Are there any good books with a focus on mechs?

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>>10934769
Maybe

>>10934769

Asimov wrote a lot of fiction about mechs.

Cordwrainer Smith wrote a short story about three super robots attacking a planet of furries. It even has a harem ending.
He also wrote a very sad story about a future nazi killer robot - with a harem ending and one about how a Kamen Rider got a job and got married.

Full Metal Panic is a pretty good series

>>10934769
so that mech is apparently from Phantom Crash(own the S.L.A.I. version of that game), what would be some other mecha media to feature a similar aesthetic?(only other ones off the top of my head are Macshincen Krieger and Hawken)

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>>10934962
Junk Tank Rock?
Some of it is very Yokoyama-esque, so much that JTR stuff sometimes pops up in Maschinen Krieger threads

>>10934769
Warstrider series

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>>10934769
Quality varies but there's something like 150 or so books so they aren't all going to be good. the writing is never any worse than, say, Gundam during one of its lows, but is usually much better.

>>10935301
>B2
That design is Battletech as fuck. Wow.

>>10934815
could you be more specific?

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>>10934769

>Going to write that mecha novel I've been meaning to write someday
>Someday...

>>10938338

Literature (I use that term lightly) is the worst medium to try and do mecha in.

It's hard enough in Japan, let alone the west, which is where I'm assuming you live.

The best you might do is write "official fanfiction" for Battletech.

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>>10938338
I know that feel.

Why aren't mechs popular anymore?

>>10938350
Not that anon, but I've been working on a mecha novel myself, but I'm reluctant to ever talk about it here because it's less a mecha novel and more a character drama between people who work at a company that happens to use robots. Every /m/ OC thread is full of grim mercenaries doing grim mercenary work in a grim dystopian mercenary postapocalypse and while there's interesting concepts in some of them, few have any real unifying theme or anything that'd allow them to carry that concept for a few hundred pages; they're mostly justifications for the battles that follow. I'd say the biggest problem with mecha literature is the priority of most of the people who try their hand at writing it, who typically want robot fights and consider things like characterization and worldbuilding a means to that end at most. No one wants to read a book for the descriptions of fight scenes.

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>>10938370

>Have notebook after notebook full of worldbuilding I've been working on for the past two years
>Terrified to share it with anyone, even online, for fear of something being stolen and used by someone else

I know I'll probably never put any of these ideas to use, but fuck if I'll let someone else use them in my place.

>>10938370
I think it's a logical thing for /m/ to actually want the robots in a mecha setting.
I'm definitely not saying world building is bad, far from it, but it should be used to make the mecha brawls all the more gripping like good universal century stuff.
Pure character drama and "wow look at this cool thing you'll never get to see in action" is way more sci-fi.

>>10934815
>Asimov wrote a lot of fiction about mechs.

By "a lot of fiction" do you mean "the second Foundation book and nothing else"? Because Asimov did not write a lot about mechs. Asimov wrote a lot about robots.

>>10938405
It's understandable that we'd want it. It's entirely different to write several pages of "and then he shot at him some more and the bullets hit his armor" and think that you're using the medium properly.

>>10934769
Have a rather good short story.

http://ttapress.com/LittleLostRobot.pdf

>>10938370
>Every /m/ OC thread is full of grim mercenaries doing grim mercenary work in a grim dystopian mercenary postapocalypse

That's because it's the setting with the most possibilities.

No military superiors to tell your character what to do, no overarching societal organizations to keep your characters in check, etc.

>>10938784
>2014
>still being sizeist

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>>10938370
>Not that anon, but I've been working on a mecha novel myself, but I'm reluctant to ever talk about it here because it's less a mecha novel and more a character drama between people who work at a company that happens to use robots.

>>10940069

Any setting you come up with yourself has as much, if not more possibilities for your character - not just dystopias, because it's designed around your character or vice versa. Having supervisors or societal rules restricts your character, but only based on what you design them to restrict. While your character is more restricted, you, the author aren't, and are free to design those supervisors and societies as you please.

You have the freedom your character doesn't.

>>10938784
There were mechs in Foundation at all? Fuck, I completely missed that. Didn't the first book have something completely bizarre like oil-powered spaceships as well?

>>10940069
I know that when I look for a compelling read, I look for one written by someone who thinks that things that give a narrative structure and purpose are for chumps and that "get paid" is an adequate character motivation.

Restrictions are supposed to breed creativity.

>>10940209
You ever read the Gray Death trilogy?

bump for mech books

>>10935301

>Those covers
>Not the modern grimderp one's

I'd pay so much to possess those books.

>>10935301
>Test of Vengeance

Is that a Zaku?

>>10942685

It's an oversized custom Scopedog, actually.

>>10942389
.... Exactly how much would you be willing to pay? I have every Battletech novel with its original cover. Actually I don't think i could sell them, they are too sexy.

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>>10942389
I want the German novel covers, they are great.

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I just remembered this.

It's kind of a noir detective parody with elements of sci-fi and 60s beach party movies.

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Come for the firepower.
Stay for the feels.

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>>10942687
That's pretty much one of the main reasons I like using it in the MW games.

>>10943359

I still find the Bolo's hilariously ridiculous.

>The Mark XV/R was able to engage starships in low to medium orbit. Depending on the era and enemy capabilities, a single Bolo was often considered the equivalent of a manned armoured assault brigade or even a full army corps. While each Mark generally opted for a "balanced" approach to offensive and defensive capabilities, there were often specialised variations on the base model, such as heavy siege units, scout units and ECM platforms.

>Prior to the Mark XIV, early Bolo Marks utilised projectile weapons for their main battery: a tank gun firing discarding sabot fin-stabilized long rod penetrator shells or a railgun. As the energy-storage capabilities of successive Bolo designs grew, these projectile weapons were replaced, initially by laser cannons, though these were quickly succeeded by the Hellbore: a plasma cannon derived from a battlecruiser's main battery.

>Hellbore ammunition consists of slivers of highly pressurized frozen deuterium which, when fired, are ignited (by a laser) in a fusion reaction. The resulting bolt is contained and directed using strong magnetic fields in the breech and barrel. The resulting plasma travels at a considerable fraction of light speed and is not affected by planetary gravity. However, since the Hellbore was designed as naval armament for Concordiat warships, modifications had to be made to avoid losing a significant portion of the shot's energy to atmospheric attenuation. To this end, a fraction of a second prior to deuterium detonation, a laser is fired along the path of the bolt to create a momentary vacuum. Later Bolo marks are capable of internally manufacturing Hellbore rounds, using water as a raw material, whereby the deuterium isotope of hydrogen is separated and cooled cryogenically into splinters of frozen hydrogen.

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The Emperor demands you read this.

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>>10934769

Battletech is the best you're going to get, if we're just talking about works in English.

I'm not sure anyone will disagree with me.

>>10938370
But my merc story focuses on the mindset of the professional soldier and how they cope with the distance from their family and putting down primitive cultures without making him turn into an insubordinate bitch

>>10945386

Is the story Vietnam-esque?

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>>10945346

>That pic

Best mechwarrior

>>10948780
>Dat horrid Kodiak
Mechwarrior 4 Kodiak a shit.

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>>10938338
>>10938368
I too know that feel

>>10938376
Write it, anon. Write and don't look back. Start with shorts if you want to practice. Then go for it. If it sucks, use it as chaff to write something awesome. You can do it, anon. Believe and shit.


I have a few suggestions but I'm only going on what I've heard:

>Leviathan
>Starship Troopers series
>Warstrider series
>Armor Wars series

As I'm planning to give these a try sometime, I wouldn't mind any input from anyone who's read these.

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>>10938338
>tfw done worldbuilding
>Done with the plot and character
>stuck in describing mech with words
Fuck, describing a 4-meter tall Modified Fully enclosed Exoskeleton with Mini-CIWS and Pile-bunker for CQC is hard.

>>10949266
Personally I've less problem describing thing and action than going through the "slow part" of the worldbuilding.

I like to believe I have a good plot for a 50years long space opera which tell the birth of the space-force, the start of an eugenic war and the FIRST CONTACT (no less) and yet I'm stuck at introducing the world through the characters' infancy.

>>10949266

Then don't.

Look at books like "Forever Peace" or "Starship Trooper"

The Mechs aren't really that well define visually, just given very basic descriptions (Bipedal, a little hunched over, etc.) that help give the reader a very basic idea of what they look like. The way they're made real however is by giving the reader very detailed information about what the mechs do. That doesn't require a definitive vision of what the mechs look like.

>>10949453
You could introduce the world by having an infodump in some class or type of codex.
>>10949867
Welp that's my flaw. sometimes i wrote detailed shit, but when i'm gone overboard that made me stuck and end up noticing flaws in my writing, this lead to purging the whole fifty pages. working this shit for a damn year and i havent touched 100 pages because of this bad habit of mine.

>>10949906
>an infodump in some class or type of codex.
Don't do this, this is bad advice.

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>>10949909

B-but I love infodumps!

>>10949909
well my bad. I've never touched the space opera subject. I thought it would be more like mass effect with codex and all.
I'm usually subtle on worldbuilding, told through character dialog and stuff.

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>want to start writing a comic about mechs
>basic ideas ironed out
>characters, concepts, overall tone, worldbuilding getting done
>but full stop
>struggle to choose between western style mechs or eastern mecha
>know I'm just procrastinating

>I have low self confidence especially in regards to how stupid I am
>feel that my writing will be stupid then people will know

>failed highschool
>frustration over no job, no friends
>"Anon, we know you're better than this, your brother could do this why can't you?"
I don't like these feels.

>>10938338
>>10938368
>>10938376
>>10945386
>>10949209
>>10949266
>>10949921

Why don't you all just get together, say "Fuck You" to the western world's lack of interest in mech, and form a literary group of mecha writers.

You'd be like the Beat Generation, but for Mechs

>>10949926
>tfw not a westerner
Only in japan mecha genre thrives.
In Other part of asia, the interest is close to nil. Most of novel in here either faggy islamic love stories or OH SO INSPIRING BIOGRAPHY and Pick me up bullshit book.

>>10949926
>Beat Generation
Are you suggesting we have sex with same-gender mechs, snort spice, then start praising Char edition jesus?

>>10949926
If I didn't have so much contempt for every other writer I'd probably actually totally go for this.

>>10949917
>>10949911
A codex would basically be an index at the back of your book. Some books do that but it has the same divisive effect as translator's notes on the reader. Some people will love it, others will want it explained in the book, most won't have the attention span to even look at a book with an appendix of terms.

Having people sit in a room and explain plot materials is pointless though. I'd go with a variation on what >>10949867 said and make the function and limitations of technology evident through the context of their use. Don't just infodump a SRW-style weapon list, show what they are and how they work by having the mech demonstrate their use in combat.

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>>10949906
>>10949909
Thank for the wrongly good advice but I can make interesting infodump, the problem is to have my character live normally in between my masterfully crafted (of course) though-provoking waltz of kinetic mayhem.
You could say the slow-spaced writing.
For example I can not (yet) narrate a scenery like this one.

One of my story start with a poetic description of how a robot traveled 1000 l-y, multiplied its number exponentially, started rebuilding life up to its creators... before seeing their "child" self-destroy powerless and deciding mysteriously to retry another way.

Another one is a suite of [TV]channel{<description>channel{<recursion>}}[/TV] paragraph jumping from real-time news to history news to brainwashing commercial that are cut in a way to force the spectator to not turn off their brain waiting, and finally a interview describing the impossibility of FTL flight (which will totally happen here)

Third one in the same vain is a succession of citation from various source like tv-news, newspaper, tweet, book of citation, all that serve as an exposition.

The fourth one break the fourth wall and also describe future version of today's entertainment (I couldn't find an english word for an "Audio Saga") imagine a audio-only narration which this time somehow manage to reproduce the sounds spatially.

Got a lot of idea like these, but I'm only close to finish one writing project over a dozen.

>>10949921
I would say : start small
Before starting anything longer than 3 pages (font 11) I started writing oneshot/fanfict with One idea in mind and see if I could obtain the expected reaction from reader.

>>10949999
Important question, the story told through third person or first person perpective?

>>10949921

Why don't you have one faction that uses western style mechs, and another faction that uses eastern?

I have a real love of worldbuilding, for some reason i'm just fascinated with charting out different empires on a map and then building each groups' history and interactions. But i have no idea where I'd even start to tell an actual story there. presumably i'd need to pick a protagonist and a story start point... but that's so hard to do.

>>10949999
>I don't need your advice, I can make a bad idea work just fine! I do it all the time!
Always a good thing to hear from fanfiction makers.

>>10950046
Actually its not that hard. You don't follow specific ruleset in creating a story, or if you are not confident. try to imitate someone else writing. Open a novel, open the first page and bam there you go.

>>10950017
I tend to switch from story to story and certainly inside the story too.

I plan to narrate one from an observer, I have some part that are first person, most of the time I use the omniscient narrator

>>10950059
Don't take it bad, I was just joking over how the advice I received was contradicted just after. (I am also not fluent in english)
Also, even if the quality is usually low I've read some pretty cool crossover fanfiction. That's always a good training until you feel what you need to build a coherent/recognizable world.

>>10938368
>Why aren't mechs popular anymore?

Nobody's innovating.

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>>10949926
I'd prefer it if we were the Harlem Renaissance of Mecha, thank you very much.

>>10950134
I-what? So it's like a fable?
>>10950137
No market share.

>>10938368

> Why aren't mecha popular anymore?

Mecha was never popular in the first place, at least in the West, which is where you're presumably aiming at. Hell, it's probably more popular nowadays between Pacific Rim, Transformers, Elysium, Edge of Tomorrow and possibly others I'm forgetting than it's ever been. Which isn't to say it's actually popular, just more so than before. Now's the time to capitalize if ever there was one.

>>10950171
>tfw mecha novel popular in the west
>Suddenly floods of mecha novel adaptation flooded cinema

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>>10950150
> I-what? So it's like a fable?
I'm not sure we understand each other (I'm not fluent in english)
If it's about the narration, no it's not a fable, one is what I call Space Opera, another one is a series of distinct story converging in the same setting, one is told from the perspective of another character who aren't in the heat of the events.

I just have many writing project but if I continue all of them I'll never finish any of them.

>>10950275
Post it then to clear the confusion

>>10950142

So only get notice because we're of a different race of most mecha writers, even if our work is simply average at best?

>>10946445
Sorry for late response, had no internet for a while. No, not really, there might be a jungle world or two but its very clean sci-fi in general.

Their job is pretty much to evict the locals and anything dangerous and then hand the keys over to colonists.

Heres some advice from a /lit/ anon
>world building
Not only a waste of time, but trying to shoehorn in a ton of world building will make your story suffer.
You arent tolkien, you never will be.
Unless you do something stupid like pulling BS new shit out of thin air that will create plotholes in your earlier stuff you be fine with little world building.
Characters, story, and prose first, world building has to be involved AS you do this shit, not something you work on first unless youre a fucking genious

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>>10952540
Characters?
Story?
Worldbuilding?
What is that, my executives never told me that when I was writing children's shows.

>tfw I have an awesome sci fi book idea but am too afraid that I'll fuck it up

>>10952599
We all do

>>10952540
In my opinion, worldbuilding is what separates your book from all the other myriad military sci-fi books on the shelf.

>>10951211

Well, it has to be said, if anyone of us ever got successful, the fact that we're not Japanese would play a big role in any critique that big shot newspapers would do of us.

I'm assuming of course that we're all going to make at least some references and homages to various Japanese mecha

You know I don't believe Mech are "only a japanese thing". Things like "offer and demand" is only marketing bullshit for already existing product.

If a book is good enough that people recommend it, it will create its public.
You just have to avoid the error of saying every two line that this is a niche book meant for a specific brand of Japanese geek.

Not doing 10 explicit references per second to Gundam, Evangelion or that obscure Ecchi-Mecha visual with a harem of girls in tight bodysuit would be a good start.

>>10950281
Sorry, it's written in French, it would require a significant translation.

>>10952540
If you don't aim for greater goal you never progress.
The trick is to not put the bar to high too soon.

>>10952662
He has a point, a setting is only interesting if the characters that live within it are themselves interesting. The best characters can make the blandest settings into amazing stories, the best settings will make terrible stories with poorly written characters.

World building isn't something to be scorned, but your story should never START at world building. You should never be like "I want this story to be about this continent of people who live in trees fighting another continent of space octopuses and there is a neutral continent in the middle with clam people!" You should start your thought process with "I want to write about a character dealing with the loss of a loved one in a time of war." or whatever the hell you think would make a compelling character.

You can build the setting from there, and see how it complements the character. Much better than say, trying to make characters spotlight parts of the setting you think are super interesting. They can easily come off as shallow.

>>10952860
That sucks. i'm curious about your work
>>10952883
I agree, character is the heart of the story. If your character is some klutz who always fuck thing up, make him interesting as possible.
I written mine like that

>>10952883
This guy gets it
>>10952662
Youve got it totally backwards, shit characters and story is what holds back tons of sci fi and fantasy
All those bad genre novelists tried hard to make an interesting world too, but at the end of the day you are writing a novel not an rpg setting. I world build for fun but use it for my /tg/ stuff, not my writing. Even tolkien adapted his settings to the story, theres a reason he made new land for the Hobbit instead of using the Beleriand he had already made up so much detail for. (Although he did accomplish linking the two later on)

>>10952883
>, the best settings will make terrible stories with poorly written characters.
That describes SEED

>>10952860
>You know I don't believe Mech are "only a japanese thing".

Mecha as something other than Electric Negros are a Japanese Only-thing though. Remember that western fiction really hasn't moved past the "artificial worker's revolution"-meme coined with that stage play.