Tom Clancy went from writing taut, interesting techno-thrillers to writing racist political screeds over the years (see The Bear and The Dragon for example).
Anne Rice used to make gold come out of her pen. I guess she upgraded to a word processor and all it seems to put out is crap. Is there anything Lestat can’t do? When your main character is a living (or undead, I should say) deus ex machina, where’s the challenge?
[QUOTE=Steve Wright]
I may be interrogating the text from the wrong perspective, but the degeneration of Laurell K. Hamilton’s “Anita Blake” series into furry gothic soft-porn probably counts, in my opinion.
[/QUOTE]
Preach it, Brother! But hardly “soft-core”.
I agree with Loach about Pratchett. Well, maybe not better with every book, but the general trend of better and better certainly bucks the normal trend of bad sequels.
[QUOTE=DrDeth]
Preach it, Brother! But hardly “soft-core”.
I agree with Loach about Pratchett. Well, maybe not better with every book, but the general trend of better and better certainly bucks the normal trend of bad sequels.
[/QUOTE]
I’m a little ambivalent about Pratchett right now; he doesn’t really piss all over his work, but he seems to have some problems with being original from time to time – not always plotwise, mind you, but in the stories that he explores. I’ll spoiler this in case someone has not read the most recent ones:
[SPOILER]In Monstrous Regiment, the soldiers in the company are all women? All of them? I thought it was the least interesting setup in a Pratchett novel ever, and the book itself unmemorable; it just flew by. The Vimes cameo saved what would otherwise, to my mind, have been the worst Pratchett since The Light Fantastic (which had a better title, a least).
And I find neither the Going Postal nor the Making Money plots especially creative – or the The Truth, either. It just seems to me that to fetch real-world stuff and glue it onto a fantasy world, while interestingly done, is never really very creative. The last Discworld that I really loved, because I did think it showed a mastery of his own creation and a readiness to do new stuff, was Night Watch. Since then…he still writes funny and well plotted stuff, but it’s not reached near Night Watch again.[/SPOILER]
The Godfather, Part III.
Regiment: Look up the history of the title. It wasn’t randomly chosen. Sadly, I think it is a joke that did not cross the pond successfully, unless you happen to be familiar with British suffrage.
(Myself, I only know of it because of a lovely Holmes pastiche with the completed title.)
[QUOTE=Kokopilau]
Don’t you mean Hideaki Anno?
[/QUOTE]
Tell me about it—from all that I’ve read, End of Evangelion was half “this is what we wanted to film, but we ran out of money” (at least he didn’t add Ewoks or something), and half “oh, ya didn’t like the ending, fanboy? Well I got your ending right here, ya pissy little bitch!”
Possibly held together with a varnish of “but what if, like, I’m dead, and you’re alive?*”
[QUOTE=Ranchoth]
Tell me about it—from all that I’ve read, End of Evangelion was half “this is what we wanted to film, but we ran out of money” (at least he didn’t add Ewoks or something), and half “oh, ya didn’t like the ending, fanboy? Well I got your ending right here, ya pissy little bitch!”
Possibly held together with a varnish of “but what if, like, I’m dead, and you’re alive?*”
[/QUOTE]
The rest of Gainax isn’t any better. Gunbuster 2 was almost horrifically bad (or at least horiffically lame) compared to the original.
[QUOTE=silenus]
Just from the thread title, I knew it was going to be the “Lucas Award For Lifetime Achievement.” 
My nominee(s) is/are every author who has tried to push the limits of a series past its breaking point, or ever attempted to kludge together a bunch of completely different works into a “Common Universe” so they could make more money. Larry Niven, I’m looking at you! Isaac Asimov, ghost of, step right up. Many more can be named. Rather than leave their excellent creations as they were, they had to write prequel aver prequel and sequel after sequel until the whole mess collapses under its own weight.
Dishonorable mention to those authors who start a series and never finish it. And no, death is not an excuse!
[/QUOTE]
All right now, see if Lazarus invited you to the First Centennial Exposition of the Interuniversal Scatological Multiplayer Solipsism Society! 
P.S.: Re your last paragraph, they could always take a leaf from H. Beam Piper and inspire other authors while discarnate.
[QUOTE=Zsofia]
Sob, tell me about it. And a more relentlessly depressing FOR NO REASON AND NO GOAL book than What Came Before He Shot Her you will not find.
[/QUOTE]
I checked it out and it’s still sitting here. If I read any of it, I’ll read the bit where she finally gets to the action.
Why O Why could’t she have killed off Deborah? I want to kill Deborah.
“The victim” was one of her coolest characters. (don’t want to spoil anything).
Bah.
[QUOTE=H3Knuckles]
I hate when people make generalizations about anime, because it’s almost always wrong; anime is treated as a medium choice, like filming in black and white instead of color, there are anime of all ages and varieties.
[/QUOTE]
Perhaps, but all I see are the ones that appeal to a 15 year old girl or 18 year old boy - and what they watch now hasn’t changed in regards to overall storylines from 10 years ago.
Recycled storylines are a part of all script writing. Let’s face it, everything that happens on CSI has happened on Law and Order in some way, and sitcoms are some of the worst offenders. I guess that because the shows that appeal to my children don’t also appeal to me generally, I don’t appreciate the nuances that separate one series from the next. All I see are the archetypes and recycled storylines.
That said, by the end of Dragonball Z, Toriyama had given up any pretense of character development and originality (and when some snuck in, it would be almost immediately dropped and forgotten), and that included the manga.
[QUOTE=E-Sabbath]
Regiment: Look up the history of the title. It wasn’t randomly chosen. Sadly, I think it is a joke that did not cross the pond successfully, unless you happen to be familiar with British suffrage.
(Myself, I only know of it because of a lovely Holmes pastiche with the completed title.)
[/QUOTE]
Nothing to do with suffrage, actually - more to do with queens regnant. Anyway, I got the joke, and it didn’t make it a better book. It had some good set pieces, but that doesn’t make a good book. Pratchett has been going for the easy laugh rather than the actual good book for a long, long time now. I thought Jingo or maybe The Last Continent was his personal nadir and things have been better since then, but not great. He’ll never write a book like Small Gods again.
I started to bring up David Eddings, but I killed the post because I couldn’t decide if he fit this thread, or if what I’ve read of his work showed that he was peaking (by trimming his stories from 5 long books down to 3). Then we had this comment:
[QUOTE=SpazCat]
In The Rivan Codex (I think that’s the right one), <David Eddings> comes right out and said he wrote the Elenium and Tamuli as practice for the Mallorean. Therein lies the derivativeness.
[/QUOTE]
Which suggests to me that Eddings did in fact peak with the Tamuli series, and the Mallorean series does qualify him for this thread.
I think Eddings writes very entertaining stories. There is no way I would ever accuse him of writing concise stories.
[QUOTE=Biffy the Elephant Shrew]
Frank Zappa in the '80s replacing the bass and drums on two of his classic '60s albums with sparkly new, digitally recorded parts. It was bad enough on We’re Only in It for the Money*, but when he repeated the exercise with Cruising with Ruben & the Jets, he defeated the whole purpose of the album, which was meant to sound like a bunch of old '50s doo-wop records.
*Contrary to popular belief, replacing the rhythm section on this album was not done out of necessity because of damage to the original master tape. The damage to the stereo master tape necessitated a remix from the (undamaged) multitracks; Zappa just thought it would be a cool idea to update the recording while he was at it.
[/QUOTE]
Yup. And how about the CD reissue of Uncle Meat? A great double LP from 1969, it could have nevertheless just fit on a single disc. Yet the reissue pads out a double disc set with almost 50 minutes of excerpts from the unfinished half-baked movie of the same name (and by excerpts, I don’t mean songs or soundtrack music, but dialogue), plus an unrelated song recorded in the 80s. These are commonly known as the ‘penalty tracks’ in FZ fandom.
Then there’s the Baby Snakes and Dub Room Special DVDs. “Hey, check out this awesome live footage of my band. 'Scuse me while I repeatedly interrupt it with interminable claymation sequences! Cool, right?”
Sigh. Much as I love Zappa, he was not the best curator of his own work. Oh well, at least there’s the Roxy DVD. Coming out any day now. Right?
Off topic for this thread, but relevent to the last couple posts: The first ever Frank Zappa CD I owned, there was some sort of factory error when they pressed the disc. Instead of Frank Zappa songs, the disc had twenty blank tracks that lasted one or two seconds each, and then twelve full tracks of Korean pop music.
Knowing Zappa only by reputation at the time, I had to call up a few friends to find out if that’s what was supposed to be on the disc.
[QUOTE=Cemetery Savior]
(btw…can I offer extra vitriol for authors who name a series the anything-IAD?).
-Cem
[/QUOTE]
Well, I liked Pratchett’s Bromeliad, but then I like puns. That’s the only reason I stuck with Piers Anthony for as long as I did.
[QUOTE=SpazCat]
I have generally positive memories of The Redemption of Althalus, but I’ve only read it once and it was a long time ago.
[/QUOTE]
Redemption of Althalus was the last Eddings book I will ever read. I read the book jacket, and it was a phenomenally good intro - all about how Althalus had no redeeming points but was still basically a good guy. And the book is called “redemption” so I knew where it was going, but the goddess neutered him. None of his own personality was left at the end. He was just her little toady and jumped to whatever she said.
Honestly, all the men are hen-pecked and all of the women are peckers. I was so disappointed to see how thoroughly they crushed Althalus. 
[QUOTE=Mr Shine]
Highlander: There should have only been one…
[/QUOTE]
Apocalypse Now: Redux
What was he thinking?
[QUOTE=D_Odds]
Perhaps, but all I see are the ones that appeal to a 15 year old girl or 18 year old boy - and what they watch now hasn’t changed in regards to overall storylines from 10 years ago.
Recycled storylines are a part of all script writing. Let’s face it, everything that happens on CSI has happened on Law and Order in some way, and sitcoms are some of the worst offenders. I guess that because the shows that appeal to my children don’t also appeal to me generally, I don’t appreciate the nuances that separate one series from the next. All I see are the archetypes and recycled storylines.
That said, by the end of Dragonball Z, Toriyama had given up any pretense of character development and originality (and when some snuck in, it would be almost immediately dropped and forgotten), and that included the manga.
[/QUOTE]
Fair enough. I don’t like taking that stance because I’m not really the right person to defend the artistic integrity of anime. I have fairly “common man” tastes in this regard: If it’s fun to watch, I’ll like it. Bonus points for originality and/or high levels of production quality, but I’m not fussy.
Dragonball could’ve been much better than it was, as there are moments of excellence amidst the stretches of mediocrity (one of my favorites; the allusion to Macbeth immediately before Vegeta’s first encounter with Majin Buu). But even so, it’s fun to watch, so I’m pretty happy with it. But I’d never try to argue that it was a “great” show. And I wholeheartedly agree that the continueing backslide to having Goku show up at the last minute, having completed some new training or power-up, and destroy the enemy, then wish everyone back to life was a huge mistake. My understanding is that when he finished the Cell saga he sincerely intended to leave Goku dead and shift the series to being about Gohan, but fan interest in the series flagged during the Saiyaman story arc, and he was convinced he needed to bring Kakkarot back.
Anyways, I just wanted to say that while Toriyama may have been a bit of a hack, we should be fair and not hold him responsible for a series he had nothing to do with (GT).
[QUOTE=Dangerosa]
Laurell K. Hamilton started writing her own slash fanfic.
[/QUOTE]
Not even slash; she’s shockingly squeamish about homosexual content–the most obvious example of this I can think of being Asher and Jean Claude, two male vampires who have been in love for four hundred years but can’t have sex because Anita won’t freaking allow it. And then there’s Sylvie, the werewolf who was firmly established as a lesbian, in whose mouth LKH recently put the words, “I don’t do girls.” In the Merry Gentry books there’s that geas on the Ravens, which says they can’t have sex with a woman, so none of them have had sex since they became Ravens. It apparently never occurred to any of them (or LKH) that if that’s the actual wording–and I’ve never seen it phrased otherwise–they could hook up amongst themselves right, left, and center.
So, yes, not slash, just bad fanfiction of her own work.