/sffg/ - Science Fiction and Fantasy General

High Tech and Low Life Edition

Previous Thread:

>Recommended reading charts (Look here before asking for vague recs)
mega.nz/folder/kj5hWI6J#0cyw0-ZdvZKOJW3fPI6RfQ/folder/guIyhAzS

>Archive
>>>>warosu.org/lit/?task=search2&search_subject=sffg

>Goodreads
goodreads.com/group/show/1029811-sffg

>A link to the ultimate colossal science fiction and fantasy collection torrent
>Discord
Never going to be created.

Attached: cyberpunk backstreet.jpg (1920x1080, 405.31K)

He supremely supremed the supremacy of supremia

I love cyberpunk. What should I read?

Something good to cure your love of cyberpunk.

Is desu ex cyberpunk?

Kek, this is the misery of the Cyberpunk reader.

So, just finished the first Mistborn trilogy (Era 1?), and honestly feeling a bit exhausted.
I don't often see these books categorized as YA, but I feel like I would have derived much more enjoyement from them if I had read them a few years ago

One of the main reasons for this would be the fight scenes, one-on-one ones specifically. They often felt drawn out for the sake of making a "cool" fight, but after a bit I just started speedreading them and the only enjoyement I was getting from them was trying to think of what asspull the author was gonna resort to to give a "shocking" twist and "develop" the characters a bit.

And that's another facet I've grown to loathe over the books, but not for it's repeatedness, but for how it has changed, specially after the first book, by far me favorite one. Here, there were a lot of moments, conversations, whole chapters, where everything felt so... natural? Characters being introduced, understanding their motivations, watching how they changed and developed after events, showing this close knit group of allies-friends and, while abviously very idealized and "fantasy-like", they felt alive. They weren't just the cogs and pawns that I kept finding in book 2 and forward, moving to very specific positions to advance a very complex and unjust puzzle that the author had set up as the basis for the books. They felt like real characters.
But even these decent characters felt bunched up with the new ones introduced and all relegated to a very background role, removing the little interesting worlds they introduced to the books by adding detail and general texture.
Now, maybe I felt that way at the beginning because it was my first contact with a Sanderson work and was still not acclimated to his writing, but the way the other two books read was honestly shocking, I was constantly wondering if whole sections were written by the same author, whatever "subtlety" it may have had before lost now.

The whole religion thing with Sazed felt really jarring at first, but after finding out about Sanderson's religous views, it all kinda clicked and made sense. Honestly not the worst aspect of the books, but brought it down oftentimes.

Lastly, I know this is a point of contention, but I honestly liked the romance elements, as much as Vin and Elend became the ultimate Mary Sues early on, the start of it on book 1 made me really like them and kept me interested in their romantic affairs, kept looking forward to their interactions and I even cried like a bitch a few times.. Which is weird, considering that it's one of the most "YA elements" of the book, but I couldn't bring myself to hate it.

Overall, it was a decent read, ranging from really entertaining to absolutely loathsome at times, so I'm still not sure if I'll read more Branderson for a bit.

Thanks for (not) reading my second grade tier book review.

Attached: 1647821257880.jpg (300x392, 91.32K)

Smartphone is the first true step into cyberpunk future. Prove me wrong. Think about it. Think how vital smartphones are, they are more vital than some internal organs. You could do without a kidney or an ear but try living in a modern world within a smartphone. Smartphones enhance your memory(through recordings), your 'thinking'(through the use of Internet), your vision, your mobility and capacity to operate the reality around you (phone, taxi services, food delivery etc). Smartphone represents the greatest jump in human evolution since agriculture.

Embarrassing misery of the non-supreme sanderson reader.

Pointless drivel of schizoid cyberpunk reader.

The Three Sitgmata of Palmer Eldritch is the most unique and creative "cyberpunk" setting ever made and ever will be made. I use that term loosely as PKD never used it or identified with it but his stories objectively created the genre.

What fash mins would you have in your perky pat layouts?

>Smartphone is the first true step into cyberpunk future.
Nah, that would be digging stick.

This is what happens when you read Cyberpunk, absolute schizo mania.

Think about it, it's about a drug war between a corrupt fashion manufacturing corporation that secretly runs a drug trade of illegal extraterrestrial mushrooms and a rival drug cartel run by an insane industrialist trillionaire who discovered a new psychedelic mushroom outside of the solar system

Attached: 695050.jpg (317x500, 37.53K)

We know it's good. The issue is that it's not cyberpunk - it's the ol' PKD brainfuckpunk.

>tfw no loli demigod with metal teeth gf

Cyberpunk sadly never had a chance as a genre. During the golden age of science fiction the writers however brilliant couldn't truly comprehend the scope of digital technology, thats why in Fire Upon The Deep interstellar civilizations still communicate via emails and sell kilobytes of traffic. Modern writers are inept morons who cannot write anything except the adventures of brave LGBT misfits fighting da evil corpos.

I would argue many of Egan's stories delve into the realm of cyberpunk

I'm reading the first book of the First Law trilogy right now and I'm not liking the character of Jezal at all. Compared to how interesting and/or likable other characters are, his chapters really fall flat. Dedicating those chapters to Logen's old crew would've been much better imo.

This is a Cyberpunk general now.

Dude just fuck off.

Egan does his own thing.

Haven't read dune should i watch the new movie?

read the book first

Try Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

not every cyberpunk is about neon streets in the rain

Attached: sterling.jpg (700x1082, 241.33K)

Recommend me a book based on this image

Attached: mk11-nightwolf-1564685146163_160w.jpg (1280x720, 70.95K)

I agree, but only for book 1

His character improves? I'm on the fence right now on whether I should buy the other two books, and it's mostly because I really don't like his chapters.

I guess? I don't use my phone for internet, it's actually hard for me to understand the appeal.

Most people seem to agree the third Mistborn book is the worst. Because it's basically "a lot of pointless misery until the finale". There's not really any significant growth or change or anything except maybe for Spook but who gives a fuck about him, Sazed's chapters are just him being depressed and Vin is just burning the candle at every end. I think Era 2 Mistborn (Alloy of Law and onwards, if you're curious) are generally better and more coherently-written. Everybody is a bit more of an archetypical character, but they're competently written archetypes, and Wayne at least is pretty great. Sanderson is a mixed bag, and currently Stormlight is on a bit of a downturn, but maybe book 5 will be good again and not just another poorly-paced mess that's all set-up into a climax that's yet more set-up.

Attached: 300.jpg (300x400, 61.33K)

A have not read A Fire Upon the Deep, but I fully believe people will still be sending emails 10,000 years from now.

The first book of this ended up being really good. I think I thought it was slow in the first 2/13 chapters because I quickly grasped what he was doing with the worldbuilding. The mythological references are easy and the nature of the world is not as mysterious as New Sun. You know what this place is, if not how everything works. It's written like a normal novel, in the third person, and narrator is not unreliable.
The basic conflict of the plot comes from the main character being an augur (priest) being forced to engage with the criminal underworld because his manteion (church) got bought out from under their feet. So he has to figure out which lines he's willing to cross or not as he deals with criminal types, juggles his responsibilities to the gods and follows all the rules of his office, and wrestles with the question of violence, and so on.

Attached: longsun.jpg (881x1254, 335.38K)

>narrator is not unreliable

Attached: pringlesman.png (600x600, 266.92K)

It's an omniscient third person narrator that occasionally hops to other POVs, nice try bitch you can't meme me.

Pff, I don't even have a smartphone and do just fine. Schizo retard

To be fair, it's significantly less "fair" than Severian blatantly telling about himself.

Embers ad infinitum
Worm

One of the biggest plot points in Wheel of Time. Hallucinations, paranoia, manic episodes and all.

All 3 parts piece by piece have around 800 pages combined but this whole series in 1 had 600. How to explain it ?

Attached: Screenshot_20220421-155042.png (496x783, 345.97K)

>find an interesting title to read
>female protagonist
>ignores the title completely
How can I stop being like this?

Attached: 1650513491893.jpg (828x707, 310.11K)

Physical dimensions, formatting, font size

Is janny fucking retarded?

Why would you stop?

Stop thinking of women as "the other".

maybe slightly.
for me, it's more that another character just got worse and worse so I didn't find jezal boring any longer

>Book has an unironic tranny "genderfluid" main character
>Actually pretty good

Attached: Mask of Shadows cover highres.jpg (1695x2560, 647.67K)

Is it just, like, a shapeshifter protagonist, or is the protag just human?

No, the main character is a (biological) female who is mentally fucked up a bit and who wants to be addressed in the pronouns of whatever her current attire is- so dressed or presenting as a male, referred to as a male, dressed or presenting as a female, referred to as a female.

The book is surprisingly light on actual tranny virtue signalling shit. There's a le evil bully who refuses to call the MC by her preferred pronouns (the joke being they are in a "game' where every single one of the assassins is trying to kill every other assassin, so pointing out this bully is so mean and evil in a group of murderers is very funny to me) and of course the oh so wise magical super-queen acknowledges and accepts the MCs special gender identity without hesitation despite being way older then everyone else and literally in charge of this traditionalist medieval empire.

I really prefer not to think about politics or align works of fiction with my views at all; though I will say that if ANY fictional character can pull off being a "genderfluid" then I think an androgynous assassin blending into crowds and wearing disguises of either sex would probably be the best for this concept.

Don't stop. Works written by women (or liberal males using women protags) simply do not appeal to white male audience, don't read them because if you do you consciously or subconsciously condition your mind to work more like a womans mind, soft, accepting, irrational, illogical, liberal, to make decisions based on feelins or unable to make decisions at all, even if you have strong resolute mind reading the words of women (or about women) will affect you and erode your convictions the more you read about them.

Attached: photo-1506765336936-bb05e7e06295.jpg (1000x667, 115.67K)

Honestly, I think something as minor as gender stops mattering to super-old fantasy characters so them just being like "Sure whatever" tracks.

Greg Egan's female and nonbinary protagonists are just as autistically rigid and analytical as the males

I don't get the hate for female protagonists (apart from, y'know, Yea Forums). Most of the shitty ones seem to be written by people who treat women like they're a whole different species and there's an annoying trope to make them just better lately, but that's sort of fading and the good ones are just good characters.

>nonbinary protagonists
Why would I want to read about such people? Just reading such a description of a person is already giving me cancer, why would I read entire book about it?

I don't get the need to write female protagonists.
If they are good characters then why not just write them as males in the first place?

Why not write them as women? Male isn't the default.

It is in fantasy and science fiction.

>complaining about non binary in scifi
lol
lmao even
for all I know it could be some transhumanist shit too

I read harry potter again after like 20 years. It was fun. Checked out the recommend chart and ended up with The Riftwar Saga and The Way of Kings. Would these be good or have decent similarities in fantasy? I don't mind if they're just overall good books regardless.

Any transhuman is still effectively male or female, even if it is just their brain floating in a tank it is still essiantially male or female brain.

Way of Kings is... Pretty good. People are divisive on Sanderson in general (a lot of it is just "popular thing bad") but Way of Kings is generally considered pretty solid for him. It's a slow burn, though, and the rest of Stormlight is a bit more of a mixed bag. Dunno about Riftwar.

Will William E. Brown ever continue the Daniel Black series?
Is his other stuff even good?

Read Red Wedding chapter and holy fuck, Catelyn going mad and crying for Ned after Robb is killed was heartbreaking. A lot more brutal than in the show

Attached: 1622959842505.jpg (474x790, 89.66K)