Approved Literature

This page lists the genre fiction which is popular on /tg/, along with a brief description and the notable area's of merit. While paragons of Fantasy and

Fantasy

• Brandon Carbaugh - Deep Sounding: A two-part story written by a fa/tg/uy, dealing with themes of isolation in a Dwarven society. Consistently humorous and socially relevant.
• Robert E. Howard - Conan the Barbarian: Conan the Barbarian was born from this quill. A seminal pulp classic which could be considered the father of sword and sorcery.
• George R. R. Martin - A Song of Ice and Fire: Best character development in genre, with a bit of mystery, political chess and realistically high death rate. Tends to drag at times, and since the release of the HBO series will be consistently overrated by those who've seen little else.
• Michael Moorcock - the Elric Saga - The spiritual liege of Drizzt Do Urden and the Witcher, with all of the Mary Sue replaced with badassery. Elric, the High Lord of Chaos, travels reality with a shadow puma and a soul-eating demon sword learning the true nature of Chaos.
• Terry Pratchett - Discworld series: Starts from parodying Fantasy as genre, finishes far beyond AWESOME. Rare combination of good humor and wise messages.
• Patrick Rothfuss - The Name of the Wind: A mary sue bard goes on mary sue adventures - world building may be weak but it's a fun read, so enough people on /tg/ have read it to count, even though nobody will praise it.
• J.R.R. Tolkien - The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and anything else he wrote: The great grand-daddy of modern fantasy. at Not having even the slightest familiarity with his work is inexcusable. He is the creator of the entire genre.
• Robin Hobb - The Farseer Trilogy and The Liveship Traders: First is a story of a royal bastard's horrible upbringing as an assassin. Second is a story of magical sailing ships that talk, dragons, pirates, rape, 14 year old girl overcoming terrible misfortune. It has it all. (Please note the following two sets of books in the series are a little average compared to these two).
• Charles De Lint - Someplace to be Flying and Trader, Pretty much all of his books, you can't really miss: Most of the books seem to be set in canada and revolve around gypsy folk-lore and native american spiritual stuff with urban settings. Don't get attached to characters.

Science Fiction

• Edgar Rice Burroughs - A Princess of Mars: Iconic, manly, and fuckin' A!
• Harlan Ellison - I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream: The most creepy thing in this book is that author thought it is optimistic. If he some day want to wrote something pessimistic, universe would implode from grimdark overdose.
• Robert A. Heinlein - Starship Troopers: Where Space Marines and Tyranids came from.
• Frank Herbert - Dune & its earlier sequels: World-building, politic, super-humans - it's one helluva party. The spice must flow!
• Walter M. Miller, Jr. - A Canticle for Leibowitz In the grim darkness of the far future there is only Catholicism. Think Fallout meets Farenheit 451 and you wouldn't be too far off.
• George Orwell - 1984, Animal Farm: WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH!

Horror

• H.P. Lovecraft - The Call of Cthulu & Other Stories, Dreams in the Witch-House, At the Mountains of Madness, and anything else he wrote - Lovecraft is to modern horror what Tolkein was to fantasy.

Mystery

• Raymond Chandler - The Big Sleep: The grandfather of Noir.