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I will happily poo poo on Piers Anthony all day long - it feels cathartic to me as I resent how much of his poo poo I read as a dumb kid. McCaffrey's Pern I thought started off okay but nose-dived really quick once the whole spaceship/time travel poo poo started up. I think I read maybe 3 or 4 before she jumped the shark with it (I was reading them as they came out). One thing I haven't seen mentioned so far is Terry Brooks' "Wordcount of Shannara" series. I know I read at least one of those things, but don't remember anything more than it was really long and generally boring.
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Aug 30, 2020 01:54
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stinky ox posted:This thread brought back memories of a very peculiar scifi/fantasy novel I read when I was in my early teens. I used to get armfuls of scifi books from my local library, of all kinds of quality, some good, some not so good, and this one was... surprising, to say the least. That sounds like quite a book. This quote from one of the longer reviews seems pretty informative: quote:If cannabalism and sex with horses is how to save the human race, maybe it's better to let humans die. There are lines that shouldn't be crossed.... and to think that the author of this book thinks she's a feminist...
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Aug 30, 2020 22:41
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I remember some Piers Anthony short stories that were loving grim - "On The Uses Of Torture" I think one was called, and it seemed to exist just to make you cringe. Sexual content in other books was often really bad - I remember weird rapey and baffling things in some of them, like the gay Satanist priest performing non-consensual cunnilingus on a female character because I don't remember why. I think one book that was particularly egregious without having sexual content was:  I don't seen any way this one can be read as anything other than a racist screed wrapped in a sci-fi/fantasy veneer.
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Aug 31, 2020 07:14
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firrup posted:I think I read the collection that had "On the Uses of Torture" in it. Yeah, I think the one with the sperm quest thing was called "Minnie's Crew," as a pun on "mini screw." The fact I remember the loving titles is not because reading the book was a pleasant experience.
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Aug 31, 2020 07:45
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Splash Attack posted:god i totally forgot to mention xanth/piers anthony too. i remember reading about that in the last incarnations book and going “what the gently caress?” even as a teenager Somehow I am not surprised. I definitely read the first Incarnations book about Death, and maybe the one after that, but that's also around the time I realized Anthony was just poo poo in general. Unrelated, it occurred to me the other day exactly WHY I ended up reading so much crap sci-fi and fantasy like Piers Anthony - it was because of the loving Science Fiction Book Club. Basically you had to order like 2 books a month, or they would arbitrarily send you whatever crap wasn't moving otherwise. Since that never worked out well, I was always careful to diligently send in my book requests. That meant that I often would just go with recognizable authors, so ended up with a lot of prolific asshats like Anthony. There were some good authors in there, and it was great to be able to get stuff like Zelazny, but it also meant I ended up with a lot of crap because of the necessary 2 books per month thing. The books themselves were the lowest-quality hardcovers imaginable most of the time. Like, so bad the local used bookstore would refuse them outright. But they were cheaper than paperbacks and as a kid it was kind of neat to get a box of books every month. CaptainSarcastic fucked around with this message at 06:27 on Sep 5, 2020 |
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Sep 5, 2020 06:21
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I spent my D&D time in 2e, and am only vaguely familiar with 5e. My memories of 2e are that there were some things that were vaguely racist, but for the most part it was such a complicated mess that it wasn't that in-your-face. Maybe it was easier to be more oblivious to it, and I was admittedly younger and dumber. The Drow were there, but I think I thought of them more like the Borgias of the elf world. Some of the races didn't seem to hew to the more strict alignments, at least in my memory. Lizardmen I remember being pretty much interested in doing their own thing, and as I recall Gnolls didn't have quite the whole bad-for-badness-sake vibe that goblinoids and Orks had. And Kobolds always seemed like a throwaway - like what do you even use a Kobold for? In 2e the gods just seemed like really high-level monsters. I guess some of my view might also be influenced that I never consumed any D&D-related media. I never read any novels, and never got involved with the more involved settings like Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, or the other detailed universes. I just had the base 2e books and a collection of modules, nothing from the big settings with their own lore.
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Sep 6, 2020 23:05
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Black August posted:one way you can portray orcs and why they're so difficult to deal with is that they come from a linguistic, cultural, and evolutionary ancestry that just didn't allow the concept of bullshit That was another thing about 2e - because of the Monster Manual picture and a lot of the pictures of half-Orcs I always pictured the Orcs as having pig heads. Like being pink, cartoony-looking things with pig snouts. I never really connected D&D Orcs with Tolkein Orks.
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Sep 6, 2020 23:18
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I pretty much always thought of halflings as obligate NPCs.
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Sep 8, 2020 04:36
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Doing a quick search on Kender makes me feel really glad I barely looked at 5e and never looked at Dragonlance.
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Sep 8, 2020 05:28
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PetraCore posted:Kenku are where it's at, anyway. They started off in the AD&D Fiend Folio, so at least they've been around a while?
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Sep 8, 2020 05:47
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Barudak posted:While Clan of the Cave Bear is weird, do not be like me and get it confused with the hit 1970s winner of the Governor's General Award canadian novel "Bear" and rent that from the library instead by mistake. I'm only familiar with "Bear" thanks to these very forums and I can never look at Canada quite the same way ever again.
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Sep 10, 2020 06:21
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I'm not sure I've heard of Drizzt before this thread, but I now think of his apparent girlfriend as Cheese-Cat, which is kind of cool.
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Sep 13, 2020 00:06
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Cafe Barbarian posted:I pretty much learned to read a book by reading the Hobbit with my mom. I thought that I read Piers Anthony back in the day but it turned out it was this book Master of the Five Magics by Lyndon Hardy: I remember that book, mostly vague on the story but the more systematic approach to magic stuck with me. I didn't realize there was a series of those books - looking at the titles it's possible I read the second and was underwhelmed enough to drop it, but I'm not sure.
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Sep 13, 2020 22:21
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overseer07 posted:Anyone else read the Guardians of the Flame series by Joel Rosenberg? Apparently there's like ten books in the series, but young me was only aware of the first five. That cover looks familiar but if I read it then I have no recollection of it.
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Sep 14, 2020 06:26
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I assume there are probably books out there with a similar idea, but I always thought that magic as a replacement for infrastructure made sense. Like instead of the power company you paid the magic guild to keep your light spells going, keep the water flowing, and so on. Like a utility. This would also go a long way to explain why everyone and their uncle doesn't use magic - it's controlled and licensed and if you go against the guild they will gently caress you up either literally or legally, depending on how the society is structured.
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Sep 15, 2020 07:19
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ClamdestineBoyster posted:Most people are so incredibly loving stupid that the few people that can pass comprehension benchmarks for the simplest poo poo are touted as unquestionable pillars of knowledge than no simple person could challenge over any concept that is over their head. What people don’t realize is that they are actually a very solid bearing for science and engineering. Does that poo poo hurt? Garbage. Does that poo poo impede your functioning? poo poo. Does that poo poo make this task harder? Bollocks. Does that taste gross? Does that make you sick? Does that poo poo present a risk to people? Double donkey dick horseshit. The problem is people think they can’t learn that poo poo independent of an institution, or they’re told people who don’t test high on intelligence tests can’t learn that poo poo. You can literally just buy college textbooks and get a working knowledge of most poo poo in this world, even if you aren’t that smart. Most people don’t realize that good engineering, good science, doesn’t inflict pain on people, doesn’t make risk for people, doesn’t make confusing and counterintuitive systems, doesn’t involve self sacrifice. Most people who think they are smart are actually just good at following complicated instructions, they can hold a lot of poo poo in memory at once. They are usually horrible at making decisions, answering questions clearly, and truly understanding the mechanisms they are using and the results they yield. Not very many “intelligent” people actually produce any new information, it’s actually like there is a block that keeps them from doing that, when it’s an easy thing for people with lower iqs to do (although the new ideas they produce are touted as worthless without credentials). Like when magic and fantasy didn’t have an instruction set, all the brainiacs were the fearful and nervous ones while everyone else moved poo poo forward with real practical science. Useful poo poo that doesn’t gently caress poo poo up p much. I'm not sure what kind of point you were trying to make but I will say you made it with gusto.
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Sep 16, 2020 07:53
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poisonpill posted:Actually good fantasy: It's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, and Fritz Leiber was an awesome writer. I'd recommend those. Amber is Roger Zelazny, and he was also an awesome writer. Even his weaker stuff was decent, and his good stuff was very, very good. Michael Moorcock I've always found uneven, and I haven't read that much Elric stuff.
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Sep 19, 2020 08:49
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The Breakfast Sampler posted:I'd second Lord of Light, probably my favorite, plus the Amber books. I also liked Jack of Shadows a lot. I'm also fond of Jack of Shadows - it's one of his books I rarely see mentioned. I've read pretty much everything Zelazny wrote, at least in SciFi/Fantasy. I'd have to pull up a list to sort out my favorites from ones I am more meh about and haven't read multiple times.
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Sep 20, 2020 00:12
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VideoTapir posted:Everything has to be a goddamned trilogy to get published tho. LOTR was a trilogy and people just love that word. Trilogy. Look how many clubs, resorts and poo poo are named 'Trilogy.' You're more forgiving than I am. I seriously question length at 350 pages, if not sooner. It was actually thanks to reading Zelazny that I discovered Ambrose Bierce, who was one of the authors he cited as influences. Bierce was awesome at being able to convey a lot in a story without resorting to a massive wordcount to do it. "Ambrose Bierce in [i posted:The Devil's Dictionary[/i]"]NOVEL, n. A short story padded. A species of composition bearing the same relation to literature that the panorama bears to art. As it is too long to be read at a sitting the impressions made by its successive parts are successively effaced, as in the panorama. Unity, totality of effect, is impossible; for besides the few pages last read all that is carried in mind is the mere plot of what has gone before. To the romance the novel is what photography is to painting. Its distinguishing principle, probability, corresponds to the literal actuality of the photograph and puts it distinctly into the category of reporting; whereas the free wing of the romancer enables him to mount to such altitudes of imagination as he may be fitted to attain; and the first three essentials of the literary art are imagination, imagination and imagination. The art of writing novels, such as it was, is long dead everywhere except in Russia, where it is new. Peace to its ashes — some of which have a large sale.
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Sep 21, 2020 07:18
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Flared Basic Bitch posted:I once bought a used D&D book with an “official” pronunciation guide off of eBay to win a bet about how duergar was pronounced (we were both wrong). Is it pronounced "Throat-wobbler Mangrove?"
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Sep 21, 2020 20:12
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I always read it how it appears to be intended from a quick search - DEW-er-gahr.
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Sep 21, 2020 20:32
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muscles like this! posted:https://boingboing.net/2020/10/19/margaret-weis-and-tracy-hickman-sue-wizards-of-the-coast-after-it-abandons-new-dragonlance-trilogy.html I have no feelings about Dragonlance, as I avoided it entirely, but I have to say I appreciate this sentence from a technical English perspective: quote:Weis and Hickman created Dragonlance, set within the broad ambit of WoTC's Dungeons & Dragons role-playing franchise, in the 1980s. "Ambit" is not a word you see often.
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Oct 19, 2020 21:47
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syntaxfunction posted:I was introduced to RPGs via Rifts. Yeah, that's right. And worse, introduced by people who insisted on *winning* every time. How do you even win an RPG like that? So they vaguely show us how to play this horrible game. And neglect to mention so many rules so that they can go "well actually I can do this dumb this just trust me I know the rules". People actually played Rifts? I read a bunch of sourcebooks for it, but the idea of actually playing it just seems crazy to me. Shadowrun and Champions gave you a pretty broad pallette to work with - Rifts was just buckets of paint.
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Mar 9, 2022 05:00
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I read an unfortunate amount of Piers Anthony in my youth. I blame my subscription to the Science Fiction Book Club.
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Mar 10, 2022 00:45
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ExecuDork posted:David Drake I read a lot of Hammer's Slammers stuff, and his sci-fi based on historical naval stuff, but don't think I ever read any of his fantasy. Or I did and just forgot it.
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Mar 10, 2022 03:28
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This is semi-on-topic, but I liked the Kane stories by Karl Edward Wagner. For those unfamiliar, Kane is a Conan-like character based on the biblical character Cain in a gritty fantasy setting. I had a paperback copy of one novel, I think maybe it was Bloodstone, and it wasn't bad because of the story, it was bad because the editing was absolute poo poo. About halfway through the book a major character's name changes for no reason, and as I recall a paragraph or so is clearly missing. It's like a record scratch and suddenly "Jane" is now "Mary" and it takes a minute to figure out the character hasn't changed, the name is just arbitrarily different.
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Mar 11, 2022 20:29
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Dr. Jerrold Coe posted:Yeah the Berserker stories were great, there's an old one called Berserker's Planet which mixes fantasy and sci-fi. A crashed Berserker AI has created a fighting tournament on a regressed colony world, all the best fighters kill each other off and then the winner gets a "prize" (death) from the Berserker god. Some great sword and sorcery barbarian stuff mixed with the killer robot, and then some big game hunters from off-world crash the party. There's a couple fixup Berserker novels from the 90s that are pretty bad though, totally padded up page counts. Yeah, I remember at least one late Berserker book that seemed to have a kind of anti-abortion/right to life theme to it, which was weird. There was another that was basically Moby Dick but in space with a Berserker which was okay, but like you said, it was longer than it needed to be. The earlier stuff was good, and the shared anthology Berserker Base was great, to my mind eclipsing the original author.
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Mar 19, 2022 22:20
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Atopian posted:Dude had some rough edges of his time, but for his time he was impressively not hosed up. Zelazny was just a great writer - even his lower-tier books were eminently readable. I've read just about everything he ever wrote, and I've read almost all of it multiple times.
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Mar 30, 2022 08:43
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Groke posted:One of a handful of authors who, when I read them, make me feel simultaneously very smart and also very dumb. (Others in that category include Borges and Eco. None really belong in this thread.) The Dosadi Experiment by Frank Herbert kinda made me feel that way. Like it seemed like it was making some kind of really deep and philosophical statement, but I could never figure out what the hell it actually was.
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Mar 30, 2022 21:57
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RaspberrySea posted:Look, I didn't even get into the fact that all the Neanderthals are enlightened bisexual atheists and only meet up with their opposite gender partners once a month for sex romps, or that all the women have synchronizated menstrual cycles and men stay completely out of the cities during that time, or that they really, really love practicing eugenics. 
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Apr 5, 2022 00:16
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:It seriously does. In one of his collections (I want to say Frost and Fire but I'm not 100% certain) he includes an essay about his writing process for Eye of Cat with bits like "So I got the idea that these characters' sections should be freeform poetry; I've always considered poetry to be the closest thing you could find to exercise and stretch your writing ability, the way calisthenics does for your body" and why he chose the myth structures he did and that kind of thing. It's one of my very favorite books. He would do neat experimental stuff, like as I recall Damnation Alley was broken up with descriptive passages of the post-apocalyptic landscape that read almost as prose poetry. I've read pretty much all of Zelazny's stuff, too (but not the poetry), and one of my personal favorites has always been Jack of Shadows. It just seemed so narratively fresh and had such a weird world to work within it always felt fun. The man was just a great writer - I find it odd he isn't a bigger name than he is.
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Apr 7, 2022 04:59
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I loved Lloyd Alexander when I was a kid, and in looking for something similar I read the Narnia books, but after the first couple it became a hate-read as Lewis really leaned into blundering around Christian allegories and got more and more boring and incoherent. I have vague memories of Voyage of the Dawn Treader mostly because his obsession with the ocean being sweet just struck me so deeply weird.
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Apr 7, 2022 21:46
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I was really young when I read the Chronicles of Narnia and only have vague memories of it, and for that I am glad.
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Apr 7, 2022 22:08
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Mooey Cow posted:Although it isn't bad but if it had published today, Dracula would surely have been classified as urban fantasy. There is a nice part about halfway through the book when Lucy has been attacked by Dracula for the last time, and as she feels her life draining away she scribbles down on a note what happened that night. Interesting to contrast that with Frankenstein, written like 80 years earlier but eminently readable.
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Apr 7, 2022 22:20
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Shageletic posted:Lol I remember the stinging taste of betrayal reading the Last Battle when I was 14. Like I remember yelling at my friends about the books were actual Christian bullshit. Haha good times I double-checked, and apparently the C.S. in Lewis's name stood for "Clive Staples" which somehow seems fitting. "STFU Clive!" I was raised with a complete absence of religion, so when I read the Chronicles of Narnia I really didn't know much about Christianity and the apologia didn't make much sense to me but still managed to be tedious and annoying.
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Apr 8, 2022 21:32
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