The Second Worst SF Book Ever

Cafe Society
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The worst, as we all know, is Galaxy 666 by Pel Torro, the pen name of an English cleric who wrote by wandering around his house and dictating into tape recorders spread throughout.

I hold in my hand The Last Astronaut which I nominate as the second worst sf book ever. It is by, gasp Pel Torro. (My copy is Tower 43-247, copyright 1969.)

Here be spoilers - not that you’re going to read this book for the plot.

First of all, character naming in sf is important, giving a feel for the society and the character. This book, set 1,000 years in the future, has the following characters in the crew of the starship Leibnitz

Alex Braid - Captain
Conrad Danes - co-pilot
Eric Fenn - Doctor
Gerald (Jerry) Hilton - hydroponics
Isaac Jackson - Engineer
Keith Lewis - astrogator
Mike Neville - scientist
Orlande Price - psychologist
Queenie Romaine - Computer operator and sexpot
Sally Thompson - organizer
So you see Torro names his characters with all the care of a writer of a logic puzzle.

Now point of view is important in fiction. It is generally considered that point of view should not change except in a major transition. Torro rotates point of view with the speed of the merry-go-round at the end of Strangers on a Train.. Waiting for takeoff, he rotates pov, in alphabetical order, among all the characters, who have no interesting thoughts, and are confined to their stereotypes. Writing all their names, over and over, does chew up the pages though.

Reading the takeoff scene, as the Leibnitz prepares to head for Galaxy 701, star system 256, planet 4, I thought it unfortunate that he didn’t create an eleventh crew member, named Ultra Violet or something. Silly me. Soon after take off, they discover a stowaway, a blue haired beatnik chick named Ursula Vernon. I would have thought beatnik was out of date 10 years after 1959, let alone 1,010 years after 1959.

I won’t bother you with the plot too much, which consists of the crew members dying in ever more ridiculous ways. (Queenie, looking for a private place for an assignation, and being a bit confused as to the layout of the ship, walks into an airlock and dumps herself into space.) But enough. The characters are even more cardboard than those in Galaxy 666, and the plot is worse, though this one doesn’t have quite the level of howlers in the dialog.

A must for your bad book collection, I think.

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If I ever do drag, that’s going to be my drag name.

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I’m gonna use it for my new internet handle.

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I’m gonna use it to remove hairballs from my cat.

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Wait, is this the book that has an explosion which causes one unlucky crewman to be “spread thinly” about the engineering room?

By the seven green moons of Gongle, I hadn’t realized Torro had written that one, too.

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“Pel Torro” is one of the many pen names of Lionel Fanthorpe, known in science fiction as The Biggest Hack That Ever Lived. Fanthorpe wrote around 180 books (the exact total is unclear, since Fanthorpe used several pseudonyms; some of those were used by other authors, too, as house names*) in about 15 years. Fanthorpe wrote many of these books in less than a week, with several clocked at three days and one as a single day. He dictated all his work and, once the tape was full, sent it off to secretaries to transcribe.

There’s a Fanthorpe appreciation page (of course).

*“House Names” were pseudonyms which multiple authors used: for example, Victor Appleton III.

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For those not acquainted with the great man’s pellucid prose, more information about Pel Torro - actually just one of the pseudonyms used by the indefatigable R. Lionel Fanthorpe - can be found on his website, of course …

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And RealityChuck beats me to it by five minutes! I was distracted by a mind wallaby, I’m afraid.

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What, he couldn’t come up with just three more characters?

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That’s the one.

And after, the captain and the stowaway pitch woo.

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Please. True cognoscenti know that the first worst book, and possibly even the second worst, is Negative Minus.

Written, of course, by Lionel Fanthorpe. Best/Worst title too. Fred Turner had a copy at the 69 Worldcon and drew crowds by public readings. I’ve never shudder forgotten.

A synopsis:

Suessydo. Phil Collins is a fan!

BTW, the link Steve Wright gives is the same as Chuck’s fan appreciation site. The real Fanthorpe home page lies elsewhere.

And if you don’t believe us on the quality of Fanthorpe’s writing, you must, must, must, MUST go to the random quote generator on this page.

Samples {WARNING: DANGER, WILL ROBINSON! DANGER}

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According to Wikipedia, Fanthorpe is also a Mensa member, a martial arts instructor and an Anglican priest. :eek:

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On his site, the books he really promotes are the ones he has written on the paranormal & historical mysteries. He is, not surprisingly, an occasional guest on Coast to Coast AM.

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Voyager writes:

> The worst, as we all know, is Galaxy 666 by Pel Torro, the pen name of an
> English cleric who wrote by wandering around his house and dictating into tape
> recorders spread throughout.

Lionel Fanthorpe didn’t become an Anglican priest until after his really heavy writing phase. He was working as a high school teacher when he was doing most of his writing. That’s the amazing thing. Not only did he write 89 books in one three-year period, but he was working a full-time job in addition to his writing.

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Many giggles.

-FrL-

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Speaking on behalf of all writers of logic puzzles, may I say … ooh, Queenie Romaine. Nice.

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Seems like kind of a cheat if he only got up to Ursula Vernon. Shall we complete the set? I nominate Wendy Xerxes and Yolanda Zimmerman.

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So when is Hollywood going to make a movie of The Last Astronaut?

Then Alan Dean Foster can novelize it . . .*

*Shortly after the Kenneth Branagh film Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (so titled because it was purportedly closer to the book than all previous film adaptations) came out, I saw a paperback for sale in a bookstore titled Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. This was not a new edition of Mary Shelley’s classic novel; it was a novelization of the Branagh film. I’m not making this up.

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Um… worse than Battlefield Earth? Really? shudders

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The reason that Fanthorpe was able to get so many terrible books published was that he had a deal with a publisher called Badger Books that they would publish anything he wrote. They honestly didn’t care that the books were awful. Fanthorpe had demonstrated to them that he could consistently turn out a book every week or two, while working another full-time job. Badger Books had a schedule to meet and didn’t care how bad the books were as long as they were nominally science fiction, of the right length, and told a story, however ridiculous it might be.