#dragon masters

[simon-roy]

The idea of logging on a colonized alien planet brings my mind back to the planet Lalonde from Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn books - a world that had very hard wood as its only meaningful export, and was also stuck developing its economy from agriculturalism (due to investment shortages, though).

All this is to say - Hey! What are some foundational inspirations for your sci fi verse? You gotta have some like recommendations of classic or older sci-fi for us, right? What are some of your suggestions of books and authors to read?

OK SO - My sci-fi tastes have sort of ended up in some very specific niches. Growing up, I was a Larry Niven +Jerry Pournelle man, in part because my dad amassed a huge collection of their books - then gave 90% of them away before i was old enough to read them. So one of my teenage missions was rebuilding that library, trash and all!

Stuff like Footfall, Ringworld, Gil "The Arm" Hamilton, Protector (yes i attempted to name a comic series similarly, and paid for it) "The Mote in God's Eye"... you name it, I read fuckloads of these books. And while they tend to land on a sort of human chauvinist "mankind will win based on his inherent adaptive human-ness, and the aliens will fail because of their rigid alien-ness", this shit was very foundational to me.

Their more collaborative series, The Man-Kzin Wars and War World, also loom large in my teenage mind. The Man-Kzin wars are super fun - humans meet a race of tiger-men, and go from being NWO peaceniks to roughneck cat-skinners in a generation! PEACE AND LOVE WONT DEFEAT TIGER MEN!

Similarly, war world (like lots of that 70s/80s military sci fi) was a sort of catch-all for western military nerds to play with their favorite factions - it was a planet where all the un-ruleable ethnic groups and nationalities had been deported by the authoritarian earth government, and left to rot... until a race of genetically engineered fascist super men land on the world, and start trying to rule the place. Pretty fun shit.

As I got older, I turned hard into William Gibson, and read the absolute shit out of both the Neuromancer trilogy and the Bridge trilogy, as well as his short stories. Bruce Sterling was part of that wave for me, too, and I religiously sought his old paperbacks out too. In terms of novels, "Distraction" is my favorite coherent Sterling Novel - though the short stories in the "Schismatrix" novel/collection of his remain my absolute favorite space opera pieces.

At this age, too, I found my top-top fave Sterling Stories - "Taklaman" and "Bicycle Repairman", both gritty pseudo-cyberpunk stories of the highest degree, in this collection:

This thousand-plus page collection of short stories and novellas was basically my bible for a few years - i put sticky notes on each story i loved and meant to return to, until the book was so festooned with sticky note bookmarks i abandoned the practice altogether. If you have the chance, just buy this book and chew on it for a few years.

As i got into my 20s, Charles Stross became my lode star - his books like Accelerando and Glasshouse were total game changers for me. They come with their own peculiarities, but I loved his transhuman/posthuman musings (or at least i was obsessed with his stuff for a good few years - the venn diagram of his obvious interests and my own overlapped enough that his books were great fodder for a growing sci-fi loving brain).

But since then, my main literary squeeze has been the great man, JACK VANCE. Working on Prophet, my friend @cmkosemen made a remark about how much the early issues of the series reminded him of a book series called "Planet of Adventure" or "the Tschai Cycle", by Jack Vance. The book has a beautifully simple setup - a man from an entirely undescribed spacefaring human civilization crash-lands onto a weird planet. But on that planet, he finds four separate civilizations, each who possess a population of enslaved humans, culturally and physically molded to the needs of their masters. And each book of this series covers our generic hero's interactions with each bizarre expoitative culture. I was extremely intrigued.

Soon thereafter, I found my current absolute favorite book - "THE DRAGON MASTERS". A book about an isolated medieval world... which gets visited, once every few generations, by a black pyramid starship, flown by a reptilian race known as the Greph. The greph capture humans to (surprise surprise) breed them into hyper specific slaves... who in turn become Greph-like in their thinking and demeanours. But the last time the BLACK PYRAMID landed, a bunch of angry medieval dudes stormed the thing, blew it up, and captured a bunch of greph... who became the breeding stock for a whole new human world of slave labour. By the time we meet this planet, the two rival lords of the human-populated regions have been breeding greph slave warriors, or "dragons", for generations, for combat against one another. But soon, the black pyramid will return...

I love this book I even spent a good few months during covid talking with the Vance Estate and several publishers about developing it into a graphic novel, but nobody could quite agree on how it could get made with old Simon getting a paycheque... so sadly it fell apart. There are concept drawings floating around my patreon and other corners of the internet. But one day I'll use 'em...

My other favorite books of his, to name a couple of the MANY books of his I love:

THE BLUE WORLD: A caste system of humans, descended from a crashed prison ship, live on floating settlements on an ocean planet, paying protection to a giant long-lived intelligent crustacean. But one man is tired of giving up all his crops to this tyrannical megafauna...

THE MIRACLE WORKERS: Rival lords on a planet descended to medieval tech (surprise surprise) fight using armies... and rival SORCERORS who employ the powers of suggestion to voodoo each others' warriors... but when facing non-human intelligences, these sorceror's skills fall short.

But there are heaps more, and I love most (thought not all) of the ones i've read. They're generally short, concise, and full of all sorts of bizarre bullshit.

THere are more books i've read and enjoyed in my life, of course, but these are the core ones that I think of when I think of my career as a sci-fi reader... let me know what your top recs are!

[scbingham]

Dark Dragon's Den

Inspired by one of my favorite childhood Lego themes, the Dragon Masters sets from the 90's. This is available as a print on my Ko-Fi!

[ammoniteapplemuncher]

Just watch the video. You know what it is.

[dasparkmaneyt]

My Series ‘Elemental Masters’ will soon be released here on Tumblr, here’s some incorrect quotes for ya

Shadow pouncer: we’ve lost them!

Swift Swipe: I’ve got this

Swift Swipe: DAWN ISNT SMART ENOUGH TO BE THE ELEMENTAL MASTER!

Dusk: [Bursting out of the forest in flames] BITCH

Amber: [poking her head out of a hole] WHAT

Jasper: [also in said hole] THE

Char: [also poking her head out of the hole] FUCK

Flint: [who wasn’t in that hole but in a different hole] DID

Wolf: [ready to defend his girlfriend] YOU SAY ABOUT MY GIRL?!

Dawn: [walking out of a cave holding a bag of nuts] hey did you know nuts may contain nuts?

Swift Swipe: I appear to be correct

Viper: the moon looks nice tonight

Dusk: not as good as you

Viper: [intensely blushing]

{outside}

Amber: should we tell them that’s a tortilla you just threw at the window?

Dawn: nah

Dusk: here’s all the possible places Dawn could’ve gone

Queen Blaze: this is the whole continent

Jasper: we have no clue where she is

[Blister being knocked out on complete accident]

Burn: we gotta hide the body!

Viper: [rolling Blisters body on a carpet] go get the twins to help!

[Dawn and Dusk walking in with Slushes]

Dawn: oh shit

Dusk: [helpful husband roles kick in] I’ll help!

Dawn: I ain’t, I wanna hear the story!

Queen Blaze walking in: what are you doing?

Burn: we’re playing a game!

Queen Blaze: Called?

Dawn: [completely deadpanned] guy in a carpet

Sunset: YOUR HAVING A LITTLE SIBLING!

Dawn: I’m going to the Haven

Hawk: hatching next week

Dusk: VIPER PACK A BAG! WERE GOING TO THE HAVEN FOR A MONTH!

Viper: WHY?! ITS SO COLD THERE!

Dawn: I’m never returning

[the next week]

Sunset: another boy!

Dawn: his name is Smoke

Dusk: why do you get to name it!

Dawn: because I’m now the middle child!

Dusk: AND?! IM THE OLDEST!

Hawk: I like Smoke

Sunset: agreed

[twins yelling at each other as Hawk, Sunset and Smoke all cuddle up]

Sunset: YOUR HAVING A LITTLE SIBLING!

Dawn: I’m going to the Haven

Hawk: hatching next week

Dusk: VIPER PACK A BAG! WERE GOING TO THE HAVEN FOR A MONTH!

Viper: WHY?! ITS SO COLD THERE!

Dawn: I’m never returning

[the next week]

Sunset: another boy!

Dawn: his name is Smoke

Dusk: why do you get to name it!

Dawn: because I’m now the middle child!

Dusk: AND?! IM THE OLDEST!

Hawk: I like Smoke

Sunset: agreed

[twins yelling at each other as Hawk, Sunset and Smoke all cuddled up]

Dawn: [singing horribly] GRAVITY DON'T MEAN TOO MUCH TO ME!!

Wolf: oh my stars-

Wolf: DAWN GET OFF THE CLIFF!

[just-dnd-thingys]

[rollingtablesiguess]

Rolls to Alarm Your Players

Want to spice the game up? Why not try alarming your players for no real reason? Make sure to make a show out of counting the dice before you roll.

[thatonenewdungeonmaster]

[neogohann]

[mintysaurs]

Master Sword

(reupload bc idk how tumblr works)

[sacredrealm64]

I was literally blown away by Tears of the Kingdom. I've literally never had this feeling for a game since Ocarina of Time. It definitely had exceeded my expectations. Easily Game of the Year. I cannot wait for the Future of Zelda!

[obeymybrain]

How to Speak Like a Dungeon Master btw, available as sticker sheets on my etsy :) https://ObeyMyBrain.etsy.com

[ataraxixx]

a family tradition

[theplatypusblue]

buddy, I think you're doing just fine.

(this post is NOT an invitation to start bashing on Wu btw ☝️ he's trying his best I just think his season 9 antics are. kinda funny.)

[kika-ila]

Gave them a little DnD contest ^^;

[literary-claustrophobia]

What people think DnD is like:

What it's actually like:

[critterbitter]

THEY WON!! (They didn’t win first, but they sure won our hearts.)

Look upon them your honor. They’re having the time of their lives.

Elesa’s first taste in stardom! She won third place. Ingo got to the third bracket and then Litwick Ate Shit against a dewott (sorry buddy).

(A bonus emmet, if he were to enter:

Man’s decked fully as a jester with his clown eel.)

Masterpost for more pokemon shenanigans!