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Teh Madd Hatter posted:Does anyone here have a resource or recommendations for fantasy books that are written by non-westerners or have been translated to English? Specifically, my book group was wanting to read more things that have been translateds to English/are from a non-Euro/American perspective. Zafon was the only author that came to mind for translated works but doesn't quite fit the non-euro category. There is the wuxia genre, if that suits you.
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Jul 10, 2019 03:08
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StrixNebulosa posted:Finished Julie E Czerneda's Survival, first book of her Species Imperative trilogy last night and holy moly this book is so much fun. It's about a salmon researcher in an utopian future earth who spends at least half the book not wanting to get dragged into the sci-fi thriller taking place around her, because salmon! She wants to stay on earth and study fish! This is written to be (thankfully) hilarious instead of frustrating, and I was genuinely saddened when we left the salmon behind to get into alien business...but my sadness lifted quickly because it turned into a very Cherryh-esque "adapt to the aliens via understanding and suffering" sequence, capped with our poor salmon researcher being trapped on a starship full of aliens who don't understand that humans need water to survive. It's a good series, but a lot of book 2 takes place in a cabin away from the action so it's a little weird.
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Jul 10, 2019 03:09
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Teh Madd Hatter posted:Does anyone here have a resource or recommendations for fantasy books that are written by non-westerners or have been translated to English? Specifically, my book group was wanting to read more things that have been translateds to English/are from a non-Euro/American perspective. Zafon was the only author that came to mind for translated works but doesn't quite fit the non-euro category. It’s more short stories than novels (though they also do chapter samples) but Clarkesworld Magazine likes to feature translated fiction. You could start on their website for inspiration.
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Jul 10, 2019 04:26
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StonecutterJoe posted:And it was a really bad movie. I liked it, in a bad, B-movie way
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Jul 10, 2019 04:44
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GreyjoyBastard posted:everything in the Witcher series Poland is in Europe
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Jul 10, 2019 09:00
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Teh Madd Hatter posted:Does anyone here have a resource or recommendations for fantasy books that are written by non-westerners or have been translated to English? Specifically, my book group was wanting to read more things that have been translateds to English/are from a non-Euro/American perspective. Zafon was the only author that came to mind for translated works but doesn't quite fit the non-euro category. Sergei Lukianeno wrote a great series of fantasy/horror/whatever books that I really enjoyed (English translation is very good) Originals are in Russian of course Night Watch Day Watch Twilight Watch Last Watch New Watch Sixth Watch And just realized there are two more in the series I haven't read before There are also two movis based on the books by Timur Mekmambetov (Abraham Lincoln vampire hunter director)
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Jul 10, 2019 09:14
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Teh Madd Hatter posted:Does anyone here have a resource or recommendations for fantasy books that are written by non-westerners or have been translated to English? Specifically, my book group was wanting to read more things that have been translateds to English/are from a non-Euro/American perspective. Zafon was the only author that came to mind for translated works but doesn't quite fit the non-euro category. Amos Tutuola, "my life in the bush of ghosts" and "the palm wine drunkard". Alternatively Jin Yong is getting translated again and the first third of Condor heroes is out (I think the title is something like "a hero born"?)
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Jul 10, 2019 12:17
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Lot of people don't know what non-westerners are.
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Jul 10, 2019 14:47
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Ben Nevis posted:Lot of people don't know what non-westerners are.  
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Jul 10, 2019 15:00
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So Zafon would count if he took a vacation in the Pyrenees.
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Jul 10, 2019 16:15
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Teh Madd Hatter posted:Does anyone here have a resource or recommendations for fantasy books that are written by non-westerners or have been translated to English? Specifically, my book group was wanting to read more things that have been translateds to English/are from a non-Euro/American perspective. Zafon was the only author that came to mind for translated works but doesn't quite fit the non-euro category. Not a recommendation, as I haven't read it, but some of my friends enjoyed The Last Ringbearer, a retelling of LoTR as told from Sauron's point of view. English and German translations: https://ymarkov.livejournal.com/280578.html
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Jul 10, 2019 16:41
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adary posted:Sergei Lukianeno wrote a great series of fantasy/horror/whatever books that I really enjoyed (English translation is very good) Originals are in Russian of course That series became rather repetitive after the first book as I recall. It was basically a novella version of WoD.
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Jul 10, 2019 17:48
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Cardiac posted:It was basically a novella version of WoD.
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Jul 10, 2019 17:51
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Cardiac posted:That series became rather repetitive after the first book as I recall. Guess I got a poo poo taste in books  I loved the first four books
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Jul 10, 2019 21:43
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I was bummed because it appears finding physical versions of many of the Zothique stories is rather difficult but behold! Like all of Clark Ashton Smith's stories are available online. Guess they're in the public domain? Wonder if there will ever been enough interest to reprint Zothique the Ballantine collection :/
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Jul 10, 2019 22:47
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my bony fealty posted:I was bummed because it appears finding physical versions of many of the Zothique stories is rather difficult but behold! Like all of Clark Ashton Smith's stories are available online. Guess they're in the public domain? I bought mine on Amazon.
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Jul 11, 2019 00:24
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my bony fealty posted:I was bummed because it appears finding physical versions of many of the Zothique stories is rather difficult but behold! Like all of Clark Ashton Smith's stories are available online. Guess they're in the public domain? There was a Fantasy Masterworks imprint entitled Emperor of Dreams which collected all of Smith's stuff. I bought mine about a decade ago so I dunno if it's still around
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Jul 11, 2019 05:40
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ringu0 posted:Not a recommendation, as I haven't read it, but some of my friends enjoyed The Last Ringbearer, a retelling of LoTR as told from Sauron's point of view. English and German translations: https://ymarkov.livejournal.com/280578.html That is not an accurate description. The basic idea is that LOTR is a mythologized and whitewashed account, Mordor was an industrializing kingdom of mortals (Orcs and trolls being races of Men), Sauron was a mortal king (last of his name and line), etc. The novel happens after the defeat and near-genocide of Mordor, and Sauron is not in it at all, being dead before it begins.
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Jul 11, 2019 12:06
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Yeah, if you want "LOTR from Sauron's perspective" you want The Sundering by Jacqueline Carey. TLR is something considerably different.
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Jul 11, 2019 15:59
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Neurosis posted:There was a Fantasy Masterworks imprint entitled Emperor of Dreams which collected all of Smith's stuff. I bought mine about a decade ago so I dunno if it's still around Cool, I'll see if I can find that. Looks like there's a documentary by the same name about CAS too, neat.
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Jul 11, 2019 16:58
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Groke posted:That is not an accurate description. The basic idea is that LOTR is a mythologized and whitewashed account, Mordor was an industrializing kingdom of mortals (Orcs and trolls being races of Men), Sauron was a mortal king (last of his name and line), etc. As I said I haven't read it. Thank you for clarification!
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Jul 11, 2019 17:43
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adary posted:Guess I got a poo poo taste in books We all have poo poo taste in books, it is only few of us that are actually honest about it. As example, there are too many people in this thread that have read entirely too much of Weber.
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Jul 11, 2019 18:39
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Recently read and finished a posthumous biography by/about Harry Harrison the sci-fi writer. Was able to finish the Harry Harrison biography in one sitting because the other book I've been trying to read is totally insane. I've been stuck at the following quoted-text for 2 days now, just read it yourself and marvel at the wording and sentence construction in it. quote:The basic characteristic of any amplifier (mechanical, electrical, or economic) is that it receives an input control signal and delivers energy from an independent energy source to a specified output terminal in a predictable relationship to that input control signal.
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Jul 11, 2019 18:40
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Cardiac posted:We all have poo poo taste in books, it is only few of us that are actually honest about it. Well, reading too much Weber isn't exactly difficult.
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Jul 11, 2019 23:34
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ringu0 posted:As I said I haven't read it. Thank you for clarification! Nbd. I recall it as an enjoyable work worth reading, you have to bear in mind that as I said it treats LOTR as mythology with a weak basis in reality.
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Jul 12, 2019 00:17
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fritz posted:Amos Tutuola, "my life in the bush of ghosts" and "the palm wine drunkard". Thanks to all for the help here, I think I'm going to look more at Tutuola and the wuxia options as they should grab some interest! I've actually been reading A Hero Born as an ARC and enjoying it so far but we usually have to try and avoid hard covers.
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Jul 12, 2019 00:52
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Halfway through 'Black Leopard Red Wolf' by Marlon James and loving it. Ymmv but it has all the things I want in a fantasy novel: an unreliable narrator, a fantasy world that doesn't draw on a European tradition, a narrator that loves the sound of his own voice, and gay stuff. A bunch of reviewers have characterized it as 'difficult' and ... maybe? I guess? It's not a straightforward narrative, but it's also not obtuse for-the-sake-of-it. Threads of trauma and pain weave their way through the narrative, and there's a lot of violence so a content warning is probably justified; I'm gonna quote the NPR and LA Review of Books discussions rather than try and summarize it: https://www.npr.org/2019/02/08/692415906/black-leopard-red-wolf-is-a-beast-of-a-book quote:I understand where those comparisons [to LotR and AGoT] come from, the publicity strategies that underly them, but they are wildly inaccurate to the experience of reading this book, which is more like if Toni Morrison had written Ovid's Metamorphoses: Painful and strange, full of bodies shifting from personhood into meat, and somehow, always, still, upsettingly beautiful. This isn't Tolkien's grief-stricken melancholy, or Martin's calculating, character-forward plot mechanics; it's horror and tragedy by way of fantasy, nothing discrete, everything penetrating everything else. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/but-that-is-not-the-story-on-marlon-jamess-black-leopard-red-wolf/ quote:It would be tempting to read Tracker’s series of stories-that-are-not-the-story as false starts, as Tracker’s failed attempts to tell a tale he cannot quite articulate for its size or complexity, an example of the failure of words to represent an external reality. Certainly, Black Leopard, Red Wolf is large and complex, but Tracker has already aptly narrated the events he now only summarizes over the course of the previous 586 pages. The complexity of the story so told over these pages derives precisely from Tracker’s skill as a storyteller, from his facility with story and his ability to weave together manifold, fragmented, nested, and achronological narrative threads into a single tale, even if this tale never finally coheres into a moral lesson or final meaning. He may very well have told the story in a less complex fashion, but then it would not have been the story, just as these summaries are not the story. Tracker’s summaries only reveal what the reader already knows, what he has already told. They are not the story because they summarize what cannot be summarized, because they abstract what cannot be abstracted, because they reduce what cannot be reduced, because they edit and reorder what cannot be edited or reordered: story itself, which in Black Leopard, Red Wolf is both the sum total of the world and the impossibility of that world’s coherence. The author won the Man Booker prize a few years ago, so a pivot into 'genre' fiction is, I guess, sort of a scandal (or whatever passes for one in literary circles)? Def recommended. Gato The Elder fucked around with this message at 01:06 on Jul 12, 2019 |
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Jul 12, 2019 01:03
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it's really really good. I read a few months ago and think about it a lot. I posted right after reading that I wasn't sure if I loved it but I do now. One of the most unique fantasy books I've read for sure. the next in the trilogy is going to be the same story told from Sogolon's perspective and I cannot loving wait.
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Jul 12, 2019 01:40
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:Recently read and finished a posthumous biography by/about Harry Harrison the sci-fi writer. Are you reading the original document or the book? And why?
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Jul 12, 2019 02:45
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:Recently read and finished a posthumous biography by/about Harry Harrison the sci-fi writer. Lol at that quote but also ick at the first sentence purely from a clear writing perspective. The human brain isn't good at putting together too many ideas in a single sentence.
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Jul 12, 2019 03:30
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ToxicFrog posted:Yeah, if you want "LOTR from Sauron's perspective" you want The Sundering by Jacqueline Carey. TLR is something considerably different. i have complicated but generally positive feelings about every Jacqueline Carey novel I have read
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Jul 12, 2019 05:53
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fashionly snort posted:The author won the Man Booker prize a few years ago, so a pivot into 'genre' fiction is, I guess, sort of a scandal (or whatever passes for one in literary circles)? Def recommended. His work has always been genre though. John Crow's Devil is full blooded splattery horror novel. A Brief History of Seven Killings - which nabbed the booker - is a gangster thriller. High Warlord Zog fucked around with this message at 10:18 on Jul 12, 2019 |
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Jul 12, 2019 10:15
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I'm trying to remember a (probably) short story I read, and I think it's fairly recent. There's some kind of CERN-esque physics research station and they learn Something which causes half of them to commit suicide upon learning it. PoV character is an outsider sent in to deal with whatever it is that happened. I want to say that what they learned is that the universe is a simulation, but I'm not 100% on that.
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Jul 12, 2019 12:08
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You're not thinking of The Three Body Problem, are you?
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Jul 12, 2019 12:57
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Sounds similar to a Ted Chiang story thats in his anthology Story of your life and others which I can't remember the name of.
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Jul 12, 2019 13:46
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Beachcomber posted:I'm trying to remember a (probably) short story I read, and I think it's fairly recent. That is the plot to a Doctor Who from a few seasons ago. But it's definitely a written story you're thinking of?
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Jul 12, 2019 15:37
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It sounds like a more explicitly horrific “What Did Tessimonde Tell You?”
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Jul 12, 2019 16:12
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Carrier posted:Sounds similar to a Ted Chiang story thats in his anthology Story of your life and others which I can't remember the name of. I keep thinking of the 99 names of god, which is similar thematically to 72 letters but not by him. Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Jul 12, 2019 |
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Jul 12, 2019 20:30
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Sibling of TB posted:That is the plot to a Doctor Who from a few seasons ago. But it's definitely a written story you're thinking of? gently caress, it was this. Sorry everyone! General Battuta posted:It sounds like a more explicitly horrific “What Did Tessimonde Tell You?” Dug this up (no E) and it's pretty good and haunting.
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Jul 12, 2019 21:11
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Amniotic posted:Are you reading the original document or the book? Read/powerskimmed a bunch of books recently about the alt-right and other books about belief in conspiracy theories making a overwhelming return in modern social media. Behold A Pale Horse was the apparently the ur-deep state conspiracy theory book prior to the internet making most of the world globally connected/rise of facebook and twitter. So I decided to powerskim BaPH, with certain expectations for the amounts of crazy + bizarre claims inside BaPH, because I didn't think it would be that bad. Turns out I was wrong, and underestimated the claims + insanity + clunkiness of the writing. BaPH suffers from disjointed leaps in logic, utter belief that economic theory can be translated into/out of mathematics theory or/and electronics theory perfectly and lose nothing, as well as extremely dated terminology/references. ... 4 week old off-topic thread necromancy but gently caress it fordan posted:Hmm, yes. I'm sure fans of military sci-fi will be flocking to a "Schrodinger's WarCriminal" thread. Turns out, YES. Fans of military sci-fi will flock to a "Schrodinger's WarCriminal" thread. Discussions of terrible authors, worse writing, and literary WarCrimes (pun intended) the likes of which even reddit fears to discuss. Anyone is welcome to post in there, even if its drive-by-trolling.
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Jul 12, 2019 23:04
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