/hob/ - Hobbies

>>68271
things that make sense. not too much outstanding elements

>>68272
to me*

This is one of the most beatiful books i ever read. This is what a fantasy book should be.

I've read thousands of books from cultures fortunate enough to have achieved literacy across the chasms of time. What I'm about to tell you is a brutally short summation of my understanding of fantasy, which is deeply rooted in a vast comprehension of literature. I'm not bragging; I'm just urging you to pay attention.

What makes a good fantasy? It's simple.

The fact that the author doesn't know it's a fantasy. And that's why, OP, fantasy as a genre is abject garbage. A fantasy written with intention is like watching the shadow of actors performing a shadow of a play. There's no real fear, no real guile, no real wonder. The staunch belief of the writer in the stunning things they're narrating is the main factor determining the quality of a story. Everything else is detail. This might not be obvious to neophytes, but the further you delve into the human soul using literature as a medium, the more apparent this truth becomes. A fantasy is only good when the writer is deeply immersed in the world they're weaving; in that narration, their life hangs in the balance. Relate something incorrect about a god, or write words that can anger demons, and your life is forfeit. This pressure breathes real life into the pages of a story.

Modern fantasy writers are a joke. Their stories are copies of copies of copies—bland, insipid, safe dreams of fat, weak men with nothing to lose but a paycheck. I don't understand how anyone can read that stuff and enjoy it; but then again, most people have not even scratched the surface of literature, while I am as deep in it as is humanly possible.

What are good fantasy books? Look towards mythology, religion, and the geographers and historians from the time when Man was young. That's where the sense of wonder is at its strongest, most concentrated form: during the childhood of humanity.

I may sound harsh but you won't hear this from anyone else, not many people have gazed at literature for as long as I have. Make of that what you will.

>>68277
what do you think of J.R.R Tolkien and G.R.R Martin?tolkien is better than Martin, right?.
can you recommend us good fantasy book or medieval dark fantasy?
How do I write a good book about fantasy? (I'm a brainlet NEET whi didn't read enough/know nothing about life so far)

>>68278
Mr. Tolkien was a sweet, pious man and a scholar. His fantasies are not without charm. He knew that his own literature was merely a weak transfusion of much darker, more powerful, wonderful forces. To recommend something, I point to what Mr. Tolkien himself preferred to read above all else: Beowulf, Mabinogion, Prose Edda and Nordic mythology, and the Bible.

G.R.R. Martin is chaff, not worth one's time, unless that is all one is able to achieve as a reader.

>>68278
>How do I write a good book about fantasy?
Well, I suppose I might as well respond to that part as well. Listen, a good story is indistinguishable from the reality in which the writer finds himself. Look for the things you cannot escape from; that is the beginning of your tale.

>>68280
>Look for the things you cannot escape from;
and where can I find these things I cannot run away from?

>What makes a good fantasy or science fiction novel for you.
Good plot, well written primary characters, consistent internal logic, decent pacing and development of both the plot and primary characters.

Prose is not a substitute for good story telling and is the primary reason I will never take anything from shitchan's /lit/ seriously. They exclusively care about prose over the substance of the story to sometimes extreme degrees. It disgust me.
In fact, overwrought prose gets in the way of story telling, kills the pacing, and destroys immersion.

A great fantasy book draws you into the world, it's immersion gets ahold of your imagination until you are imagining the goings on in that world weeks after you put the book down. Overwrought prose kills that and is just a way of authors with ego issues to masturbate over how expanded their vocabulary is as they sit with their draft and abuse their thesaurus to make up for their personal weakness of character. It's a sign of midwittery and I hate it.

>>68277
What a crock of shit.

Op Here. Dont forget to discuss your favorite book or the ones you are reading actually

>>68277

>Modern fantasy writers are a joke

Most modern fantasy books, with some honorable exceptions, looks like a shitty fanfic. If you want to see what is the look of a modern fantasy book go and see veilguard. I know is a game, but you get the idea.

>>68285
>Most modern fantasy books, with some honorable exceptions, looks like a shitty fanfic.
Maybe if you look at webnovels or stuff put out by and for middle class white succubi.

Most male fantasy authors self publish or hybrid publish, so you have to put a little more effort to find their stuff, but it's well worth it.

I already post the stuff I read and listen to (audiobooks and full cast audioplays) in the two other book related threads so it feels redundant to post here too.

>>68278
>>68279

>G.R.R. Martin

Don't waste your time reading song of ice and fire. I have the idea that Martin writes things like violence and incest just for shock value. Besides, every beautiful thing that hack touches is corrupted. The ideal of errant knigth is personified by an amoral being who fucks his own sister, throws a kid from a tower, and leaves a female that is not related to him. The only good thing about Jaime is that he kills the other king who wanted to destoy kings landing. 

If you want a writer with similar themes but much better written, read Andrzej Sapkowski and his Witcher saga. Much of the themes are there, but executed in a more magistral way.

When I read The Caves of Steel and at the end it says that humans will have to stop working so that robots can take their place, I started to believe that there was something wrong with Asimov. When I read one of his stories where old people are recycled I confirmed it. When I learned the concept of technocracy I knew what the problem was.

Asimov does not question technological progress, he celebrates it without questioning who it will take with it. He favors a government of experts to control every little aspect of human life. Hari seldon is a technocrat who plays with the future of humanity like a horse breeder, instead of letting it evolve spontaneously. No one asked him to save humanity

That is why I always preferred Philip K. Dick. He was the first to understand that this kind of thinking was dangerous, as well as predicting that a world government of the people in the Rockefeller Building in New York, where the governments of the world meet to take away our freedoms, in the name of science is a big mistake.

>>68291
I've read blade runner/do robots dream of electric sheeps. it's good and the noir ambiance it gets makes it unique I guess

>>68290
> Andrzej Sapkowski and his Witcher saga
Forget that plagiarist hack. Read the real original in the form of the Elric Saga by Michael Moorcock.

>>68301
I have the whole books in one book. it's a pretty book

R.E.H.'s melancholy was ahead of its time. The melancholy of believing he was born in the wrong era to be able to live adventures like the ones he dreamed of as a child is much more common than many believe. He always regrets not having been born in a wilder time, possibly since, at the age of 12, a supposed psychic told him that his previous reincarnation had taken place in Atlantis. At the end of the dark horse comics about Conan, sometimes there were a few vignettes telling anecdotes of his life. What was described there was quite a character.

Personally I prefer Kull. I love contemplative and melancholic characters, but he wasn't a character he could put on new adventures in every story. Besides, Conan has a strength that other characters don't have. He thought of it when he was already king. And he never seemed to come up with a story before that. Instead, with conan, he always said that writing a story of his was as if conan himself was telling it to him. But even conan was leaving him almost at the end of his life. The one who never stopped was Brak mak morn. He always came up with stories for himself.

>>68302
Nice.
I am mildly envious, but in a good way.

>>68308
may you have beautiful books you too,kind wizzie👍

>>68291
Ray Bradbury was way more human than Asimov.