One thing that bugs me a little about Arthur C. Clarke’s writing is how he will frequently end a paragraph with an ellipsis. I guess it’s supposed to signal “How about that? Makes you think, doesn’t it?” But after ten or twenty times in one book, it gets kinda old…
I rather feel that a lot of Clarke’s later books seem more like first drafts or synopses.
As if he couldn’t be bothered to really fill them out into fully realized novels. He did have post-polio syndrome, so maybe his energy level was not that good, I suppose?
I enjoyed reading Michael Crichton novels, like the Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park. The plots were clever, suspenseful, and engaging. What annoyed me was that in each book he was on a soapbox preaching about a subject he knew nothing about, like chaos theory, global warming, or nanotechnology. He wanted you to believe that he was an expert on those subjects, but that was far from the case.
One irritating, or maybe just pathetically inept thing about Lee Child’s Reacher novels is Child’s ignorance of geography and road travel.
The worst example was when Reacher was trying to track someone driving down I-95 in southeast Maine, and for some reason couldn’t follow him on the Interstate in his own car and instead paralleled him on Route 1. In real life, that drive with all the traffic and stoplights would’ve taken so much extra time that Reacher’s quarry would’ve been far gone.
In another book Reacher decides the fast way to get from Maine to Boston at the end of tourist season is not to hitch a ride on the Interstate, but to hitchhike on two-lane back roads, going west into the wilds of New Hampshire. 
Regional weather knowledge is another Lee Child failing; for instance, central South Dakota is typically not incredibly snowy in winter.
I think I’ve read everything that Banks / M. Banks published and I came in here to say that it gets on my nerves how formulaic his female characters are.
But I can’t think of a single example of what you’re referring to. I’m not saying you’re wrong but could you give some examples?
Inversions
Algebraist
Surface Detail
Clarke had a strange quirk, where he packed a lot of surprising information into the last sentence of a chapter or short story. Over and over again.
“Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out”
“none could ever guess their meaning: …‘A Walt Disney Production’ ”
An ellipsis in that last one, by the way.
In Inversions I’m pretty sure the woman does not get raped, at no point is she not in control of the situation though correct me if I’m wrong. I’ve only read Surface Detail once so don’t remember the details. I’m not sure what you’re referring to in the Algebraist.
But whatever Banks’s flaws are when he writes about women, I’m yet to be convinced that he gets off on writing rape scenes/rape fantasies like lots of other male writers do. If you read Complicity, there are about 8 torture-murders described explicitly in it. He makes a point of all the victims being male, some of them being violated, in order to redress the balance regarding women always being used as victims in fiction.
There’s more than on woman in Inversions. I was not talking about the Doctor.
Perrund kills the Protector because he and his men raped her.
Lededje was repeatedly raped, that and her murder are why she wants revenge. It’s the whole reason she comes back from the Culture.
Taince kills herself and Saluus as revenge for his assault and murder of Ilen.
Not a thing I said.
Stephen King: In two of his books he’s referred to a .410 shotgun like it’s some sort of killing machine. A small amount of research would tell him that it’s the smallest bore shotgun made and only suitable for very small game or varmint control. Yeah, it’s minor, but it bothers me.
Ok, that’s pretty funny. I’m not a gun person but I took hunter’s safety as a kid (I was an archer) and they even let us kids fire the .410. It’s the only time I have ever fired a gun.
I like Rincewind and don’t like Vimes, so there you go, we’re all different, and my Discworld opinions are quite possibly the rarest of them all.
Ok, I inferred that as being your point, sorry if that was wrong. If it’s just that you think it’s a cliche or a lazy plot device in Iain Banks’s writing, I think I could probably supply some that appear in more than just 3 out of about 24 books that he wrote.
It’s the lazy plot device part of it.
There are others, but none that annoy me like the rape revenge one.
FYI, I specified Iain M. Banks because I’m not interested in his non-SF stuff.
After reading You Like it Darker I realized King has killed a lot of four-year-olds.
I can sort of see why, it’s an age of maximum cuteness and vulnerability and goes straight for parents’ jugular. But damn.
FYI, I think you should read the non M stuff again!
Reported.
I read The Wasp Factory in the 90s, I have no interest reading any of his other non-genre stuff.
Transition is by Iain Banks rather than Iain M, but it is much closer to science fiction than any other genre.
I didn’t question that because even though my part of Jersey has the Route 1 that you describe, my drive in to work involves Route 1 in PA, at about 70mph until the PA Turnpike, so I imagined that there could be stretches of the road that were faster than what I see in NJ.
My gripe with that particular book (I think) was a couple absolute failures of suspension of disbelief: in one scene Reacher fights a superman, one-on-one, like the final boss in a video game, in a way that just couldn’t be believed. In another scene, a group of law enforcement professionals who should know better are standing around in the empty enemy’s lair sorting through bad-guy stuff, when they are surprised by a single armed bad guy who showed up. Didn’t anyone ever hear about posting a guard? Or even just locking the door?
I abandoned the book at that point. Ugh.