Sci-fi authors you (and I) should NEVER read

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

That, from the author of The Female Man?

Yes.

Incidentally, I read _The Female Man_ and most of the rest of Russ's ouvre, and respected it. But Joanna sometimes suffered from what I think of as an academic bias, in the sense of starting from a theoretical position, and forcing things to fit her theory now matter what sort of bending and folding might be needed or how ungraceful the result was.

I read a long discussion she was having with other folks of James Tiptree's work in a fanzine, which took on whole new connotations later because at the time, no one knew "James Tiptree" was a pseudonym for Alice Sheldon. At one point in the thread, Joanna said "Of course I'm a lesbian!", but as near as I could tell from the preceding discussion, she wasn't a lesbian because she preferred women as bed partners: she was a lesbian because she didn't think it was possible to have a politically acceptable relationship with a man. Well, it was the '60s, feminism was in first flower, and sex roles were being redefined.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by charleski

I tried a couple of books by Heinlein and despised them, despite the fact that I'm fairly tolerant of bad writing. The only reason I finished 'Stranger in a Strange Land' was because I was still in the phase where I felt obliged to finish books and read the whole think before judging them. But many years on I can still remember how much it made me want to vomit in disgust at its infantile attempts to shock.

Context is critical, as usual.

SIASL was neither infantile nor an attempt to shock. It was very much a product of its time.

Heinlein was born and raised in a fundamentalist Bible Belt area and culture. A good bit of his writing can be described as RAH systematically examining the assumptions he was raised in and asking "Does this make sense?" His answer was often "No, it doesn't."

I consider that sort of examination one of the jobs of literature, and was pleased to see RAH doing it, though I agree the results weren't always successful.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

Deus Irae. It should have been a masterpiece, coming from two amazing authors, Zelazny and PK Dick. It wasn't garbage but I did not enjoy my first reading years ago, nor my second reading recently. Probably just me. I give up, lol.

"should have been a masterpiece"?

Given the very disparate authors Dick and Zelazny were, a collaboration between them counts for me as a "What was the person who conceived this idea thinking? event. Amazing to me it was readable at all.

Roger talked a bit about the collaboration back when, and as I recall his description, the process was rather surreal. No surprise. Dick's underlying theme was always "How do you know what's real?" and dealt with the vague boundaries between reality and fantasy. They gained power from the fact that Dick didn't always know where the line was or which side he was on.
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Dennis

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Yes.

Incidentally, I read _The Female Man_ and most of the rest of Russ's ouvre, and respected it. But Joanna sometimes suffered from what I think of as an academic bias, in the sense of starting from a theoretical position, and forcing things to fit her theory now matter what sort of bending and folding might be needed or how ungraceful the result was.

I read a long discussion she was having with other folks of James Tiptree's work in a fanzine, which took on whole new connotations later because at the time, no one knew "James Tiptree" was a pseudonym for Alice Sheldon. At one point in the thread, Joanna said "Of course I'm a lesbian!", but as near as I could tell from the preceding discussion, she wasn't a lesbian because she preferred women as bed partners: she was a lesbian because she didn't think it was possible to have a politically acceptable relationship with a man. Well, it was the '60s, feminism was in first flower, and sex roles were being redefined.
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Dennis

I read The Female Man and several other books by her in the late '70's. I wasn't impressed. A rant is rant.

(Note: I am the scanner for Gutenberg's version of Mizora, 90 years older and still a more readable feminist fiction that The Female Man.)

I disliked intensely Kate Wilhelm's Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang.but I considerate a fine piece of fiction. I can't say the same For what I've read of Russ.

[geneven]

I had never completely read Dune till recently and found it to be decent. I'm not going to read any of the others.

[Dr. Drib]

To all contributors:

I want to thank all contributors here for maintaining a courteous stance with one another as we discuss in a fun way the real stinkaroos and horrible booboos from (some) authors who really need to find a day job and stay as far away from a typewriter [note: an antiquarian device that makes impressions on paper] or computer as possible.

Now, where are some of those horrible books and writers we were talking about?


Don (Moderator)

[Archergal5219]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

There's no accounting for tastes. I don't like the Vorkosigan series as much as her later books, but I still like them. I certainly would not consider Aral, Cordelia, and Gregor to be dumb.

Agree (1). I really like her Sharing Knife books, and the Chalion series more than the Vorkosigan books, but I thought even those were quite readable.

I don't think her books are brilliant, but they're good tales, told well.

[Darqref]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

To all contributors:

I want to thank all contributors here for maintaining a courteous stance with one another as we discuss in a fun way the real stinkaroos and horrible booboos from (some) authors who really need to find a day job and stay as far away from a typewriter [note: an antiquarian device that makes impressions on paper] or computer as possible.

Now, where are some of those horrible books and writers we were talking about?


Don (Moderator)

I like reading these threads, because most people at least attempt to explain why they like or dislike the book(s). This allows me to calibrate how much I agree or disagree, and lets me judge whether I'll like or dislike a particular book or author. It can be just as valuable to consistently disagree with someone as consistently agree.

For my contribution, I really dislike Stanislaw Lem's Solaris. I read it as part of a class many years ago, and found both the book's concept and execution intensely depressing. It's possible that the execution was an artifact of the translation, but when I read it, I didn't even realize it was originally written in a different language. I've never been able to bring myself to read anything else by this author, even though he's considered one of the classic Eastern European SF writers. I just shudder, and put it down again.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by Darqref

I like reading these threads, because most people at least attempt to explain why they like or dislike the book(s). This allows me to calibrate how much I agree or disagree, and lets me judge whether I'll like or dislike a particular book or author. It can be just as valuable to consistently disagree with someone as consistently agree.

For my contribution, I really dislike Stanislaw Lem's Solaris. I read it as part of a class many years ago, and found both the book's concept and execution intensely depressing. It's possible that the execution was an artifact of the translation, but when I read it, I didn't even realize it was originally written in a different language. I've never been able to bring myself to read anything else by this author, even though he's considered one of the classic Eastern European SF writers. I just shudder, and put it down again.

Slightly OT:

Yes, I agree with you on this.

I think people who live a purely negative life or who live to concentrate on finding the negatives in life are the kinds of people who don't enjoy self-analysis when they think of the reasons why they dislike something. Also, some people feel threatened, perhaps by their own fragile egos.

Threads such as this can sometimes join a community (when handled properly and when "maintained" by other Moderators and by this moderator).

Some people seem to forget that we can, indeed, look at horrible books and wrong-headed authors and - GET THIS! - HAVE FUN IN THE PROCESS AND ALSO MAINTAIN A CIVIL ATTITUDE WITH ONE ANOTHER.

There seems to be an attitude among some people that "negativity" breeds contempt, but I feel differently and am more open-minded about the concept than to simply consign a thread such as this to the dung heap of popular opinion.

LET'S ALL HAVE FUN.

Now: I disagree with you about some of Stanislaw Lem's work, especially his Ijon Tichy Series in the books The Futurological Congress, and Memoirs of a Space Traveler. For me, these books are hilarious.


Don

[BenG]

Originally Posted by Darqref

For my contribution, I really dislike Stanislaw Lem's Solaris. I read it as part of a class many years ago, and found both the book's concept and execution intensely depressing. It's possible that the execution was an artifact of the translation, but when I read it, I didn't even realize it was originally written in a different language.

The version published in the U.S. is actually an English translation of the French translation of the original Polish.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

Shucks, I like most of the Rat books. But then again, I write Red stories (occasionally). You can tell where my taste is...

The first three or so were readable, and I think the last one more or kess returned to form, but the others are better left unread.

At that, they fared better than the attempts to turn _Bill, the Galactic Hero_ into a series.
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Dennis

[Krystian Galaj]

Originally Posted by Darqref

For my contribution, I really dislike Stanislaw Lem's Solaris. I read it as part of a class many years ago, and found both the book's concept and execution intensely depressing. It's possible that the execution was an artifact of the translation, but when I read it, I didn't even realize it was originally written in a different language. I've never been able to bring myself to read anything else by this author, even though he's considered one of the classic Eastern European SF writers. I just shudder, and put it down again.

I'm reading his books in Polish, and Solaris was originally depressing. It's written in the attitude of the most books written in socialist Poland. But many of his books aren't so depressing - I recommend:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cyberiad
A collection of short stories, philosophical and humorous. I hope stories from earlier 'Robots' Fables' collection are also in this one, as I don't see if the earlier collection was translated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star_Diaries
Also a collection of short stories, in similar taste.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Investigation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katar_%28novel%29
Detective stories. Very good in my opinion, and I read many of those - but they remind me more of Larry Niven's detective stories in the near future, than of typical mysteries. Also philosophical, like all his books.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Mas...ce_%28novel%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invincible
Well, the descriptions are better than I could put together, I just chose them as those are two books I could re-read again and again, which I wouldn't say about many of his other books. His Master's Voice may be a bit depressing like solaris though.

I can't say if any of those weren't horribly translated though, I read them all in Polish.

[radius]

Originally Posted by charleski

I tried a couple of books by Heinlein and despised them, despite the fact that I'm fairly tolerant of bad writing. The only reason I finished 'Stranger in a Strange Land' was because I was still in the phase where I felt obliged to finish books and read the whole think before judging them. But many years on I can still remember how much it made me want to vomit in disgust at its infantile attempts to shock.

Wash your mouth out with soap! How can you talk about the Grandmaster that way?

Sometimes I think whether people like RAH or not depends on where in his career they started reading. Readers who started with the juveniles or short stories seem to become fans while his longer novels which start exploring unconventional family structures are hit and miss.

Even so, while RAH had his writing ticks, as most writers do, I don't recall ever reading any book and thinking that it was bad writing. I think he was fairly accomplished at the mechanics of story telling. Its at the ideas and themes level that some people have trouble with him as far as I can tell.

[sirwired]

I avoid anything John Ringo has written in the last few years. He started out his (still short) career strong, but has veered far off into polemic (some of his stuff makes Tom Clancy look like a flaming lefty), and that most certainly is not my cup of tea. (His recent "Tuloriad" had the core of a great book, but had too many pointless characters tossed in from other books in the universe, and he added a thoroughly insulting Afterword.)

And RAH's The Cat Who Walks Through Walls... WTF? Maybe I just haven't read enough RAH to appreciate it properly, or maybe it really was a very pointless, plotless, book.

And I agree that Clarke/Gentry stuff is best used as a firestarter. Cradle was unmitigated awfulness and the Gentry/Clarke Rama books made me want to gag.

SirWired

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by sirwired

I avoid anything John Ringo has written in the last few years. He started out his (still short) career strong, but has veered far off into polemic (some of his stuff makes Tom Clancy look like a flaming lefty), and that most certainly is not my cup of tea. (His recent "Tuloriad" had the core of a great book, but had too many pointless characters tossed in from other books in the universe, and he added a thoroughly insulting Afterword.)

And RAH's The Cat Who Walks Through Walls... WTF? Maybe I just haven't read enough RAH to appreciate it properly, or maybe it really was a very pointless, plotless, book.

And I agree that Clarke/Gentry stuff is best used as a firestarter. Cradle was unmitigated awfulness and the Gentry/Clarke Rama books made me want to gag.

SirWired

As to Heinlein...He was a writer that really needed an editor. In the beginning, there was John Campbell, the on the Juveniles there was Alice Daglish, Ian Ballantine heavily edited the Puppet Masters. Every time, (except under Campbell, where he was learning the trade of producing salable copy), he chafed mightily at the editing, (see his letters, Grumbles From the Grave) yet IMHO each book was improved by the required editing. Then by the mid to late '50s, he seemed to learn the editorial needs to sell adult fiction, and produced several excellent novels, without much fuss. But by the very late '50's, he was making enough in royalties from his existing works, he decided he didn't need an editor any more. Thereafter some books were excellent and some not. Finally, he had to have major brain artery bypass surgery, and the books thereafter, starting with Number of The Beast) became dark dreary tragedies, that few enjoy reading, even though they were best-sellers in their time (they were heavily marketed.)

His work was always noted for projecting the future, in a wrapper of the attitudes of the times they were written in. That was what sold them, because they had a "I understand this universe, I've been there" background. As culture has changed, this tends to age the books more than, say Jack Vance, or Cordwainer Smith.

Having said all that, there are some excellent reading in his works. Here's a short list that should be read before writing him off as a writer.

The Star Beast - One of his finest juveniles.
Double Star - a shortish novel in top form.
The Past Through Tomorrow - A marginal call, as it is a long work, but a great collection of his short stories from the pulp and slick eras.

Try reading those three, and then review your opinion. You may still not like his works, or you make find that you just don't like his late works...