# Something stupid that ruined a book or author for you. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 3, 2002, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/something-stupid-that-ruined-a-book-or-author-for-you/126745 "2002-09-03T03:18:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![WSLer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a6a055/32.png) [@WSLer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WSLer)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2002, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/something-stupid-that-ruined-a-book-or-author-for-you/126745/61 "2002-09-15T00:27:50Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by HPL \* > \*\*The book 2001 was written at the same time as the film, but IIRC, the movie was originally supossed to follow the book where the Discovery goes to Saturn. They changed it because apparently the SFX guys couldn’t make a good Saturn (it looked “fakey” was what I heard). \*\* Ummm, you guys **do** know that the movie was based on Clarke’s short story entitled _The Sentinal_ don’t ya? Sure ya did. 2001 the book was pretty much one of those novelizations of the movie type of deals. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2002, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/something-stupid-that-ruined-a-book-or-author-for-you/126745/62 "2002-09-15T03:42:21Z")
Netbrian writes: \> Maybe the four cubes fragmented into two smaller cubers (by \> dividing and having each reform), and THEN have them all fuse? No, that won’t work. It would take a while to show you the math, but the fact is that you can’t divide a cube into any finite number of cubes of the same size which you can re-assemble into two cubes of half the size. WSLer writes: \> Ummm, you guys do know that the movie was based on \> Clarke’s short story entitled The Sentinal don’t ya? Sure ya did. \> 2001 the book was pretty much one of those novelizations of \> the movie type of deals. Not quite. Kubrick read the story “The Sentinel” and asked Clarke to help him make a movie of it. The two of them then simultaneously wrote the novel and the screenplay for the film. Then Kubrick decided that he didn’t want his name to appear on the novel, so it was published as just by Clarke. ---
**Author:** ![HPL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3da27b/32.png) [@HPL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HPL)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2002, 6:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/something-stupid-that-ruined-a-book-or-author-for-you/126745/63 "2002-09-15T06:21:26Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by WSLer \* > \*\* > > Ummm, you guys **do** know that the movie was based on Clarke’s short story entitled _The Sentinal_ don’t ya? Sure ya did. 2001 the book was pretty much one of those novelizations of the movie type of deals. \*\* I know that quite well. The movie was based off the story, but it’s also true that ACC wrote 2001 around the same time the movie was being made. ---
**Author:** ![Fionn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Fionn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fionn)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2002, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/something-stupid-that-ruined-a-book-or-author-for-you/126745/64 "2002-09-15T21:23:58Z")
_The Last Precinct_ pretty much ruined Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta series for me. I enjoyed all of the previous books in it, and I eagerly awaited TLP’s paperback publication. I know crime thrillers aren’t necessarily bastions of reality, but TLP was just too convoluted and unrealistic, featuring an elaborate plot arc involving several books. I have nothing against elaborate plots, because when they’re good they’re very, very good, but when they’re bad they’re horrid. ---
**Author:** ![Tiburon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e36b37/32.png) [@Tiburon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tiburon)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2002, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/something-stupid-that-ruined-a-book-or-author-for-you/126745/65 "2002-09-15T21:33:25Z")
Here’s an update - I received e-mail from John Lescroart. He said: Dear Tiburon – Thanks for the nit-pick. You were not the only person to point it out, but I’m grateful you took the time. I really do try to get details right, but sometimes the right questions to ask just don’t occur. Hope you keep reading my books, and I’ll keep trying to get things right. All best, John Lescroart I thought that was pretty cool. Tibs. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2002, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/something-stupid-that-ruined-a-book-or-author-for-you/126745/66 "2002-09-15T22:12:29Z")
> [@](#): > > _Originally posted by Wendell Wagner_ > No, that won’t work. It would take a while to show you the math, but the fact is that you can’t divide a cube into any finite number of cubes of the same size which you can re-assemble into two cubes of half the size. Okay, how about this: Imagine you have four cubes of clay. You mush them all together, then form the resultant mass into another cube. Now do the same with 'Borg cubes, and voila! That, or Shatner’s a moron. > [@](#): > > _Originally posted by Metalhead_ > In Moria, in the tomb-room (Chamber of Mazarbul, sp?) anyway, there’s this big window and this big shaft of sunlight shining down on Balin’s coffin. When the cave troll attacks, he repeatedly runs back and forth thru the shaft of light. IT SHOULD HAVE TURNED HIM TO STONE!!! Earlier in the movie, they even showed the trolls that were turned to stone by sunlight in the Hobbit. And that fat hairy director-dude keeps saying in interviews about how he carried the books around and was real religious about following them. I assume that only direct sunlight harms trolls, otherwise they’d also turn to stone in a full moon, moonlight being relected sunlight. Since Balin’s Tomb is some distance underground, that shaft of sunlight probably was reflected for some distance before hitting the troll, thereby losing its fossilizing properties. Although, personally, I was always bothered by the whole troll-sunlight thing. Seemed too fairy-tale-ish for Middle Earth. My own ruined book: _Blindness_, by Jose Saramago. It’s about a bizarre strain of viral blindness that starts sweeping across a city in Portugal (Saramago is Portugese, and the book was originally written in that language). I had a butt-load of problems with the book, most of them stylistic: there are a lot of run-on paragraphs. Like, two to three pages long without an indent. None of the characters have names. They’re referred to as The Doctor, The Doctor’s wife, the thief, the young boy, the girl (took me a long time to realize the “girl” was in her mid-twenties. The book became marginally less creepy at that point). But, these things were annoying literary conceits, not necessarily “wrong.” What made me give up in disgust was when he started describing the government’s reaction, and the blind people’s reaction to that reaction. The government rounds up all the blind people, locks them in an abandoned hospital, and threatens to shoot anyone who leaves. They throw food over the wall for them once a day. There are no researchers trying to find out what caused the blindness, let alone cure it. (Never mind the fact that the gov. _knows_ they haven’t got everyone who’s been exposed, and the plague is almost certain to keep spreading) There are no volunteers helping these people who have been suddenly and inexplicably been struck blind cope. They’re just cut loose and cast adrift. _And they don’t seem to mind!_ None of them feel that the government is giving them the shaft in anyway! They’re not even particularly upset about not being able to see! Stupid, stupid, stupid book. One of the few books I’ve ever given up on before finishing it. ---
**Author:** ![brianjedi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3be4f8/32.png) [@brianjedi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brianjedi)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2002, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/something-stupid-that-ruined-a-book-or-author-for-you/126745/67 "2002-09-16T03:59:12Z")
Here’s one that really bugged me: Stephen King’s _The Stand_ (I was reading the uncut version, but I assume it is in both.) He opens a chapter by discussing how students at the University of Kentucky in Louisville printed flyers. Small problem. As a student at UK, I can assure you that I live in **Lexington** , KY, and that the university in Louisville is the University of Louisville. There is no U of K in Louisville. Also, on the Shatner thing, as I recall the cubes were in hyperspace at the time, and so they were forming a hypercube. Don’t have the book handy, but it’s the one where Kirk is revived after he dies on Veridian III. Other problems include Starfleet phasers going back to being blue during the book, as well as other small, geeky things like that. -brianjedi ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2002, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/something-stupid-that-ruined-a-book-or-author-for-you/126745/68 "2002-09-16T05:07:35Z")
If we’re talking about a hypercube (i.e., a 4-dimensional cube), it would take 16 hypercubes of the same size to make up a hypercube with a side that’s twice as long. ---
**Author:** ![vontsira](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/51bf81/32.png) [@vontsira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vontsira)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2014, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/something-stupid-that-ruined-a-book-or-author-for-you/126745/69 "2014-02-28T19:48:26Z")
Am doing a bit of heavy-duty zombie-resuscitating – from 2002. With the usually fairly short life of threads on SDMB (for thoroughly valid reasons), I am one who feels that zombie-bringing-back has its positive aspect. This thread which I happened on, appealed to me; with my being a keen reader, but fairly hard to please, and easily put off by what I perceive as stupidity or whatever-kind-of asshattery on the author’s part. This same thing might, I feel, strike a chord with others twelve years later – I have the feeling that SDMB numbers in fair plenty, fussy types vis-a-vis reading matter, such as myself. As the OP says, “it doesn’t have to be _stupid_ per se, but something that made you jump outside the book and pause”. Most of the posts concern inaccuracies / “howlers” on the part of the author, re things factual; but I read the OP as saying that it’s right-and-fine to be put off by other kinds of flagrant dropping of bricks, on the author’s part. My example /submission here, is actually a reaction by my brother – who is also an avid reader; but mentally sharper, and yet more discriminating vis-a-vis reading matter, than me. I like – though short of white-hot fandom – Lois McMaster Bujold’s “Vorkosiverse” sci-fi / fantasy novels. I introduced my brother to this series. He started reading the series according to internal chronology, and reported enjoying it, until he got – a few books in – to _The Vor Game_, with Miles and the youthful Emperor Gregor – in the latter’s one and only bid for escape from his horror-inspiring destiny – happening to find themselves at the same time, in the same lock-up on the “outlaw planet” of Jackson’s Whole. For my brother, this was the kiss of death – he felt it to be, on the author’s part, wildly and unacceptably over-the-top stretching of the long arm of coincidence, for the two to happen to land up incarcerated together at the same time and place – with the succeeding plot depending on things coming about thus. He promptly shut the book and read no further, pronouncing, “for me, to hell with Ms. Bujold and all her works – I’m having no more to do with same”. Said coincidence had not particularly bothered me when I read _The Vor Game_; but – different people, different things that infuriate them. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/something-stupid-that-ruined-a-book-or-author-for-you/126745.md?page=3)