# Bad Endings - Novel Divison **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 12, 2014, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-endings-novel-divison/681150 "2014-02-12T15:11:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2014, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-endings-novel-divison/681150/81 "2014-02-19T20:06:26Z")
_3001: The Final Odyssey_. Ugh. Frank Poole dead body floating in Space is resurrected 1000 years in the future, where he discovers paragliding, engineered dinosaur butlers, and that women are grossed-out by circumcision. Turns out the mysterious Monoliths are…Alien Computers there to kill us based on 1000 year old information about how terrible we were in the 20th century. Frank gets in touch with Bowman the sentient computer ghost and convinces him to give the monolith a computer virus. Which he does. And which works. The End. Yes that’s right, the entire Odyssey series boils down to a Deus Ex Melissa. ---
**Author:** ![StusBlues](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@StusBlues](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StusBlues)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2014, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-endings-novel-divison/681150/82 "2014-02-19T20:27:45Z")
> [@tapu](#): > > I couldn’t agree more. You’ve characterized it perfectly, too. Maybe there’s a tacit agreement that people might jump out a window if they leave it too dark and so they “end on a happy note.” Remind me to read _The Rape of Nanking_ when I get home. I can’t see Iris Chang wrapping that up in a bow no matter what a good guy John Rabe was. ---
**Author:** ![teela\_brown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d9b06d/32.png) [@teela\_brown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/teela_brown)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2014, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-endings-novel-divison/681150/83 "2014-02-19T20:39:20Z")
It’s not really the _end_ of the novel, but it almost is. The whole Utah / Mormons backstory which is the second half of Arthur Conan Doyle’s **A Study In Scarlet** is one big far-fetched, melodramatic snooze. It’s such a relief in the final chapter or two to get back to the story that everyone cares about - the London murder mystery. I’m not keen on the similar pattern in **The Valley of Fear** , either. ---
**Author:** ![epbrown01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7ba0ec/32.png) [@epbrown01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/epbrown01)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2014, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-endings-novel-divison/681150/84 "2014-02-19T21:00:45Z")
The ending of the novel _Quick Change_ (different than the movie). ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2014, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-endings-novel-divison/681150/85 "2014-02-19T21:44:06Z")
Gad, no one has mentioned Michael Crichton’s _Sphere_ in this thread? That was the one that turned me off MC’s work forever more. Humans find strange spaceship. Humans find out it is a human ship from the future. Humans find out it captured some strange alien device on the far fringe of the galaxy. Humans slowly acquire mental powers from the device. Humans give each other a terrifying ride with their new powers. In the last wto pages, surviving humans use powers to forget everything about the ship and its contents. The End. (I ground through most of what followed, but with only the grimmest and usually fulfilled expectations.) ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2014, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-endings-novel-divison/681150/86 "2014-02-20T02:49:46Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Yes, within the scope of remaining days for planet Earth. The final extended special director’s cut fanwank edition of both series may require two lifetimes to watch. 🙂 > (Apropos of nothing in particular, one of my favorite answering machine messages ran something like this: “Thank you for calling the [Your Name] theatre. Our current offering is the twinbill _Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire_ and _War and Peace_. Next showing begins on Tuesday at ten a.m. and runs through Saturday at six p.m. There will be two intermissions and a Dippy Dawg cartoon.”) Intolerence, 190 minutes or so. I occasionally have a fairly bad patch of insomnia, I have been training myself to fall asleep to the soundtrack [I pop it on netflix streaming and go to sleep. I don’t care if my tablet turns itself off after I am asleep.] So far, the soundtrack is becoming so familiar that it is starting to be able to drone me to sleep. 😛 Not that it is a bad movie, mind you, it just has a very predictable soundtrack and no dialogue. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2014, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-endings-novel-divison/681150/87 "2014-02-20T03:23:34Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Gad, no one has mentioned Michael Crichton’s _Sphere_ in this thread? That was the one that turned me off MC’s work forever more. > > Humans find strange spaceship. Humans find out it is a human ship from the future. Humans find out it captured some strange alien device on the far fringe of the galaxy. Humans slowly acquire mental powers from the device. Humans give each other a terrifying ride with their new powers. In the last wto pages, surviving humans use powers to forget everything about the ship and its contents. The End. > > (I ground through most of what followed, but with only the grimmest and usually fulfilled expectations.) I forgot about the thrilling end to “Congo”. After being threatened by killer apes… …they figure out how to say “killer apes go home” in killer ape language and they play that on a loudspeaker. The killer apes then go home. ---
**Author:** ![Detroit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/45deac/32.png) [@Detroit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Detroit)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2014, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-endings-novel-divison/681150/88 "2014-02-20T13:54:53Z")
The movie “Phenomenon”. Excellent cast, Travolta, Duvall, Sedgwick. A small town man sees strange lights in the sky and suddenly develops mystical powers. He’s saving people, can suddenly speak several languages, telekinesis, etc. He even predicts an earthquake. It a really fascinating movie - up till about half way. Of course Sedgwick is the romantic interest. SPOILER (I’ve whited it out) ( It’s actually a brain tumor and he dies. ) ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2014, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-endings-novel-divison/681150/89 "2014-02-20T14:27:20Z")
> [@hogarth](#): > > I forgot about the thrilling end to “Congo”. The novel was far from Crichton’s worst. The movie may have been one of Hollywood’s though… ---
**Author:** ![KarlGrenze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dbc845/32.png) [@KarlGrenze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGrenze)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2014, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-endings-novel-divison/681150/90 "2014-02-21T00:55:46Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Gad, no one has mentioned Michael Crichton’s _Sphere_ in this thread? That was the one that turned me off MC’s work forever more. > > Humans find strange spaceship. Humans find out it is a human ship from the future. Humans find out it captured some strange alien device on the far fringe of the galaxy. Humans slowly acquire mental powers from the device. Humans give each other a terrifying ride with their new powers. In the last wto pages, surviving humans use powers to forget everything about the ship and its contents. The End. > > (I ground through most of what followed, but with only the grimmest and usually fulfilled expectations.) Not really. One of them didn’t. One of the survivors is a woman who, at various times in the book, had been described as homely, not pretty, etc. A few of the last lines mention the other survivors (after they supposedly collectively used the powers to forget everything) mentioning how pretty she is. She kept the power. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-endings-novel-divison/681150.md?page=4)