Worst Best-Seller (Novel?)

[DrDeth]

@Wendell_Wagner

DrDeth, that’s a book of collected interviews with Asimov published thirteen years after his death. It’s edited by someone named Carl Freedman and published by the University of Mississippi Press. Freedman teaches at Louisiana State University. He wrote the introduction, which is what you’re quoting from. He’s thanking his assistants at the university.

oops. :smack: But still, Asimov was known to have research assistants, which is almost *de rigueur *when you write a non-fiction book, such as Asimovs Guide to the Bible or Shakespeare. This doesnt mean he didnt write all his books or that they were written by commitee.

However, he did count in his total a number of books where he was the editor, not the primary writer.

Isaac Asimov FAQ

It also lists 117 science fiction anthologies, none of which are entirely by Asimov, and many of which include no stories by him (and so some people might be inclined not to count those.) There are also books which were almost entirely written by someone else (the Superquiz books, From Harding to Hiroshima, the Book of Facts) which Asimov counted because he had an extensive role in the editing of the book. Some books were counted more than once if Asimov did extensive work on later editions (such as the Biographical Encyclopedia.) And, of course, Asimov recycled many of his stories and essays so that they appeared in more than one collection, and some books are nothing but recyclings of older books.

[Wendell_Wagner]

There’s an article in The New York Review of Science Fiction (issue 91, March 1996) in which someone calculates the number of books that Asimov’s works would take up if you just count the things he actually wrote, not the things he edited. This eliminates the multiple appearances of some stories and such. It also eliminates the retitling of previous books. The number calculated is about 200. That’s not that surprising. He spent essentially every day full-time, from the time he retired from teaching in 1958 (and he wrote a lot before he retired) until a few months before his death in 1992, writing, and he wrote fairly fast. That’s turning out about six books’ worth of original writing per year. I’ve never seen any claim before now that Asimov used research assistants. Where did you see it?

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@DrDeth

oops. :smack: But still, Asimov was known to have research assistants, which is almost *de rigueur *when you write a non-fiction book, such as Asimovs Guide to the Bible or Shakespeare. This doesnt mean he didnt write all his books or that they were written by commitee.

Asimov was not known to have research assistants. I’ve read enormous amounts about him and I’m not aware of any research assistants. You’d think their names would be famous in the tiny sf world. They are not. They may exist, but I will not acknowledge that until I see real evidence.

[Trinopus]

He’d have given public thanks to them in his books. He thanked his editors, his wife, his daughter, his friends, etc. He was always very open about thanking readers who corrected his (rare) errors. It’s way out of character for Asimov to have used researchers and not to have thanked them.

[Blue_Blistering_Barnacle]

@CalMeacham

Battlefield Earth, hands down.
It’s L. Ron Hubbard, decades after his peak writing ability, churning out latter-day Space Opera infused with his philosophy*, and without any editor gutsy enough to ride herd on him. This allowed the book to balloon to an absurd length with unchecked style** Finally, it’s pretty much taken as a given is that the only reason the book got on the bestseller list in the first place is because Hubbard deployed his minions as a Tactical Buying Squad, making sure enough copies were bought in bookstores that counted so that it’d get on the list.***

*The book doesn’t explicitly push Hubbard’s Dianetics or Scientology, amazingly. But it still shows Hubbard’s thinking and attitudes. It couldn’t help but do so.

**Bridge Publications was owned by the Church and by Hubbard. The editor was his employee and, most likely, a member of the CoS. He’s going to be awfully intimidated about criticizing the word of his boss and his religious leader.

***Mad magazine cynically suggested that unscrupulous publishers might get their books on the bestseller list by sending out people specifically to buy lots of copies of the books. This is the only case where I’ve heard people saying that they thought anyone actually did it.

OMG! My mind had expurgated that reading experience, in self defense. When you ripped the scar tissue off, the memories flooded back! My biggest problem with it was that it actually had potential at times, but always spoiled in each section’s “climax”.

[Melbourne]

@Simplicio

I think if that were true, every publishing house would have its own Harry Potter every few years. Certainly decisions about what books to market play into what books become bestsellers, but that’s hardly enough to explain the HP phenomenon. If publishers had control over that, they’d be doing it constantly.

By contrast, for at least a while, Oprah Winfrey really could create a bestseller more or less by fiat. But I don’t think anyone else has had that ability. I think for books like HP or Shade of Grey or whatever, a lot of it is just being in the right place at the right time.

Harry Potter is an example of a style of writing (long, slow, age 9-11) that has a long history, but was very unpopular with publishers in the 70’s and 80’s. At that time, publishers believed that the market for simple childrens books was in short, fast, action books.

And it’s a school book, another wildly popular genre inexplicably abandoned by publishers.

Given that there was almost no competition in an obviously vacent mass-market, I think that the brave decision to go against conventional wisdom is enough to explain the HP phenomenom. And no, I can’t think of any other vacant market segments that publishers could expand into every couple of years.

Thought all of the books mentioned above were crap, but Danielle Steel is the worst of that lot, and GoT is much worse than HP or dVC.

[MacLir]

@astorian

Jonathan Livingston Seagull, anyone?

Indeed.

The only good thing I recall of it is that they made a forgettable movie of it that had a nice Neil Diamond theme song. :rolleyes:

Presuming you like Neil Diamond.

[Boyo_Jim]

@esmeralda2

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

I loved that book … though I was probably 10 when I read it.

[Lamia]

@Boyo_Jim

I loved that book … though I was probably 10 when I read it.

I remember liking it too, although I was also about 10 and can’t remember much about it now.

ETA: I just looked up the description on Wikipedia and was kind of surprised to find that what I did remember was entirely from Part One. I’m pretty sure I did read the whole book, but most of the description doesn’t sound familiar at all.

[danhanegan]

@CalMeacham

Battlefield Earth, hands down.

Absolutely. Bad as the movie was, the novel was definitely worse. For some reason when I read this I had a weird personal rule, “start it, finish it”, I never set novels aside partially read. I did finish the thing, but decided to ditch that rule, I was never going to put myself through that useless dreary pain again.

[Trinopus]

I, too, used to have a rule about finishing books I’d started. I remember the sense of liberation when I put that rule aside.

(I also remember the same sense of great freedom, as if released from a prison, the first time I ever walked out of a movie. It was “Mr. Majestyk” with Charles Bronson, and, maybe 25 minutes in, I decided I was not having fun. I stood up, and walked out, and felt great about it!)

[Stoid]

Coma

I was nothing less than outraged when I read it, that someone who can barely form coherent sentences got a book published at all, much less that it became a best seller.

[CalMeacham]

@Stoid

Coma

I was nothing less than outraged when I read it, that someone who can barely form coherent sentences got a book published at all, much less that it became a best seller.

Not to mention a big-budget movie, directed by fellow bad-book writer Michael Crichton, then got made into a 2012 mini-series produced by Ridley Scott!
I haven’t read anything by Robin Cook, but he’s had a LOT of books published. Of course, if this thread teaches us anything, it’s that THAT doesn’t necessarily mean very much.

[Wendell_Wagner]

And both Cook and Crichton made it through medical school.

[Irishman]

I have little experience with most of the books mentioned here. The only real candidate mentioned I have read and remember is Battlefield Earth. I read it as a child, heavily into my newly discovered love of science fiction, and motivated mostly by the facts that (a) my brother and sister had both read it, and (b) it was over 1000 pages long! This is when most books I was reading were 300 pages long at most. It was just a badge of honor.

My brother and sister both slogged through within a week each, so I was challenged to keep up.

At the time, I didn’t think it dreadful, but I know better now. I did like one little gimmicky idea.

The Psychlos have transporter technology, but they want to protect it from any stupid alien races like us slacker humans. So they have a control panel that has one switch that is changed every time the panel is operated. If you try to set the controls exactly like last time, it won’t work. You have to know to reverse the one switch. Apes like us humans would presumably see the board configured and try to replicate it and not be able to, because even if you memorized the configuration of every switch, it wouldn’t work.

I thought that was a dastardly cool concept, or the root of a dastardly cool concept. But the rest of it was pretty bad. Even then, I had issues reading it.

Harry Potter is not dreck. It may be a bit simplistic in places, and the later ones may suffer from a lack of editing for length and content, but it’s not dreck.

While I did read Jonathan Livingston Seagull as a child, I recall absolutely nothing about it. I even glanced at the description in wikipedia. Nope. Nada.

I have Clan of the Cave Bear sitting on my shelf waiting to be read, along with a hundred other books I have gathered but not gotten to yet.

Eragon was not dreadful. It might have been a bit derivative, but the author was 15 when he wrote it.

But honestly, for badly written books that get a lot of acclaim, nobody has yet mentioned Moby Dick. A couple years ago I decided to read it. OMG, it’s horribly written. Melville goes off on wild tangents. He writes a whole friggin’ sermon and subjects us to it. He goes on a long exposition about whales. There’s no story there, just chapters about whales. I gave up. The good elements have been extracted and condensed into other forms.

None of these are the worst books I’ve read, but the worst that have some sort of popular acclaim.

I would note the first novel by Walter Koenig (of Star Trek fame) as pretty bad, though I did finish it.

There’s one David Gerrold book that was so bad I did quit reading it: Under the Eye of God. I picked this up when I was in a huge David Gerrold phase, and a pretty big fan. This cured me.

[Irishman]

@Trinopus

It seems that this shouldn’t absolutely have to be bad. “Industrial” writing of this sort – work-for-hire – could be decent. At least some of it should rise to the level of “average.” Ghostwriters have done some good work. I wonder why “factory” writing of this sort is so often crappy.)

Because everybody’s best work is eliminated in the “averaging” process to make it feel like one author’s work? Because sometimes committees are too focused on doing what they know will sell instead of trying have an original idea or construction? Because the process and industry reward lowest common denominator crap cranked out as fast as possible to fit an existing mold or publisher’s idea of what sells rather than striving for any sense of creativity? Because they already have a big author’s brand to drive sales, so who needs quality?

[jsc1953]

@Enright3

My biggest problem with The Da Vinci Code was that people seemed to be too stupid to realize it was a work of fiction. On top of that it didn’t take long to realize that Dan Brown was a trick pony; and that all of his stories are generically the same story.

Everything said in this thread about DaVinci Code is true; but consider this: it’s better than Angels and Demons. :eek:

[Saint_Cad]

I have to go with the DaVinci Code. The protagonist make wild suppositions that are perfectly accurate and yet are particularly out of brilliance when it comes to a basic fact (at least it should be basic for them. Hell I knew this and I’m not a symbologist) that the word for wisdom is sophia. It is the archetype for writing a novel in which everyone needs to do the perfect thing and then be a complete idiot for the plot to work.

[Boyo_Jim]

@Irishman

… But honestly, for badly written books that get a lot of acclaim, nobody has yet mentioned Moby Dick. A couple years ago I decided to read it. OMG, it’s horribly written. Melville goes off on wild tangents. He writes a whole friggin’ sermon and subjects us to it. He goes on a long exposition about whales. There’s no story there, just chapters about whales. I gave up. The good elements have been extracted and condensed into other forms …

I’m glad you mentioned this – otherwise I wouldn’t have thought to consider the “classics”. My candidate is Silas Marner. I can’t recall why they forced us to read this dreck in high school – perhaps as punishment? I did take a lesson away from it – being a peasant sucks and is incredibly boring.

[jsc1953]

@Saint_Cad

I have to go with the DaVinci Code. The protagonist make wild suppositions that are perfectly accurate and yet are particularly out of brilliance when it comes to a basic fact (at least it should be basic for them. Hell I knew this and I’m not a symbologist) that the word for wisdom is sophia. It is the archetype for writing a novel in which everyone needs to do the perfect thing and then be a complete idiot for the plot to work.

Re: Angels and Demons…we’ve got the Illuminati whacking cardinals and plotting to blow up the Vatican with an anti-matter bomb. Cool. I can roll with that. But when the climax hinges on the Pope’s right-hand-man being a former military helicopter pilot, that’s when I go “Seriously??” The line I cannot cross.