Nah. First of all it was meant to be educational. Second he allowed it to be reissued under his own name. Third, the dates are wrong, and there aren’t enough of them. Fourth, he mentioned them in his autobiography without shame, and I don’t believe that Dr. A would have lied about something like that.
If the part in question died by 1976, and he wrote two dozen of these things, he could not have written more than 2 a year, which would have put the start date back no earlier than 1964. Robert Moore Williams and John Jakes wrote some crappy Conan imitations, but I don’t think they wrote that many, and I’ve hardly seen better writing from them. There just weren’t that many series books back then. I’m going to have to browse the Tuck Encyclopedia this weekend for clues.
There were only six Lucky Starr novels, and the original idea was not to write something that would be deliberately bad, but to write something which could be easily adapted to the screen (this was the reason for the pseudonym: In case the screen adaptations (which never materialized) were bad, Asimov wanted to be able to distance himself from them).
Thanks for finding that. Must have been the thread title that threw me off the scent. And I hadn’t realized it was so old that I was still a lurker.
Something that wasn’t available online that far back is the Internet Speculative Fiction DataBase. It hasn’t been updated recently, but it covers all of the older writers and their works. I was going to say that if people consulted it some of the sillier suggestions might not have been offered, but then reality hit.
WHy would anyone say E. E. Smith’s work was bad? His stuff seems really cliche now, of course, but that was because he created so many sci-fi elements which later writers turned into cliches. He was amazingly innovative in this day.
That thread had the guesses in almost the same order.
I should have thought of Tubb, but I doubt it was him for the same reasons it isn’t “Akers.” And I doubt that it is Hamilton, since the Captain Future stuff was work for hire for a magazine, which didn’t involve fan demand.
After reading it, I’m even more inclined to the Spidey is playing with our heads theory.
Wasn’t there an anonymous story that made the rounds of one of the early cons, that was so badly written, people were appalled and laughing hysterically at the same time? I know I’ve seen it linked to from the SDMB, and there was a comment on it that many of the writers at the con thought a professional writer had done it on purpose, with the only giveaway being its excellent pacing.
You’re thinking of The Eye of Argon. It was written by a totally sincere 13-year-old.
K364: What was the general plot of Venus on the Half-Shell? I’m a big Vonnegut fan and thought it might be an interesting addition to my Vonnegut collection, but the prices on it were always so high, I guess because it’s out of print. Was it a Trout book summarized in one of Vonnegut’s books?
I’m not K364 but I read my dad’s copy of Venus on the Half-Shell when I was thriteen. All I remember is lots and lots of sex with alien women. Which made it perfect reading ofr a thirteen year old girl but probably not all that interesting for an adult…
It seems to me that our legs are being pulled with this story. Let’s examine this: Someone intentionally writes a bad science fiction novel, but people read it and enjoy it anyway and it becomes a big hit.
Okay, now read that last sentence again, only replace the words “science fiction novel” with “musical play about Hitler” and now we’re talking about a Mel Brooks movie.
Of course. But what’s bad about Smith is his prose style. E.g., the first Lensman novel, Triplanetary told an exciting story, in a way so clumsy and ham-fisted it made me gag. His later stuff, like the Family D’Alembert books, is better, but not by much.
No, but actually Asimov did use the idea in one of his stories. An author wrote a deliberately bad mystery novel as a parody of mystery novels in general, then found himself trapped into a long series of them. Then the detective comes to life, and starts haunting the detective.
I’ve still got my copy. It was written by P. J. Farmer, with Vonnegut’s permission, IIRC. Which Vonnegut later withdraw, sadly. I liked that book!
Basically it’s the tale of a guy named Simon, a space wanderer, and about the last survivor of earth (wiped out by a flood, I think) who travels around the galaxy searching for meaning. He’s got a dog, an owl, and a female robot named (?) Chworktap and has many interesting adventures, and a fair amount of sex.
If you’re a Vonnegut fan, I’d say go for it.
Damn, now I have to dig up my copy and re-read it! It’s been a few years!
I pretty sure that’s the book I read. Doesn’t it start off with the protagonist having a picnic or something with his girlfriend and then the world ends and he’s in a spaceship? And then there’s massive quantities of sex, of course…
Huh, wonder what happened to my copy of Venus on the Half-Shell ? Probably lent it to somebody who never returned it, or sold it to a used bookstore for a dime or something.
I still think that its recurring question “Why are we born only to suffer and to die?” is one that I’d like an answer to.
But it wasn’t sex for sex’s sake. It was sex more for the purpose of exploring the idea of “Why are we born only to think about sex all the time, suffer, and die”. IMHO.
