AE35Unit
]==[]===O °
Yes, very wrong. Give yourself fifty lashes!
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Oh thats better!
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NEWS: Update on the catastrophic server crash: https://www.sffchronicles.com/threads/587701/
Worst SFF Book Ever
- Thread starter Jev
- Start date
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Oh thats better!
AE35Unit
]==[]===O °
Yea finished it last night about 2 am! See t'other thread•••
AE35Unit
]==[]===O °
Oh not me. If I don't like the first book and its a series where they all follow immediately,then thats it for me. If on the other hand its an SF series like Banks' culture that is only loosely linked then I think one doesn't need to read them all in order to get whats going on.
williamjm
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Apr 28, 2006
- Messages
- 1,045
Yes, The Traveller had a quote on the front cover comparing Twelve Hawks to Dan Brown. I initially thought that was a bad blurb quote (not unusual) since I'd heard good things about the Traveller, but after reading (some of) it, I'd say it was quite apt - JTH has similar weaknesses to Brown except I actually thought The Da Vinci Code (which I'm not a big fan of either) was more entertaining to read.
Terry Goodkind is the author who liberated me from having to finish mediocre series and/or books. Naked Empire was the book that did him in, and now, I am free to explore good stuff, while chucking the crap without any pangs of "what will happen?!?!?!what if it gets better?!?!?!" because, well, it never did get better.
Dimentio
Royal jester
- Joined
- Jun 27, 2009
- Messages
- 204
Why do you think so?
thepaladin
Holy Knight
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2009
- Messages
- 530
Can't agree on 1984...nor on Twelve Hawks, well I should say on Dan Brown. Traveler is okay...I found it a good solid "not bad" while I detested Code. All a matter of taste.
I don't know if, given the sheer number of scifi books out there I have actually come across "the worst" over all, but as for me of the books I've read that were touted by others as "just magnificent" the one I think of as my most disappointing read may surprise some of you. I'd tag Stranger in a Strang Land as the book I never want to see again. I found it to be.....well, very disappointing...to be nice about it.
I don't know if, given the sheer number of scifi books out there I have actually come across "the worst" over all, but as for me of the books I've read that were touted by others as "just magnificent" the one I think of as my most disappointing read may surprise some of you. I'd tag Stranger in a Strang Land as the book I never want to see again. I found it to be.....well, very disappointing...to be nice about it.
dask
dark and stormy knight
I have to agree with this.
J-WO
Author of 'Pennyblade' and 'Feral Space'
AE35Unit
]==[]===O °
Youre never alone on the Chrons.....
J-WO
Author of 'Pennyblade' and 'Feral Space'
Ah, bless!
gully_foyle
Here kitty kitty kitty!
Me too. I loved all his works as a kid, including this one. I tried re-reading it as an adult and found the experience akin to constantly rubbing sand in my eyes. I just could not get into it at all.
AE35Unit
]==[]===O °
Strange how I enjoyed a potentially difficult and awkward book and yet couldn't get into the ever popular Dune!
Queer old world
thepaladin
Holy Knight
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2009
- Messages
- 530
Well, no accounting for taste....or lack thereof.....
I liked Dune....but found the sequels progressively weaker and weaker.
I liked Dune....but found the sequels progressively weaker and weaker.
J-WO
Author of 'Pennyblade' and 'Feral Space'
Especially the ones Frank himself didn't write.
JunkMonkey
Lord High Vizier of Nowt
Applies electrodes to moribund thread... lightning crackles... oversized switches are thrown.. the thing that goes zzzt! zzzt! zzzt! goes zzzt! zzzt! zzzt! I raise a hand to the heavens while clutching an enormous lever.... "Live! live! LIVE!"
I suspect I am currently reading the worst SF book ever written. At least it's the worst I have encountered. (And I have encountered some real dross in my time.)
Remember that episode of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace where everyone turned into monkeys? Well take that image and reimagine it as a zero-budget, straight to Free to Air obscure streaming channel movie made by people who got fired by the Asylum for incompetence. (The Asylum are the makers of the Sharknado movies.) This books reads like the novelisation of that movie written by the producer's kid brother to keep him off the set and out of the way.
The plot so far (I'm only about half way through* - people all over the world are turning into hyper-aggressive Neanderthal / Sapiens hybrids and no one knows why. Society is falling apart - though Ubers still turn up on time when the plot requires them to. We know people are turning into hyper-aggressive Neanderthal / Sapiens hybrids and society is falling apart because our cast members constantly tell each other that people are turning into hyper-aggressive Neanderthal / Sapiens hybrids and watch TV news anchormen sat on ergonomically designed couches sombrely telling them the world is going to hell in a handbasket. There is an awful lot of telling in this book including exciting scenes of ultra-violence and excitement; like the moment where the first recorded case wakes up from his induced coma and goes on the rampage: smashing bulletproof glass with his bare hands, killing another patient, and ripping the testicles off a security guard before finally being shot eight times and killed. All of this doesn't happen on the page. It happens between chapters and then people tell each other about it for a bit.
From time to time the writer does remember to do some showing as well so he has excruciatingly boring scenes (full of needless details) of people going somewhere to meet someone to tell them what the readers have already been told three or four times before.
The oddness starts before the book has even started.
For one thing the author forgot to put his name on the spine. It's on the cover. It's on the back cover. It's in the indicia - twice once for 'Editing and proofreading' and once for 'Layout and Formatting' (the fact that there is a typo just below the word 'proofreading' is the funniest joke in the book). But not the spine.
The copyright date at the front is 2017 but an author's intro / dedication talks about a friend who died in 2020 and then the book is full of references to the Covid-19 pandemic. A quick Googling shows that what I have is a rewritten / revised edition. So the bits of this book that were rewritten aren't copyright? I'm not going to go look but I would guess that in the earlier version (or an earlier draft) one of the central families had a different nationality and have gone from being American to British; the wife's mother is called 'Mom', their car has a trunk and a hood rather than boot and bonnet.
The book is riddled with inconsistencies and 'what the fuckery' that comes at you from all directions. The woman of the family works in a hospital on a ward. Her job title is not given nor is it clear what she does but, at the start of her shift (and the start of a chapter) she is diligently "catching up with the status of the patients she would have charge of for duration of her shift" before having a snack. She is then told two pages later by a superior that the unusual patient that had arrived yesterday and whom she saw fit to name and tell her husband about (serious breach of medical ethics there and almost certainly a sacking offence) had been moved to a different ward... without her noticing?
I'm reading this book with a pencil in one hand and there's hardly a page that I haven't marked up a typo or an inconsistency. Things like the breakfast cereal Cocoa Pops being capitalised (as it should be; it's a proper brand name) only to be written 'Cocoa pops' a few lines later on the same page and then 'Cornflakes' having a capitol when it doesn't need it. And some seriously dreadful writing:
"Lynne pulled the door shut and the Prius pulled away. Jeff watched them leave until they had turned the corner and disappeared. Wiping the tears from his eyes he'd tried so hard to hide from them both.." It's so hard hiding your eyes from your family.
"...those who had only just managed to keep their heads above water financially and figuratively speaking..."
Crews of ships at sea are not immune: "Those that had begun turning into hybrids were left wondering the empty hulks."
"Claire realized just how small a fish she really was in the huge pool of what was happening."
"Only crews that underwent the strictest medical examinations before each flight was allowed to fly..."
"She moved back slowly, and as calmly as she was able with her body pumping huge amounts of adrenalin around her." - leaving puddles of the stuff on the floor presumably.
This is awful.
* I say 'about' because, other than measuring the pages read against the pages unread with a ruler, there is no way of telling because, for some inexplicable reason, there is no pagination. I've never encountered a novel without page numbers before. Their absence is oddly disconcerting.
I suspect I am currently reading the worst SF book ever written. At least it's the worst I have encountered. (And I have encountered some real dross in my time.)
Remember that episode of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace where everyone turned into monkeys? Well take that image and reimagine it as a zero-budget, straight to Free to Air obscure streaming channel movie made by people who got fired by the Asylum for incompetence. (The Asylum are the makers of the Sharknado movies.) This books reads like the novelisation of that movie written by the producer's kid brother to keep him off the set and out of the way.
The plot so far (I'm only about half way through* - people all over the world are turning into hyper-aggressive Neanderthal / Sapiens hybrids and no one knows why. Society is falling apart - though Ubers still turn up on time when the plot requires them to. We know people are turning into hyper-aggressive Neanderthal / Sapiens hybrids and society is falling apart because our cast members constantly tell each other that people are turning into hyper-aggressive Neanderthal / Sapiens hybrids and watch TV news anchormen sat on ergonomically designed couches sombrely telling them the world is going to hell in a handbasket. There is an awful lot of telling in this book including exciting scenes of ultra-violence and excitement; like the moment where the first recorded case wakes up from his induced coma and goes on the rampage: smashing bulletproof glass with his bare hands, killing another patient, and ripping the testicles off a security guard before finally being shot eight times and killed. All of this doesn't happen on the page. It happens between chapters and then people tell each other about it for a bit.
From time to time the writer does remember to do some showing as well so he has excruciatingly boring scenes (full of needless details) of people going somewhere to meet someone to tell them what the readers have already been told three or four times before.
The oddness starts before the book has even started.
For one thing the author forgot to put his name on the spine. It's on the cover. It's on the back cover. It's in the indicia - twice once for 'Editing and proofreading' and once for 'Layout and Formatting' (the fact that there is a typo just below the word 'proofreading' is the funniest joke in the book). But not the spine.
The copyright date at the front is 2017 but an author's intro / dedication talks about a friend who died in 2020 and then the book is full of references to the Covid-19 pandemic. A quick Googling shows that what I have is a rewritten / revised edition. So the bits of this book that were rewritten aren't copyright? I'm not going to go look but I would guess that in the earlier version (or an earlier draft) one of the central families had a different nationality and have gone from being American to British; the wife's mother is called 'Mom', their car has a trunk and a hood rather than boot and bonnet.
The book is riddled with inconsistencies and 'what the fuckery' that comes at you from all directions. The woman of the family works in a hospital on a ward. Her job title is not given nor is it clear what she does but, at the start of her shift (and the start of a chapter) she is diligently "catching up with the status of the patients she would have charge of for duration of her shift" before having a snack. She is then told two pages later by a superior that the unusual patient that had arrived yesterday and whom she saw fit to name and tell her husband about (serious breach of medical ethics there and almost certainly a sacking offence) had been moved to a different ward... without her noticing?
I'm reading this book with a pencil in one hand and there's hardly a page that I haven't marked up a typo or an inconsistency. Things like the breakfast cereal Cocoa Pops being capitalised (as it should be; it's a proper brand name) only to be written 'Cocoa pops' a few lines later on the same page and then 'Cornflakes' having a capitol when it doesn't need it. And some seriously dreadful writing:
"Lynne pulled the door shut and the Prius pulled away. Jeff watched them leave until they had turned the corner and disappeared. Wiping the tears from his eyes he'd tried so hard to hide from them both.." It's so hard hiding your eyes from your family.
"...those who had only just managed to keep their heads above water financially and figuratively speaking..."
Crews of ships at sea are not immune: "Those that had begun turning into hybrids were left wondering the empty hulks."
"Claire realized just how small a fish she really was in the huge pool of what was happening."
"Only crews that underwent the strictest medical examinations before each flight was allowed to fly..."
"She moved back slowly, and as calmly as she was able with her body pumping huge amounts of adrenalin around her." - leaving puddles of the stuff on the floor presumably.
This is awful.
* I say 'about' because, other than measuring the pages read against the pages unread with a ruler, there is no way of telling because, for some inexplicable reason, there is no pagination. I've never encountered a novel without page numbers before. Their absence is oddly disconcerting.
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