Authors you used to like, but don't now.

[Ashley_Pomeroy]

I’d have to go with Isaac Asimov, although it’s complex. I got into his generation of sci-fi in the 1980s, and I was aware at the time that it was old-fashioned, generations out of date; and it’s hard to fault him and Arthur C. Clarke and so forth for basically writing speculative science articles and clever logic puzzles that masqueraded as stories. Beyond that, they rarely pretended to be literature. I understood their shortcomings as writers and, to be fair, Clarke’s work sometimes has an evocative power that shines through the crashing sexism and dated worldview etc. As stylists they were to literature as bus driving is to the Le Mans 24 Hours and yet there can be an equivalence between the sunrise glimpsed through a bus window on the commuter run, and monotonous trees whizzing past unseen at a hundred and twenty miles an hour for hour after hour. Which one stirs the soul more?

But as the years go by I ponder Asimov’s smallness. His short story collections had little making of vignettes between the songs that told the tale of a man overly satisfied with himself, used to adulation; they’re irritating now. Not offensive, and I suppose he had a lot to be proud of. Whatever faults he had as a person were very mild for the period. He wrote hundreds of books that have fallen out of print, so many books no-one needs.

And no-one speaks of him now. When I was a kid Heinlein was nothing, he was a nobody in the UK, and I haven’t read a single one of his works, but he’s still talked about. Philip K Dick. People still hold a torch for John Brunner, Thomas Disch, there was a genuine sadness when Ray Bradbury died. Asimov’s legacy just seems smaller and smaller as time goes by. I always thought he belonged to a bygone age; he would have fit in well in the heyday of H G Wells, when people thought that supermen would lead us into a new world.

[Animastryfe]

Are these changes in preference due to changes in the author’s books, or changes in the reader’s preference? I think this should be made clear in the posts.

Edit: Some posters have made this clear, but I think everyone should make it clear.

[MsWhatsit]

I have nothing really to say in response, but wanted to say that that was a great post, Ashley Pomeroy.

[JohnT]

@Animastryfe

Are these changes in preference due to changes in the author’s books, or changes in the reader’s preference? I think this should be made clear in the posts.

Edit: Some posters have made this clear, but I think everyone should make it clear.

King: Me (Don’t want to spend the $ for a hardback, also don’t read everything he wrote)
Clancy: Author. I truly believe somebody else is writing his books, they’re that different.
Ellison: Me
Simmons: Stopped writing books in genres that I like (space opera). Plus, his last book sucked.

[Qadgop_the_Mercotan]

@MsWhatsit

that was a great post, Ashley Pomeroy.

I’d disagree, but I recently re-read his Foundation stuff, and it really did suck.

I’ve been toying with re-reading The Gods Themselves but I fear my memories of what a great book it was will be wiped away by doing so.

[EmilyG]

I used to like Dickens, but a friend’s extreme hatred of him kind of ruined it for me.

[suranyi]

@Ashley_Pomeroy

I’d have to go with Isaac Asimov, although it’s complex. I got into his generation of sci-fi in the 1980s, and I was aware at the time that it was old-fashioned, generations out of date; and it’s hard to fault him and Arthur C. Clarke and so forth for basically writing speculative science articles and clever logic puzzles that masqueraded as stories. Beyond that, they rarely pretended to be literature. I understood their shortcomings as writers and, to be fair, Clarke’s work sometimes has an evocative power that shines through the crashing sexism and dated worldview etc. As stylists they were to literature as bus driving is to the Le Mans 24 Hours and yet there can be an equivalence between the sunrise glimpsed through a bus window on the commuter run, and monotonous trees whizzing past unseen at a hundred and twenty miles an hour for hour after hour. Which one stirs the soul more?

But as the years go by I ponder Asimov’s smallness. His short story collections had little making of vignettes between the songs that told the tale of a man overly satisfied with himself, used to adulation; they’re irritating now. Not offensive, and I suppose he had a lot to be proud of. Whatever faults he had as a person were very mild for the period. He wrote hundreds of books that have fallen out of print, so many books no-one needs.

And no-one speaks of him now. When I was a kid Heinlein was nothing, he was a nobody in the UK, and I haven’t read a single one of his works, but he’s still talked about. Philip K Dick. People still hold a torch for John Brunner, Thomas Disch, there was a genuine sadness when Ray Bradbury died. Asimov’s legacy just seems smaller and smaller as time goes by. I always thought he belonged to a bygone age; he would have fit in well in the heyday of H G Wells, when people thought that supermen would lead us into a new world.

Oddly, I’ve recently been re-reading some of his science essays, and I’ve been struck by how incredibly readable they are, even though the science is often very out of date.

[kaylasdad99]

@chargerrich

Piers Anthony

I grew up on his novels at a time when the puns were genuinely funny and seemed smart. Now that I am older I see how simplistic most of the narrative is and the whole “Country of Florida” got old.

Did he ever introduce a special breed of honeybees that only build their hives on wooden pilings near the Xanth coastline, and produce Pier Xanth honey?

'Cos that would have been about his speed.

[Lamia]

@kaylasdad99

Did he ever introduce a special breed of honeybees that only build their hives on wooden pilings near the Xanth coastline, and produce Pier Xanth honey?

'Cos that would have been about his speed.

You should mail that one in to him. If he hasn’t used it yet, he’ll be sure to include it in his next book.

[DigitalC]

Hate to speak ill of the dead but i am shocked we’ve made it this far without mentioning Robert Jordan. We forget how good eye of the world was, how much promise the Wheel of Time series showed, how many flashes of great writing still came through even in some of the later books. This was supposed to be our generations Lord of the Rings, but if you didn’t hate him sometime around books 5-10 you are some kind of masochist.

[SCAdian]

@Ashley_Pomeroy

I’d have to go with Isaac Asimov, although it’s complex. I got into his generation of sci-fi in the 1980s, and I was aware at the time that it was old-fashioned, generations out of date; and it’s hard to fault him and Arthur C. Clarke and so forth for basically writing speculative science articles and clever logic puzzles that masqueraded as stories. Beyond that, they rarely pretended to be literature. I understood their shortcomings as writers and, to be fair, Clarke’s work sometimes has an evocative power that shines through the crashing sexism and dated worldview etc. As stylists they were to literature as bus driving is to the Le Mans 24 Hours and yet there can be an equivalence between the sunrise glimpsed through a bus window on the commuter run, and monotonous trees whizzing past unseen at a hundred and twenty miles an hour for hour after hour. Which one stirs the soul more?

But as the years go by I ponder Asimov’s smallness. His short story collections had little making of vignettes between the songs that told the tale of a man overly satisfied with himself, used to adulation; they’re irritating now. Not offensive, and I suppose he had a lot to be proud of. Whatever faults he had as a person were very mild for the period. He wrote hundreds of books that have fallen out of print, so many books no-one needs.

And no-one speaks of him now. When I was a kid Heinlein was nothing, he was a nobody in the UK, and I haven’t read a single one of his works, but he’s still talked about. Philip K Dick. People still hold a torch for John Brunner, Thomas Disch, there was a genuine sadness when Ray Bradbury died. Asimov’s legacy just seems smaller and smaller as time goes by. I always thought he belonged to a bygone age; he would have fit in well in the heyday of H G Wells, when people thought that supermen would lead us into a new world.

@suranyi

Oddly, I’ve recently been re-reading some of his science essays, and I’ve been struck by how incredibly readable they are, even though the science is often very out of date.

I’ve always preferred Asimov’s non-fiction to his fiction.

[Hershele_Ostropoler]

@astorian

So, if you no longer like an author you used to love, is it because…

1. When you were much younger, his/her work seemed profound and/or inspirational… but now that you’re older and wiser, it seems kinda, well, sophomoric and stupid (former Ayn Rand, Kurt Vonnegut and JRR Tolkien fans often fall into this category.

2. The books he/she was writing 10, 20, 30 years ago were great… but the last few books have been lousy. A once-great artist ran out of creative gas, and is just going through the motions now (former Stephen King and Tom Clancy fans often fall into this category.

3. I found out some things about an author I used to love, and that’s completely changed what I once thought about him/her.

4. It’s not really the author- I’ve completely changed my lifestyle and beliefs, and people who used to inspire me now don’t (fans of assorted Christian authors may fall into this category).

Basically, it comes down to this question: did the writer change, or did you?

1 and 4 (aren’t they kinda the same thing?) Peter DeVries’s writng has really fallen off in the last 20 years Seriously, though, he was very much a man of his time, meaning his '70s adult view of women as Mysterious Other lined up very well with my teenage thoughts about girls. Then I got laid (and discovered real feminism, but getting laid was probably a bigger factor).

[BwanaBob]

I’ll add my 2c to the Heinlein mention.

I discovered him via the juveniles too. My brother had read some of the “mature” series and recommmended them. Well before I knew it I had gone through all the books he’d written up to that time.

Then came The Number of the Beast (this was 1980).
It seemed as if this was an old manuscript he started in his heyday, put aside after one chapter, then took it up 20 odd years later and had nothing left in the tank and started using old characters and an assortment of utter shit. I was so disappointed.

He followed that up with Friday. I felt that could have been a lost book from his past.

The final three that followed disappointed me more and more. He just lost it. Rehashing old characters. Extreme bullshit science (not that he was ever a hard science fiction writer).

So I choose to exclude his final 3 novels plus Number of the Beast from the canon.
He changed. I didn’t.

[ralph124c]

Paul Theroux: his first books were good…now he’s just a bitter old man, endlessly complaining-stay home!
John Gresham: the same plot, endlessly recycled (idealistic young lawyer joins corrupt law firm, hijinks ensue)
Stephen King: like Gresham, endlessly recycled crap

[Lynn_Bodoni]

Extreme bullshit science (not that he was ever a hard science fiction writer).

Oh, but Heinlein WAS a hard science fiction writer. He did write about psi powers and magic sometimes, but if he wrote about science, he’d check the science and make sure that it was the most accurate as could be.

[Battle_Pope]

+1 for Tom Clancy. I still enjoy his earlier books, but from around the early 1990’s (after Without Remorse) his stuff got weaker and it felt like re-treads of earlier work.

[AuntiePam]

@astorian

So, if you no longer like an author you used to love, is it because…

I honestly don’t know. My tastes have changed but it’s probably due to experience. I’m old and have been reading for a long time – long enough to compare, hopefully to recognize quality.

That’s not to say that young readers can’t know good from bad, but if reading choice has been limited and if you need to read, you’re probably going to like whatever’s in front of you, because that’s all you’ve got. If you’re hungry, everything tastes good.

When I was young, I’d read anything and think it was good. As I got older and had access to more resources – book review columns in the newspaper, actual bookstores, and money – my taste improved.

[BwanaBob]

@Lynn_Bodoni

Oh, but Heinlein WAS a hard science fiction writer. He did write about psi powers and magic sometimes, but if he wrote about science, he’d check the science and make sure that it was the most accurate as could be.

This gets into what you consider hard science. For me, it’s when the science takes front seat over the “human condition” aspect of the story.
I consider Heinlein’s latter day novels as bullshit science because of his “wish it /think of it and make it so” scenarios. Might as well have slapped a fantasy label on those books, and I’m one of those people who think Fantasy and Science Fiction have enough of a distinction that they shouldn’t be commingled as one genre (as most bookstores do).

[Mr.Excellent]

@teela_brown

I know I’ve posted this once before in a similar thread in the past.

John Steinbeck. Once he seemed all realistic and gritty, but now the pages seem to reek of booze and misogyny to me.

Although I still love Tortilla Flat.

Hmm. Explain a bit? I’m not very familiar with Steinbeck - I’ve only read “Grapes of Wrath” and “Of Mice and Men.” I can see misogyny in “Mice” if one wants to find it - Lenny’s doom is caused, in part by a fairly unpleasant female character - but I can’t recall anything similar in “Grapes.” Basically, “Grapes of Wrath” just seemed to feel really awful for everybody.

[Mr.Excellent]

@Lynn_Bodoni

Oh, but Heinlein WAS a hard science fiction writer. He did write about psi powers and magic sometimes, but if he wrote about science, he’d check the science and make sure that it was the most accurate as could be.

Especially in his young adult novels. Heinlein genuinely believed in the power of what we’d now call STEM education (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). The YA novels had fantastical stuff, of course (hyperdrives, wormholes, etc) - but the real-world math and science were meticulous. Teenage protagonists would solve complex math mentally, navigate by the local sun, build shelters, and so on. The message was always clear: You, young reader, can be this person - and you should!