The 10 Worst Science Fiction Series

You didnt miss anything special and must read. Ender's Game is interesting for the young protagonist,the child soldier thing but not much more.
 
j. d. worthington said:
I'm not quite sure whether you are agreeing with my assessment of Asimov's Foundation series or not....:rolleyes:

At any rate, as I noted, for all its faults, it still holds my interest and is, I think a wonderful imaginative adventure. And yes, the Mule... I love that character, and the way Asimov handled him. All the terror that the Mule holds for the rest of the Galaxy, and then the very human side we see... only to have the darkest hints confirmed by a very light touch at the end as we truly look, as it were, into the eyes of the Mule for the first time... yet with the memory of having come to care for the character in the meantime, which makes the shock all the more complex.

Looking at the original "trilogy", one can see Asimov's skills as a writer developing tremendously just through the brief span of time this set was written. The advancement wasn't entirely consistent, but it is most definitely there... and Asimov is a much better, and more subtle, writer than he is often given credit for -- in part because he tended toward very lucid yet simple prose. It does, however, have its own sort of complexity to it, and repays careful reading for the subtleties and often sly (as opposed to his overt) humor contained in it.

Incidentally... for me, I tend to include the entire set of writings which became subsumed into the Foundation series: the robot tales, the Galactic Empire novels, the stories of Lije Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw, and the Foundation proper (including those later/earlier books about Hari Seldon); a massive series, all told, yet he did manage to weave it all together fairly well before he died... and there are some damn' fine things there.

As I said, it depends on the recipient's taste in reading matter whether these will appeal or not; but I would by no means suggest it in all cases, nor would I avoid suggesting it in all cases either....
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Agreeing with jd and Connavar about the Foundation series. I find now that re-reading some fiction needs to be done with an eye to the era and it's mores. the stories and the 'what if' elements are excellent; many of Asimov's (and Clarke's for that matter) were ciphers and the books themselves were a fraction of the size of most novels now.
Asimov's early work was a major foundation (sorry!) underpinning what came later and I wonder what else might not have been written without his influence.
So 'worst'? Even if it's in someone's least favourite series I'm not sure who it can be worst.
 
And Pern? A whole world, with concepts that have been emulated elsewhere. Great stories, wonderful ideas - not everyone's cup of tea, certainly many things I find a little grating but, as with the Foundation series, it seems a long jump from 'personal least favourite' to 'worst'.
I wonder.....perhaps the story goes:

I-don't-like-it + it's-very-popular = worst ?

Or am I being a bit mean?
 
You are a bit. You're assuming I take "best" to mean "popular". It doesn't. Dan Brown sells a huge number of books. It doesn't make him a good writer. Foundation is often described as "best", but I don't think it is. It's certainly popular - the reaction to my list proves that - but that doesn't make Asimov a good writer.
 
iansales said:
You are a bit. You're assuming I take "best" to mean "popular". It doesn't. Dan Brown sells a huge number of books. It doesn't make him a good writer. Foundation is often described as "best", but I don't think it is. It's certainly popular - the reaction to my list proves that - but that doesn't make Asimov a good writer.
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Indeed, I would say that Asimov is popular (amoungst SF fans) because he wrote good science fiction. When judged in a more general, literary light he doesn't fare so well. But SF fans were traditionally far more concerned with concepts and ideas than general writing skills. Perhaps there's something to be said for writers trying to be both and, while I'm not saying it's necessarilly a trade off, it all to often is.

Being a good writer in the general, literary sense is nice but only optional when it comes to SF. Being able to posit and explore interesting ideas and concepts is absolutely essential.
 
I think if you like literature,read classics like Melville, Dickens, Bronte etc then you're going to be disappointed with a lot of SF,
which is outside of literature. The likes of Asimov, Clarke,Stapledon etc would, I'd have thought,be enjoyed by such fans of literature, as such authors are intelligent,with big ideas. Oh i'm not making myself very clear today, I've had no real sleep for 3 days due to a tickling cough so excuse me.
 
Why should sf be immune to the rules of good writing? That's nonsense. It's a genre of fiction just like all the other genres of fiction. Good fiction is good fiction, irrespective of whether it features spaceships, detectives, wizards, secret agents, historical figures, middle-class university lecturers, or upper class spinsters...

Anyway, see this article for more on Foundation.
 
iansales said:
Why should sf be immune to the rules of good writing? That's nonsense. It's a genre of fiction just like all the other genres of fiction. Good fiction is good fiction, irrespective of whether it features spaceships, detectives, wizards, secret agents, historical figures, middle-class university lecturers, or upper class spinsters...
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It's not that I think it shoudl be immune to the "rules" of good writing. Only that in different genres, different things are more important than others. What's especially important in another genre (or non-genre fiction for that matter) is not necessarilly as important in SF. I'm not saying that it doesn't matter attall, only that "good" writing becomes less important in SF. Or, more precisely, what constitutes good writing changes when it comes to SF.
 
If a sf graphic novel uses stick figures, it's still a crappily-drawn graphic novel. A bad actor in a sf film is still a bad actor; and cheap CGI still looks rubbish. The genre gets no free passes in those media, so why should it for the written word?

Besides, look at what's being written now in sf, novels and short stories. The writing is much better. Because crap writing is no longer publishable. The genre has changed, and we should hold all books to the same standard. Ralph 124C41+ was the first proper sf novel. No one claims it's one of the best sf novels ever because it was first, or because "good writing didn't matter in sf then", or because "it's the ideas that count"... Using those excuses to defend Foundation is a little bit hypocritical.
 
iansales said:
If a sf graphic novel uses stick figures, it's still a crappily-drawn graphic novel. A bad actor in a sf film is still a bad actor; and cheap CGI still looks rubbish. The genre gets no free passes in those media, so why should it for the written word?

Besides, look at what's being written now in sf, novels and short stories. The writing is much better. Because crap writing is no longer publishable. The genre has changed, and we should hold all books to the same standard. Ralph 124C41+ was the first proper sf novel. No one claims it's one of the best sf novels ever because it was first, or because "good writing didn't matter in sf then", or because "it's the ideas that count"... Using those excuses to defend Foundation is a little bit hypocritical.
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Why do you think so many SF fans are hung up on the past Ian? Precisely because they feel that modern SF often lacks something that it used to have, no matter how much "better" written it might be these days. How much great SF is not getting published these days jsut because it doesn't satisfy the literary standards now expected?

At the end of the day, it's a personal thing. Everyone sets their own standards for the things they read. The "Foundation" series obviously falls well short of yours. It doesn't mine. What more can be said about it?
 
By definition, if they don't meet the standards then they're not "great sf".
 
iansales said:
Ralph 124C41+ was the first proper sf novel. No one claims it's one of the best sf novels ever because it was first, or because "good writing didn't matter in sf then", or because "it's the ideas that count"...
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Good writing probably didn't matter back then like it does now. What mattred was magazine sales. Back in the day SF was pulp,cheap,low brow, usually read by kids, or at least thats how it was preceived by those who didnt read it!
Those who did knew differently!
 
First: We seem to be getting a wee bit heated here in the discussion; perhaps it is time we took a deep breath and then went back to debating the issue.

Second: I can't agree that Asimov was not a good writer. He wasn't always a good writer, no... I doubt anyone as prolific as he was could possibly always be so. (Certainly neither Balzac nor Maupassant managed it, and I don't think anyone is likely to argue that either of them was not a good writer.) I do think there is a certain bias here, given Asimov's frequently "chatty" approach in his writing, his lack of formality and tendency to choose a less deliberately "literary" style or manner. But this is not necessarily a fault nor a sign of bad writing. Such approaches go in and out of fashion, that is all. Currently we are back in a phase where such a more literary tone is in favor. Nothing wrong with that, either -- it produces some damn' fine writers. But nor is the other approach to be condemned, as long as it is well done... and Asimov certainly managed that a fair amount of the time.

He is also a much more varied writer than he is often given credit for. He uses numerous stylistic approaches in his writing, from the almost journalistic to the clinically cold and scientific (even in his fiction) to the lyrical; his structure is generally quite good; and his ability to convey clearly and concisely what he desires to convey is admirable -- yet he can also weave in plenty of subtleties, subtexts, and aspects of that "literary" mode when he so chose. He tended to let the type of story set the type of style and tone, but he was always more of the "old-fashioned, leisurely prose" school than the moderns or post-moderns (at whom he not infrequently looked rather askance, just as he did such writers as H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith for their stylistic idiosyncracies).

As far as the Foundation set -- as I noted above, even within the context of this, one can see Asimov growing as a writer, from the ebullient but rather crude young writer attempting a schema much more ambitious than his current talents were quite ready for, to an approach much closer to a genuinely polished (if old-fashioned) literary model. (True, he kept certain conventions of the pulps of the day, but the prose itself shows vast improvement and, in the latter portions of the series, can often be quite good.)

He once wrote (somewhat humorously) about how he marveled at Daniel Keyes' abilities with "Flowers for Algernon"; but in truth he himself could do as poignant and heartbreaking a turn on occasion, as with "Eyes Do More Than See" or "The Ugly Little Boy", among others.

Third: Both sides have some points when it comes to SF and literature in general. SF has frequently been isolated from the main literary stream, not infrequently by the choice of those connected to the genre, both writers and fans (think, for instance, of Poul Anderson's comments on how important a knowledge of the harder sciences was to even being able to tell a story of alien worlds, for instance, presuming one had to have the ability to create an imaginary world whose geology, topography, etc., could pass muster scientifically... which would leave out a great many tales in the genre whose approach is more sociological or personal.) So SF has, at times, tended toward its own rules... and those are often the times when it is most imaginative, but least impressive on a literary level. The reverse is true when things go too far the other way; it is a balance that is needed in order to produce the best the field has to offer... though this is an ideal rather than a consistently achievable goal, just as it is in any genre fiction (and I include "mainstream" as a genre, as it, too, has its own conventions and quirks).

So I do think that science fiction does need to be held to certain literary standards in order to be viewed critically... but not necessarily to be enjoyed by the average reader (who seldom reads all that critically to begin with, to be frank). And to return to the subject of Asimov and the "10 Worst"... judged by those standards, the Foundation series lands somewhere around the average or a little better when looking at the popular or genre literature of that period and when taken as a whole (excluding the novels written much later), showing both the strengths and faults of the magazine writing of the time.

So, as I said, I can't agree with it being on the list, and certainly can't agree with claims Asimov wasn't a good writer. He wasn't consistently such, no; but in a surprisingly large number of instances (especially given his rate of production), he was; much, much more so than some seem aware.
 
I'm reminded of another thread about what matters, good story or good writing. Obviously both are important, but I have always read SF for the ideas...and the what if? Maybe that;s what some of the differences of opinion boil down to I can forgive sketchy characterisation if the ideas are good, whilst I'm less forgiving of paragraphs of beautiful prose that's purely descriptive. But, thank goodness, we're not all alike!
 
I side with Sales on the question of whether or not universal standards of literary merit apply to SF writers. Of course they do, and arguing that they don't is just the sort of thing that makes SF seem like a ghetto that has nothing to offer writers and readers who care about literary merit.

A good idea is fatally compromised by bad writing; anyone can have ideas, established writers keep telling us, the key is in the execution. Of course, in a world where the Ringworld series (a very high entry in my own list of worst SF series) is an enduring classic of the SF genre, it's clear that my views may not be universally shared.

Having said that, like J.D. I disagree that Asimov was not a good writer; he had the gift of presenting a surface of absolute clarity, which is harder than it seems. His apparent absence of style was a style too, and while he did slip at times, there were also times when he wrote astoundingly well, as in The Gods Themselves.
 
Um, not to change the subject, but what is "Four Lords of the Diamond" doing on this list? I'm not defending it, never having read it. It just doesn't seem to be in the same class as the others listed in terms of popularity/notoriety/whatever. Is it especially big in the UK or something? Because as far as I know it's been out of print in the US for decades. Is it notably worse than the original "Well of Souls" books or his other series or singletons?
 
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