I thought this video was going to be about books in the 'Sci-Fi Fantasy' subgenre, you lied to me Daniel

Same

I don't

Spooky boi

Bro same

Dont worry about it

Cthulhu: “ ‘Sup”

Aliens: "Hello" Daniel: "Ride to ruin and the world's ending"

those are also my favorite combination in a SciFi novle

@@merrittanimation7721 *Elder Cthullu of House Annihilation liked your comment from 6 billion light years away*

Yeah, made my graduate work on neural networks. After that wanted to write a short story about guys who made "super-intellegence" for government, and their software gives "wrong" (i.e. not politically aligned) answers, so they just hardcode them instead. The more you know about AI, the more you understand that it is as far from consciousness or superintellegence as walking to the moon on your two feet.

I agree with you (I've also worked extensively with NNs), but that's almost the entire point of the genre no? The people making the AI couldn't or wouldn't consider the potential ramifications and it gets out of hand. I don't think we'll see it in our lifetime but neither did anyone else for the invention and commodification of the computer.

Would it be more interesting if the AI becomes a danger not because it's sentient, but because it has biases coded in by humans, or its rules cause unexpected interpretations of what it's supposed to do?

@@alexkozliayev9902 Do you consider the fact that Elon Musk fears AI a good indication that he's a lousy engineer and mostly just an annoying tech-bro? And do you agree with me that the way I ask my question sounds in no way biased??

@@KarlSnarks Sure. And I know some good fiction has come from that premise. I’m just exhausted with the debate about the personhood of computers in a world in which computers cause at least as many problems as they solve.

Same. I don't mind westerns, but if you give the cowboys laser guns and replace the horses with spaceships then I'm all in.

Agree. Usually, I find normal western more boring than anything else. But add blasters and tech and I`m all in on it.

Cowboy Bebop represent.

@@TheOnceandFutureJake don't you dare forget Firefly

@@TheOnceandFutureJake and the others in the trinity: Outlaw Star and Trigun

I read Kindred recently and I'm definitely planning to read more of Octavia Butler's books.

@@elessarbre I’ve heard wonderful things about Kindred!

The title of the book refers to a biblical parable Matthew 13 That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. 2 Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore. 3 Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. 4 As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 6 But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. 8 Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop-a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. 9 Whoever has ears, let them hear.” Lauren Olamina the main character develops a religion called Earthseed. That is the seed of the parable. She tries to sow her seed several times, by starting communities, but as in the parable the communities fail for various reasons.

Well, you have to go with the classics! Jules Verne, H. Rider Haggard, and that era.

Revelation Space

Jack McDevitt's books seem right up your alley, especially series with Priscilla Hutchins....

@@jasnacar9186 ooooh thank youuuuuuuu!! I'll check them out!

@@rvantong scifi?

Shiny.

Irony at its finest

Why do people like Firefly so much? Not bashing I just don't remember it being very memorable

@@DragonwolfoftheSands personally I'm a sucker for found family, and the i'll protect my crew no matter what vibe of the show. I really liked the characters and setting but part of why people like it (in my opinion) is probably because it only got one season and it will forever be remembered for what it could have been. Lots of cool things were set up but they never had a chance to explore them.

For me, it's Cowboy Bebop. For those who like a little jazz with their space western.

Read Rivers of London.

@@xx99Username99xx Cowboy Bebop is a good example of what I mean. Great show but I'm not a fan of the setting or character archetypes

Dude, space opera should be in top s just because of the possibilities of it being all time great sub genre.

Space Opera being less than S++++++ is just wrong🤣

And fantasy epic is in S. They're basically the same thing 🤣

I do legitimately think he would love the Forerunner and Kilo five trilogies.

@@sernoddicusthegallant6986 I think so too. Those books are Halos gems imo.

I find it ironic that the book he uses for military sci-fi, Harvest, is a first contact novel, which he goes on to say he loves. 🤣

Honestly Starship Troopers isn't even that good of a Military Scifi. Things like Craig Alanson's Expeditionary Force is way better or The Spiral War by Joel Shepard where the main ship goes from alien race to alien race while on the run and fighting a 'big bad' invading race. There are a lot of great Military Scifi, depending of you want to see grunts going through wars with aliens or the Lone Starship fighting others which is always great and a adventure. The Lost Fleet is a great one though military heavy. Then there are ones that are barely military while mostly story about exploring space and contact with new aliens.

😂

Most attempts at sci fi utopia i've read are actually accidental sci fi dystopias in my opinion. Culture novels and Greg Egan come to mind

Yep; Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams proved that beyond doubt

@@robertwinslade3104 also JK Rowling- that legend.

Any particular favourite books to win me over?

@@lukegregg5944 Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams for Sci-fi. Discworld by Terry Pratchett for Fantasy (check out the numerous where-to-start guides for Discworld here on KZfaq for recommendations of the best entry level Discworld books)

It just opens up all the possibilities, it's great

I second this

He's already enthusiastic about 'AI sci fi'

Yes

Absolute must!

or commonwealth, or revelation space or idk, he HAS to

Thats what i thought too

Too much trash out there.

Did you know that William Gibson practically started both those genres (though with steampunk he had some help)? I only found that out recently.

@@thegodofalldragons Well, sounds like a perfect place to start re-exploring the genre! thanks!

@@duser Yeah, I believe it's called The Difference Engine.

Maybe from a different angle it can find a resurgence. Like, a chance to not make the same mistakes as our age of steam and beyond.

I am SO GLAD I'm not the only one who still remembers Steampunk fondly. ^-^ I actually remember Cyberpunk kind of being a bigger thing first though, then Steampunk kind of took over for a little while, and now I guess Cyberpunk is back. Loll

One person's utopia may be another person's dystopia (and vice versa), it all comes down to what a "perfect world" looks like to you and what sacrifices you would deem as acceptable in order to get there. I think dystopias are easier to write because you can always exaggerate the negatives of a society to portray it as bad, even if you would agree with the general principle (see the many super-capitalist dystopian settings out there, enjoyed by capitalists and anti-capitalists alike). Try to create a utopia and there will always be people who disagree that it actually IS one. For example, it may have required a limitation of freedoms some would consider unacceptable, or it exists as the result of a eugenics programme readers may find unethical.

Star Trek DS9 would seem to support that...

Yes for the Culture and Iain M Banks in general

Cool ships like Mistake Not My Current State of Joshing Gentle Peevishness for the Towering Seas of Ire That Are Themselves the Mere Milquetoast Shallows Fringing My Vast Oceans of Wrath.

It's weird that he loves AI and the absurd and has had positive reactions to utopian Sci Fi, but doesn't mention the Culture.

I love that he didn’t want the mainstream to associate him with sci-fi so he wrote all of his mainstream novels under the name Iain Banks and for all of his sci-fi novels he chose the ingenious pseudonym of Iain *M* Banks. Like way to go, you sure fooled them buddy.

@@xx99Username99xx Ravished By The Sheer Implausibility Of That Last Statement

Got a recommendation

yes we need to see this

I was thinking the same thing but sword and sorcery for s too

@@austenmoore7326 Sword & Sorcery is my #1 :)

Damn straight. S&S is Fantasy Action/Adventure.

don't worry bro i still like s&s. the witcher is s&s. the genre ain't going anywhere.

Write your S&S, hopefully you are writing an actual Sword and Sorcery, and not the modern BS Epic/High Fantasy disguised as Sword and Sorcery.

I love Sword & Sorcery so keep on writing. Also I think even Daniel would say if you do it well, bring something new to it, etc. then your work can be great and popular. A good writer can take the schlockiest most overdone, tropey sub genre and make it great again.

keep writing it. there'll be a market. the goblin doesnt like it, doesnt mean everybody doesnt.

Are you aware of the modern small press magazines and anthologies like Cirsova and DMR press that currently publish it? If not head over to their respective websites and hook into the pulp revolution.

Nylund's early stuff was really solid. But what really surprised me was Greg Bear's Forerunner Trilogy. That first installment, Cryptum, was so good and no weapons are even fired... in a FPS media franchise. Also, I gotta be the ACTUALLY guy and mention the SPARTANs were created to put down human colony rebellions long before the Covenant showed up. Always liked that the greatest hope for mankind was birthed in such grim context.

I was a bit burnt by the last game, but the books have often always been GOOD TO GREAT reads. Definitely will check out Greg Bear's run!

Personally I'm a massive fan of the kilo-five trilogy. I love how we see some of the consequences to the families of the Spartan IIs. The ONI team going about their missions was really fun too. And come on, Black Box is just brilliant.

Yeah, he suffers from power escalation. But one could see that as character development, or a longer story arc.

I wonder if he's got more short stories that are ready to go, it's not like there's been any break in the story for Dresden to do the old Dresden stuff. He's going to need a minute to emotionally recover from the events of the last book.

Dollars trilogy for the win.

The first 2 books are great but I lost interest after that.

Have you seen Possessor? It's Semi-Cyberpunk.

@@carltanner7461 No, I haven't. I'll definitely check it out, though. Thanks for the suggestion.

Here's the thing though.... how exactly people do & don't define terrible writing varies greatly depending on who you're talking to and exactly what they're referring to when they personally say that. (Many people who talk about terrible writing, for example, aren't actually technically talking about the writing at all so much as they are talking about story development & such.) Similarly, what is or isn't "cringe" can also vary a lot from person to person. You should try to worry a little less about those things and more about just finding whatever you do or don't personally enjoy yourself. 🙂 BUT - that being said - I'd totally be interested in seeing that erotic fantasy recs video too. 🤣🤣🤭 So, here's to hoping it actually happens!💜 🥂LOLL ^--^

I also vote for the Erotic Fantasy video. Hope daniel makes it happen!

As it turns out so would mine be.

There's absolutely loads of room behind the scenes for dark stuff in a fanatically utopian society like Star Trek. The new series are just complete garbage at exploring any and all complex characters though and the whole thing feels like a fever dream of a technobabble episode.

Except for people who are actually, genuinely nice to others and who feel more estranged from all the other fictional depictions of people they can't relate to at all-and/or by the general world's insistence these days that if you're too nice (or even sometimes if you're just an average person who isn't necessarily super super nicer than anyone else but also isn't super extraordinarily riddled with issues or anything either) then you're "fake" somehow or "boring"/"uninteresting" or "have no personality" and shite...not just in fiction but in reality too. _OR_ for people who just prefer their fiction consumption to be more optimistic/hopeful, escapist ideals rather than a totally realistic reflection of the things they have to deal with in reality. ***speaking ONLY to the 'they stop being relatable or interesting' bit, not so much necessarily to the fact that it might be limiting as far as the nature or scope of stories that can be told with it goes* _(i guess i just don't personally see being limited as necessarily being a completely bad thing, either to audiences who just know what they prefer to consume & don't personally need that much variety anyway OR to audiences who consume multiple different types of fiction either way so can get their fill of variety by stepping outside of a particular genre if necessary rather than always needing variety within each & every style or genre type that they do consume)_ ((I believe [pretty-much-]ALL character and story types serve their own purposes/audiences. So, I personally think it's kind of wrong to undervalue any certain type versus other types for no real reason other than just because they're not to one's own personal preference, regardless of whether their actual audience/appeal is to a proper majority or only to some small minority of all people/audiences in the world at large; I think it's a slippery-slippery slope when people rank majority-appeal as inherently or absolutely greater value above anything else if weighed by any standard other than merely how much money it might make or the sheer numbers of people it might reach overall which I don't personally view as the be-all-end-all of value in general, and I think more small-scale &/or niche appeals are actually equally as valuable as anything else is simply in a different[ yet not actually any genuinely lesser] way. [ IF that makes sense ? ] But maybe that's just my own way of seeing it.))

I came here to find this comment. 🤣

Skyward is Brandon Sanderson, though not Cosmere

@@duskshard4854 iam sorry , but I haven't read a single Cosmere book yet iam currently reading warbreaker , I just know I bit about them.

I guess you could consider "Sixth of the Dusk" from the Arcanum Unbounded collection as "alien" invasion

Spoilers for Stormlight Archive... Couldn't you argue that SA is alien invasion after the reveal in Oathbringer? That humans were originally aliens who invaded Roshar and the Parshendi were the natives. It just takes place thousands of years after the initial invasion

@@robertwinslade3104 Spoilers for SA Yeah, you totally could, but I think alien invasion is more about the actual fighting/first contact and not many thousand years later.

He didn't have to do Halo dirty like that 😭

If someone is ok with replacing white characters with non-white ones like they did with the Invincible adaptation and countless others, then they should have no problem with turning non-white characters into white ones unless they like double standards. The racial controversy at the time was a case of extreme double standards.

This could make or break the channel for me ....

Firefly is so hard to talk about due to the circumstances surrounding it, Serenity coming out and trying to condense a story that was meant to be told over seasons of a show, and just how said surrounding factors made it very much lightning in a bottle.

It is. You're right.

Ian M Banks' 'the Culture' series is fantastic utopian sci-fi. Feels odd to discuss the genre without a callout to them.

Thomas More's Utopia isn't just the namesake, it's where the genre name comes from :)

The problem is that Utopia isn't a utopian story it is a Satire.

@@toothgnash Oh yes! I was thinking about them while writing the comment, unfortunately I had forgotten the name, so I didn't mention it. But yes, I really would like to read it!

@@robertblume2951 hmmm... I didn't know that, though it doesn't seem to be a total satire (like, some parts of it aren't satire, at least, from my own research). Even if that isn't true, it's still a utopian book, if a satirical utopian book rather than a normal utopian book!

^^^^^

100%. Daniel needs to read this series

What's culture about?

@@DragonwolfoftheSands it's a sci-fi anthology book series of 10 books by British author Iain M. Banks. Each of the 10 books is a stand alone story set in and around an intergalactic, post-scarcity, Anarcho-Communist utopian civilization called the Culture, which is composed mostly of various humanoid species, living alongside incredibly powerful artificial intelligences known as the Minds. It's a modern sci-fi classic; I highly recommend it. If you want to know more, the book tube channel Media Death Cult covers The Culture a lot

@@DragonwolfoftheSands the Culture is to modern sci-fi what that wheel of time thing is to fantasy. The culture books are just brilliant, and teeming with imagination. Also, Iain Banks KNOWS how to write a climax. You'll never be disappointed by one of his endings. I've never been as glued to the pages of a book as I was when reading the climax of Player Of Games.

Superior

@@thedragonflyers6184 Both are valid responses. In certain competitions in the US (my personal experience was marching band in HS), they explicitly state that "Superior" is their highest-level score. If you start with an A-F scale, but want a category for those that go above and beyond, there's no English letter before A to use. I wasn't aware of the Japanese influence for having an S tier, that doesn't mean it's not real, same goes for the "Superior" definition of S.

I assume it's equivalent to "super"/"superb" & or "star" or something in those veins. ..something like saying it's a thing that's a cut above even the highest grade, or something like that. Buuut who even knows! Lolll _I just googled it real quick about the S tier in Japan... Apparently it stands for "shuu" which means "excellence". So, basically, same difference._

@@Miss_Myth it actually comes from Japan, where their top grade is S for 秀, or "excellent". The idea of S as a grade above A was then popularised in the west through various video games and arcade machines, many of which were from Japan.

Yes! Would love to see Daniel review The Culture

Came here to say the same thing :)

I was NOT expecting to see this comment and I am glad to see it.

@@ShubhamGupta-ir2gn It was it is. Can't wait for them to finish the new adaptation.

I really need to watch that.

@@ThatSpecificIndividual the new version is great but it's only about half way through

I talk about it all the time

lol

A western is a story with cowboys. A westerner us someone from the west.

I feel like Stephen King actually falls into that category sometimes. Coraline also comes to mind. Some Guillermo Del Toro movies. I've always seen the Insidious movies that way too. Edit: I see it referred to as Dark Fantasy kinda interchangeably.

the dark souls series (and bloodborne) are the best examples that i can think of if you're into video games

Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, Especially the earlier story arcs. (Preludes And Nocturnes, The Doll’s House).

“24 Hours” (Sandman #6) is one of the best horror short stories I’ve ever read.

I just read it for the first time last month and I felt broken afterward but in the best way. That’s the good shit

I would actually love to see you try the first couple books in that series it doesn't turn truly erotica until like book 10. There's vampire slaying and necromancy and voodoo and zombies it's soso good highly recommend

Interestingly, fear and sexual arousal actually have similar effects on our body, which can cause the phenomenon called "misattribution of arousal". For example, let's say my heart beats faster and I experience a shortness of breath. Is that because of the beautiful woman next to me or the monsters chasing us? (Somewhat simplified, but it basically works like that)

That is not horror. Paranormal romance is the subgenre.

@@robertblume2951 dude, dont try to mansplain to me something you havent read. ive read 25 books in the series and it definitely has very horror elements. thats why the INITIAL comment i made says its EROTICA with HORROR.

@@gracelingaccountant horror elements don't make something change its subgenres. Elements of romance in Tarzan don't make it a romance story. A sex scene in a book doesn't make it erotica.

Would also like to see which Western films you DO like and why

For me, it's overly macho. It's also based on a problematic historical period of US history that's still mythologized today and recent enough to make me uncomfortable.

I'll say this, as a big fan of the Western myself from the time I was a kid, he kinda has a point. Most of the genre has not moved beyond its founding themes and characters. Even with movies like "Pale Rider" and "Bone Tomahawk," it still focuses on the same rugged individual who all the other characters sort of orbit around. It hasn't quite embraced the greater spectrum of people and situations that the modern versions of other genres have. It's a bit backwards looking. All that being said, I think it's a bit silly that he likes Yojimbo and not A Fistful of Dollars. They're quite literally the same damn movie. By the way, if anyone reads this and wants to explore some genuinely interesting Western books, read "Blood Meridian" and "Heart of the Country." Neither is an east read, and the latter can be frankly boring in parts; but they're both a radically different take on the Western. Edit: Okay, I hadn't watched the video yet. He gives western-fantasy a C rank, but powder fantasy a B rank. Dude... again, they're the same damn thing. It's just 18th/19th century adventure inspired sci fi/fantasy. I guess it's an aesthetic choice, we've been exposed to a whole lot more John Wayne in America than Rider Haggard.

@@revjoe250 But he also doesn't like sword and sorcery or pulps in general. So it would appear his gripe is actually with the individualism and not the aesthetic.

@@revjoe250 ? They're not the same thing at all unless you're just looking at the time period and presence of guns. Both also share those qualities with court fantasy and a lot of industrial revolution era vampire fantasy but you wouldn't consider them together right?