Thanks for the clarifications, Chuck.
I was torn between gasping with disbelief and laughing soda out my nose.
IMO, knocking oneself unconscious should not be the scene-transition of choice. Not unless one is writing commercials for attorneys specializing in head-trauma litigation.
I could not stand John Steakley’s Armor. Waffles between boring and stupid. What’s weird is that a lot of people seem to regard it as some sort of masterpiece. I think it might have something to do with testosterone, but I don’t have enough data to state that consclusively.
If I recall correctly, he’s also the guy who gets fake accounts and posts the following sort of message to rec.arts.sf.written:
From: F. Akename
Hey, guys!!! I just discovered a GREAT new SCI-FI book called Attack of the Rockoids!!! It’s really keen!!! It’s by that great writing team of Gene and Grayson Steinberg. Gene is a best-selling author…etc.
As you can imagine, he’s not really popular there. 
Fenris
Innumerable pieces of pupl garbaage qualify. My nominations for major works, even award winning works, that I despise:
Sphere: Really, you could put several of Chricton’s works in this category, but Sphere combined the lamest ending ever imagined by a six-year-old with a structure that was obviously designed for quick-and-easy screenplay transition.
Red Mars: My wife loves this book. I admire some of the technical skill the writing displays. But this is another book that raises hopes only to quash them with an ending that is bad on many levels.
Wizard’s First Rule: Good plot, excellent pacing, cardboard characters, thinly developed millieu, no control of dramatic tension; it’s like driving a Ferrari around an empty oval track.
L. Niel Smith’s - Tom Paine Maru. I ripped the book in half and tossed it on the fire after about 100 pages. I don’t even know what it was about, it was just bad.
I loved Heinlein’s early stuff, even tripe like “space cadet”, or the one with the boyscout troop that builds it’s own Moon rocket and finds Nazi’s on the Moon. I have got to agree with Tranquilis that his later stuff was just too damn weird. His last five books seemed to just be crap, and he seems to have some kind of thing for hairy, pungent, pregnant women. That’s fine if thats your thing, but every book shouldn’t dwell on it.
You have no idea how far he carried it, especially awhile back when he flooded the science fiction newsgroups with posts (probably hundreds a day) telling about how great his book was and how everyone liked it. And, oh yeah, all the lurkers were sending him e-mail supporting him (the cry of the Internet loser).
Wince
At the very least, he should change the title – “Attack of the Rockroids” sounds like a cheesy video game.
And to echo Spiritus Mundi, Red Mars wasn’t wretchedly bad, but it was very disappointing.
Aaaaah, grasshopper!
You have your Hienleins, Dicks, so on and so forth. Pretty bad, I guess. Down towards L. Ron Hubbard, starts to get into the “really sucks” level. No one seems to have even mentioned the starkly banal “Twilight Zone” series… trick ending, it was all a dream, turns out its the Earth, turns out they’re Adam and Eve…
But for really and truly BITES… Bites like a pit bull, bites like a school of piranha, I defy you to find a more complete embodiment than (drum roll, muffled, suitable for an execution)
1945 by Newt Gingrich!!!
No contest.