What is the single best science fiction or fantasy franchise?

[overgeeked]

Co-signed on all of that.


That's not his first Elric story. I've seen this issue crop up before. Did you start with the in-world chronological order? f so, that's your issue. Moorcock went back years later and filled in all kinds of boring and slow backstory for Elric. The original stories, starting in publication order, have much more of that Howardian pulp pacing and punchiness.

Elric of Melniboné - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Oh, wow. So I'm digging around and trying to find where to start with the character...publishers really love to reuse the names of these stories. Elric of Melnibone is the name of the character, the name of a novel, the name of a separate collection of shorts...and the first novel EoM is sometimes published under the title of the first Elric story (Dreaming City). Damn. They really don't want people reading this guy's stuff unless they're already super fans. Luckily I have Weird of the White Wolf which has the first two shorts, despite being the "third" book in the series. What an absolute disaster.

 

[Mannahnin]

Oh, wow. So I'm digging around and trying to find where to start with the character...publishers really love to reuse the names of these stories. Elric of Melnibone is the name of the character, the name of a novel, the name of a separate collection of shorts...and the first novel EoM is sometimes published under the title of the first Elric story (Dreaming City). Damn. They really don't want people reading this guy's stuff unless they're already super fans. Luckily I have Weird of the White Wolf which has the first two shorts, despite being the "third" book in the series. What an absolute disaster.

Yeah, the publishers really didn't give a damn. "Pulp" literature was supposed to be cheap and profitable, not organized or coherent. The "novelettes" and "novellas" mentioned above are the best of the stories. Pretty much all the stuff Moorcock wrote between '61 and '64.

 

[Gradine]

I think there's definitely a gulf between what I would consider the best and what I would consider my favorite. My favorite was, is, and will always be Star Wars, but both old and new canons are objectively filled with duds (even if we disagree on what those duds are).

Best? Honestly? Final Fantasy

 

[Zardnaar]

I think there's definitely a gulf between what I would consider the best and what I would consider my favorite. My favorite was, is, and will always be Star Wars, but both old and new canons are objectively filled with duds (even if we disagree on what those duds are).

Best? Honestly? Final Fantasy

There's also how prominent it is.
. Eg with Star Wars in the 90s if you didn't deep dive into the comics and books you have the OT, maybe the Thrawn trilogy and perhaps various videogames. Most of that was great and the worst of it was more average.

And the 00's quality games were kept up.

 

[Divine2021]

Fritz Lieber's last two Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser collections were bad and then awful and they couldn't get published for the first time today except by sketchy outfits doing so to outrage people for political points. And I say that as someone who thinks the first three collections in particular are works of staggering greatness that every fantasy fan, and every D&D fan especially, should read.

In contrast, even the weakest links of Pratchett's Discworld content, from when he first started and when Alzheimer's was stealing his ability to create interesting, layered stories, are at worst, B-grade novels. Pratchett effortlessly runs rings around nearly every other fantasy author, before or since.

It was a joke. As indicated by the emoticon. You wrote all those words in response to a clearly demarcated joke.

 

[Mannahnin]

It was a joke. As indicated by the emoticon. You wrote all those words in response to a clearly demarcated joke.

Huh?

 

[Divine2021]

Huh?

I made an obvious joke about Discworld being indebted to Fritz Lieber’s Lankhmar, something that even Prachett admitted in both The Colour of Magic and in the name of the city Ankh-Morpork itself. What I got in response was this weird defensive aggression to defend the brilliance of Terry Prachett, a type of anger you seem to only get on forums that have anything to do with nerdy pursuits. Comes with the territory, I guess.

Also, Prachett’s later works, because of him sadly slowly losing himself to Alzheimer’s, are terrible.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I made an obvious joke about Discworld being indebted to Fritz Lieber’s Lankhmar, something that even Prachett admitted in both The Colour of Magic and in the name of the city Ankh-Morpork itself. What I got in response was this weird defensive aggression to defend the brilliance of Terry Prachett, a type of anger you seem to only get on forums that have anything to do with nerdy pursuits. Comes with the territory, I guess.

Also, Prachett’s later works, because of him sadly slowly losing himself to Alzheimer’s, are terrible.

No one's being weirdly defensive but you.

 

[Parmandur]

I made an obvious joke about Discworld being indebted to Fritz Lieber’s Lankhmar, something that even Prachett admitted in both The Colour of Magic and in the name of the city Ankh-Morpork itself. What I got in response was this weird defensive aggression to defend the brilliance of Terry Prachett, a type of anger you seem to only get on forums that have anything to do with nerdy pursuits. Comes with the territory, I guess.

Also, Prachett’s later works, because of him sadly slowly losing himself to Alzheimer’s, are terrible.

Jokes are not necessarily obvious to other people as one may imagine.

 

[Tonguez]

.
Also, Prachett’s later works, because of him sadly slowly losing himself to Alzheimer’s, are terrible.

I wouldn’t call Shepherds Crown, Unseen Academicals or Going Postal Terrible by a long shot. I enjoyed them immensely