/21. Thought I’d publicize it here. Feel free to join!
Finished up my goal of reading all of this years Hugo nominees with a couple days to spare.
Middlegame, Seanan McGuire
(5⁄5) My first of McGuire’s extensive catalog and easily my favorite out of the 2020 Hugo nominees (And despite the Hugo nod, this was much more gothic horror than science fiction) Reminded me a lot of vintage Stephen King (particularly in her writing of the child characters and her habit of throwing out foreshadowing asides at the end of chapters)
And it is always nice to see a time travel/parallel universe narrative that doesn’t implode on itself.
My only (minor) gripe was that the two protagonists were supposed to separately be the literal embodiments of mathematical logic and verbal communication. And the speech patterns of the two weren’t really as reflective of that as one would have expected- particularly the math genius.
The Ten Thousand Doors of January, Alix E. Harrow
(4⁄5) From the description this seemed like the type of well …
I’m looking for some sci-fi horror books to read. Preferably similar to something like the sayer podcast, scp, or welcome to night vale. Any ideas?
Just read “The Space Between Worlds” by Micaiah Johnson and am in the mood for stories that take place in multiple worlds. Doesn’t have to be hard sf, will accept handwaving and science-fantasy as long as the story and characters are good. Any recommendations?