The Genres Ablaze: Critical Looks at Sci-fi and Fantasy

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > The Genres Ablaze: Critical Looks at Sci-fi and Fantasy

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Milkfred E. Moore posted:

This is wrong.

Fairly sure "this" is intentional cruelty so you just saved a goon from a very painful reading experience, thus lowering the entertainment value of this thread by one suffering internet user.

anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 14:55 on Mar 19, 2019

# ¿ Mar 19, 2019 14:50

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 13:27

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Solitair posted:

I've read the first book. There is a magic system, but like a lot of other things, Erikson doesn't explain it.

Yeah, the thing is as you go on it becomes clearer that no one in the books understands it either and that includes the magic users themselves. Everything you're told about it is bits and pieces of speculation coming from unreliable narrators.
There's a lot of things to criticize (and I'm saying that as a fan of series) but a Sanderson approach isn't one of them. I don't doubt they had a system in place for the RPG they based it on but the books never devolve into Setting Magical Laws.

I'd also say it feels pretty unfair to hold the fact that noted twit Donaldson likes the books against them.

anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 18:33 on Apr 10, 2019

# ¿ Apr 10, 2019 18:31

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

He does love his ap'o'strophes.

# ¿ Apr 10, 2019 20:23

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Excuse me, do you mean the "ruthless exploration and interrogation of gender, sexuality, racism, and imperialism"?

Becaue I'd love to see a dragon interrogate imperialism.

# ¿ Dec 6, 2019 12:00

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Sham bam bamina! posted:

Looks like somebody hasn't read Murakami.

I was thinking Chinghiz Aitmatov or Olga Tokarczuk myself; is there something that binds magical realism to its place of origin?

# ¿ Jan 7, 2020 13:58

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Xotl posted:

Ellison was a big fan of the "speculative fiction" badge, in part because he had a rabid hatred of the term "sci-fi", which inevitably came with science fiction, but also in part because by the 60s there were lots of stories being written that weren't fantasy but certainly weren't science fiction as people traditionally knew it, stories that involved little or no actual science. It's hard to look at something like Jeffty is Five or a lot of what New Worlds was publishing or whatever and unambiguously say "that's sci-fi".

You don't even need look that far. Take Ray Bradbury - I sincerely doubt there's a jot of "science" in his entire body of work. And yet he's considered one of the most influential sci-fi writers.
Genre-wise, alas, it seems that fantasy means "it has wizards", sci-fi "it has spaceships" and horror "it has monsters". Using "speculative fiction" as an umbrella term could help do away with this rather ridiculous categorization.

anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Jan 10, 2020

# ¿ Jan 10, 2020 02:12

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

IIRC it's a story about alternative timelines and Sci-fi AI that involves the 2016 election.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2020 23:52

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 13:27

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Heath posted:

Is there a particular translation you recommend?

Ishiguro's.

Hell, I like that book, and I mostly read fantasy. But I guess Ishiguro is pretty accessible in general.

anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Oct 26, 2020

# ¿ Oct 26, 2020 19:34

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > The Genres Ablaze: Critical Looks at Sci-fi and Fantasy