Hmmm… :dubious:
Nope, it´s crap whichever way you look at it; but keep in mind that I read the book when I was twelve, so it may even be worse than I remember it.
Man, talk about “fish in a barrel.”
L. Ron Hubbard: A not-bad writer of pulp fiction, he found religion but lost his talent. Whatthehell, he died rich. But I had to force myself to finish Battlefield Earth, and I think the movie actually did the book justice; the book stank, remarkably, and so did the movie.
George Lucas: A not-bad maker of small, personal films, once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away; today, he stands largely as a living example that once you have a certain amount of money, you can do any damn thing you want, and no one can tell you anything.
John Byrne: Well, I still like his art. On the other hand, both he and Chris Claremont aren’t the writers they used to be. Or something. What the hell happened to these two? When I read the sequel to Willow that Claremont wrote, I was quite sure the man had gone insane, and he seems to have taken Byrne with him…
Stephen King: A writer of excellent horror fiction, once upon a time, he now stands largely as a living example that once you have a certain amount of money, you can do any damn thing you want, and no one can tell you anything.
Robert Jordan: Interestingly enough, I’ve read some of Jordan’s early work, and I don’t think he’s gotten any worse. He’s ALWAYS been a mediocre writer. I think he just realized early how many people were getting really wound up in his Wheel Of Time series, and he’s stretching it out to pay off the mortgage and the kids’ orthodontist bills before he finally has to put paid to it and drift off into obscurity…
David and Leigh Eddings: Well, I liked the Belgariad. It wasn’t bad. It was different. It wasn’t a *Lord Of The Rings * ripoff. Then, when I read the Malloreon, I thought, “Gee, aren’t we just kind of retelling the same basic story, here, with a few new characters and a coupla plot twists?” And then, I read the Sparhawk books, and thought, “Gee, this reads quite a bit like The Malloreon…” …and about then, I discovered *Belgarath The Sorcerer * and Polgara The Sorceress, in which they retell the Belgariad all over again from two other points of view…
…and I thought, “Why am I reading this crap over and over again? Someone fill me in, here…”
Anne Rice: See the entry for David and Leigh Eddings…
I’ll have to agree. I was a big Clancy fan for a long time, but after executive orders, my interest has waned considerably. I hoped Rainbow 6 was a fluke(it wasn’t),struggled through Yellow Sausage Risin…er, The bear and the Dragon and haven’t bothered to read Red Rabbit(despite the fact I got it for free).
See, I like Turtledove, but he is so fucking uneven, in terms of quality. Guns of the South and The Great War series are really good and he’s held the momentum well into the rise of “Southern Nazi-ism”, though I haven’t read the last couple of books. But I started that Darkness series of his and quit before I got ten pages in.
Dan Brown. Good lord, I’m not sure why I’m reading Angels and Demons or Demons and Bikers and Pirates (no, that was probably an S Clay Wilson comic and it was no doubt brilliant) or whatever it’s called because that boy cannot write! Maybe I’m reading it in the vain hope that The DaVinci Code (no, I have paid for neither) sux less. Kids, read Illuminatus and get the conspiracies out of your system with something that only sux a lot rather than creating a planet-sized ball of suckitude.
I will second Michael Crichton. Poorly plotted and all of the characters speak in an identical monotone.
Colleen McCulloch of The Thorn Birds infamy. I know it’s a been a while but some things just stick in your craw.
Sylvia Plath
The entire self-help genre
Justice Antonin Scalia
Gee, all the fantasy titles/authors in this thread and no one has mentioned Terry Brooks?
Created: (Several novels, although the word “created” seems out of place.)
Offense: Never publishing a novel someone else had not already written and published–only written better.
Steven Brust.
Actually my problem with Brust is the ridiculous way the characters talk in his latest books. You just want to beat them so they’ll talk like normal humans.
Are you referring to the, oh shoot, I don’t remember the name of the series. The one that includes “Five Hundred Years Later”. If that’s the one you’re referring to, you DO know, don’t you, that he’s deliberately imitating the tone of Alexander Dumas’s Three Musketeers? I read the first one of that series right after reading Three Musketeers, and I thought he pulled it off surprisingly well. But, man, I was way burnt out on that style of language when I finished that book.
Re Stephen King’s It-Spoilers
I was somewhat let down as well. But It isn’t a spider from space. IIRC The smoke lodge induced vision of the coming of It includes a spaceship only as a symbol that the kids can understand. It isn’t from space, but another dimension. This isn’t a case of Earth 1 and Earth 2 (or even Earth C). It’s home plane cannot be conceived or explained in human terms. It is alien in the sense of coming from an indescribable someplace else and having nothing in common with us. It is also not a spider. Most of the time, It has no physical form at all. But It must feed, and for that it must take on a physical form. It is a predator that laid a trap, waits for victims to get caught, and then devours them. It takes on the form of a spider because that’s the closest human concept to It’s true nature. IIRC When the kids face it in the house on Niebolt street, It escapes down a drain. Before It does ‘Beverley thought she saw a glimpse of the final mask. It was lean and menacing’ The spider isn’t the true face of It, just the last mask hiding behind the clown and all the others.
Re Tic Toc- No Spoilers
I liked it. The possibility of a happy ending is established on the cover “The Deadline Is Dawn”. If Phan can last that long, he’ll live. It isn’t a case of a happy ending coming from nowhere. The other elements of the happy ending are hinted at throughout the book.
Re Douglas Adams No Spoilers
I agree his work declined once he achieved sobriety. So Long and Mostly Harmless are IMHO good books. But the first three were great books.
Maybe he should be forced to write a series of books envisioning an alternate history in which his parents were never born.
Terry Goodkind was mentiond in passing as punishment for someone else, but he definitely deserves his own.
Created: The Sword of Truth Series
Crime: The Sword of Truth Series
The first book wasn’t amazingly bad, though it wasn’t well written. Contained a little too much rape and torture for me, but I figured he was just trying to be gritty. Next book had a little more rape and torture… until he gets to the book that is entirely about a group of evil red leather wearing dominatrix women who’s entire purpose for being is rape and torture. No more than three pages between torture scenes. More explicit than The Passion.
Punishment: I would say rape and torture him, but I honestly think he would enjoy it. This guy has serious issues with women.
I enjoyed the first 2/3 of Tom Gordon. The ending, I thought, was truly horrible. Unfortunately, that seems to be the case with so many of his works… Start off phenomenally good, and wither into absolute idiotic crap. Sometimes it seems to me that he was racing the deadline and just threw whatever ending came to mind after a night of eating burritos and drinking cheap beer. Not too long ago, I had a thread in Cafe Society asking if Stephen King Still Had “It”, because as Master Wang-Ka says, it is starting to look as if enough fame and longevity can buy you the ability to publish just about anything, no matter how crappy it is. Which I can understand, because there are certainly plenty of people like me who buy everything he writes, on the hopes that one day he’ll show signs of the Stephen King I once read and loved. Even if the next 20 books suck, I’ll be in line for the 20 beyond that. Just because he was good once. Unfortunately, “once” is getting farther and farther into the past.
I nominate:
Stephen R. Donaldson:
Created: The First and Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant
Crime: The First and Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant
I wish I knew how to explain my bizarre love of this series (which is due for a third Chronicles soon). I just reread the First, and am now rereading the Second, and the impression this time is the same as every other time I’ve read it. It’s a phenomenal story that is written extremely badly. I swear the man used every word in the thesaurus for that book. I’m all for varied and even challenging vocabulary, but man, SRD, way to take it overboard. It’s the most conflicting love/hate relationship I’ve ever had with an author. It fascinates me as it repulses me. I can never put it down, but I can also never stop shaking my head. The man makes the metaphor look like the word “the” - finding two consecutive sentences without an “as if” metaphor is a challenge. His protagonists are insanely difficult to like, which I know is intentional, but it’s a little bit too succcessful. So there’s my self-contradicting nomination for this morning. Love him. Hate him. Can’t get enough.
Punishment: Take away his thesaurus and make him read VC Andrews.
A third series, are you sure? I’ve heard people talking of a third since the 80’s, so I figured it ain’t coming. Did you hear of this recently, from a reputable source?
Eh, did my own searching (like I should have done in the beginning) and I see the next series will be:
The Third Chronicles of Thomas Covenant
- The Runes of the Earth
- Fatal Revenant
- Shall Pass Utterly
- The Last Dark
and the first book is scheduled to come out October 2004.
This would have really jazzed me up 15/20 years ago.
I’d also like to nominate Stephen R. Donaldson, as well as Anne McCaffrey, for their “To Be Continued” novels.
Donaldson’s “Mirror of Her Dreams” series (or whatever it’s called) was, I thought, well-written and a rather good book. Same with McC’s “Freedom” series. At least the FIRST two books of each were. After that I gave up.
Dammit, authors, I’m not going to be willing to read through 600-plus pages of your Deathless Writings just to be confronted with a little note that says, “to be continued in the next volume, which won’t be published for at least another year and don’t WE just have you on the hook, ha ha ha ha ha.”
Forget it. You want to get your story across, don’t release the first one till the last one’s done.
I mean, sheesh, at least the Harry Potter series has a resolution of the immediate plotline at the end of each book.
Oh, and Daniken’s stuff is just putrid. Trying to read it as fiction, humor, fantasy, total-wackjob-ravings…nothing helps. It’s still really really really BAD.
Not many non-authors seem to have made it onto this list…
Richard Linklater
Responsible for: Dazed and Confused,* Before Sunrise*
Unforgiveable crime: Waking Life
Punishment: Being required to watch every single student film that features college students evaluating their life (in other words, every student film ever made)
Laurell K Hamilton
Responsible for : Anita Blake/Merry Gentry Series
Offense: Burnt Offerings, every AB book after Blue Moon, Seduced by Moonlight
Okay - the first books of the series were good - not great literature, but enjoyable. Love triangles can be fun - and I know that they can get a bit boring unless the heroine picks her man (or creature, as it would be). But c’mon - just because Anita falls in bed with one man doesn’t mean she has to fall in bed with every man who crosses her path! And Merry is even worse - SbM is 99% sex, with a plot thrown in in the last 10 pages. And guess what - copy and pasting descriptions of characters from previous books does not make good writing!
Susan
Straight from the horse’s er… website…
There only were two books in the “Mirror Of Her Dreams” series (actually called “Mordant’s Need”). I recall the story ending quite satisfyingly, too.