I currently have a hankering for diving into a really long book series, so was hoping to get some recommendations from fellow Tildes users.

The genres I enjoy most are scifi and fantasy, especially darkly themed ones with deep lore, but I'm open to trying anything. The only caveat is that I have absolutely no interest in starting to read a series that hasn't actually finished yet, since at this point I am honestly quite sick of waiting for the next ASOIAF and Kingkiller.

I was considering listing all the longest series I have already read in order to avoid them getting recommended to me again, but I decided against doing that so other people can use this as a resource in case they're also looking for similar recommendations.

p.s. Malazan Book of the Fallen would be my biggest recommendation, BTW. It's by far my favorite dark fantasy series, is a whopping ~3M words, ~11k pages, with hundreds of unique/memorable characters, and an insanely deep lore spanning thousands of years.

Hello! I do a fair bit of my reading via Libby (I have memberships at the NYPL and Brooklyn Public Library) but I like to pick up some physical copies as well. I've spent some time in a couple of NYC bookstores but I'm curious about online portals folks here use to buy books. I've switched to bookshop.org for new books but what's the go to for used books?

Thanks!

So I'm reading Asimov's short-story anthology The Complete Robot, which contains stories written between 1939 and 1977, and I'm fascinated by several instances in which Asimov tries to predict the future of robotics.

When he gets it right is just as interesting as when he gets it wrong, as even when he's wrong, he's wrong in very interesting ways.

For example, it's very interesting how Asimov seems to think that everything must have a positronic brain (which often produces something either identical or very close consciousness), when in reality we now have numerous useful robots that have nothing of the sort.

So this made me thinking, I think I'd like to write a story that was just like that, an exploration of universal themes that is facilitated by simplified technology. A form of retrofuturism. And since I had the idea, obviously someone else had it before. I wanna read it! More recent stories, especially those with old-school robots and artificial intelligence. Any suggestions?

Also open to other medias, but books would be particularly helpful.

Hoping to generate discussion and have a few books recommended that have some of the following characteristics:

• foreboding discovery of a main character’s past
• a plot conflict that with a focus other than war or physical/political fighting
• preferable plot conflict examples: exploration, escape, grand heist, obtaining wisdom, treasure hunt
• undercurrent of a great unused power or magic that has been long lost

btw, I’m borrowing this format from r/Fantasy

Books I have liked:
Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law series
Samantha Shannon The Priory of the Orange Tree
Michael Crichton The Eaters of the Dead
Lara Prior-Palmer (non-fiction) Rough Magic
Arthur C. Clarke (sci-fi) Rendezvous with Rama
Neal Stephenson (sci-fi) Anathem
Brandon Sanderson’s The Stormlight Archive series

Traits like prose, characters, or settings you most enjoy:
Settings within the wilderness, crypts, large buildings/structures, caverns are all great.

Series vs. standalone preference:
No real preference, but longer is better I suppose.

Tone preference (lighthearted, grimdark, etc):
No strong preference, but mystical, ancient, and dark comes to mind.

Complexity/depth level:
Preferably on the more intricate side.

Thank you, let’s chat!

I often re-read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow around Halloween time. If you haven't read the original (published in 1819), it's a really fun read, with great descriptions of (obviously somewhat fictionalized) life in a town on the banks of the Hudson River in 1790.

What other short stories or books would you recommend for the Halloween season?

No Time To Die recently had it's world premiere. This concludes the Daniel Craig saga. I have liked the majority of these films. I have never read any of the Bond books, and I kind of want to read some of them. Which ones are your favorites?

I'm interested in reading some books with good plot twists and would love some recommendations.

BUT WAIT THERE'S A TWIST

Knowing that a twist is coming can inhibit its effectiveness, so I also want some recommendations in this thread that do not have twists. This means that I or anyone else consulting this thread for recommendations won't necessarily know if the given book we've chosen has a twist or not, which helps keep us on our toes.

Speculative fiction contains elements that don't exist in reality. It includes genres such as science fiction, fantasy, and supernatural horror.

A producer friend is looking for stories with a focus on LGBT issues. As someone with a predilection for speculative fiction, it would be great to read/watch some speculative stories that deal with issues in that area. I am aware of some stories with LGBT characters, but gender and LGBT issues are generally not the main themes. I'd love to get suggestions for movies, TV shows, and books (especially short stories) that deal with those issues in a proper and inventive way.

As usual, Wikipedia has an extensive list on the subject, but I was hoping to get some more personal suggestions from the Tildes crowd.

Thanks!

It seems incredibly common in works of science fiction that touch upon technological immortality to focus on every possible way that such a technology could go wrong, create problems, or worsen social dynamics.

Among the negative outcomes that have attained trope levels of frequency, off the top of my head, I can name the following:

1. Immortality becomes available only to the ultra-wealthy, allowing them even more power to abuse everyone else, leading immortal people to be antagonists in a pretty generic dystopian plot.

2. Immortality subtly twists the morality of its beneficiaries, causing them to lose sight of "the real meaning of life" according to the author's worldview, and the protagonist usually fights for society to recognize how important death and endings are

3. Immortality causes people to go insane, become monsters, or otherwise utterly lose their humanity (this is more of an extreme version of case #2, but I feel it's distinct in the way a story plays out)

4. Immortality ultimately leads to the extinction of the human species due either to biological effects of the immortality technology in question, or due to cultural/societal shifts that lead people to stop reproducing

I'm sure there are many others that I'd recall if prompted, but my point is that I don't think I can name any science fiction that involves immortality technology that doesn't also decry it as ultimately a harmful development.

Are there any works of science fiction that any of you can think of that do more to celebrate the idea or look forward to it with some optimism?