Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

I'm going to start this a bit earlier than G33z3r used to since will be the first time I've created reading challenges (I found the Create button so that's a good start). I'll get to the BINGO challenge in a little bit, but no fear, I'll be keeping it.

Remember I don't have G33z3r's original images so will take me time to update the icons and stuff so I want to prune the set of challenges. At the same time, don't want to ruin anyone's fun!

Group 1 - There were participants but no books were read, I'm thinking of removing these:
Historian Challenge
Graphic Novel Challenge

Group 2 - There was only one active participant, I'm fine with that, but let's confirm that person (or some other person) wants to continue next year so shout out if you want me to keep it:
Subgenre Focus Challenge
Standalone Challenge

Group 3 - Had some decent participation, I'll keep these going:
Explorer Challenge
Awards Challenge
Female Author Challenge
Short Story Challenge
Series Completist Challenge

Group 4 - suggestions for new challenges? Only post something you think you'd actually participate in, this isn't for tossing random ideas out there that in the end no one joins up for :)

I fell down on the job with pretty much all my challenges this year and just ended up reading whatever the library would give me. So not sure I’ll be any help. Lol

I've read two books and a short story for the Historian challenge and was planning to finish it during Christmas break. I'm not sure why my participation isn't showing up. I just checked, and my books are listed. I like the challenge, but I understand if others aren't interested.

Having said that, I'm behind on all my challenges this year. I've been reading, but I haven't marked all of them as complete. I'm definitely working on bingo and Historian and was planning on hitting the sub-genre challenge during my school's break. I work at two different schools, and we've been so understaffed at one of my jobs for most of the semester that I've been scheduled a lot more than usual, and it's cut down on my reading time. They've hired someone new, but my hours won't reduce for three or four weeks. It's just been a lot of pressure.

Whatever challenges you want to do next year is fine with me. I do like Historian and Sub-Genre, but if others don't want it, I understand. And of course, I love Bingo.

Next semester should be more normal. I will have to give new challenges a thought. At present, I can't think of anything.

EDIT: for the Historian Challenge, I renamed last year's tag and used that. Maybe that has something to do with it?

I was a bit confused by what the stats were showing. I now see your Historian progress.

But if you open the Graphic Novel one, I'm very confused :) So under the icon it says 1 person participating but I see two people registered. The overall progress says 41 out for 44 books read, but neither participant made any progress and they only committed to a total of 15 books, not 44. And there's an average goal of 14 which is nearly the total of both, which is not how I usually calculate averages :o)

I figured the overall stats might be showing people who have since left Goodreads so their accounts are gone but their recorded readings are still there? So I basically tried to guess participation based on the "Community" section. Seems that didn't work quite right either :)

Well, let's see how many requests there are for new challenges, if there aren't any I could just recreate the ones we have.

Seems there haven't been any requests for the addition of new challenges, so I'll just go ahead and recreate this set then. Let me see if I can find some handy icons or can just quickly craft something together

There, the icons are maybe a bit boring but at least I can easily change colours and text :)

I took the Female Author one and turned it into a Minority Author one so you can set a challenge to read authors by different races, religions, sexuality, gender, disability, or anything else you can think of. You can challenge yourself to only one sub group or span as many as you can

Here they all are, I'll tag them to the main page near the end of the month - https://www.goodreads.com/challenges/...

I was also able to salvage G33z3r's BINGO card and was able to change its colour, only the title was a little tricky to tweak, so I'll start asking for suggestions of new slots tomorrow.

Alright, here is this year's BINGO card


I'm thinking of keeping the following:

Alternate form
Anthology
Award Winner
New-To-You Author
Published before ??? (I'll pick some date)
Published in 2022


And of course keeping the center square that we at some point turned from free meaning "anything you like" to "a book that was free" which is more fun, like borrowed from a library, found online, a gift, etc.


And here are some suggestions we've had other years, as well as topics chosen before but we can reuse. Feel free to suggest new ones or variations on existing ones:

Genres:

High Fantasy
Hard Sci-Fi
Speculative
Space Opera
Epic Fantasy
Young Adult
Middle Grade
Urban Fantasy
Humour
Romance
Mystery
Apocalyptic / Dystopian
Optimistic / Utopian
Non-fiction SFF
Fantasy of Manners


Authors:

Female Author
Male Author
LGBTQ Author
Author of Color
By a favorite author
Indigenous
With a disability
Non-English author (kind of same as "Translated")


Features:

Female/Male/etc protagonist
Non-human protagonist
Some kind of fantasy creature (dragon, unicorn, demon, god)
Features some SF creature (alien, AI)
Features some kind of job (librarian, doctor, ruler)
Immortality
Time Travel
Parallel/Portal Worlds
Alternate Timelines
Non-Western Country or Culture
Set in a real, non-English-speaking country
Military SF
Near Future
Social SF
Religion
Mythology
Fairy tale / folklore
Colony
School
Lost civilization
Generation ship
Features a character with wings/tail/other unusual feature
Tech/Magic run amok
Bio/Nano-tech
Talking animals
Virtual Reality
A holiday (Christmas, Halloween, something specific to the world)


"Punks":

Steampunk/Gaslight
Cyberpunk
Silkpunk
Solarpunk / Clifi
Biopunk
Decopunk
Atompunk
Dieselpunk
Gunpowder/Flintlock Fantasy (not really punk but goes with the rest)


"Metadata":

Number of pages
Short story/novella/novelette
Beautiful cover
Cover that is -some colour-
Debut novel
Standalone novel
Last book in a series
Omnibus
SF/F Translated from other than English
Made into a TV show or movie
Media Tie-in
Shared World (multi-author series)
Pre-20th Century SF/F
SF/F Graphic Novel
Complete a duology/trilogy
E-book / Audiobook
A special letter or word in the book title
Published in a certain month of the year

How about book by an indie author?☺☺ ( doesn't have to be me) LOL

I'm surprised that's not on the list, I even read through all the old BINGO cards and suggestions to try to catch them all, there were a few good ones that got lost along the way. By sort of grouping them hope I'll keep track of them better going forward.

I only managed three squares of the bingo, but I like the challenge and plan to try again in. I think translated, pre-20th century, indigenous, time Travel and fantasy of manners sound fun

I'm still working on this year's challenge, but bingo is one of my favorites, and I'm excited to see a 2022's card!

I agree with the ones you want to keep. I also like the indie author idea.

I'd love to see Epic or High Fantasy again. Pre-20th century would be a good one. I noticed character with wings, tail, etc. That sounds pretty interesting. Involving telepathy/psychic abilities might be a good one, too.

I'll leave this up another week then put the card together next weekend, I've got enough ideas already I think but just in case anyone wants to give more support for a particular option I can still be swayed.

Alright, took inspiration from your requests and glanced through my ~200 book to-read pile for next year and picked out what I hope will be some interesting challenges but at the same time not too hard. Pulled in a few from previous years, and a few that weren't even on the list

As usual, in the end you are free to interpret the squares as you see fit, but feel free to pick my brain as to what I had in mind if any seem unclear. I'm particularly fond of my station/inn one as it works so well for both SF and F and is a relatively common theme, a place where people gather either for safety or where mayhem will ensue (there's always a thief or two hiding in the dark corners)

I'm guessing I'm not the only one who is unsure about this - but what is "silkpunk"? Is it just another name for "gaslight"?

Tony wrote: "I'm guessing I'm not the only one who is unsure about this - but what is "silkpunk"? Is it just another name for "gaslight"?"

This is what I found for silkpunk. It looks like it is sci-fi/fantasy with a tech element that is inspired by an Asian aesthetic.

https://bookriot.com/what-is-silkpunk/

https://twitter.com/fondajlee/status/...

It looks like The Tea Master and the Detective might count, and I'm intrigued by that book. I might do that.

Andrea wrote: "Alright, took inspiration from your requests and glanced through my ~200 book to-read pile for next year and picked out what I hope will be some interesting challenges but at the same time not too ..."

Awesome card! My creative juices are flowing. I might like some good ideas for prequel if anyone has any. I feel like I've probably read the obvious ones.

Thank you, Tony, for asking my question ;)

I actually had some suggestions but I never got around to posting them - teach me for being slack :) I was going to suggest Reread and Space Opera - but they can wait for 2023.

I'm actually switching one of them up, we did Near Future just recently, but I want to change it to Distant Future, if anyone objects let me know and I won't change it since I already posted the card but thought with a few people probably reading Dune, or anyone wanting to read some classics like Dying Earth or New Sun that might be a fun one.

Space Opera would have been good for me this year I would have picked that for sure, in fact Reread works really well for me too LOL Ah well, there's always next year. And if there are still some last minute suggestions I'll add them to our master list so we'll have them for next year

And yes where steampunk is Victorian, Silkpunk is more Silk Road:

"Silkpunk" is a term coined by the brilliant Ken Liu to describe a blend of sci-fi and fantasy inspired not by Victorian-era steam-powered technology ("steampunk") but by East Asian antiquity. It does NOT apply to every SFF story inspired by Asian history or culture

Found one Goodreads list for suggestions - https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...

In the process of researching, I found a bunch more "punks" like diesel/solar/atompunk...but I think beyond Cyber/Steam/Silk (the last becoming more popular, not necessarily due to Asian authors but just from wanting to find new cultures to write about) it might be very hard to find books that match the categories. Maybe if we need an "extra hard" slot one year :D

Steampunk, dieselpunk and atompunk form a loose timeline, with dieselpunk following on from steampunk (which should end at WW1) and going through to WW2. After that it should be atompunk. Neither term has gained the general public awareness that steampunk has, although there have been some movies which are clearly dieselpunk without having had that label attached - such as The Rocketeer and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

I love all the punks. The atompunk aesthetic is awesome, and I love the movies/books that have grown out of it. Another I'm intrigued by is decopunk. I might do a side "punk" challenge and see how many I can read next year.

Wonderful bingo, I love the categories! I'll join you!