Hack is a very specific form of bad writing. Hack is churning out the same formulaic crap to turn a buck. Some bad writers aren’t hacks. Some hacks ain’t bad writers. For instance, just because you went back and reread Tolkien and now don’t like his style doesn’t make him a hack. Anne Rice is not a hack, she is just a bad writer. Hacks don’t write 700 page novels (actually she has been a hack as well, churning out erotic fiction for a buck under other names but that is not what she is most known for). I think most of you have the wrong idea of what a hack is. I don’t like Vonnegut but he is no hack.
hack2 /hæk/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[hak] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun 1. a person, as an artist or writer, who exploits, for money, his or her creative ability or training in the production of dull, unimaginative, and trite work; one who produces banal and mediocre work in the hope of gaining commercial success in the arts: As a painter, he was little more than a hack.
[QUOTE=Sevastopol]
Roget. Anything by Roget. He seemed so deft and clever when I was young, but now I’ve got him beat, standing on my head.
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I still think his Thesaurus is pretty good.
[QUOTE=featherlou]
Mine would have to be Tanith Lee. “Silver Metal Lover,” anyone?
On a slightly different note, I bought a mess of ancient paperbacks at a garage sale a couple of summers ago, with old stories by many famous authors, and I was amazed at just how good some of them are. I mean, “I can’t put this book down until I’ve read it cover to cover” good. There is a reason that many of those old farts were given the Grandmaster of Sci Fi title.
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“Silver Metal Lover” is only one novel written by the extremely prolific Tanith Lee. Back in the 80’s, I was working at a company with much promise that was being driven into the ground by its nutso trust-fundie founder. So I escaped into the works of Tanith Lee–everything available on the paperback racks or at Half Price Books.
I haven’t kept up with her massive output but I’ve re-read some of my oldies with great pleasure. Don’t know whether I could make it through her “Birthgrave Trilogy” again–but I might try. “The Silver Metal Lover” wasn’t one of my favorites; “Don’t Bite the Sun” & its sequel “Drinking Sapphire Wine” tell a more interesting “teenage girl versus Utopia” story. “Red As Blood: Tales of the Sisters Grimmer” remains one of my favorite anthologies. “Sabella, the Bloodstone: A Science Fiction Vampire Story” is witty fun. I could go on; Lee works in several genres.
Tanith Lee is just one reason we oldsters own so many tattered paperbacks. The Good Stuff keeps going out of print.
I loved the Dragonlance books when I was a kid. Now…bleah.
Like others, I was also into Piers Anthony and Anne McCaffrey.
The older I get, the less interested I am in sword and sorcery. It’s got to be exceptional, like George RR Martin or Ellen Kushner (to give two wildly varying examples) for me to bother.
[QUOTE=burundi]
The older I get, the less interested I am in sword and sorcery.
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From this thread and the other one on books/authors that have held up, it’s beginning to look like the rule of thumb is that Children’s fantasy that you enjoyed reading as a child is still worth reading as an adult, but “adult” fantasy that you enjoyed as a youngster probably won’t hold up when you’re older.
[QUOTE=Bridget Burke]
“Silver Metal Lover” is only one novel written by the extremely prolific Tanith Lee. Back in the 80’s, I was working at a company with much promise that was being driven into the ground by its nutso trust-fundie founder. So I escaped into the works of Tanith Lee–everything available on the paperback racks or at Half Price Books.
I haven’t kept up with her massive output but I’ve re-read some of my oldies with great pleasure. Don’t know whether I could make it through her “Birthgrave Trilogy” again–but I might try. “The Silver Metal Lover” wasn’t one of my favorites; “Don’t Bite the Sun” & its sequel “Drinking Sapphire Wine” tell a more interesting “teenage girl versus Utopia” story. “Red As Blood: Tales of the Sisters Grimmer” remains one of my favorite anthologies. “Sabella, the Bloodstone: A Science Fiction Vampire Story” is witty fun. I could go on; Lee works in several genres.
Tanith Lee is just one reason we oldsters own so many tattered paperbacks. The Good Stuff keeps going out of print.
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May I recommend When the Lights Go Out? It’s set in an English coastal resort out of season and is eccentric, endearing and all-out weird. Imagine a mix of Brighton Rock ** and The Wicker Man ** (but it’s too individualistic to be really like either. There are hints of Powell and Pressburger’s film A Canterbury Tale, too.) As you can no doubt tell I’m having trouble describing the thing. :rolleyes: Just read it!.
[QUOTE=Bridget Burke]
Tanith Lee is just one reason we oldsters own so many tattered paperbacks. The Good Stuff keeps going out of print.
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Amen! I bought the Don’t Bite the Sun omnibus just because my copies were falling apart.
Anthony, Moorecock, McCaffery: those are hacks. I pick up any of their books now, and they’re just dreadful; I used to like them, but am older and wiser now.
Once upon a time I also enjoyed a book called “Spellfire”, by Ed Greenwood. I am now heartily ashamed of this. :o
[QUOTE=Boulter’s Canary]
May I recommend When the Lights Go Out? It’s set in an English coastal resort out of season and is eccentric, endearing and all-out weird. Imagine a mix of Brighton Rock ** and The Wicker Man ** (but it’s too individualistic to be really like either. There are hints of Powell and Pressburger’s film A Canterbury Tale, too.) As you can no doubt tell I’m having trouble describing the thing. :rolleyes: Just read it!.
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Thanks. I went to add the book to my ever-expanding “Saved Items: To Buy Later” at Amazon. But the cheapest paperback edition was $15.00, so I ordered it. I’ve been meaning to catch up on Lee’s more recent works…
I don’t know if Tanith Lee is a hack, but I read “Silver Metal Lover” recently, and after having loved it as a yute, I found it clichéd and obvious on re-reading. I didn’t think we were just staying within the strict, dictionary definition of “hack” - just generally saying which authors haven’t stood the test of time for us, and Tanith Lee is one for me.
[QUOTE=RickJay]
I was coming into the thread to mention Madeline l’Engle, actually. “A Wrinkle in Time” was great when I was eleven.
I picked up a couple of her books lying around the house (MRs. RickJay has an enormous collection of science fiction and fantasy work" and I was appalled. It was terrible writing. Within six pages I was cheering for Charles Wallace to be run over by a semi.
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Funny thing: after another recent thread that slammed l’Engle, I went back and re-read the series (Wrinkle, Wind, Planet, Waters).
I thought … that the first book was rather simplistic. Apart from that, all four still have plenty of magic for me.
[QUOTE=Ghanima]
Piers Anthony - I found his Xanth and Incarnations of Immortality books entertaining as a teen, but the last time I read one of his books I realized he is a completely sophomoric hack. All women are sluts, hags or bitches. Lots of bosoms bouncing and skintight dresses. Total shite.
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The sad thing is, Piers used to be a good writer, before he started aiming specifically for the pubescent-teen crowd. Some of his early books, though, are still good. Macroscope, for example, still stands as (IMO) a classic of the SF field.
[QUOTE=MacSpon]
The sad thing is, Piers used to be a good writer, before he started aiming specifically for the pubescent-teen crowd. Some of his early books, though, are still good. Macroscope, for example, still stands as (IMO) a classic of the SF field.
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Yeah, I really like his old science fiction as well. It’s not great, but it can be pretty solid.
[QUOTE=rjung]
I’ll nominate William Gibson for Neuromancer; it impressed me the first time I read it, but later re-readings just revealed it to be a confusing mess.
I’m almost tempted to nominate Robert Anton Wilson for Illuminatus!, except the books in that series are so trippy I just know he’s doing it deliberately.
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I tried to reread the Illuminatus trilogy recently. Made it about a hundred pages in and gave up on it. I can understand why it appealed to me as a kid, but as an adult, I had to conclude that surreal crap is still crap.
[QUOTE=MacSpon]
The sad thing is, Piers used to be a good writer, before he started aiming specifically for the pubescent-teen crowd. Some of his early books, though, are still good. Macroscope, for example, still stands as (IMO) a classic of the SF field.
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Which, of course, makes him the very definition of a hack.
I think there’s probably a lot to that. I wonder why. I guess the cliches so common in “adult” fantasy aren’t cliches to a kid yet. And kids are less aware of bad writing, maybe?
I was coming in here to say Terry Brooks whom I could have turned into a nerd-dork in my teens when I discovered the Shannara series and just loved them.
When I rediscovered the books and decided to re-read the series, either it has lost its its thrill or I’d grown up. Probably the first.
