The most creative universe
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Sadly I would have to agree. Butcher is my favorite author at this point of my life, and while the books are a hell of a lot of fun and the way he puts the stories together is creative, the individual components of his urban fantasy is pretty much taken from a ton of other sources. Now his Codex Alera series is a bit more original, or at least, borrows less from other sources, although the overall themes involved have been done to death in numerous stories and will continue to be so forevermore.DoPo said:
My opinion on most creative universe would have to be Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. Just the sheer craziness of everything involved in those stories requires an incredible amount of creativity just to imagine while reading it, much less writing such a thing.
I also liked Warbreaker's world and take on magic, but I agree WoK's seemed the most original he's done, and considering he has Mistborn, Warbreaker, and Elantris under his belt, that's saying something. Though to be honest, Elantris is definitely the closest he's come to "traditional" fantasy.Newtonyd said:
To a degree yes, but to be fair the Hindu creation myths are pretty damn creative too.Meaning of Karma said:
As opposed to all the other fantasy worlds that are completely original? Myth permeates pretty much every facet of fantasy. Pratchett just did more with it than most.88chaz88 said:
Okay, so today I was watching some JLU, and I would have to say the DCAU. To understand just how mental it can be, here for your pleasure is an episode called Once and future thing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mfizjf67MfA
Watch it.
Watch it.
China Mieville's Bas-Lag.
I haven't encountered a single world in recent years that was as interesting, diverse and captivating in it's otherness than China Mieville's Steampunk/Fantasy potpourri that was Bas-Lag. It surprises at every new page with ideas that are always vivid, disturbing and utterly creative and Mieville knows exactly how much he has to show and explain for it to remain mysterious and interesting.
Want a taste?
Bas-Lag features....
Trains eternally stuck in time-bubbles, a swimming metropolis made out of a collection of tied together ships, crab and mosquito people, a nation of undead, probability manipulation, shadow and light golems, self-aware steampunk AI's, tooth and color-bombs, mysterious twisting forces that turn whole countrysides into perversions of reality, tropical beaches consisting of rusty clockwork,a so called "crying king" living in a city of water, magics of all possible varieties, gunfights, airship battles, devious political machinations, city consuming demons, embassies of hell itself and much much more.....
The three books of that series (Perdido Street Station, The Scar and Iron Council) are well worth their read, too, since they are not only hugely creative but also feature an always interesting narrative laced with socio-political commentary. Now, go and read them! ^^
Other universes worth mentioning that mostly score through their size and attention to detail than through flashy ideas: The AD&D universe (size wins, also features extremely interesting parts in Planescape for instance), Discworld (It's satire so it tends to just overtly subvert what we already know than invent something entirely new, but oh my god is it good and surprises with creativeness in it's comicalness with each new entry), Tolkien's universe (nuff said), A Song of Ice and Fire (not particularly creative by being strange but by carefully fusing harsh historical realism with carefully inserted mythology and fantasy)
I haven't encountered a single world in recent years that was as interesting, diverse and captivating in it's otherness than China Mieville's Steampunk/Fantasy potpourri that was Bas-Lag. It surprises at every new page with ideas that are always vivid, disturbing and utterly creative and Mieville knows exactly how much he has to show and explain for it to remain mysterious and interesting.
Want a taste?
Bas-Lag features....
Trains eternally stuck in time-bubbles, a swimming metropolis made out of a collection of tied together ships, crab and mosquito people, a nation of undead, probability manipulation, shadow and light golems, self-aware steampunk AI's, tooth and color-bombs, mysterious twisting forces that turn whole countrysides into perversions of reality, tropical beaches consisting of rusty clockwork,a so called "crying king" living in a city of water, magics of all possible varieties, gunfights, airship battles, devious political machinations, city consuming demons, embassies of hell itself and much much more.....
The three books of that series (Perdido Street Station, The Scar and Iron Council) are well worth their read, too, since they are not only hugely creative but also feature an always interesting narrative laced with socio-political commentary. Now, go and read them! ^^
Other universes worth mentioning that mostly score through their size and attention to detail than through flashy ideas: The AD&D universe (size wins, also features extremely interesting parts in Planescape for instance), Discworld (It's satire so it tends to just overtly subvert what we already know than invent something entirely new, but oh my god is it good and surprises with creativeness in it's comicalness with each new entry), Tolkien's universe (nuff said), A Song of Ice and Fire (not particularly creative by being strange but by carefully fusing harsh historical realism with carefully inserted mythology and fantasy)
Why is the green lantern black? Why is that the first thing I notice? Also why isn't that an issue?LordJedi86 said:
It's not that he doesn't bother to lay down rules, he never intended to do it. Magic (in ASoIaF) is something that you can't properly explain or define, and no one really knows the rules or boundaries of it. If you did, it would be too common, you could in some form control it and that is not the way he wants to show magic in those books. It is a force that some may use but it exists outside the capabilities and understanding of people.Azahul said:
Damn, you beat me to it. My favourite part from the first book is the robot that runs on punch cards, seeing as how it was amazing that any computer was able to even barely function on punch cards in the first place. Now I've got to re-read those books now that I remember them.Chromatic Aberration said:
My aunt got me The Iron Council for Christmas or a birthday a few years ago, and she told my mom that the person at Barnes & Noble told her it's about lesbians. Well joke's on her, it's not about lesbians. There's gay dudes too.
To add to this with the same author, The City & The City is really creative too. It's about two cities that are built in each other (that's never explained why, but whatever), but only one city is allowed to be perceived at a time. Everyone's clothes and the buildings of each city are marked and coloured in a way to designate which city they are in, and people are trained from birth to be unable to "see" the other city. If a person even accidentally interacts with the other city it is a major crime, as it's basically the equivalent of hopping the border. There are some buildings and areas though that belong to both cities, but rarely use the same name.
If you want to interact with the other city, you have to go to Copula Hall with your visa, then cross the border by getting checked through, switching your brain over to unseeing your home region and seeing the foreign city, then driving back out.
Then there's a rumored third city which uses symbols and colours made to confuse each city's citizens into thinking the building and people are actually part of the other city, therefore blocking them out.
Edgeworld series of novels, anyone? You've got sky ship that use levitating stones for flight, and lightning crystallises in when it hits the ground, and the entire setting is on a massive floating stone island thing that drops away into... nothing.
So? Lord of the Rings is heavily based on Norse mythology and D&D is a copy of that, while just about everything in western fantasy since copy one or both of those, likely with a splash of European Medieval-ism thrown in for good measure. And all those Japanese settings people will inevitably bring up? All heavily based of the Shinto belief and various Japanese myth and story, themselves also usually tied to Shinto and Buddhist belief.88chaz88 said:
Jesus story parallels that of Baldur from Norse mythology. Christmas is a pagan holiday. Die Hard was based on a book. Nothing is original!
So with all that said whether something is entirely original or not doesn't particularly matter, it's how well its done and whether it can make itself stand apart from the crowd that matters, and Terry Pratchetts Discwold does that amazingly well.
Oh, don't get me wrong. I understand that it's a deliberate effect and I've read a good number of fantasy books that handle magic in a similar manner. Magic in ASoIaF is mysterious, unearthly, and exotic. But it certainly isn't subtle. Magic is absolutely everywhere in his setting, and all I was saying is that his use of it can't really be called subtle.dragon_tail said:
This one.
Everything about it that seems obvious turns out to be false. And then, once you've learned more about it, you find out that the original idea is often true in a poetic sense.
For example, and this is just one example among several I've found:
And no matter how well you think you understand any part of it, there never seems to be any end to how deep you can dig.
There are places where the laws of physics are more foreign than in fiction's parallel dimensions, creatures more bizarre than the most unusual aliens, and landscapes so improbable that they would be written off as impossible if seen in film.
It's just awesome. Boom de yada.
Everything about it that seems obvious turns out to be false. And then, once you've learned more about it, you find out that the original idea is often true in a poetic sense.
For example, and this is just one example among several I've found:
They used to think that volcanoes were fueled by a mixture of fire or hot rocks with either wind or water, formed within passages deep inside the earth. As kids we learned that it's "just" the melted rock that fills the earth's interior. Later, we're told that the reality is a bit more complex: liquid rock is actually very rare inside the earth, and only occurs at specific places. One of the places it occurs is where water and gasses entrapped in the chemical bonds of certain minerals lower the melting point and cause the rock to melt and migrate towards the surface in tiny capillaries between mineral grains. So, it really is the mixture of fire, water, earth and air, but not in the way the classical thinkers believed.
And no matter how well you think you understand any part of it, there never seems to be any end to how deep you can dig.
There are places where the laws of physics are more foreign than in fiction's parallel dimensions, creatures more bizarre than the most unusual aliens, and landscapes so improbable that they would be written off as impossible if seen in film.
It's just awesome. Boom de yada.
I get that it hardly uses anything that's truly original, but I love the 'A song of Fire and Ice' universe, especially the dynamics of the militairy forces there, and how they form an unsteady balance.
Otherwise I'd have to go for the 'Full metal alchemist' universe, (talking about the manga and the second anime). The way they try to explain alchemy and the effect they have it let on their universe is really interresting and you've got to give creativity points for every single character in the series.
Otherwise I'd have to go for the 'Full metal alchemist' universe, (talking about the manga and the second anime). The way they try to explain alchemy and the effect they have it let on their universe is really interresting and you've got to give creativity points for every single character in the series.
1- They decided to use John Stuart for the cartoon series so as to have a more diverse cast.Eddie the head said:
2- You're probably more used to seeing Hal Jordan (The white dude with a mask) he's the most well known GL, and actually does pop up in the series (along with some of the other human ones) from time to time.
3- Issues just get misunderstood by people looking for trouble/ arguments. I like it when stuff isn't an issue!
:^)
No what I meant for 3 was. They went back to the old west. Yet no one appears to be raciest. At all, no one said a thing about it.LordJedi86 said:
Haha!!! I hadn't noticed that at all! Now that you mention it, that is odd!Eddie the head said: