I actually did not have that problem with Anathem, because the words are never made up out of whole cloth, so to speak; they are all portmanteaus of existing words. One of the things I ALWAYS enjoy about a Stephenson book is the playing around with linguistics in one for or another (most evident in Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, and the Confusion...). Basically you can puzzle out the origin of the 'made up' words - they aren't just gobbledygook.
Two excellent series of classic titles have been released in the last few years, one each for Fantasy and SF. Old classics sit next to stuff you've never heard of but which is great anyhow, and nary a dud on either list.
I'll add all april books start of February, but information is always appreciated.
Edit: Also Patrick Rothfuss' 2nd book comes out in April
Nope, that date is wrong. It got delayed. Again. Indefinitely. That Kingkiller trilogy sure starts to look like a pain in the ass.
Jragghen, I was thinking of linking reviews from Pat's place, Werthead & Jay Tomio's blogs etc, but you're probably right and it's a good idea to have links in the OP to all those places. Will get to it tomorrow.
Dammit, I got all excited for nothing it seems. I loved Name of the Wind, and when I saw the post about April, I was all "Oh shit, I thought it was going to be a longer wait..wee!"
Only to have my dreams crushed. Why does good fantasy(and Wheel of Time) take so long??
Indefinitely? Are you sure it didn't just get delayed to April 2009 like the Authors blog says?
Absolutely certain. I can't find the relevant info for some reason, but it was saying something of the sort that Rothfuss is going back to rewriting stuff and the earliest we can expect the book is late summer/early fall 2009.
I'll try and link it if I find it.
Two excellent series of classic titles have been released in the last few years, one each for Fantasy and SF. Old classics sit next to stuff you've never heard of but which is great anyhow, and nary a dud on either list.
Very good way for people to get some quality and classic SF or fantasy at a reasonable price.
A lot of people here like the Amber novels by Zelazny which are available there (I think they're wildly overrated, but the first one is really good). People with an interest in DnD should check out Jack Vance (Tales of the Dying Earth), and people in general should check out M. John Harrison (Viriconium).
I never noticed that they've published Edward Plunkett/Lord Dunsany twice, that's pretty obscure.
Seeing a category for "Sword & Sorcery/Heroic Fantasy" reminded me that such a category really needs a David Gemmell mention, if only for Legend. He certainly deserves a place there if Salvatore does.
i guess his books would fall under sci-fi epics....
most notably the hyperion books are a great story but ill split them into hyperion and endymion here.
Hyperion and The fall of Hyperion are a 2 book series about a sci-fi pilgrimage to a planet to ask a strange creature for one favor when only one favor per pilgrimage is answered. the book is a must for any sci-fi lover who also enjoys early english poetry and stories. for example: the first book, Hyperion, is one of the few frame stories like the canterberry tales and has massive allusions to John Keats (him being in the story) and other poets. the second book, The Fall of Hyperion, wraps up the story from the first with more interresting literary allusions.
the second 2 books in the series after Hyperion, Endymion and The Rise of Endymion, are a much more interesting religious/metaphysical philosophy sci-fi books this time focused around a theocratical inter-galactic government and fighting against its ideas. Quingu would enjoy these two. these two are told through a first person rememberance of past events and really could be just set as one story as they do flow into one another. The story occurs a long time after the Hyperion books but references the books as a historical story. also it has characters from the previous series come back.
the other good books by Simmons are Ilium and Olympos which are a sci-fi duology but this time with references to greek mythology, Shakespeare, Faust and there are some minor references to other poets. mostly the story is about the trojan war/Iliad and a sci-fi representation of those events.... very enjoyable for anyone who enjoys history.
Anyone else here read anything by Jeff Vandermeer? Veniss Underground is an amazing book; I read it in the course of two or three days and it pretty much blew my mind. The comparisons to the Inferno are apt, and Vandermeer has maybe the best command of language of any SF author that I've read. Shriek: An Afterword is arguably a better book, but it's not quite as enjoyable. He also has done some pretty amazing short story collections; Secret Life is not 100% perfect, but the titular story, a mythologizing of a modern office building, remains probably my favorite fantasy short story.
On an older SF note, Jack Vance's Dying Earth series is a personal favorite of mine. It starts off fairly bleak and depressing with the first short story collection, then, with Eyes of the Overworld, turns into a surprisingly funny fantasy picaresque. There are very few true heroes in the series; almost everyone is self-motivated and greedy, which is kind of refreshing for fantasy. As an additional plus, the wizards, especially in Rhialto the Marvellous read like a prototype for Pratchett's wizards in Discworld.
She's good but the Tawny Man series really left a bad taste in my mouth
she is good. i loved the farseer trilogy... then the magic ship books were kinda meh... then tawny man was decent but not as good as the first 3. i didn't mind the way it ended.
then the new series she wrote was draggin, depressing and just kinda terrible. I understand that she enjoys mutilating her characters and that her motto is "anything that can go wrong, MUST GO WRONG" but damn i felt bad for the main character.
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GoodKingJayIIIThey wanna get mygold on the ceilingRegistered Userregular
edited January 2009
So I thought Dan Simmoms Ilium was excellent. Good prose, solid story, interesting concepts. How does the sequel, Olympos, fair?
She's good but the Tawny Man series really left a bad taste in my mouth
she is good. i loved the farseer trilogy... then the magic ship books were kinda meh... then tawny man was decent but not as good as the first 3. i didn't mind the way it ended.
then the new series she wrote was draggin, depressing and just kinda terrible. I understand that she enjoys mutilating her characters and that her motto is "anything that can go wrong, MUST GO WRONG" but damn i felt bad for the main character.
I love all of her series so much. I'm just 100% sold on her writing; I guess it hits the spot, for me.
The Liveship Traders books are my favorites, followed I suppose by the FitzChivalry books taken as a whole (unlike some I didn't perceive a drop in quality from the Assassin books to the Fool books). And yeah, the Soldier Son books are dismal as all hell, and the magic system is a little too vague for my taste--but I still gobbled it up in about a week and wound up enjoying quite a lot.
She has what's supposed to be a stand-alone novel coming out in the summer. It will be set in the Rain Wilds (which featured prominently in the Liveship books). Up to this point, though, one of the reasons I think she's so great is that not only is her writing top-notch, she puts out books in a timely manner and only writes trilogies... never letting her stuff spiral into massive unending storylines. A trilogy is a really strong way to present an epic fantasy story, IMO.
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My zombie survival life simulator They Don't Sleep is out now on Steam if you want to check it out.
I just finished the latest Discworld novel, Making Money. It, uh, kinda sucked. And this is from a guy who's read almost the whole series, probably three times each.
It only made me laugh a few times, none of the plot threads really had the interesting resolutions that they promised, all the twists and reveals were disappointing, and the ending was confused and nonsensical and anticlimactic.
I'm concerned that Pratchett's brain is a little more embuggered than he's willing to admit.
Guys, can I get some input on the recommendations list? How can we do those?
- We could just add everything that people mention and add votes as it gets proposed by different people, but that seems disorganized. I could keep track of it, but a bit too much monitoring of this thread is required.
- I could change the title and add: "VOTE NOW FOR <GENRE>" and include all recommendations in the specific genre made in the next 7 days.
- We could start a separate voting thread, starting 1 thread per week, every thread covering 1 genre after 7 days the thread is closed, all recommendations get added to the 2nd posts(genres are already there).
- We could do anything else you people come up with.
Separate threads seem like more trouble than necessary. Have everyone just spoiler their votes in this thread (5 each?) for books and then add em up at the end of a week.
How about just requiring a nomination and a second in this thread to get on the list? Doesn't need to be overly complex, right?
id prefer if it was more than 2 at least.
first people will mention books (put a notice not to repost books already mentioned)
then if you get say 3 other people to say 'i recommend it' then it gets put up there. so 4 people total per book (and it might be easier to just list authors in some cases)
that way the 'list' doesnt just become a list of all the books that have been referenced in this thread but of good books people have read.
Separate threads seem like more trouble than necessary. Have everyone just spoiler their votes in this thread (5 each?) for books and then add em up at the end of a week.
That works fine for me. If we do it so, should we do it by genre, or just let posters nominate 5 fantasy/sci-fi books/series and then allocate them? If we do it the second way, I fear we may run in the same 20-25 books over and over. That's not really a bad thing, but it kind of defeats the purpose of the recommendations per genre.
then if you get say 3 other people to say 'i recommend it' then it gets put up there. so 4 people total per book (and it might be easier to just list authors in some cases)
I could put a huge list of books in a genre spoilered in the OP and let people:
!recommend from it and after let's say 5 recommendations it gets added as a D&D favourite?
as well as !add titles for recommendation.
I loved the Takeshi Kovacs books but I am wary of purchasing Morgan's latest work
I just don't know if he can do fantasy well
Well, if you're looking for Recommendations and Seconds, I'll second the first Kovacs book, "Altered Carbon". I just finished it last night, and I loved every minute of it. I'm kind of a sucker for both cyberpunk and noir, though, so this was right up my alley.
I'd also through out a recommendation on Simon Green's "Nightside" books. About as much depth as a wading pool, but I'll be damned if they aren't fun.
Separate threads seem like more trouble than necessary. Have everyone just spoiler their votes in this thread (5 each?) for books and then add em up at the end of a week.
That works fine for me. If we do it so, should we do it by genre, or just let posters nominate 5 fantasy/sci-fi books/series and then allocate them? If we do it the second way, I fear we may run in the same 20-25 books over and over. That's not really a bad thing, but it kind of defeats the purpose of the recommendations per genre.
then if you get say 3 other people to say 'i recommend it' then it gets put up there. so 4 people total per book (and it might be easier to just list authors in some cases)
I could put a huge list of books in a genre spoilered in the OP and let people:
!recommend from it
or !add titles for recommendation.
yeah the color or the spoiler for votes works i think. make a rule that one book can only be in ONE CATEGORY and maybe in big letters to NOT READD BOOKS ALREADY ON THE LIST.
I guess by genre, but I'd probably have less categories than you've got in your second post. Hard/Epic/Military/Speculative/Space Opera all cover much of the same ground. And I'm unsure what Urban Fantasy consists of: fantasy in a town?
I'd probably stick just to Fantasy and SF myself, or break fantasy up into Heroic Fantasy (trilogies and things in the vein of Tolkein and his many, many imitators) and Fantasy (everything else, from John Crowley to M John Harrison). Or maybe break SF into pre and post cyberpunk if you want an arbitrary dividing line that will give us room for more recommendations.
So I thought Dan Simmoms Ilium was excellent. Good prose, solid story, interesting concepts. How does the sequel, Olympos, fair?
continues the story basically. really its a duology, one is just an extension of the other.
Yeah, I got that. I guess I was looking for a little more detail than that. Simmons has a lot of plot threads at the end of the book. Does he tie everything together nicely, or just go off the rails? That kind of thing.
Reason: Hyperion and The fall of Hyperion are a 2 book series about a sci-fi pilgrimage to a planet to ask a strange creature for one favor when only one favor per pilgrimage is answered. the book is a must for any sci-fi lover who also enjoys early english poetry and stories. for example: the first book, Hyperion, is one of the few frame stories like the canterberry tales and has massive allusions to John Keats (him being in the story) and other poets. the second book, The Fall of Hyperion, wraps up the story from the first with more interresting literary allusions.
Reason: the second 2 books in the series after Hyperion, Endymion and The Rise of Endymion, are a much more interesting religious/metaphysical philosophy sci-fi books this time focused around a theocratical inter-galactic government and fighting against its ideas. Quingu would enjoy these two. these two are told through a first person rememberance of past events and really could be just set as one story as they do flow into one another. The story occurs a long time after the Hyperion books but references the books as a historical story. also it has characters from the previous series come back.
!add Dan Simmons - Hyperion Cantos for Space Opera would have done it.;o)))
Bogart, the reason I split it so much, is because otherwise we'd get the same 20 book list that is on every fantasy forum. There are authors whose books aren't as good/as fun as the best authors, but are still top of the cream in their sub-genre. I'm guilty of sometimes not looking for pure quality, but just more of the same.
Yeah, urban fantasy is a magic/shapeshifters/fae in post-industrial/industrial setting.
Reason: It's a gritty cyberpunk-noir detective story set in a world where mankind has learned to cheat death by keeping a digital record of themselves in a "stack" at the base of their skull, which can be moved to other bodies, or "sleeves"; for a price, of course. Good mystery, fun characters, and lots of technology gone wild. I can't speak for the rest of the series, yet, but the first book's impressed me enough to look up the rest.
You may end up with five different lists of SF books that could happily sit in other lists, though. The Dan Simmons books you use in your example above are probably a better fit for Epic SF than Space Opera, for instance.
One other thing. Sci-fi is a term used only by satan's little helpers that makes writers wince and angels die from distemper. SF is the abbrevation cool cats use.
One other thing. Sci-fi is a term used only by satan's little helpers that makes writers wince and angels die from distemper. SF is the abbrevation cool cats use.
Statements like this are why I never talk about books with people, and largely stopped reading for years. :P
Cyber Punk - the main theme is that advanced technology causes a break down of social order.
Examples: The Matrix trilogy, Blade Runner
Epic Fantasy - Consists of an epic struggle against a great evil over (usually) a long series of books. often contains elves dwarves and other common fantasy races.
Examples: Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Hard Sci-fi - a large genre where the book tries to adhere to actual real science and technology as much as possible. for simplicity lets just say no time travel, phasers or lightsabers here. it has to be plausible scientifically.
Examples: ?
Epic Sci-fi - ???
Military fantasy/sci-fi - main theme of these books is the military. many stories will have military fantasy or sci-fi elements but to fit in this genre it has to be about the fighting and the army... normally characters in the army.
Example: Starship Troopers
Space Opera - A space opera is similar to an epic fantasy except instead of an overarching evil you will often have an evil organization or a group of evil people... and its sci-fi. Space operas often have a romantic component and a slow fight between two different sides. if its group of good guys vs group of bad guys, has romance and it is not constant action... it probably fits here.
Examples: Star Wars, The Fifth Element, Star Trek
Speculative fiction - the main theme here is 'what if this happened'. this is a very common genre for warnings on global warming, communism and AI take overs... this genre can be seen in others but once again if the main idea behind the story is 'what if' then it fits here.
Examples: Jurassic Park, The Day after Tomorrow, The Terminator
Sword & Sorcery - theres a good chance if its not an epic fantasy then its a sword and sorcery fantasy. usually this genre is defined by fast paced action with the benefits being more personal than world wide. generally these stories focus on one or a few main characters instead of an entire cast.
Examples: Pirates of the Caribean, Eragon, Spiderman
Urban Fantasy - either the story takes place almost entirely inside of a fantasy city with little change of scenery or it takes place in modern day settings with normal aspects of fantasy.
Reason: It is a great serial story of a Modern Day wizard in the city of Chicago. Along with the Wizards of the White Council, to which Harry belongs, there are various organizations and super powers in the Arcane underworld: The Winter and Summer Fae, the various Vampire Courts, and the occasional warlock or sorcerer. Also - Werewolves!
The books really pick up after the first few and by the time you get one finished you'll be thirsting for another.
Posts
I actually did not have that problem with Anathem, because the words are never made up out of whole cloth, so to speak; they are all portmanteaus of existing words. One of the things I ALWAYS enjoy about a Stephenson book is the playing around with linguistics in one for or another (most evident in Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, and the Confusion...). Basically you can puzzle out the origin of the 'made up' words - they aren't just gobbledygook.
http://lexiconmegatherium.tumblr.com/
http://www.amazon.com/Broken-Sky-Part-One-Pt/dp/0439014875/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231401042&sr=1-3
I'd suggest getting all of them, as amazon seems to only have 1 used copy of many of them (there are 7 books)
Seriously.
I just don't know if he can do fantasy well
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
Wiki articles on both series here and here.
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Absolutely certain. I can't find the relevant info for some reason, but it was saying something of the sort that Rothfuss is going back to rewriting stuff and the earliest we can expect the book is late summer/early fall 2009.
I'll try and link it if I find it.
Very good way for people to get some quality and classic SF or fantasy at a reasonable price.
A lot of people here like the Amber novels by Zelazny which are available there (I think they're wildly overrated, but the first one is really good). People with an interest in DnD should check out Jack Vance (Tales of the Dying Earth), and people in general should check out M. John Harrison (Viriconium).
I never noticed that they've published Edward Plunkett/Lord Dunsany twice, that's pretty obscure.
Seeing a category for "Sword & Sorcery/Heroic Fantasy" reminded me that such a category really needs a David Gemmell mention, if only for Legend. He certainly deserves a place there if Salvatore does.
DAN SIMMONS
i guess his books would fall under sci-fi epics....
most notably the hyperion books are a great story but ill split them into hyperion and endymion here.
Hyperion and The fall of Hyperion are a 2 book series about a sci-fi pilgrimage to a planet to ask a strange creature for one favor when only one favor per pilgrimage is answered. the book is a must for any sci-fi lover who also enjoys early english poetry and stories. for example: the first book, Hyperion, is one of the few frame stories like the canterberry tales and has massive allusions to John Keats (him being in the story) and other poets. the second book, The Fall of Hyperion, wraps up the story from the first with more interresting literary allusions.
the second 2 books in the series after Hyperion, Endymion and The Rise of Endymion, are a much more interesting religious/metaphysical philosophy sci-fi books this time focused around a theocratical inter-galactic government and fighting against its ideas. Quingu would enjoy these two. these two are told through a first person rememberance of past events and really could be just set as one story as they do flow into one another. The story occurs a long time after the Hyperion books but references the books as a historical story. also it has characters from the previous series come back.
the other good books by Simmons are Ilium and Olympos which are a sci-fi duology but this time with references to greek mythology, Shakespeare, Faust and there are some minor references to other poets. mostly the story is about the trojan war/Iliad and a sci-fi representation of those events.... very enjoyable for anyone who enjoys history.
On an older SF note, Jack Vance's Dying Earth series is a personal favorite of mine. It starts off fairly bleak and depressing with the first short story collection, then, with Eyes of the Overworld, turns into a surprisingly funny fantasy picaresque. There are very few true heroes in the series; almost everyone is self-motivated and greedy, which is kind of refreshing for fantasy. As an additional plus, the wizards, especially in Rhialto the Marvellous read like a prototype for Pratchett's wizards in Discworld.
There's only three and I thought Engineers and Throne were both pretty good...for me Children seemed to have less of the sense of wonder and scale.
You should probably stop half way through 'Engineers' and go read
I think this series of abstract-y covers for Dan Simmons books are much better
Damn fine books, though the end of Olympos got weird...
Man, I should make a big HP Lovecraft post later.
it actually made me look up the bird "shryke" which made me appreciate it more.
i had a hard time at first getting through the first book but after that it was like candy.
And Robin Hobb is the best epic fantasy author.
She's good but the Tawny Man series really left a bad taste in my mouth
she is good. i loved the farseer trilogy... then the magic ship books were kinda meh... then tawny man was decent but not as good as the first 3. i didn't mind the way it ended.
then the new series she wrote was draggin, depressing and just kinda terrible. I understand that she enjoys mutilating her characters and that her motto is "anything that can go wrong, MUST GO WRONG" but damn i felt bad for the main character.
continues the story basically. really its a duology, one is just an extension of the other.
I love all of her series so much. I'm just 100% sold on her writing; I guess it hits the spot, for me.
The Liveship Traders books are my favorites, followed I suppose by the FitzChivalry books taken as a whole (unlike some I didn't perceive a drop in quality from the Assassin books to the Fool books). And yeah, the Soldier Son books are dismal as all hell, and the magic system is a little too vague for my taste--but I still gobbled it up in about a week and wound up enjoying quite a lot.
She has what's supposed to be a stand-alone novel coming out in the summer. It will be set in the Rain Wilds (which featured prominently in the Liveship books). Up to this point, though, one of the reasons I think she's so great is that not only is her writing top-notch, she puts out books in a timely manner and only writes trilogies... never letting her stuff spiral into massive unending storylines. A trilogy is a really strong way to present an epic fantasy story, IMO.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
It only made me laugh a few times, none of the plot threads really had the interesting resolutions that they promised, all the twists and reveals were disappointing, and the ending was confused and nonsensical and anticlimactic.
I'm concerned that Pratchett's brain is a little more embuggered than he's willing to admit.
- We could just add everything that people mention and add votes as it gets proposed by different people, but that seems disorganized. I could keep track of it, but a bit too much monitoring of this thread is required.
- I could change the title and add: "VOTE NOW FOR <GENRE>" and include all recommendations in the specific genre made in the next 7 days.
- We could start a separate voting thread, starting 1 thread per week, every thread covering 1 genre after 7 days the thread is closed, all recommendations get added to the 2nd posts(genres are already there).
- We could do anything else you people come up with.
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id prefer if it was more than 2 at least.
first people will mention books (put a notice not to repost books already mentioned)
then if you get say 3 other people to say 'i recommend it' then it gets put up there. so 4 people total per book (and it might be easier to just list authors in some cases)
that way the 'list' doesnt just become a list of all the books that have been referenced in this thread but of good books people have read.
definitly keep it in this thread though.
I think that would require a bit too much time on my part, but I'm ok with it if that's what works for everybody.
That works fine for me. If we do it so, should we do it by genre, or just let posters nominate 5 fantasy/sci-fi books/series and then allocate them? If we do it the second way, I fear we may run in the same 20-25 books over and over. That's not really a bad thing, but it kind of defeats the purpose of the recommendations per genre.
I could put a huge list of books in a genre spoilered in the OP and let people:
!recommend from it and after let's say 5 recommendations it gets added as a D&D favourite?
as well as
!add titles for recommendation.
Well, if you're looking for Recommendations and Seconds, I'll second the first Kovacs book, "Altered Carbon". I just finished it last night, and I loved every minute of it. I'm kind of a sucker for both cyberpunk and noir, though, so this was right up my alley.
I'd also through out a recommendation on Simon Green's "Nightside" books. About as much depth as a wading pool, but I'll be damned if they aren't fun.
yeah the color or the spoiler for votes works i think. make a rule that one book can only be in ONE CATEGORY and maybe in big letters to NOT READD BOOKS ALREADY ON THE LIST.
then you can just update once a week.
I'd probably stick just to Fantasy and SF myself, or break fantasy up into Heroic Fantasy (trilogies and things in the vein of Tolkein and his many, many imitators) and Fantasy (everything else, from John Crowley to M John Harrison). Or maybe break SF into pre and post cyberpunk if you want an arbitrary dividing line that will give us room for more recommendations.
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Yeah, I got that. I guess I was looking for a little more detail than that. Simmons has a lot of plot threads at the end of the book. Does he tie everything together nicely, or just go off the rails? That kind of thing.
!ADD DAN SIMMONS: Hyperion for Space Opera
Reason: Hyperion and The fall of Hyperion are a 2 book series about a sci-fi pilgrimage to a planet to ask a strange creature for one favor when only one favor per pilgrimage is answered. the book is a must for any sci-fi lover who also enjoys early english poetry and stories. for example: the first book, Hyperion, is one of the few frame stories like the canterberry tales and has massive allusions to John Keats (him being in the story) and other poets. the second book, The Fall of Hyperion, wraps up the story from the first with more interresting literary allusions.
!ADD DAN SIMMONS: The Fall of Hyperion for Space Opera
Reason: See Above
!ADD DAN SIMMONS: Endymion for Space Opera
Reason: the second 2 books in the series after Hyperion, Endymion and The Rise of Endymion, are a much more interesting religious/metaphysical philosophy sci-fi books this time focused around a theocratical inter-galactic government and fighting against its ideas. Quingu would enjoy these two. these two are told through a first person rememberance of past events and really could be just set as one story as they do flow into one another. The story occurs a long time after the Hyperion books but references the books as a historical story. also it has characters from the previous series come back.
!ADD DAN SIMMONS: The Rise of Endymion for Space Opera
Reason: See above
!add Dan Simmons - Hyperion Cantos for Space Opera would have done it.;o)))
Bogart, the reason I split it so much, is because otherwise we'd get the same 20 book list that is on every fantasy forum. There are authors whose books aren't as good/as fun as the best authors, but are still top of the cream in their sub-genre. I'm guilty of sometimes not looking for pure quality, but just more of the same.
Yeah, urban fantasy is a magic/shapeshifters/fae in post-industrial/industrial setting.
!ADD RICHARD MORGAN: Altered Carbon for Cyberpunk
Reason: It's a gritty cyberpunk-noir detective story set in a world where mankind has learned to cheat death by keeping a digital record of themselves in a "stack" at the base of their skull, which can be moved to other bodies, or "sleeves"; for a price, of course. Good mystery, fun characters, and lots of technology gone wild. I can't speak for the rest of the series, yet, but the first book's impressed me enough to look up the rest.
One other thing. Sci-fi is a term used only by satan's little helpers that makes writers wince and angels die from distemper. SF is the abbrevation cool cats use.
EDIT: This is nitpicking, I know, so I'll stop.
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Statements like this are why I never talk about books with people, and largely stopped reading for years. :P
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I'm not shooting anyone. I'm expressing my distaste for... what would you call that? Elitism?
Aren't sure where your book falls?
Category Explanation and popular move examples:
Cyber Punk - the main theme is that advanced technology causes a break down of social order.
Examples: The Matrix trilogy, Blade Runner
Epic Fantasy - Consists of an epic struggle against a great evil over (usually) a long series of books. often contains elves dwarves and other common fantasy races.
Examples: Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Hard Sci-fi - a large genre where the book tries to adhere to actual real science and technology as much as possible. for simplicity lets just say no time travel, phasers or lightsabers here. it has to be plausible scientifically.
Examples: ?
Epic Sci-fi - ???
Military fantasy/sci-fi - main theme of these books is the military. many stories will have military fantasy or sci-fi elements but to fit in this genre it has to be about the fighting and the army... normally characters in the army.
Example: Starship Troopers
Space Opera - A space opera is similar to an epic fantasy except instead of an overarching evil you will often have an evil organization or a group of evil people... and its sci-fi. Space operas often have a romantic component and a slow fight between two different sides. if its group of good guys vs group of bad guys, has romance and it is not constant action... it probably fits here.
Examples: Star Wars, The Fifth Element, Star Trek
Speculative fiction - the main theme here is 'what if this happened'. this is a very common genre for warnings on global warming, communism and AI take overs... this genre can be seen in others but once again if the main idea behind the story is 'what if' then it fits here.
Examples: Jurassic Park, The Day after Tomorrow, The Terminator
Sword & Sorcery - theres a good chance if its not an epic fantasy then its a sword and sorcery fantasy. usually this genre is defined by fast paced action with the benefits being more personal than world wide. generally these stories focus on one or a few main characters instead of an entire cast.
Examples: Pirates of the Caribean, Eragon, Spiderman
Urban Fantasy - either the story takes place almost entirely inside of a fantasy city with little change of scenery or it takes place in modern day settings with normal aspects of fantasy.
Example: Godzilla, Cloverfield
YA fantasy - ?????
!ADD JIM BUTCHER: The Dresden Files (Books 1-10) for Urban Fantasy
Reason: It is a great serial story of a Modern Day wizard in the city of Chicago. Along with the Wizards of the White Council, to which Harry belongs, there are various organizations and super powers in the Arcane underworld: The Winter and Summer Fae, the various Vampire Courts, and the occasional warlock or sorcerer. Also - Werewolves!
The books really pick up after the first few and by the time you get one finished you'll be thirsting for another.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
I've seen Dresden mentioned a few times already in this thread. I take it I should be reading it? What's it about?
Well, in the first book he Bitch Slaps a vampire Countess in the face with Sunshine he folded into a white handkerchief.
And not to spoil but at one point in the series - how should I put this. Zombie Tyrannosaurus mount.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)