One of the best trends we’ve seen in fantasy and science fiction in recent years is the explosion in accessibility of non-Western fantasy and speculative traditions entering the global English language market.
For those not familiar with him, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki is a Nigerian SF/F writer and editor who has been doing amazing work to showcase African speculative fiction. He’s won the Otherwise (formerly Tiptree) and British Fantasy awards and been nominated for the Nebula, Locus, and others. He edited the first Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction anthology (review in Locus), the award-winning anthology Dominion with Zelda Knight, and is editing the upcoming Tor anthology Africa Risen with Knight and Sheree Renée Thomas (current editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, best known for the Dark Matter anthologies).
The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction, which contains fiction from both African writers and writers from the African …
So, don’t get me wrong, I like a certain amount of thought and historical precedent for world building, but that’s just because it gives me shorthand to understand the the society. Like if serfs are included in the setting, I know there’s likely to be feudalism as an economy.
But authors who say, as an example, all faux medieval societies should have girls getting married at 12 set my teeth on edge. Yes, that was the case in our world. But you know what? Our world didn’t have dragons, mages, wizards, real gods, elves, or whatever other fantastical elements this world includes.
If the author really wants 12 year old girls getting married, that’s fine, but then don’t be surprised when your modern audience says ick. None of us live in a medieval world after all.
Now, maybe there is a good in world reason that that author included bigotry towards sexuality, or very young marriage, or lack of consent. Maybe those are themes the author is writing about. …
One of my favorite things to do is to click on the “Popular Highlights” section on Kindle to see what lines other peopled liked. I find that, more often than not, it is filled with little snippets of wisdom from the author through the eyes of one of the characters, and I just love those so much.
So, what is your favorite line, or paragraph, from a book that really made you think?
Examples:
“You learn over time that the world isn’t broken. It’s just…got more pieces to it than you thought. They all fit together, just maybe not the way you pictured when you were young.” — Sword of Kaigen
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“Our weakness doesn’t make us weak. Our weakness makes us strong. For we had to carry it all these years.” — Rhythm of War
What it says really. There was a post the other day, I can’t remember if it was on here or r/Malazan of someone complaining about so much being obscure etc and it got me thinking. Maybe it is my age, the Internet wasn’t what it is today when I got into fantasy. You read the books and that was it, maybe if you were lucky you discussed it with a friend. If you didn’t understand something, missed a plot point or just had general questions, tough. You maybe picked something new up the next time, details that slipped by the first time round become clear.
Now though there seems to be an obsession with understanding everything and I feel it takes the magic away. I don’t want everything to be explained, every thread tied off and every hole plugged. For me the joy, the escapism, of a book comes from the unknown.
I bought a book for over $30 on google play. It had drm and could only be read through their app. This wasnt made clear or shown at all when I bought it. When I immediately requested a refund, they just denied it with no other options of recourse.
An expensive lesson for me to learn. I hope this helps someone else not make my mistake.
So I’ve been doing some research into F. Scott Fitzgerald. Some of you may know him as the author of ‘The Great Gatsby’ and other works. He was a great writer, no doubt, but I can’t help but think his personal might have inspired ‘Daisy’ and other characters in The Great Gatsby.
Basically, he literally described his relationship with his wife, Zelda, as “sexual recklessness.” He was known in his circle as an alcoholic already.
Fast forward to their wedding day. Both F. Scott and Zelda were known throughout New York City for getting drunk and getting kicked out of hotels during their marriage. A couple causing chaos everywhere basically. Now, later in their marriage, Zelda began to have an affair with a French pilot. Much to her dismay, F. Scott found out about this affair and Zelda asked for a divorce. F. Scott basically denied her request for a divorce and locked her in a room. Like kidnapping style.
Fast forward and F. Scott …
Bear with me as I’m not reddit savvy. But one topic of discussion that I feel like I see a lot ( especially on booktok), is when it comes to books with characters who exhibit problematic behaviors (i.e. they’re racist, homophobic, ableist, etc) it’s so common to automatically connect those behaviors done by fictional characters to the author. As an example, the book Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell has instances where Eleanor (and another character whose name I can’t remember) makes racists comments about Park the other main character who is Korean. Now, not only have readers decided Eleanor racist for making those comments (which I can understand), but now Rainbow Rowell is racist for writing a character who has made a racist comment.
Now, I haven’t read anything by Rainbow Rowell in who knows how many years, nor do I know anything about the woman, so by all means she could be racist and I just not know. But this is just one of many examples that …
Might be a controversial take but honestly: fanfiction is pretty overhated. Yes, there is a lot of bad and toxic fanfic out there, I am aware. Yes, it might take some time to find the really good fics. But when you do? My god. Better than some published books. Yes, the world and characters are borrowed but that doesn’t automatically make it bad. The fic itself creates its own story. And there are some AUs out there that have expanded the world and characters so incredibly that it’s better thought out than canon.
There are some incredibly talented authors out there writing fanfiction. Some are even better than some published books I’ve read. I’m talking “so captivating and beautifully written that you cannot stop reading” levels of good. And it honestly annoys me when people say that fanfiction doesn’t count as a read book. So a 100k story that is beautifully written and well thought out does not count as something worth to read simply …
I’ve lately been mining the early decades of sci fi, and reading classics from the 50s, 60s and 70s. The Stars My Destination is one that I’ve seen pop up on many “best of” lists, so I finally decided to try it out. The Count of Monte Cristo might be my favourite novel of all time, so I was extra hyped for this one as it was essentially billed as TCoMC in space
I am honestly extremely impressed. This is a fantastic story, and one that shocks me to realize that it was written in the 50s. So much of that Golden Era of sci fi feels hopelessly dated, but TSMD feels like it probably could have come out sometime in the last couple of decades.
There are a ton of brilliant concepts here. Jaunting is the big one obviously, and I love how it was implemented throughout the story. Like the best sf, Bester showed us the wide-ranging, societal and cultural effects of such a concept, instead of it just being a cool idea that pops up here and there. There are a ton of other …
The City and the City by China Miéville is a weird fiction murder mystery set in two cities that somehow exist in the same geographic space. It won the Hugo award in 2010 and I can see why - such an interesting mystery within a mystery!
On the surface, the story is a murder mystery. However, the real mystery for the reader is how do these two cities work? Is it magic or technology, or something else entirely? And who or what are the agents of breach that arrest, expel, or even execute people who ‘breach’ and pass from one city to the other?
Inspector Borlu is a smart, likeable, no-nonsense detective who is assigned to investigate the murder of a young woman. The case quickly proves to have interested parties across both cities. As Inspector Borlu digs deeper into the case, it also exposes the workings of the cities, and shadowy, all-powerful agents of Breach that patrol the border and enforce the separation. Miéville never tells us how the system works, instead he lets the story …
I loved it. But I found the Reception section in the Wikipedia article about it funny: “Kirkus Reviews described it as ‘Predictable, certainly, and less imaginative than Consider Phlebas, but technically much more solid: honorably crafted work, often engrossing despite some sluggish patches.’” What a lukewarm review!
I think what some readers may miss is that it’s not about the games, nor about the player of games. it’s about this backwards society into which he is thrust. That backwards society, the Empire of Azad, has a lot more in common with our world than the utopic society of Banks’ Culture.
The Culture is like John Lennon’s “Imagine” come to life on an interstellar scale – no countries, no religion, no wars, no possessions, etc. The Empire of Azad is a brutal hierarchy in a remote corner of the galaxy. The hierarchy is purportedly based on a game called Azad that everyone can play – except that it’s …
As the title suggests. I am tired of getting half-way through hard sci-fi books that are fascinating conceptually, waiting for the human story to develop, and then finding myself disappointed and annoyed when it never comes to fruition. I end up left in the dark with cold rationality or with characters whose traits seem to have been chosen to be ‘high rationalist Mary Sues.’
There are some hard sci-fi authors who I would argue find a good balance between their theoretical science and telling an excellent story, but there are also many more who don’t.
A few examples to get the ball rolling:
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Never have I ever felt more for inhuman species than I have for the Portias, Biancas, and Fabians of his world. I genuinely welled up at their achievements.
Blindsight by Peter Watts. This one is a little harder to get through the meat of his hard sci fi concepts, but I think he really achieves a terrifying story about the possible natures …
Top 3 Offenders
Dr Strange: Sounds like he’s over emphasizes certain inflections on softer A sounds on words can’t handle what
Power of the Dog: I’m not sure if he was going for a modern regional Montana accent or trying to go more southern cowboy. Either way complete miss
Black Mass: I suppose Boston has a notoriously difficult accent to nail but it was a bad enough attempt that they should’ve just hired another actor. He didn’t have a lot of dialogue but what lines he did have he kinda mumbled through them
Seriously. Even if the show doesn’t have any political connotations, if the main character isn’t a white guy, it will be regarded as “woke” pandering and political. The term “woke” has completely lost all meaning. It’s now just a word people use to greenlight their prejudice. Not every film starring a non-white male lead is “woke.” Shang chi isn’t “woke”. It had no political undertones, the characters were genuine and entertaining, but because of its cast, every youtube movie reviewer and their mother wished for its demise, and all of the talking points in their videos revolved on the idea that it was “woke.”
There are plenty of other examples, but the point is that, no matter how good or bad the program is, these people will always perceive the existence of minorities or women as political, and will dismiss any type of media that features them as “woke” pandering. Since identity politics …