Intelligent Fantasy

[molten_dragon]

I can't believe this thread has gone on so long without anyone mentioning Jim Butcher. Both of his series (The Dresden Files and Codex Alera) are spectacular, though they feel quite different from each other when you read them. He's truly one of the greatest fantasy authors writing today.

 

[Renae]

Two book series trump all other fantasy for me...

"The Belgariad" and "The Mallorean" in terms of fantasy... I just love em.

 

[Goshin]

Two book series trump all other fantasy for me...

"The Belgariad" and "The Mallorean" in terms of fantasy... I just love em.

They are good...oddly enough, none of Eddings other books (outside of the Belgariad setting) that I've read were at all appealing to me.

 

[Tucker Case]

Two book series trump all other fantasy for me...

"The Belgariad" and "The Mallorean" in terms of fantasy... I just love em.

Did you read the Polgara and Belgarath books? I liked those as well.

 

[Tucker Case]

They are good...oddly enough, none of Eddings other books (outside of the Belgariad setting) that I've read were at all appealing to me.

I read the Dreamers Elder gods thing and thought it was meh, but The Redemption of Althalus was pretty good.

 

[Renae]

Did you read the Polgara and Belgarath books? I liked those as well.

I've not. My dad has them, I have a copy somewhere, I just... haven't gotten around to them yet.

Working on my own novel right now, reading screws me up.

 

[Tucker Case]

I've not. My dad has them, I have a copy somewhere, I just... haven't gotten around to them yet.

Working on my own novel right now, reading screws me up.

Good luck on the novel, dude.

I recommend the polgara and Belgarath books. Very good backstory.

 

[liblady]

I've not. My dad has them, I have a copy somewhere, I just... haven't gotten around to them yet.

Working on my own novel right now, reading screws me up.

really? awesome.

 

[jallman]

This thread inspired me to pick up a fantasy novel and read it just for fun. I went back and started R.A. Salvatore's Dark Elf Trilogy again.

While not what I would consider "intelligent fantasy", his works are some of the most imaginative and detailed stories I ever read. I am about 25 pages from ending the third book now. I've probably read them a dozen times or more.

 

[Renae]

really? awesome.

Yeah, since I haven't gotten anywhere pushing my screenplay, I got this crazy novel idea that's eating me up, so I've been working on it pretty hard. I wrote one in Highschool, it was about 300 pages in.. and being young, dumb and well.. young, I had one copy of it, on our old PC, and the hard drive failed.

It was a sword and sorcery novel about the land of Arcotia.. one day I'll try to rewrite it.

This one a planned first part of a Trilogy. The whole plot is a scifi fantasy novel about a detective brought into a virtual city to help stop crime and gets pulled into a much deeper battle. The tag line for it I think is gonna be "He who controls Avalon, controls the internet, and thus the world".

I'll let you guys know when it's done, gonna be a while. Writing is like that.

 

[Scarecrow Akhbar]

Yeah, since I haven't gotten anywhere pushing my screenplay, I got this crazy novel idea that's eating me up, so I've been working on it pretty hard. I wrote one in Highschool, it was about 300 pages in.. and being young, dumb and well.. young, I had one copy of it, on our old PC, and the hard drive failed.

It was a sword and sorcery novel about the land of Arcotia.. one day I'll try to rewrite it.

This one a planned first part of a Trilogy. The whole plot is a scifi fantasy novel about a detective brought into a virtual city to help stop crime and gets pulled into a much deeper battle. The tag line for it I think is gonna be "He who controls Avalon, controls the internet, and thus the world".

I'll let you guys know when it's done, gonna be a while. Writing is like that.

"Halting State" by Charles Stross starts out with the cops being called in to investigate the robbery of a virtual game realm's central bank by what appeared to be trolls.

But there's no fantasy in that novel, it's straight SF.

 

[Scarecrow Akhbar]

This is from a book about saving christmas, more or less...




TRICKERY WITH WORDS IS WHERE HUMANS LIVE.

'All right,' said Susan. 'I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable.

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

'Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little...

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

'So we can believe the big ones?

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

'They're not the same at all!

THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET-- AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME... SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

'Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point...

MY POINT EXACTLY

That's from Hogfather?

 

[Scarecrow Akhbar]

Eddings is fun and light in my opinion.

Maybe I'm a bit of a cynic but I've found my interests drifting more towards heavier writers with darker worlds such as Glen Cook and S. Erikson.

Then you'll just love George R.R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice. Dark, brutal, unpredicatable.

And it's not finished, either.

 

[Renae]

"Halting State" by Charles Stross starts out with the cops being called in to investigate the robbery of a virtual game realm's central bank by what appeared to be trolls.

But there's no fantasy in that novel, it's straight SF.

I'll check it out.

My world isn't a game, it's a Virtual city where you are plugged in ala the Matrix, and held in a suspended fluid while "in the city" It's more then a "VR situation". I'm working the kinks in the logic as I go.

 

[Renae]

Then you'll just love George R.R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice. Dark, brutal, unpredicatable.

And it's not finished, either.

I liked it till book three, then it jsut got... like a bad soap opera, set in a fantasy world with no censors.

 

[the makeout hobo]

That's from Hogfather?

yeah... towards the end after the big showdown. You seem surprised.

 

[the makeout hobo]

A premise for a story or a rpg campaign came to me today in the shower (where all good ideas come from)...

So you have the Long War (think World Wars or the 30-year war). The story follows an airship and its crew. The side the airship was on lost, but wasn't conquered, and now this airship, which is on the other side of the continent or world, is trying to make its way home through what was enemy territory. They're the last of the fleet to head home, the lost lamb so to speak... I'm not quite sure what to do with it, but I really like the premise. I'd also love a good name for the airship if anyone can think of one, which is in my mind a sort of "heavy scout", though that's not final...

any advice where to take it?

 

[Caedon]

any advice where to take it?

You should include talking monkeys.

And for the sake of originality, you could set up an interior conflict for the primary character where he finds out that the bad guy is actually his dad and turns out to be a good guy after the son whines at him for a while.

Yeah, that would be cool.

 

[the makeout hobo]

You should include talking monkeys.

And for the sake of originality, you could set up an interior conflict for the primary character where he finds out that the bad guy is actually his dad and turns out to be a good guy after the son whines at him for a while.

Yeah, that would be cool.

I like it... I could call it... WAR IN SPACE!!!

 

[Scarecrow Akhbar]

yeah... towards the end after the big showdown. You seem surprised.

No, I just don't remember it, is all, and I'd have to dig it out of storage to read it again, which is a chore.

 

[Mach]

any advice where to take it?

Whatever you decide, just be sure to include a TPK finale

 

[Redress]

I thought of this suggestion while packing to move a couple days ago(moved now and back posting)...Jack Vance's Lyonesse series. Vance is one of the best at making the English language do what he wants of it, with vivid descriptions, exciting action, and fascinating dialog and plots. The bad part is that you either get him, or he comes off as totally artificial(he is, but it is intentional).

 

[Panache]

I read the Dreamers Elder gods thing and thought it was meh, but The Redemption of Althalus was pretty good.

yeah, that was a good one.

 

[Zyphlin]

That being said, I have found a few decent authors. One that I've read quite a bit of in the past year is Steven Erikson. His Malazan Book of the Fallen series is excellent, although particularly dense. The only negative that I've seen is that I don't think he proofs his writing much - some of his sentences have just horrible structure and are overly obtuse.

My best friends been telling me I need to read the Malazan books. He's been raving about them. Says the first is kind of slow but they really pick up after that.

I can't believe there are four pages of a thread on intelligent fantasy and Neil Gaiman hasn't been brought up yet. :doh

American Gods, Neverwhere, and the Sandman series are some of my particular favorites. For those of you who also like Terry Pratchett, Good Omens is a good place to start, as Terry collaborated on it.

American Gods was a great book as was Good Omens which was wonderfuly funny and inane while having a good story. Gotta love the Sandman series of graphic comics as well. Good call.

This thread inspired me to pick up a fantasy novel and read it just for fun. I went back and started R.A. Salvatore's Dark Elf Trilogy again.

While not what I would consider "intelligent fantasy", his works are some of the most imaginative and detailed stories I ever read. I am about 25 pages from ending the third book now. I've probably read them a dozen times or more.

Definitely not "intelligent fantasy", I think of it more as I do action movies. Its mindless fun, but a good read...doubly so for a D&D geek The entire Drizzt series of books are rather entertaining, save for the fact that as they go on Drizzt becomes less and less interesting. The side characters make up for it as well. Check out the Cleric Quintet as well by Salvatore.

Then you'll just love George R.R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice. Dark, brutal, unpredicatable.

And it's not finished, either.

It saddens me greatly it took 63 posts for this book series to be mentioned.

Far and away the best, and my favorite, book series I've ever read. A wonderfully spun together story with a large cast of extremely interesting characters and a brutal, realistic feeling world and style that makes things like R.A. Salvatore or Terry Goodkind feel like the Muppets.

There's only one bad thing about this series I can think of off the top of my head. The ****ing aurthor has "Stephen King Dark Tower Syndrome" where books he's taking forever to get the next book out. If its not out by April I seriously think that someone needs to do the same thing that solved Stephen Kings problem with this horrible illness.........run him down with a van.

Can't wait for the HBO series to air. Sean Bean as Eddard FTW

 

[Zyphlin]

HAHA, love the diagram Catz.

I will never look at google the same. We need to hurry and level up Debate Politics so that we get more hit points to win the dungeon.