# Authors who started out brilliant and then turned to custard **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 3, 2009, 10:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-who-started-out-brilliant-and-then-turned-to-custard/501797 "2009-07-03T10:58:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2009, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-who-started-out-brilliant-and-then-turned-to-custard/501797/41 "2009-07-04T06:44:40Z")
> [@](#): > > i’m not sure where to draw the line with Turtledove, but there was a definite problem when he got into “yet another book on X” territory. Here’s Turtledove’s recent bibliography: 2009 Give Me Back My Legions! The Golden Shrine Hitler’s War Liberating Atlantis 2008 After the Downfall The Breath of God The Man with the Iron Heart The United States of Atlantis The Valley-Westside War 2007 The Gladiator In At the Death Opening Atlantis 2006 The Disunited States of America Fort Pillow The Grapple 2005 Drive to the East End of the Beginning Every Inch a King In High Places Keep in mind that each of these is a full novel. He’s averaging a complete book every 96 days. ---
**Author:** ![DWMarch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dwmarch/32/1010_2.png) [@DWMarch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DWMarch)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2009, 8:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-who-started-out-brilliant-and-then-turned-to-custard/501797/42 "2009-07-04T08:33:35Z")
I almost want to argue that Tom Clancy wasn’t all that good to begin with. His first books were collaborations with Larry Bond (who is an accomplished techno-thriller writer in his own right) and it seems clear that Bond did a lot of the heavy lifting, particularly in Red Storm Rising. As the series goes on, the stories just get stranger and stranger. Spoilers for the Clancyverse, which I am not going to code since the books are legitimately old now. Patriot Games: Jack Ryan comes to the rescue of Charles and Diana and fights off vicious IRA terrorists who manage to outwit the Secret Service. The Cardinal of the Kremlin: in a truly byzantine plot, Jack Ryan manages to talk the head of the KGB into defecting. There’s also a plot with a Russian agent who has a breakdown because she is a lesbian and can’t keep herself together around a nerdy guy’s hot wife. Clear and Present Danger: America is going to win the drug war by kicking ass! This was probably Clancy’s best solo effort but it is also a very odd fantasy about how the drug war should be fought: fighter jets shooting down drug planes and commandos killing Columbian drug peons. The Sum of All Fears: Clancy drops all pretense of reality so we can have a brink of WWIII plot. Palestinian terrorists find and rebuild a nuke, a Russian sub captain tracks and destroys a boomer, a “Peace Bowl” at the Vatican solves the Palestinian issue by having the Swiss Guards provide security and the nuke goes off at the SuperBowl in a massive blast of contrivance that convinces the US that it was a huge Russian nuke so that the President can go nuts overreacting. Without Remorse: A Navy SEAL goes on a revenge fantasy mission after drug dealers kill the redeemed prostitute he was falling in love with. He also single-handedly invades Vietnam and captures an important Russian while killing the evil Viet Cong who was torturing American soldiers. Let us not forget a corrupt cop who somehow happens to be everywhere at once and a brilliantly-staged fake death that allows John Kelly to become the nefarious Mr. Clark. Debt of Honor: well, since Russia decided to make peace and stop being an Evil Empire, it would seem we need a new enemy. Who has lots of money and technology? Japan! That’s right, let’s not forget who was running an evil empire before it was cool! And they’re going to torpedo both the financial markets and the remaining two aircraft carriers in the Pacific at the same time because there’s nothing the Japs (Tom Clancy’s term, not mine!) love more than fucking Americans! And they’re so damn serious about kicking America’s ass that they’re going to build themselves some nukes too! But fear not, America can recover from the financial crisis by pretending it never happened! The nukes are easily found and destroyed and the aircraft carriers are repaired in time for a big battle scene near the end. This novel is mostly remembered for the prescient scene of an airliner slamming into a building at high speed in a suicide attack. Other than that, it’s pure political fantasy. Executive Orders: what if we had a president who didn’t have a congress, senate, supreme court or anything else to answer to? If DoH was political fantasy, this is political fantasy on speed and coke and a dozen Red Bulls. Iran and Iraq combine to form one huge Islamic Republic and they start crusading across the deserts of Saudi Arabia after attacking America with the ebola virus. However, two brave brigades stand in the way of the UIR’s impressive army and they prevail through luck, pluck and superior technology in addition to their in-depth knowledge of the Civil War. The bad guy is killed on live TV courtesy of the Ryan Doctrine. Rainbow Six: enviro-terrorists weaponize ebola even further and plan to release it at the Olympics but the brave multinational Rainbow team defeats them! The Bear and the Dragon: the dirty little Communist Klingon child-molesting baby killing godless heathen Chink cocksuckers (all terms used repeatedly in the book) sometimes known as the Chinese have decided to invade Siberia for massive oil and gold reserves. America defeats them in three shots- an artillery barrage, an airstrike and the timely use of “magical pigs”. China tries to nuke Washington DC but a single brave Aegis ship (with President Jack Ryan on the bridge no less) shoots the nuke down just in the nick of time. I don’t know if Tom Clancy just had some really bad Chinese food when he wrote this book but not only is it way over the top ridiculous it is also horribly racist, with every single American character busting out a colorful variety of epithets every single time the Chinese are mentioned. Red Rabbit: Tom Clancy wipes his ass and sells the result. Oh, and Jack Ryan, before he was anybody special, personally saves the Pope from assassination. The Teeth of the Tiger: Arab terrorists are back in style post 9-11 (which happened in the Clancyverse but is never contrasted with the even more horrible events such as a nuke going off the heart of an American city) and America has a new super-secret spy agency that can kill terrorists using special pens filled with heart-attack inducing poison. Just in time too because Al Qaida has teamed up with the Colombian Cartel for a double dose of terrorist badassery! So as you can see Tom Clancy didn’t really go from strength to crap. More like his crap gained strength. I should also mention Anne Rice, whose early novels were compelling but whose later efforts just became a showcase for her immortal, unkillable, beloved vampires who were evil but really felt bad about it. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2009, 9:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-who-started-out-brilliant-and-then-turned-to-custard/501797/43 "2009-07-04T09:20:58Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I was at the infamous speech in Kansas City in 1976. He was the honored guest at an sf convention, followed by gangs of fans, almost worshiped. Then he gave his speech and had the entire crowd booing in hatred. I’ve always felt that was the real Heinlein. My google fu is week, can you please elaborate? ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2009, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-who-started-out-brilliant-and-then-turned-to-custard/501797/44 "2009-07-04T13:59:45Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > My google fu is week, can you please elaborate? If you remember the 70s, you weren’t really there. I have to set the stage. People forget that 1976 was what legend has 1967 to be. Far more people were anti-war then, far more people had long hair, far more hated and feared the government. Nixon had resigned in disgrace in 1974, we left Vietnam in disgrace in 1975, the economy was going to hell with the effects from the oil embargo and soaring inflation. Heinlein had famously moved to the most conservative pocket of Colorado and put up an electric fence to keep the Stranger in a Strange Land-reading hippies from bothering him. I don’t remember the specifics of the talk, but in a nutshell he insisted on the glories of war and how that defined who was a man (Starship Troopers without any irony), defended Vietnam, praised Nixon, denounced youth culture, said a lot more on how war was wonderful, and generally sounded like every right-wing talk radio shouter of today. To a young (probably stoned) and decidedly left-wing audience. I have never seen a crowd turn like that. I may very well have some of the details wrong. It all blurs after 30+ years. The gist is correct, though. Later it was all blamed on the lack of blood to the brain. He Didn’t Really Mean It. Yes, He Really Did. I’m Convinced. ---
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2009, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-who-started-out-brilliant-and-then-turned-to-custard/501797/45 "2009-07-04T14:26:59Z")
I would have mentioned many already mentioned. I will add \*Anne McCaffrey \*I don’t doubt that I could add many more if my memory wasn’t so poor… ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2009, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-who-started-out-brilliant-and-then-turned-to-custard/501797/46 "2009-07-04T14:56:03Z")
The 1976 Guest of Honor Speech by Heinlein is published in _Requiem_ by Robert A. Heinlein (edited by Yoji Kondo). You might want to take a look at it, Exapno Mapcase, to see if it’s what you remember it as being. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2009, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-who-started-out-brilliant-and-then-turned-to-custard/501797/47 "2009-07-04T15:32:37Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > (Starship Troopers without any irony) What irony was there in Starship Troopers? It’s a straightforward pro-military book. ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2009, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-who-started-out-brilliant-and-then-turned-to-custard/501797/48 "2009-07-04T15:39:18Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > What irony was there in Starship Troopers? It’s a straightforward pro-military book. Their uniforms were very well pressed. ---
**Author:** ![Estilicon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/848f3c/32.png) [@Estilicon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Estilicon)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2009, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-who-started-out-brilliant-and-then-turned-to-custard/501797/49 "2009-07-04T15:52:42Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Joseph Heller’s first novel was _Catch-22_. Now, when your first novel is a genuine candidate for the Great American Novel you’re probably not going to top that later on. But I never found any of his other books even to be finishable let alone good. Apart from Catch 22 I’ve read [“Picture this”](http://google.mini60.com/) and it’s a great book. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Excellent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f19dbf/32.png) [@Mr.Excellent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Excellent)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2009, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-who-started-out-brilliant-and-then-turned-to-custard/501797/50 "2009-07-04T16:15:02Z")
> [@Number](#): > > Orson Scott Card’s early works were wonderful. _Ender’s Game_ and _Speaker For the Dead_ are classics. His short fiction and lesser-known novels like _A Planet Called Treason_ and _Wyrms_ were bizarrely imaginative. He even branched out into computer games (the creative insults from Monkey Island) and created backstory for the characters in _The Abyss_. > > But sometime in the early-to-mid 90s it all went to crap. _Lost Boys_ was schmaltzy, the Homecoming and Alvin Maker series went downhill, and _Lovelock_ was decidedly subpar. I gave up after being unable to finish _Children of the Mind_ or _Pastwatch_. > > He turned into a raving bigot too, which doesn’t help. All true. I will say, though, that Card still does a respectable job when he deliberately tries to force himself into the mold of his earlier work - the “ender’s shadow” books were enjoyable, though the “Bean must find his zygotes!” subplot was a bit fundie. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2009, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-who-started-out-brilliant-and-then-turned-to-custard/501797/51 "2009-07-04T16:25:23Z")
> [@DWMarch](#): > > I almost want to argue that Tom Clancy wasn’t all that good to begin with. His first books were collaborations with Larry Bond (who is an accomplished techno-thriller writer in his own right) and it seems clear that Bond did a lot of the heavy lifting, particularly in Red Storm Rising. As the series goes on, the stories just get stranger and stranger. Spoilers for the Clancyverse, which I am not going to code since the books are legitimately old now. > > (summaries snipped) How does he type all that stuff one-handed? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2009, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-who-started-out-brilliant-and-then-turned-to-custard/501797/52 "2009-07-04T16:46:54Z")
> [@](#): > > Those are whacked out ideas, yes. (Though I’ve seen weirder in books I’ve enjoyed. Anthony’s Prostho Plus was about interstellar dentistry. ) But I like to think that an author’s entitled to a bizarro premise if he follows through and produces an enjoyable book; and, weird premise aside, I thought Macroscope was decently written and worked pretty well. Maybe in other genres, but to me, science fiction is all about the ideas. Using good writing to present stupid ideas is no better than using high-quality pigments to create an ugly or bland painting. Admittedly, there was an interesting idea or two in the book (the Macroscope itself, particularly in its role as “super-duper pooper scooper”), but they’re completely washed out by all the crazy which he crams between the same covers. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2009, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-who-started-out-brilliant-and-then-turned-to-custard/501797/53 "2009-07-04T17:02:28Z")
> [@DWMarch](#): > > The Teeth of the Tiger: Arab terrorists are back in style post 9-11 (which happened in the Clancyverse but is never contrasted with the even more horrible events such as a nuke going off the heart of an American city) and America has a new super-secret spy agency that can kill terrorists using special pens filled with heart-attack inducing poison. Just in time too because Al Qaida has teamed up with the Colombian Cartel for a double dose of terrorist badassery! Of course it’s just in time - waiting for a terrorist attack in the Clancyverse is like waiting for a Tuesday. ---
**Author:** ![emarkp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3be4f8/32.png) [@emarkp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emarkp)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2009, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-who-started-out-brilliant-and-then-turned-to-custard/501797/54 "2009-07-04T17:12:45Z")
Piers Anthony not only got weaker as a writer generally, he got weaker as his series continued. Take the first 3 books of any series (Xanth and Incarnations spring to mind) and they’re infinitely better than what follows. But then I haven’t read him in about 2 decades, so I could be remembering things better than they were. ---
**Author:** ![Windwalker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/5e9695/32.png) [@Windwalker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Windwalker)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2009, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-who-started-out-brilliant-and-then-turned-to-custard/501797/55 "2009-07-04T17:37:34Z")
> [@DWMarch](#): > > So as you can see Tom Clancy didn’t really go from strength to crap. More like his crap gained strength. You sure have read a shit-ton of books from this guy you hate so much! I read most of them, too (as a teen, I found the majority to be entertaining fantasy masturbations), and that’s a lot of pages… I would still defend Hunt for Red October as a pretty decently-written thriller and Without Remorse as an oddly satisfying tale of serial killing, though. ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2009, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-who-started-out-brilliant-and-then-turned-to-custard/501797/56 "2009-07-04T17:41:06Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > Of course it’s just in time - waiting for a terrorist attack in the Clancyverse is like waiting for a Tuesday. On the other hand, _Teeth of the Tiger_ came out in 2003. When’s the next one coming, already? ---
**Author:** ![WormTheRed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/bbe5ce/32.png) [@WormTheRed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WormTheRed)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2009, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-who-started-out-brilliant-and-then-turned-to-custard/501797/57 "2009-07-04T18:51:01Z")
> [@BrotherCadfael](#): > > On the other hand, _Teeth of the Tiger_ came out in 2003. When’s the next one coming, already? Apparently never. His ex-wife supposedly gets a cut of all future Jack Ryan-novels and it was a pretty nasty divorse. ---
**Author:** ![Idlewild](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/8491ac/32.png) [@Idlewild](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Idlewild)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2009, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-who-started-out-brilliant-and-then-turned-to-custard/501797/58 "2009-07-04T19:05:40Z")
> [@ianzin](#): > > The story goes that sometime in the 80s a journalist asked Heller ‘Are you disappointed that in the 20 or so years since Catch-22 you haven’t published anything as good as that?’ and Heller replies, ‘No, because neither has anyone else’. > > I can understand a lot of people had problems with Heller’s second novel, ‘Something Happened’, because it is _intentionally_ very long-winded. One of the central ‘jokes’ is that the ‘something’ that happens only happens towards the very end of a whole big chunk of book in which nothing much happens at all, but this was Heller’s take on the staleness and emptiness that many people endure on a daily basis. I’m surprised **Exapno** found similar problems with Heller’s third effort, ‘Good as Gold’. It’s much shorter than either C22 or SH, fast-paced and full of good gags that don’t outstay their welcome. It also has a wonderful structure, but I won’t say more so as not to spoil it. > > Sorry for the slight hijack re Heller, but he’s one of my favourite authors. I read ‘Something Happened’ when I was in college, and it just about broke my heart. ---
**Author:** ![DWMarch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dwmarch/32/1010_2.png) [@DWMarch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DWMarch)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2009, 7:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-who-started-out-brilliant-and-then-turned-to-custard/501797/59 "2009-07-05T07:41:17Z")
> [@Windwalker](#): > > You sure have read a shit-ton of books from this guy you hate so much! I read most of them, too (as a teen, I found the majority to be entertaining fantasy masturbations), and that’s a lot of pages… > > I would still defend Hunt for Red October as a pretty decently-written thriller and Without Remorse as an oddly satisfying tale of serial killing, though. I read them all, including the horrible, horrible SSN (unstoppable US submarine kills the entire Chinese navy in the most boring way possible) but it took me watching 15 years of actual history unfolding to realize how far from reality they actually were. Mind you, Tom Clancy has said publicly that he doesn’t much care what anyone thinks of him so long as they’re willing to plunk down hard cash for his books. And if a Tom Clancy book came out tomorrow I’d be first in line to buy it, even if it was a more ridiculous plot than all the previous ones. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2009, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-who-started-out-brilliant-and-then-turned-to-custard/501797/60 "2009-07-05T13:51:52Z")
I’ll throw in **Martin Amis**. Oh, and \*\*Annie Dillard’s \*\*The Living was pretty bad, after much terrific work. Not sure what she’s done since. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-who-started-out-brilliant-and-then-turned-to-custard/501797.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-who-started-out-brilliant-and-then-turned-to-custard/501797.md?page=4)