I’m a tremendous fan of the works of Terry Pratchett, and if I had to choose one series of his it would be the one he spent half his life writing, Discworld.

I was first recommended Discworld by my primary school librarian, I was a smart, clinically depressed child with a chronic pain condition. Terry made me laugh and laugh and laugh into the wee hours of the night.

His books have been a source of joy and solace for me ever since.

I cried the day he passed from this world.

GNU Terry Pratchett.

I really like ASOIAF but i haven’t really engaged with it in a few years. I’ll return to the fandom when the new series drops.

HUGE fan of Ted Chiang. Still have never seen the film about his short story (Arrival), but the stories are all so amazing. He wrote one story where a device is invented to allow a limited amount of data to be sent from one branch of the multiverse to the other that was created by starting the device. So people turn it on before making big decisions to have a way to text/call themselves in another branch to see how the important choice affected their lives. The exploration of that concept ended up making me cry despite it not being a sad/soppy story. Just astonishingly good.

He also wrote one about a brain implant that causes people to be unable to experience “beauty” of people that has some odd biological essentialism behind it, but it seemed more like just sci-fi explanation than relevant for the story itself. A bit lib in its analysis, but still just a great exploration

Hell yeah, Dune! Overall pretty much agree with your opinion, though I did read the books well before I saw the Lynch film (which I did find enjoyable, even if it was a fuck). Will also add I didn’t care for the increasing horny that Frank put more and more of into the later books, you nasty old man. But I do still like the later books, even if they get super weird. I even kind of liked the Butlerian Jihad series by his son, even if it seems most the fandom hates all the things Brian has wrote.

Love Lord of the Rings as well; sent me on a love of linguistics and constructed languages that I still have. And I think most of the ‘problematic’ elements that people pick out of Tolkien are more a result of people mindlessly copying his world. Orcs = innately evil is I think okay for the world he set up, even if it is a bit lazy, considering they’re a constructed minion race constantly under direct control of evil gods. It really only becomes directly a racist trope in DnD like world, where the orcs are inarguably people, who are only rarely under direct subjugation, and also are often ‘native savage’ coded. (and also Gary Gygax was absolutely racist, with his fukkin “nits make lice” lawful good paladin should kill orc babies bullshit).

There is legitimate criticisms for not having more good female characters, and for being hella horny for monarchy. There some ‘product of his times’ excuses you can make about the ‘female characters’ thing, and there are some badass women in the books, especially the Silmarillion, but would be cool if more. Funnily enough, with all the chud whinging, you can’t directly criticize him for having all white people heroes, since he just very rarely even states their skin color. But of the three houses of man, the house of Hador is stated in an appendix to all be fair skin, and most blond or brown haired, while the house of Beor is described as: “…and many were less fair in skin, some indeed being swarthy.”, and the last house, Haladin, described as like the house of Beor, but shorter. So a full 2/3 of mankind is just vaguely described as ‘diverse skin colors’. Of the elves, nothing is directly stated, other than that they ‘could not easily be distinguished from the Beor’ which would imply that there are some dark skinned elves.