Heh, I like how the cover of the first book says “The Most Important Fantasy Event Of The Century”. I know the century is young and all, but there were those Tolkein movies, too…
Yeah I saw that too, couldn’t help but :rolleyes: I wonder if that will actually make the printed edition. At least he says the Chronicles are not likely to ever be made into movies… I just don’t see it working.
I really enjoyed Mordant’s Need as well - much more accessibly written than the Covenant books. I just wish I understood how I can love something so much, and yet find it really just horrible at the same time…
Hmm… This might explain my ex-husband… runs off to reflect
Robert B. Parker
Created: Spenser
Crimes: Jesse Stone, Sunny Randall
Punishment: To be locked in a small room with a baseball-bat-wielding Avery Brooks. “The ways of the Lord are often dark, but never pleasant.”
Orson Scott Card
Created: Ender’s Game, Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets
Crimes: His attempts at fantasy and spirituality (including Ender sequels and Ender parents), the character “Bean.”
Punishment: To be forced to write only near-future but taking-place-in-the-Cold-War political yarns. Which he seems to be doing at present, so…er…he’s on probation.
Good Lord, page 2 of this thread and still no mention of the dreaded
Clive Cussler
Wrote: A pile of crap
Offense: Above noted pile of crap
This “writer” takes some grade D action hero concept, vaguely reworks it to set it in water, throws in pathetic sketches of characters, adds more water, creates bad guys that would be laughed out of an Archie and Jughead comic, adds more water, wraps up his plot in thoroughly impossible and unlikely ways, adds more water, writes himself in as a convenient cameo figure that randomly has the one item that makes everything OK again, and then coats the whole thing in a thick layer of ice which will eventually melt into even more water for the “plot”.
Gee, all the fantasy titles/authors in this thread and no one has mentioned Piers f’n Anthony?!?!
The sad part was that it took me about 20 books into the Xanth series to realize that the whole thing was going absolutely nowhere (I was young and inexperienced). Reading his work for literary satisfaction is analogous to eating air and expecting to become full.
Moving away from the sci-fi/fantasy genre a little,
Mary Higgins Clark
Wrote: a lot of books with the same f’n plot
Punishment: Make her daughter, who might have actaully had a career, write the same kind of mechanical mindless drivel…oh, wait.
Only book of hers I ever truly enjoyed was While MY Pretty One Sleeps. Everything after that was just a re-hash or a variation of the same plot with static, wooden characters. I understand the woman had a similar real-life traumatic event, but c’mon already-!
Yeah, okay, I’ll do it…
Piers Anthony
Writes : Lotsa stuff. Xanth.
Crime : 26 counts of ‘blatantly setting up sequels’
“Gee, NewPerson certainly has an interesting problem, doesn’t s/he, CurrentProtagonist? I hope that works out for him/her.”
Punishment : 72 hour marathon of the Scorpion King, on endless repeat.
Arthur C. Clarke
Wrote: 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2010, 2061: Odyssey’s End, Rendezvous With Rama, Rama II, lotsa others.
Crime: Lots, but Rendezvous With Rama get the brunt of the blame – one-dimensional characters, lots of teasing ideas, and a plot that ultimately goes nowhere. The only thing I got out of Rama was the realization that I’ve just lost six days of my life which I’ll never get back.
Punishment: Force to watch Spaceballs for eternity.
By the way? Subtle. I like. 
Let’s not forget Albert Camus. I had to read that man’s drivel when I was in college.
His punishment? I don’t think we have one severe enough for him.
Isn’t it obvious? The Plague.
Sue Grafton. She stole the idea from Ed McBain about writing a series of mystery books with alphabetical titles, and wrote absolute unreadable crap. I tried to read one of them. There is very little I cannot at least finish, but she holds the prize! I bought the book at a thrift store for 25 cents. I was overcharged.
I have to disagree with you. R w/ Rama was probably the best Rama Book. The rest went from good to eh… I blame Gently’s Lee’s co-authoring.
You mean, he founded religion.
Speaking as a sometime film student, this is incorrect. In my experience, 90% of all student films currently being produced are Pulp Fiction pastiches.
A plot?
What page was that on?
Man, you stopped before it really got bad and the story became one loooong diabtribe against communism, of all things. Because I know that’s why I read fantasy novels - to learn about the author’s political views. Hilariously, one of the novels is even dedicated to the CIA.
Punishment: enforced exposure to Air America.
I’d never quite gotten with the flow of science fiction so somebody recommended her years back. The dragon stuff was pretty good for casual reading; the dragons were cool, the plots moved right on along, everything copecetic: perfectly okay brain- in-house slippers reading.
Then the series started cloying badly, like Swiss Family Robinson crossed with the Von Trapps, only obsessed with pregnancy. And her other series…well, they started out okay but plummeted right down the crapper. Entire worlds and the people in them behaved inexplicably by their own rules.
I’ve long since branched out to much better SF writers.
My first love is still murder mysteries, though. My nominee in that category:
Patricia Cornwell.
What a damned waste of natural resources. She’s managed to make forensics and paranoia boring.
And fucking slow! I figured that out ten pages into the first book I tried.
You want crappy fantasy? Try Andre Norton. Dull and pointless, and I get enough of that in REAL life.
Timothy LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins
Created: the Left Behind series
Crime: the Left Behind series
Setting aside the questionable theology for a moment, the Left Behind books are just poorly written. I’d estimate the first four or five books (all I’ve read, and all somewhat under duress) to be at about the fifth or sixth grade reading level. And then, they released a “Left Behind: For Kids” series!
A plot that probably could have been a tightly written five or six book series is stretched thin enough to last for twelve. Foreshadowing is laid on with a trowel, then molded into shape with a sledgehammer. Vaguely interesting characters are created, but then become “Christian,” and just a clone of every other Christian character. And then they die.
As for the theology…well, they took what was a radical interpretation of Revelations that was accepted only by a small minority of Christians, and are presenting it to the public as what Christianity is. Suffice to say, I don’t agree…
:rolleyes:
You may disagree with Scalia’s conclusions, but his writing is excellent, particularly by the standards of the legal writing genre (I am unaware of any fiction written by the man). More to the point, why on earth would you want to politicize this thread?