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 Science Fiction...

Fantasy

• Richard Adams - Watership Down: The epic story of a tiny band of desperate people's odyssey to flee a great calamity and find a new homeland. Along the way, they fight dangerous battles, encounter dangerously seductive dystopia after dystopia, and ultimately destroy a fascist dictator before founding a new nation. Also, everyone's a rabbit. Badass storytelling, sweet worldbuilding, and an incredible level of quality for a children's book.
• 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.
• Glen Cook - The Black Company: I can't remember the exact quote, but someone put it best when he said "it's a story about level 5-8 badasses trying to make it in a world dominated by epic level Wizards". Follow the mercenary entourage known as the Black Company as they sell their swords to the highest contractors, who usually end up being The Big Bad Evils.
• Steven Erikson - Malazan Book of the Fallen: An enormous read that stretches across over three million words and ten books, Erikson's worldbuilding rivals anybody else in the genre, with a large focus on the many different cultures, how they rose, and then how they fell. Can be overwhelming at times due to the sheer number of simultaneous plotlines and a large, perhaps even bloated, cast. Very much the definition of epic fantasy, the level of power at play swings fairly wildly depending on which set of characters is being focused on at the time, from assassins fighting upon rooftops, to flying castles being crashed into cities, and then back to the oft-humorous exploits of a group of mostly mundane soldiers that is reminiscent of Glen Cook's Black Company. In all, a story full of engaging personalities exploring a supremely fantastical world, with all the hallmarks of classic fantasy, elves, dragons, gods, and wizards, given a unique spin.
• Michael John Harrison - Viriconium: A truly peculiar set of novels and short stories dedicated to put traditional world building on its head, by never making sure if the stories are happening between the same characters, in the same place or same time. A very open-ended to interpretation "setting", which is also a great exercise to how tell a story without overburdening anyone with details and in the same time providing all the important elements to keep audience (readers or players) invested and interested.
• 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).
• 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.
• Ursula K LeGuin - Earthsea trilogy+: Threads about /tg/-approved literature will consistently end up having a poster say something to the effect of "no Sea Jedi Wizard Chronicles WTF" about halfway down, immediately being followed by a chorus of agreement. Needless to say, this series is an excellent one, little-known but suprisingly influential. It's the series that established the concepts of the concept of nominal magic as understood in modern fantasy literature: names of power in the language of magic are spoken to exert power over the person, place, thing or idea that name refers to. Later, less-respectable novels such as those by Christopher Paolini would abuse this concept for fun and profit. Sadly, such novels seldom strive to equal the actual accomplishments of the Earthsea novels, such as the successful building and display of a rich, believable, and internally consistent setting without letting any of the world building bog down the narrative like in LotR.
• Fritz Leiber - Swords and Deviltry, et al.: A runaway momma's boy and a failed magician's apprentice lose everything and become thieves in Lankhmar, center of civilization and debauchery. They are Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser:, swordsmen supreme, insatiable adventurers, womanizers unequaled, and bros of the highest caliber. Together, they plunder the world of riches, bitches, and wine, while facing magic and horror of a decidedly cosmic sort.
• 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.
• George R. R. Martin - A Song of Ice and Fire: Best character development in genre, with a bit of mystery, political chess and 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.
• Terry Pratchett - Discworld series: Starts from parodying Fantasy as genre, soon turns to far beyond AWESOME, then the last few books... eh. Rare combination of good humor and wise messages, until at the end when the humor goes out the window and the message becomes preachy. Still great read, though.
• 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 (eg; the Simarillion): The great grand-daddy of modern fantasy. Not having even the slightest familiarity with his work is inexcusable in eyes of /tg/.
• Gene Wolfe - The Book of the New Sun: The setting is inspired by Jack Vance's Dying Earth series, so this could be either in SF or Fantasy. A torturer is exiled from his guild and old life after he helps kill the woman he loves to spare her from the agony of torture, now forced to journey through Urth; our Earth in the far, far, far future, in a time when our sun is beginning to die. These books do not make for easy reading, however. The author uses lots of very obscure words to create the worlds own unique lingo. Also, the main character is an unreliable narrator of the more extreme sort. The reader will be spending some time figuring out what are the truths and what are the lies.
• Jim Butcher - The Dresden Files: Basically the World of Darkness with all most of the depression, brooding, doom and gloom replaced with badass, humor and a pinch of noir detective. Follow the young wizard/private investigator Harry Dresden through his misadventures in a supernatural world of Chicago, as he grows in power and fame, deals with ever increasing levels of supernatural horrors, get his life ruined to oblivion and beyond and yet manage to make it look cool rather then utterly depressing and sanity-check inducing by sheer will alone (OK, will and snarkiness).

Science Fiction

• Douglas Adams - The Increasingly Inaccurately Named Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy: One of the funniest works of science fiction ever made.
• Neal Asher - The Gridlinked Series: Some of the best, hardest sci-fi out there, this is one of those universes that has unique, creative technologies (rare nowadays)as well as 007...EEEN SPESSS
• Issac Asimov - Foundation Series: The seminal space opera modeled roughly on the decline of the Roman Empire. It follows the fall of a Galactic Empire and the rise of a new civilization from the ashes.
• Ian M. Banks- The Culture Series: A series about a perfect, utopian spacefaring society and all its many problems. Some of the grandest-scale worldbuilding in science fiction, and full of clever ethical and political musing.
• Paolo Bacigalupi - Pump Six and Other Stories: Biopunk meet post-apo and hefty dose of shady business. Think Shadowrun, minus the magic.
• David Brin - The Postman: First novel to present post apocalypse not from the point of view of badass heroes or insane raiders, but random villagers and such. Great world building for a very small world. Has infamous film "adaptation", sharing only title.
• Edgar Rice Burroughs - the Barsoom Series-aka Mars Chronicles: Iconic, manly, and fuckin' A!
• Harlan Ellison - I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream: The last five humans alive are being held deep in an underground complex, where they are perpetually tortured by AM, the sadistic AI that wiped out the rest of humanity, with no hope of escape. The most creepy thing in this book is that the author thought it was optimistic. If he someday went to wrote something pessimistic, the universe would implode from the sheer grimdark overdose.
• Robert A. Heinlein - Starship Troopers: Where Space Marines and Tyranids came from.
• Frank Herbert - Dune & its earlier sequels: World-building, politics, super-humans - it's one helluva party. The spice must flow!
• Aldous Huxley - Brave New World: Take 1984, and do the total opposite the way people are controlled (rather than "Do what I tell you or I'll beat you", it's "Do what I tell you and I'll make you feel good") mixed with a Tau-esque genetically enforced caste system and conditioning to make people embrace their servitude.
• Stanisław Lem - Tales Of Pirx the Pilot: Collection of short stories documenting gradual progress of humanity in space exploration and AI development. Nice deconstruction of all the shitty elements from space opera, before there even was space opera.
• 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! FOUR LEGS GOOD! TWO LEGS BAD!
• John Steakley - Armor
• Robert Sheckley - short stories: once dubbed the clown prince of sci-fi, recommended by Douglas Adams.
• Charles Stross - Missile Gap: While Stross is most famous for his Laundry Files (basically collection of Delta Green shorts, which are all worth reading too), Missile Gap is just mind-numbing novella about entire Earth being transported on an Alderson disk... or maybe a snapshot of Earth... or maybe both. All right in the middle of the Cuban Crisis. Think "Primer" meet Tom Clancy techno-thriller.
• Andri Magnason - LoveStar:Winner of the Philip K. Dick Award 2012, special citation of excellence. Equal parts biting satire and bittersweet love story, set in a bizarre future that feels like it waits just next door.

Horror

• John W. Campbell - Who Goes There?: Remember John Carpenter's The Thing? Well this is where it all started. Taking into account when the novella was written is the real game-changer.
• H.P. Lovecraft - At the Mountains of Madness and anything else published after it: Lovecraft is to modern horror what Tolkien was to fantasy. While most of his stories are mediocre, starting with At the Mountains of Madness, their quality rises sharply, explaining how this guy reached such memetic status.
• Richard Matheson - I Am Legend: Singlehandly responsible for creation of post apocalypse genre and modern take on zombies and vampires. Also, depressive as fuck, so bring some tissues. No, really. None of the 3 film adaptations managed to match the quality of the novel.

Mystery

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

Historical Fiction

• Tom Clancy - The Hunt for Red October: The quintessential techno-thriller, being one of the halmarks of the entire genre and probably the most famous of all Clancy's book. Tightly written, with plausable story and great characters.
• Patrick O'Brian - Aubrey–Maturin series: A series of 21 nautical historical novels, set during the Napoleonic Wars and centering on the friendship between Captain Jack Aubrey of the Royal Navy and his ship's surgeon Stephen Maturin. Almost autistically well-researched and amazingly addictive series which should be read by just about anyone even wishing to run a maritime-themed game. They are really addictive, so make sure you have enough time to spare before starting reading. The film adaptation is also approved.
• Neal Stephenson - The Baroque Cycle: Adventures of a really big cast of characters living amidst of the central events of the late 17th and early 18th centuries in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Central America. Extremely well-researched portray of the era, seamlessly blending history with fictional characters. And a real door-stopper.
• Robert Louis Stevenson - Treasure Island: If by any chance or twist of fate you still didn't read it, you damn should right now. Absolute classic and absolute gold mine for ideas, not even for pirate game, but just adventuring in general.
• Kawabata Yasunari - The Master of Go: The story of a brash young power gamer challenging a grizzled old neckbeard to a championship Go match. Chronicles the national-scale edition war that was 1930s Japan through the medium of gaming obsessed hyper-autists.

Shunned/Hated

• Terry GoodBadkind - The Sword of Truth: An infamous series full of Terry's magical realm BDSM, utterly gratuitous rape and torture (Terry's cheap/lazy method of making his main characters look better by comparison), and "heroes" we're supposed to arbitrarily like no matter what horrible things they do. Badkind himself having nothing but contempt for the entire fantasy genre while bragging about how he is a "serious" novelist and packing the later books with his stupid Ayn Ranting (even when it contradicted previous fucking events) did him no favors.
• John Norman - Gor: A cheap knockoff of Barsoom and Conan made notable for having a lot of half baked philosophizing, skeevy BSDM stuff and a ton of fucked up ideas about gender, slavery and sex. In brief a bunch of bug aliens make a zoo full of humans to live "as nature intended" and make sure of it by incinerating anyone who attempts to develop technology or societies they don't approve of with laser beams. Which they sometimes do to whole cities just for the lulz. Also for spawning one of the original obnoxious apologist Internet subcultures, the Goreans.
• Stephanie Meyer - Twilight: ...Have you been on the internet lately? The series that singlehandedly killed an entire style of modern fantasy vampire for an entire generation of fantasy fans who aren't sexually-frustrated housewives and hormonally-addled teenage girls.
• Christopher Paolini - The Inheritance Series: A Mary Sue main character and a derivative plot. It was written when Paolini was a teenager and it shows. Every single book could stand to lose at least a third of its wordcount and there are lot of times when the plot grinds to a halt for entire chapters just for the characters to think and ramble about the most inane of topics. Less offensive than other stuff on this list since it lacks traits such as bootlick fans and an asshole author. The author also put a decent amount of effort into his worldbuilding which is more than can be said for Badkind and Smeyer. If you must, start in book two and read his cousin's story, he is a farm boy who was getting his dick wet until his betrothed is whisked away by humanoid bugs, he then murders 200 people with a hammer and deals with PTSD.

Other Recommendations

Fatguys briefly exit their basement comfort zone to recommend /tg/ romance novels.

/tg/'s approved reading list on Goodreads