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.
• 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).
• 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. The first three books are good then things start to get weird.
• 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.
• Raymond E. Feist - The Riftwar Cycle: A 30 book epic written over the course of three decades, The Riftwar Cycle starts off as the story of a boy learning how to be a wizard, only to save the world by the end of the debut novel, Magician. After this the series evolves into an epic spanning multiple generations of characters (but roughly half focusses on the initial cast) fighting to protect their world from internal political strife and malevolent external forces. Grew to be a lot more cosmic in scale in the last eight or so books, and the ending was kind of a lackluster business. The classical fantasy races are not the focus here: the dwarves and elves get along just fine, and while there's dragons, serpent folk and dark elves (the latter of whom are Native American inspired), it's mostly about humans and their struggles. The series is divided into ten sagas, with the best one being the Empire trilogy which tells the tale of the chronologically six first book from the perspective of the antagonists in a beautiful tale of loyalty, honor, politics and love. Was also the inspiration of Betrayal at Krondor, an old-school RPG that is held in high esteem in some circles.
• J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter: Love it or hate it, and there are things to hate (especially where J.K. is concerned), this series is a big part of the collective fantasy consciousness, especially where normies are concerned. As such, if you want a tone that is easily familiar to those unfamiliar with fantasy in general, or children, this is not a bad place to start. The first three books are good light reads, book four is where things start to get Sirius serious. No, really, it gets pretty dark for a series of kid's books. At best, they're is pretty readable books; at worst, they're thoroughly mediocre and derivative as all hell. At the very least, you'll look less of a neckbeard knowing what a Muggle is.
• Neil Gaiman - American Gods, The Graveyard Book, Neverwhere, Sandman, etc.: He's a damn entertaining writer, known for his unique and well fleshed out ideas. There's something here for everyone, from the Noblebright Stardust to the fairly grim and pretty dark Sandman comics. American Gods, however, is the one he's best remembered by, which is a story about physical manifestations of IRL gods fighting a losing war against globalisation, mass media and technology. There's also a part where a man is swallowed whole by a woman's vagina.
• 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). The endings of the books in the second series are a little pat, but are still entertaining.
• 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 Cycle+: 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 folklore and Native American spiritual stuff with urban settings. Don't get attached to characters.
• George R. R. Martin - A Song of Ice and Fire: Some of the better 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 a genre, soon turns to far beyond AWESOME. Rare combination of good humor and wise messages. Does get a little preachy towards the end, but hey, it's still a great read.
• Patrick Rothfuss - The Name of the Wind: A mary sue bard goes on mary sue adventures (arguably an unreliable narrator) - 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.
• Brandon Sanderson - The Stormlight Archives': A warlord, a depressed soldier/slave/soldier again, and a fraudulent scholar play the main roles so far. Women's left hands are fetishised Currently 3 of the expected 10 books are released, but tie into his other works within the overarching universe ("the Cosmere")
• Andrzej Sapkowski - Witcher short stories: While the Witcher saga is just getting more bland and increasingly more generic with each following part, the two initial books collecting all the short stories (especially Sword of Destiny) are the reason why everyone treated Witcher as unique and original. Tonnes of wacky ideas how to spin cliches and old tropes into something fresh. Reading the saga proper is not required and generally not advised, especially with wooden English translation.
• 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.
• Larry Correia - Monster Hunter International: In the modern world monsters of all kinds are out there. Stopping them from eating humanity are private groups of monster hunters who get paid very handsomely for removing the supernatural with superior firepower. As one would expect from an author with a background in running a gun store and competitive shooting, it's very /k/. A character's choice of firearm describes them as much as their clothes or hair and guns work as they're supposed to. The first book is enjoyable, but very rough, and the series improved dramatically each book.
• Roger Zelazny - The Chronicles of Amber: A lesser known series written between 1970 and 1991 about a family of (essentially) demigods who inhabit the "true" reality of the city of Amber. Everything else is merely a shadow of Amber and its inhabitants. The princes and princesses can move freely between Amber and an infinite number shadow worlds but the constant plotting and backstabbing at home and the less-than-real nature of everything outside makes them callous and often amoral. The first book effortlessly turns from "hard boiled detective story" to "psychedelic road trip" to "drama about Greek gods" in style.
• Karl Edward Wagner - Kane series: Essentially a more grimdark version of Howard's style of sword and sorcery, Kane is more akin to a villain that Conan would fight than the "noble savage" barbarian archetype. Immortal and cursed with the inability to ever truly settle down, Kane is an expert fighter, leader of men and potent sorcerer. After thousands of years his only real goal is to stave off boredom, which he does by offering his services and considerable intellect to various rulers, although more often than not with an ulterior motive. In one story he sets out to revive a race of ancient cosmic horrors simply because they offered him a chance to explore the cosmos.

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, although you could count it as the first. The precursor to all comedy stories about everyday people having to deal with the absurdly massive and meaningless universe around them. Grab your towel, make a fresh cuppa, and make sure you've got enough tape to keep your sides from splitting too much.
• 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.
• Iain 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!
• Glen Cook - The Dragon Never Sleeps: Basically an EVE Online novel written decades before EVE Online. Was supposed to be a trilogy but the publisher wouldn't okay sequels so it gets rushed at the end. Not as iconic as The Black Company, but this is in SPAAAAAAACCCCEEEE!!!!!!!
• 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. The novel carries a vastly different message and tone than the campy movie based on it. Roboute Guilliman keeps a copy in his duffel.
• Frank Herbert - Dune & its earlier sequels: World-building, politics, super-humans - it's one helluva party. The spice must flow! Navigators are totally not stolen from Dune *BLAM*
• 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.
• Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson - The Illuminatus! Trilogy: /x/ the book, and a cult classic in every sense of the word. Once you get used to the massively cheesy tone, usually takes 100 or so pages, what you'll find here is an incredibly intelligent and fun series of books that both parody, and send up: 70s counterculture, Western esotericism, political and religious dogma, numerology, and conspiracy theories all in a way that won't leave you bored, and will genuinely have you questioning everything you hear from that point on. One of the cornerstone texts of Discordianism, more commonly known as "the geek parody religion that is not Pastafarianism and not the Church of the SubGenius."
• 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.
• Larry Niven - Footfall Remember kids: if at first your nukes don't kill the xeno, just use more. Also 'The Magic Goes Away' is good for DnD while technically not fantasy.
• 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: Equal parts biting satire and bittersweet love story, set in a bizarre future (think equal part of Brave New World, corporate dystopia and high-concept sci-fi). It's the humour and creative application of own setting and its rules that makes it helpful for worldbuilding that amounts to anything more than just trivia.
• H.G. Wells - The War of the Worlds and Time Machine: Absolute classics. Not knowing them is akin to being illiterate, while they can be used for all sorts of games.

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.
• Laurell K. Hamilton - Guilty Pleasures: Probably one of the most iconic and influencial urban fantasy in existence, despite seemingly obvious setup for occult detective. While rest of Anita Blake series is unquestionably in shunned territory, this one is still a must-read. Also, mind the title.
  • Aneta Jadowska - Dora Wilk series: Essentially Anita Blake: Polish Edition. Unlike original, doesn't turn into BDSM harem porn, but instead gradually distances itself from romance and focuses on the world-building and occult. Also, it fully embraces being written to cover for bills. Decent fan translations exist.
• H.P. Lovecraft - At the Mountains of Madness and anything else published after it: Lovecraft is to modern horror what Tolkien is to fantasy. While his early 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.
• Anne Rice - The Vampire Chronicles: Where Vampire: The Masquerade started. You are probably already familiar with this particular style of vampires even without knowing there were any books, that's how iconic the imaginary is. And for the sake of everyone's sanity, let's just pretend the Chronicles consists of only three books: Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the Damned. You really don't want to read any further titles, trust us on that, especially since this is a self-contained trilogy.

Alternate History

• SM Stirling - The Peshawar Lancers: In the 1878 a bunch of comets hit the Earth causing much havoc and forcing the British to Evacuate to warmer parts of the world. In 2025 the British Empire still reigns as the most powerful nation on earth run from Delhi, along with French Africa, the Japanese Empire and a rather nasty Russian Empire in a world powered by steam. If you want steampunk that's more than superficial, exotic and just all around well done this is where you go. Just be prepared for a lot of Indian terms.

Mystery

• Raymond Chandler - The Big Sleep: The grandfather of noir.
• Agatha Christie - And Then There Were None: Ten random strangers trapped with a vengeful killer. Or so they think.
• Arthur Conan Doyle - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: A stample of detective fiction.

Historical Fiction

• Robert Bolt - The Mission: A journey of a young boy into becoming a murder-hobo and then trying to repent his sins as a missionary, taking place in 1740s Paraguay. But more seriously, it's about the Jesuits and their mission in a patch of land contested between Spain and Portugal, with great, nuanced characters caught up in a conflict they can't even hope to win. Mostly famous for its movie adaptation with de Niro and Irons and cutting the entire backstory which made the book worth reading in the first place.
• 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.

Weird Stuff

This is for things which may not strictly be the best stuff but have some off beat noteworthy qualities which might make it worth a look regardless. Sometimes "flawed but novel" can beat "generally good but run of the mill".

• David Brin - Uplift Hexology: A sort of really lazily worldbuilt sci-fi setting, based around the idea that a trillions-years-old galactic civilization is perpetuated by the "uplifting" of near-sentient animals and tool-using species. Every species has its specific attitude and special trait, like most bad sci-fi, except for humans and their uplifted dolphins and chimpanzees. But it does have some interesting ideas about evolution and how that could lead to truly strange forms of life and ways of thinking, if you can suffer through all the ecofanaticism.

Other

• Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra - The Ingenious Nobleman Mister Quixote of La Mancha: The misadventures of an old man driven to madness by reading chivalry novels, being the first major parody of the classic interpretation of that setting. Mixing comedy and a ton of political commentary for its time, it's one of the most important novels of all time, and the elements and tropes it brought to popular culture are referenced and satirized to this day.
• Antonio Pigafetta - Journal of Magellan's Voyage: A historical account of the first circumnavigation of the globe. Aside obvious historical value, it's worth to note Pigafetta wasn't an explorer himself or a member of the crew - he was a tourist, joining the expedition for the thrill of adventure and described everything from such perspective. Provides a lot of nautical and ethnographical observations, creating a panorama for Age of Discovery.
• The Poetic Edda: A historical source, the Poetic Edda provides most of the basis for what we know about norse myth and belief today. The mere fact that it's Viking myth poetry written in Old Norse should entice most fa/tg/uys, but for those somehow unmoved still, it's basically THE sourcebook for the Lord of the Rings and all else Tolkien. If you want to know where Gandalf (who is basically Odin), Dwarves (and their names), Elves, the phrase "Middle Earth" and that obssession he has for massive trees came from, then look no further. Also, pick up a copy of the Prose Edda while your reading this one, seeing as you're on a roll.
• Xenophon - The Anabasis: Another historical account, this time of the journey of 10,000 Greek mercenaries (hence the other title - The March of the Ten Thousand) who end up stranded in the middle of Persian Empire after their employer, Cyrus the Younger, got killed in the battle. Problem is, Cyrus was trying to overthrown his brother, king Artaxerxes II, using said Greeks. So now they are in the middle of hostile territory, with no means to resupply, no support and constantly endangered by Persian military and tributary locals. Due to Xenophon's writing style, the book is highly entertaining and action-packed, while also providing countless descriptions of both Greek and Persian customs. And if you wonder why the plot sounds familiar - you probably saw "The Warriors".
• Thucydides - History of the Peloponnesian War: Happens right before The Anabasis, covering roughly two decades of warfare between Athens and Sparta, in varying degrees of detail depending on the reliablity of the sources Thucydides had access to at the time (he was exiled from Athens and switched sides mid-war) Trails off at the end, presumably he died writing it.

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" as misogynistic slaving barbarians 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. Spread to Second Life, so go there if you want to burn your brain.
• Stephanie Meyer - Twilight: ...Have you been on the internet lately? (Twilight's an old meme at this point) 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 while struggling with a hostile father-in-law, until the civil war reached his hometown and his betrothed is whisked away by humanoid bug-birds, he then murders 200 people with a hammer and deals with PTSD.

Gallery

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  Kid-tested, fa/tg/uy-approved.

Other Recommendations

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

• /tg/'s approved reading list on Goodreads