# Who's Your Favorite BAD SF Writer? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 3, 2001, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whos-your-favorite-bad-sf-writer/60599 "2001-04-03T05:07:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Podkayne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Podkayne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Podkayne)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2001, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whos-your-favorite-bad-sf-writer/60599/41 "2001-04-09T19:54:29Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Sir Rhosis \* > And Podkayne, I too “like” Longyear, that’s the point I’m making. The guys I mention have it going for them in their ability to write entertainingly, they just are “godawful,” or “cheesy,” or whatever. Well, sad thing is, I thought it was pretty good. Unreservedly good. Ah, well, I’ve never been a very critical person. > [@](#): > > And while we’re here, a slight hijack. How is “Podkayne” pronounced, i. e. Pod-kane or kay-ne? I’ve always assumed the former, but was never one hundred percent sure. I pronouce it Pod-kane, but I confess that I have no idea how the Dean intended it to sound. Probably impossible for the the human tongue to pronounce properly, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Billy\_Rubin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/billy_rubin/32/3622_2.png) [@Billy\_Rubin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Billy_Rubin)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2001, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whos-your-favorite-bad-sf-writer/60599/42 "2001-04-10T00:28:30Z")
I may be the only person to have intentionaly suffered through the mind-bogglingly vacuous drivel known as “Way-Farer” by Dennis Schmidt(sp?). This is not a bad book, it is not a dismally bad book, it is a book of such stunningly horrific proportions, one gets the impression that it was written by throwing darts at a bulletin board covered with words. In my wildest dreams I cannot fathom the inanity of the publisher who received this, read it, and thought someone would be interested in buying it. Words are insufficient to describe the epic stupidity of the story, which pales by comparison to the character development, which is disjointed at it’s best and at it’s worst is heroically nonexistent. I could carve a better book out of a bananna. If someone else has read this saga of blind ignorance, please contact me and we’ll start a support group. I have been in therapy for the six years following the reading of this book. My first therapist hung herself from a cold water pipe in her basement, and the current one is undergoing intensive treatment of his own. Please, please please, if you see this book, beg, borrow, buy, steal it and destroy it unopened. For the love of God. b. P.S. it’s really pretty bad. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2001, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whos-your-favorite-bad-sf-writer/60599/43 "2001-04-10T05:58:09Z")
Wow, an SF thread has gone on for nearly a full page, and I still get to nominate someone new! Howzabout Piers Anthony: He has about a third as many plots as he has novels (Compare _Ogre, Ogre_ and _Faun and Games_), his characters in different series (and sometimes even the same series!) are directly isomorphic (Magicians Kaftan and Humphrey), he only has a bare minimum of a modicum of surface familiarity with anything that resembles science, and his internal consistency stinks, but… He’s fun to read. Heck, I’ll admit it: I’ve been checking the library intermittently for the past two years, to see if there’s a new Xanth novel, and yes, _Bearing an Hourglass_ was the direct source for my username. So, I guess he’s my favorite bad SF writer (except, of course, that he’s a fantasy writer who occasionally tries SF, not an SF writer). Now, for the obligatory Heinlein comments, in keeping with **Fenris** ’ Law: His juveniles are all good. His cross-timeline books (_Number of the Beast_, _The Cat who Walks through Walls_, etc) are all bad (couldn’t he leave well enough alone?). Any book where he was making a deliberate point of being controvertial (and yes, I’m most certainly including _Stranger in a Strange Land_ in that category) was bad: Shock value may sell books, but it does not make for classic nor enduring literature. For comparison, read anything by Ibsen: The shock value is now gone (Gasp! A woman actually divorces her husband!), and so there’s nothing left to the stories. The same thing will happen to Heinlein’s shockers, when and if the ideas contained in them become mainstreme. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2001, 9:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whos-your-favorite-bad-sf-writer/60599/44 "2001-04-10T09:39:57Z")
If you’re looking for an explanation of why Heinlein wrote some bad books in the 70’s, it might interest you to know that he was mentally impaired by physical problem in his brain (blocked vessels or an aneurism, as I recall). He had surgery to correct the problem, and gained much of his faculty back in the early 80’s (I think ‘Friday’ was his first post-operation book). ---
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2001, 10:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whos-your-favorite-bad-sf-writer/60599/45 "2001-04-10T10:35:24Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Sam Stone \* > \*\*If you’re looking for an explanation of why Heinlein wrote some bad books in the 70’s, it might interest you to know that he was mentally impaired by physical problem in his brain (blocked vessels or an aneurism, as I recall). He had surgery to correct the problem, and gained much of his faculty back in the early 80’s (I think ‘Friday’ was his first post-operation book). > > \*\* That sure puts a lot of things into place. Thanks! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2001, 10:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whos-your-favorite-bad-sf-writer/60599/46 "2001-04-10T10:52:53Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Chronos \* > \*\*Now, for the obligatory Heinlein comments, in keeping with **Fenris** ’ Law: His juveniles are all good. His cross-timeline books (_Number of the Beast_, _The Cat who Walks through Walls_, etc) are all bad (couldn’t he leave well enough alone?). \*\* I’d quibble and say that one crosstime novel, To Sail Beyond the Sunset is good. (and will I lose everyone’s respect if I admit that I _like_ Number (especially once I found out the in-joke, which completely changed my viewpoint on Number) and The Cat (which, again, has an in-joke, but one I don’t like)? I realize that they’re objectively not very good, but I still enjoy them.) With Anthony, the thing that gives me the creeps (especially in the later Xanth books) is the leering way that the omniscient narrator speaks of little girl’s (pre pubescent girls!) and their panties. In one book, there’s a _creepy_ scene where a 11 year old girl is changing clothes and the omnicent narrator turns into a pervert Homer Simpson: “MmmmmMMm, Innocent Little-Girl panties! MmmMmmm!” Yuk Fenris ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2001, 10:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whos-your-favorite-bad-sf-writer/60599/47 "2001-04-10T10:58:49Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Sam Stone \* > \*\*If you’re looking for an explanation of why Heinlein wrote some bad books in the 70’s, it might interest you to know that he was mentally impaired by physical problem in his brain (blocked vessels or an aneurism, as I recall). He had surgery to correct the problem, and gained much of his faculty back in the early 80’s (I think ‘Friday’ was his first post-operation book). > > \*\* I believe it was mid-70s and Number of the Beast was his first post-operation book. The only two he wrote while affected were Time Enough for Love and I Will Fear No Evil (and part of the problem with I Will Fear No Evil is that he went into the hospital before any real editing was done, so in essence, you’re reading a rough draft. And boy does it show!) Fenris ---
**Author:** ![Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2001, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whos-your-favorite-bad-sf-writer/60599/48 "2001-04-10T12:07:24Z")
Someone mentioned [John Norman](http://www.strangewords.com/weirdbooks/gor.html)? But my vote would have to go to [John Boyd](http://home.powertech.no/tug/tugma10.htm) for his work The Polloinators of Eden. Not only does it have women having sex ith plants, but it is one of the few novels ever to have to the line “It’s a million to one chance, …” ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2001, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whos-your-favorite-bad-sf-writer/60599/49 "2001-04-10T13:43:17Z")
Ah, yes. John Norman. I could never get into his books. But one time a friend was being given an award at MIT – I think at the Science Fiction Society – and they put on as little play entitled **Buckets of Gor, or Abbott and Costello meet ther Priest-Kings** ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Zero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c4cdca/32.png) [@Saint\_Zero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Zero)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2001, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whos-your-favorite-bad-sf-writer/60599/50 "2001-04-10T22:55:56Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Fenris \* > \*\*I’d quibble and say that one crosstime novel, To Sail Beyond the Sunset is good. (and will I lose everyone’s respect if I admit that I _like_ Number (especially once I found out the in-joke, which completely changed my viewpoint on Number) and The Cat (which, again, has an in-joke, but one I don’t like)? I realize that they’re objectively not very good, but I still enjoy them.) > \*\* Wait… there’s a joke to that book? What is it? It’d help improve it for me. ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2001, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whos-your-favorite-bad-sf-writer/60599/51 "2001-04-10T23:41:31Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Saint Zero \* > \*\* > > > [@](#): > > > > \*Originally posted by Fenris \* > > \*\*I _like_ Number (especially once I found out the in-joke, which completely changed my viewpoint on Number) and The Cat (which, again, has an in-joke, but one I don’t like) I realize that they’re objectively not very good, but I still enjoy them.) > > \*\* > > Wait… there’s a joke to that book? What is it? It’d help improve it for me. > > \*\* The “joke” to The Cat Who Walks through Walls is that the cat in question is Schrodinger’s cat, right? And when the cat’s in Schrodinger’s box, the cat’s in an indeterminate state, (suspended between alive and dead) right? Think about how the book ended: the main characters were left in an indeterminate state. :rolleyes: I never said it was a _good_ “joke”. Number of the Beast on the other hand, has a pretty decent in-joke. (I had to have it pointed out to me, so don’t feel bad about missing it…) Every bad guy named in the book (all the “Black Hats”) were anagrams of Robert Heinlein or one of his pseudonyms (Neil O’Heret Brain = Robert A. Heinlein etc.) In other words, the characters were trying to escape from the writer. Reading it with that filter actually improved the book quite a bit for me. But it’s a pretty obscure gimmick. Fenris {Edited to fix coding. Lynn} [Edited by Lynn Bodoni on 04-11-2001 at 06:15 PM] ---
**Author:** ![Sir\_Rhosis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@Sir\_Rhosis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sir_Rhosis)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2001, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whos-your-favorite-bad-sf-writer/60599/52 "2001-04-11T03:42:20Z")
A thread of mine has broken the one page barrier. The Apocalyse is nigh. Sir ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Pinky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/848f3c/32.png) [@Dr.Pinky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Pinky)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2001, 8:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whos-your-favorite-bad-sf-writer/60599/53 "2001-04-24T08:22:56Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Sir Rhosis \* > \*\* As a matter of fact, if you’ve read this far in the thread, substitute the word CHEESY for BAD in my thread title. \*\* Telepathic slime molds from Ganaymede? You can’t get cheesier than that. Dick, of course, sucks. He’s off his game, off his meds (on his meds (speed) more likely the problem) 80-90% of the time. It’s crap, from top to bottom. No good sentences, no good paragraphs, cliched characters. Except for those random flairs of perfect genius, illuminating a blank night sky like rocks dropped on our collective heads by an insectoid universe. Actually, put in those terms, PKD & Charles Bukowski are soul brothers. Both put out over 50 books. Both wrote an incredulous quantity of substandard crap. And a hundred years from now, when everyone else is forgotten, Gore, Oprah, & di Capprio; when all our issues are reduced to trivial pursuit questions; when only the anal and maniacal any longer know or care to remember our semi-coddled wounds, Dick & Buk will still be read. The sham halo cast over all this will fade; the ill-written and mis-begotten truth will out. ---
**Author:** ![Badtz\_Maru](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e36b37/32.png) [@Badtz\_Maru](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Badtz_Maru)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2001, 8:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whos-your-favorite-bad-sf-writer/60599/54 "2001-04-24T08:55:40Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Fenris \* > \*\* > Case in point: Larry Niven, a Science Fiction writer by anyone’s definition wrote a brilliant little story in the mid '60s called “The Coldest Place”. He used bleeding-edge, up-to-the-minute science for the “gimmick” of the story. Within about two weeks of it being published, the gimmick was disproven conclusively. (I’m not going to say what the gimmick was so as not to spoil the story for those who haven’r read it.) As far as I’m concerned, “The Coldest Place” is still Science Fiction despite the fact that the science became wrong after the fact. > > Fenris \*\* Actually it was even worse than that - the discovery was made after the story was bought, but before it was published. Niven was surprised that they went ahead and published it anyway, even though the ‘hook’ of the story was based on recently-outdated science. ---
**Author:** ![Pabitel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bbce88/32.png) [@Pabitel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pabitel)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2001, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whos-your-favorite-bad-sf-writer/60599/55 "2001-04-24T15:57:56Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Fenris \* > \*\* > > The sequel is called “Alien Minds” and as far as I know it was only printed in hardcover. I’ve seen it a couple of times, but never for less than $75.00 > > Fenris \*\* I found it online at this site [http://andromedabook.co.uk/acatalog/Main\_Index\_E\_23.html](http://andromedabook.co.uk/acatalog/Main_Index_E_23.html) But it is a UK site the selling price is 11.25 GBP that figures out to about $16.16 US. So it might not be a bad deal depending on where in the world you need it shipped to. ---
**Author:** ![tisiphone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tisiphone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tisiphone)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2001, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whos-your-favorite-bad-sf-writer/60599/56 "2001-04-24T23:03:34Z")
JT Edson. Some of you will recognize him as a writer of bad cheesy westerns. Not just cheesy - bad. I am the proud possessor of “Bunduki and Dawn”, his ill-advised foray into the Tarzan universe. It’s amazingly bad. Not just for the trite, hackneyed phrases, but for its random plot jumps and complete non sequiturs. It’s waaayy worse than his westerns. I keep it for the amusement value, and as a standard of comparison for new authors. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whos-your-favorite-bad-sf-writer/60599.md?page=2)