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sdenton4 20 hours ago [-]
Allow me to make a small recommendation for the "best related work": Ada Palmer's 'Inventing the Renaissance.'
It's a fantastic work of complex history, told with the tools of science fiction and fantasy writing. But it remains a high quality academic work: the tools are used to unravel the telling of a gay and complicated topic, but you still get the vastness.
If you like ACOUP, it should be right up your alley.
marcus_holmes 8 hours ago [-]
I was really put off by the Terra Ignota series. I struggled through it, but her writing really didn't gel with me. I've been resisting reading "Inventing the renaissance" because of that, though it does come highly recommended.
I found it very USian [0] - obsessed with religion (and the overt assumption that emperors are a good thing was unsettling). And I also found her position that all the best of human thought lay in the past (the greek classics and the renaissance specifically in this case) deeply at odds with my worldview.
[0] I have noticed that US writers tend to feature religion prominently in their writing (e.g. Brandon Sanderson, not that this stops me from enjoying his writing, which I do). I read a new writer and make a bet whether they're USian after a couple of chapters based on their attitude to religion, and I've been mostly right.
shagie 18 hours ago [-]
The one that caught me off guard was Old Man's War by John Scalzi as best series.
> The Hugo Award for Best Series is one of the Hugo Awards given each year for science fiction or fantasy stories published in or translated into English during the previous calendar year. The award is available for series of science fiction or fantasy stories consisting of at least 3 published works totaling at least 240,000 words, with at least one work released or translated into English during the previous calendar year. A losing finalist becomes eligible again with the publication of at least two new works totaling at least 240,000 words.
And now, checking on it... The Shattering Peace was released in September of 2025.
I guess I've got another item for my reading list (currently going through the classics of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser... I wonder if that will ever be eligible for a retro Hugo Award for series).
mpalmer 7 hours ago [-]
Color me surprised. The first book was the only one I got through. Scalzi's characterizations in that one are singular, in that all of his characters think and talk like exactly the same snark-spewing geeky dude. Even the very few women.
I should look into the sequel, I'd be happy for him if he stretched himself after the first one.
b473a 20 hours ago [-]
Clair Obscur is going to be game of the year every year for the next decade.
glimshe 19 hours ago [-]
Clair Obscur has great art (including music) but isn't a greater game underneath it. It's good but not exceptional. I can see the appeal for final fantasy fans, but I was underwhelmed.
Someone else mentions Blue Prince here. I think that's a much better game relatively speaking, even if not having Clair Obscur's exceptional art.
sdenton4 20 hours ago [-]
Which is too bad, because Blue Prince is the better game. :)
I'm playing through Clair Obscur now. It's above average for aaa stuff. But there are way too many cut scenes, and dodge/parry mechanics continue to be tedious. And the story is fine, but isn't really grabbing me. Sigh.
Blue Prince, on the other hand, is quite probably the best puzzle game I have ever played. My partner and I worked on it for months, and have a 50+ page Google doc of notes.
3eb7988a1663 19 hours ago [-]
I am "only" a dozen+ hours into Clair Obscur, and I am similarly not understanding the hype. Combat is too gimmicky and annoying. The story is tonally all over the place. It starts out very dark, and then the characters seemingly have no problems going on stupid side quests because they want to see some cute elves or something. Are you saving the world or not?
The joke side quests work in your standard RPG because they take themselves less seriously. Your character is wielding an eight foot sword, the mage companion is a talking cat, and your boots are haunted by a long-dead Egyptian prince. Sure, go nuts if you want to play the mini-game at the circus belly-dancing competition to win the golden hat.
Clair Obscur starts in such a bleak, breathing world that the characters not treating the situation deadly serious breaks my connection to the world, so I start to focus more on the mechanical annoyances.
fooker 20 hours ago [-]
> worked on it for months, and have a 50+ page Google doc of notes.
That sounds more like a part time job than a game. I'm curious if you play it for the mental challenge? I feel challenged enough at $dayjob that all I want from games is mindless relaxation.
glimshe 19 hours ago [-]
That's the beauty of Blue Prince. The core game doesn't require all of that. You can get to a satisfying ending with moderate puzzle solving. But after finishing the game, there are still hundreds of hours worth of optional puzzles left.
joshuamorton 16 hours ago [-]
Yeah blue prince is three games (I've played two of them and won't play the third).
First, it's a really compelling roguelite puzzler where you explore and understand the house and it's mechanics. The puzzles are mostly small and straightforward (but not easy!). You can probably win this without taking notes. I found this part compelling and delightful.
Then it's something else where you learn about the world. The puzzles are more complicated and need notebooks and notes to keep the loose threads tracked. This part for me became a slog by the end and I finished mostly to say that I had.
Then its a third thing for sickos.
sdenton4 19 hours ago [-]
To be sure, it was a couple few hours here and there, not at the scale of a job.
Blue Prince is an example of what fills are calling 'notebook games' -- instead of giving you lots of qol stuff, you just use a notebook to keep notes. The act of writing and arranging your notes is actually quite immersive. It's also fun!
Blue Prince has layers of puzzles and story... It's pretty reasonable to play to the credits, and not get into the depths of the post credits game; it's a very reasonable cutoff point for non-sickos.
bigstrat2003 19 hours ago [-]
I liked Clair Obscur a lot, but I doubt very much if I will ever replay it. The necessity of being able to dodge to survive encounters really killed the fun of the gameplay for me.
bobson_dugnutt5 20 hours ago [-]
[dead]
DarmokTanagra 2 hours ago [-]
[dead]
busymom0 20 hours ago [-]
Taking about scifi, if you guys haven't watched the tv show SILO yet, I'd highly recommend it. Everyone I've recommended it to so far has been thoroughly impressed.
NitpickLawyer 19 hours ago [-]
One of the best adaptations of a series to TV, up there with The Expanse and the like. I read the books after season 1, and still enjoy the show very much. They've taken some adaptation liberties, but they're fully supported by Hugh Howey and they make a lot of sense.
busymom0 13 hours ago [-]
The Expanse was my favorite tv show! However with the latest season finale of season 3 of SILO, it may have become my favorite now.
Any other tv show recommendations? We seem to have similar taste.
anon7000 4 hours ago [-]
Severance
fsloth 21 hours ago [-]
Sinners was very cool but I'm surprised to find it as Hugo winner.
glimshe 19 hours ago [-]
With the exception of that really cool scene in the middle, I found Sinners boring and forgettable.
nickcw 19 hours ago [-]
Disappointed to see I already read the Hugo winner for best novel - The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow.
It is a worthy winner in my opinion. Fantasy with a sci-fi element along with a story which takes some untangling. Five stars from me :-)
js2 17 hours ago [-]
Drive-by recommendation, not having read The Everlasting yet: The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez.
bbor 21 hours ago [-]
Sinners was a scifi movie...? About vampires in the past...?! Wild. Ditto for Claire Oscura: Expedition 33, which I thought was high fantasy / steampunk at most.
*EDIT:* It appears I'm just being silly, and the Hugos include fantasy. Ironically, the biggest fantasy series of our time by far has won 3 times in Novella form and once in TV form, but never the novels!
mapontosevenths 21 hours ago [-]
The difference between science fiction and fantasy was always only a tenuous distinction imposed by the few nerds who cared a little too much.
As we age out of being culturally relevant, and newer (likely less literate) generations take over the definitions will change, and perhaps should.
To me only hard science fiction will ever count, but I recognize that I'm in the minority there and also don't want to scare away the three remaining readers through gatekeeping.
srean 17 hours ago [-]
Fantasys felt so lazy to me. Although sometimes I do enjoy the descriptions. But there is always an escape hatch out of a trouble and one that was not foreshadowed. It is constraints that makes things interesting and especially the higher order consequences of constraints and new tech.
mapontosevenths 15 hours ago [-]
Agreed. Fiction where the solution was "and then he found out he was the chosen one so magic happened" are unsatisfying.
smgpie 8 hours ago [-]
What you described does not qualify as a good fantasy either. There needs to be rules even in the world of magic, and eventually so called hard fiction and fantasy only really differ in the way how they present the fantasies.
There is a book I love: Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny, in which he first wrote about fantasy figures with magic powers in Buddhism tales, and then revealed that they were just humans with high tech and play gods to those who don't.
srean 6 hours ago [-]
Thanks for the recommendation
. Sounds like a good read.
ycombinete 21 hours ago [-]
What is the biggest fantasy series of our time?
stevenwoo 20 hours ago [-]
A Song of Ice and Fire (contemporary writing I assume), it lost to Harry Potter book against one of GRRM’s best books/chance for win in novel category one year and Spin in another year(Accelerando was another nominee that year)
3eb7988a1663 17 hours ago [-]
Surely on cultural impact Harry Potter has to win. While GoT had a decade flash in the pan, Harry Potter is still deeply in the cultural zeitgeist. "Muggles", "You're a Hufflepuff", etc have become cemented into our vocabulary.
GoT is undoubtedly more complex, interesting world, but it never had a generation of children reading the midnight book release. That the author actually penned the series finale is also worth something.
ycombinete 5 hours ago [-]
That's what I was thinking! I was sure my parent meant GoT.
But there can't be many metrics at all where GoT beats out HP for the title of "biggest fantasy series of our time".
stevenwoo 17 hours ago [-]
The Hugo voting is kind of skewed since it’s a membership thing where anyone can join but one has to be aware of it and care enough to join.
GlobalChubby 18 hours ago [-]
The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin
watwut 15 hours ago [-]
That one is great.
SamBam 21 hours ago [-]
You're not the only one to be taken aback by that. Yes, the Hugos do fantasy, but I'm not sure I would have even thought to categorize Sinners as fantasy.
I mean, yes, it has vampires. Was From Dusk till Dawn fantasy?
But as a sister comment suggests, categorization is never easy, and probably just reinforced personal biases. (See Old Town Road being reminded from Billboard's country music list.)
neaden 20 hours ago [-]
I think by definition any vampire story is a fantasy story yes. Since vampires are not real and thus a fantasy creature.
SamBam 20 hours ago [-]
There's more to Fantasy than a single boolean "does it contain something that is not real?"
Fantasy gets applied to the work as a whole, to its dominant tone and structure, not to one element. A work of fantasy usually has other elements that show it to be such. Is there world-building? Is it a quest or a hero story? Is there some kind of lore that grounds the whole universe? Not all of those are necessary, but usually you can clearly define the whole work holistically as Fantasy.
From Dusk till Dawn in particular is a straight crime thriller that turns into a horror movie.
Ok, I got nerd-sniped into trying to define Fantasy after saying I wouldn't.
neaden 20 hours ago [-]
I don't think crime thriller or horror have anything to do with if a story is fantasy. Alien is a sci fi movie and a horror movie. Psycho is a horror movie with no fantasy elements. Sinners is a fantasy horror movie. It sounds like you are talking about epic or high fantasy, but there is fantasy romance, fantasy detective, fantasy crime thriller etc. You can even have a fantasy sci fi movie like Star Wars.
krapp 20 hours ago [-]
>You can even have a fantasy sci fi movie like Star Wars.
And Star Trek.
I will die on the hill that Star Trek is just as much space fantasy as Star Wars.
11 hours ago [-]
bigstrat2003 9 hours ago [-]
I can envision a reasonable case that Star Trek is space fantasy, sure. But I think it's significantly overstating things to say that Trek is just as much space fantasy as Star Wars. There's nothing in Star Trek remotely as fantastical as the Force and the users thereof.
krapp 1 hours ago [-]
>There's nothing in Star Trek remotely as fantastical as the Force and the users thereof.
A lot of things in Trek are a lot more fantastic than the Force. The second episode of the original series has someone whose powers far exceed any Jedi not named Skywalker or Palpatine. Plenty of aliens are telepaths. And then the Q came along. The Douwd are apparently an alien race made of eldritch music that can erase entire species with their mind.
Honestly the Force is far more grounded in comparison. At least it has a structure and some rules. In Star Trek you could find an alien species that literally plays billiards with planets and it's never explained or referenced again. That just a thing that sometimes happens. Oh yeah and Wesley Crusher ascended to a higher plane of existence.
But let's move on to cosmology. A weird barrier at the center of the galaxy where a space god is imprisoned like some JRPG final boss. Anomalies in space that create time loops or fulfill your deepest desires. Whatever subspace is supposed to be - both a "layer under normal space" that's used for communication and also arbitrarily fixes the plot and also sometimes monsters come out of it that steal your organs.
Or technology. Set "Threshold" aside. The transporter can create evil clones of you or turn you into a child. The holodeck can create sentient life on command. The Enterprise got knocked up and had a baby one time. How does the universal translator work? Look up the only canonical explanation in TOS, it's basically magic.
BigTTYGothGF 20 hours ago [-]
Vampires aren't any more fantastical than FTL travel, and yet we're perfectly happy to have that in SF.
neaden 20 hours ago [-]
I agree the line between fantasy and sci Fi is very thin. In general I would say if the author intends for it to be a natural explanation like wormholes or something it's sci fi, if it's a magic teleportation spell it is fantasy. There is a series I read once Starships Mage which plays with this, it's hard sci fi for most things but magic exists and FTL is solved through teleportation. Everything non magic has to obey relativity and such.
welferkj 20 hours ago [-]
I'd say that line can be blurred somewhat by "Blindsight". "Not real" isn't where I'd put the line, it's "not plausibly and consistently explained (or at least explained away) within the laws of nature.
lokar 20 hours ago [-]
Culture is fluid, it must be to continue. Categories like this will evolve, expand, and shrink over time.
krapp 20 hours ago [-]
I'm comfortable considering horror as a subgenre of fantasy. Vampires and folklore and magic are staples of fantasy after all.
plisken 20 hours ago [-]
Snakes on a plane fantasy?
krapp 20 hours ago [-]
I'm comfortable considering horror a subgenre of fantasy when it incorporates explicitly supernatural elements.
It's a fantastic work of complex history, told with the tools of science fiction and fantasy writing. But it remains a high quality academic work: the tools are used to unravel the telling of a gay and complicated topic, but you still get the vastness.
If you like ACOUP, it should be right up your alley.
I found it very USian [0] - obsessed with religion (and the overt assumption that emperors are a good thing was unsettling). And I also found her position that all the best of human thought lay in the past (the greek classics and the renaissance specifically in this case) deeply at odds with my worldview.
[0] I have noticed that US writers tend to feature religion prominently in their writing (e.g. Brandon Sanderson, not that this stops me from enjoying his writing, which I do). I read a new writer and make a bet whether they're USian after a couple of chapters based on their attitude to religion, and I've been mostly right.
> The Hugo Award for Best Series is one of the Hugo Awards given each year for science fiction or fantasy stories published in or translated into English during the previous calendar year. The award is available for series of science fiction or fantasy stories consisting of at least 3 published works totaling at least 240,000 words, with at least one work released or translated into English during the previous calendar year. A losing finalist becomes eligible again with the publication of at least two new works totaling at least 240,000 words.
And now, checking on it... The Shattering Peace was released in September of 2025.
I guess I've got another item for my reading list (currently going through the classics of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser... I wonder if that will ever be eligible for a retro Hugo Award for series).
I should look into the sequel, I'd be happy for him if he stretched himself after the first one.
Someone else mentions Blue Prince here. I think that's a much better game relatively speaking, even if not having Clair Obscur's exceptional art.
I'm playing through Clair Obscur now. It's above average for aaa stuff. But there are way too many cut scenes, and dodge/parry mechanics continue to be tedious. And the story is fine, but isn't really grabbing me. Sigh.
Blue Prince, on the other hand, is quite probably the best puzzle game I have ever played. My partner and I worked on it for months, and have a 50+ page Google doc of notes.
The joke side quests work in your standard RPG because they take themselves less seriously. Your character is wielding an eight foot sword, the mage companion is a talking cat, and your boots are haunted by a long-dead Egyptian prince. Sure, go nuts if you want to play the mini-game at the circus belly-dancing competition to win the golden hat.
Clair Obscur starts in such a bleak, breathing world that the characters not treating the situation deadly serious breaks my connection to the world, so I start to focus more on the mechanical annoyances.
That sounds more like a part time job than a game. I'm curious if you play it for the mental challenge? I feel challenged enough at $dayjob that all I want from games is mindless relaxation.
First, it's a really compelling roguelite puzzler where you explore and understand the house and it's mechanics. The puzzles are mostly small and straightforward (but not easy!). You can probably win this without taking notes. I found this part compelling and delightful.
Then it's something else where you learn about the world. The puzzles are more complicated and need notebooks and notes to keep the loose threads tracked. This part for me became a slog by the end and I finished mostly to say that I had.
Then its a third thing for sickos.
Blue Prince is an example of what fills are calling 'notebook games' -- instead of giving you lots of qol stuff, you just use a notebook to keep notes. The act of writing and arranging your notes is actually quite immersive. It's also fun!
Blue Prince has layers of puzzles and story... It's pretty reasonable to play to the credits, and not get into the depths of the post credits game; it's a very reasonable cutoff point for non-sickos.
Any other tv show recommendations? We seem to have similar taste.
It is a worthy winner in my opinion. Fantasy with a sci-fi element along with a story which takes some untangling. Five stars from me :-)
*EDIT:* It appears I'm just being silly, and the Hugos include fantasy. Ironically, the biggest fantasy series of our time by far has won 3 times in Novella form and once in TV form, but never the novels!
As we age out of being culturally relevant, and newer (likely less literate) generations take over the definitions will change, and perhaps should.
To me only hard science fiction will ever count, but I recognize that I'm in the minority there and also don't want to scare away the three remaining readers through gatekeeping.
There is a book I love: Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny, in which he first wrote about fantasy figures with magic powers in Buddhism tales, and then revealed that they were just humans with high tech and play gods to those who don't.
GoT is undoubtedly more complex, interesting world, but it never had a generation of children reading the midnight book release. That the author actually penned the series finale is also worth something.
But there can't be many metrics at all where GoT beats out HP for the title of "biggest fantasy series of our time".
I mean, yes, it has vampires. Was From Dusk till Dawn fantasy?
But as a sister comment suggests, categorization is never easy, and probably just reinforced personal biases. (See Old Town Road being reminded from Billboard's country music list.)
Fantasy gets applied to the work as a whole, to its dominant tone and structure, not to one element. A work of fantasy usually has other elements that show it to be such. Is there world-building? Is it a quest or a hero story? Is there some kind of lore that grounds the whole universe? Not all of those are necessary, but usually you can clearly define the whole work holistically as Fantasy.
From Dusk till Dawn in particular is a straight crime thriller that turns into a horror movie.
Ok, I got nerd-sniped into trying to define Fantasy after saying I wouldn't.
And Star Trek.
I will die on the hill that Star Trek is just as much space fantasy as Star Wars.
A lot of things in Trek are a lot more fantastic than the Force. The second episode of the original series has someone whose powers far exceed any Jedi not named Skywalker or Palpatine. Plenty of aliens are telepaths. And then the Q came along. The Douwd are apparently an alien race made of eldritch music that can erase entire species with their mind.
Honestly the Force is far more grounded in comparison. At least it has a structure and some rules. In Star Trek you could find an alien species that literally plays billiards with planets and it's never explained or referenced again. That just a thing that sometimes happens. Oh yeah and Wesley Crusher ascended to a higher plane of existence.
But let's move on to cosmology. A weird barrier at the center of the galaxy where a space god is imprisoned like some JRPG final boss. Anomalies in space that create time loops or fulfill your deepest desires. Whatever subspace is supposed to be - both a "layer under normal space" that's used for communication and also arbitrarily fixes the plot and also sometimes monsters come out of it that steal your organs.
Or technology. Set "Threshold" aside. The transporter can create evil clones of you or turn you into a child. The holodeck can create sentient life on command. The Enterprise got knocked up and had a baby one time. How does the universal translator work? Look up the only canonical explanation in TOS, it's basically magic.