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

[DMcCunney]

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.)

I think I've read about half of Ringo's work, and mostly liked it, but I can understand why others haven't. I don't have a problem with _Ghost_and sequels, for example - while BDSM isn't my kink, it doesn't offend me, and I see the series overll as wish fulfillment fantasy, not to be taken seriously. And I knew Ringo was right wing through the wall coming in, and make allowances as required.

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.

It's not the strongest of RAH's works, though it's far from the worst. How much of Heinlein have you read? You might see what you think of _The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress_, which Cat is a sort of sequel to.
______
Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by radius

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.

I can think of books by RAH that are relatively less good than others.

_Sixth Column_ is one: it's RAH working from an outline provided by John W. Campbell, where Heinlein's challenge was toning down the overt "yellow peril" racism and making Campbell's pseudo science at least sound plausible. It's not a good book, but given what he had to work with, RAH did creditable work in making it publishable at all.

_Beyond This Horizon_ is another. From someone else, it might have been a good book. From RAH, it was going through the motions. As evidence, I'll state that I remember reading it, but that's about all. I barely remember plot or characters.

_Farnham's Freehold_ is a pet peeve. RAH has his protagonists tossed thousands of years into the future, courtesy of a near direct hit by a nuclear bomb in the opening stages of the third world war. Once there, they discover a black society that has risen from the ashes of the US, whose treatment of the remaining whites resembles the ways blacks were treated in historical America. At the end of the book, the main protagonist and his girlfriend have made it back to thier time, and are perched in a house on top if a hill surrounded by barbed wire, trading for books, and looking for partners for bridge.

I think this was a case of RAH not having a clear grasp of what story he wanted to tell. He was a good enough technician that's it's startling he didn't realize how clumsy the framing device was that let him make comments about the society in the far future. And at the end of the book, we have his protagonist and girlfriend settled down about as comfortably as it's possible to be in a post nuclear war world, with no indication of how they got there. That story is the one I wish he'd told.

Another that gets panned is _The Number of the Beast_. I have mixed feelings about this one. It's not one I re-read, and it's a bit chaotic. But it came out during a period when various authors were retro-actively tying works together into series. Moorcook was making all of his works part of his Eternal Champion cycle. Asimov was stigtching together the Robot novels and the Foundation series.

Heinlein liked to play with solipsism on occasion, and gave it full rein in Number. He tied together not only everything he had ever written in one overall series, but tied together everything everybody else had written, too. I almost fell off my chair laughing when I realized what he'd done. And it's hard to really dislike an SF novel whose ending takes place at an SF convention.
______
Dennis

[JasonB]

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.

I consider Wilhelm one of my favourite authors, and that book was one of only a couple that I've considered to be "life changing" as I read them. (The other would be The Child Garden by Geoff Ryman.) I've been affected in a similar vein by two movies Truly, Madly, Deeply and Until The End Of The World.

[DoctorOhh]

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.

I haven't read any book by RAH that I felt was bad writing, Including most of his later works. I started with Stranger in a Strange Land then moved to Time Enough for Love and Number of the Beast and thoroughly enjoyed them all.

Recently I read Starship Troopers (prior to the movie which was awful) and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress both great reads. I look forward to reading Puppet Masters, Double Star, Farmer in the Sky and his other Juveniles.

[brecklundin]

Originally Posted by dwanthny

I haven't read any book by RAH that I felt was bad writing, Including most of his later works. I started with Stranger in a Strange Land then moved to Time Enough for Love and Number of the Beast and thoroughly enjoyed them all.

Recently I read Starship Troopers (prior to the movie which was awful) and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress both great reads. I look forward to reading Puppet Masters, Double Star, Farmer in the Sky and his other Juveniles.

I have to agree though I have been reading Heinlein since the latter 60s. His later works like The Number of the Beast, Friday and a couple others are just different and need to be taken in the FUN they seemed intended. In fact I laughed more at the silliness of The Number of the Beast than any of his other novels.

I think folks might get lost in the middle somewhere because there is little indication there is a sequence to reading the RAH latter novels.

Now if there is an RAH related travesty...an utter and total travesty of a story line that is Variable Star which was written by Spider Robinson using a few pages of outline found in the RAH archives. The thing was a joke which was nothing more than a different version of Citizen of the Galaxy meets, oh heck, I forget which other RAH novel seemed stolen from as well. If you haven't read CoG it's a fun RAH read. But Variable Star should never be taken as an RAH work...it is weak even for a Spider Robinson work, though I enjoyed his (Spider Robinson's) short stories about the folks at Callahan's.

Speaking of Spider Robinson you can skip the Callahan related title Callahan's Legacy which contains a significant amount of material about incest/child molestation...in fact that novel pretty much put me off reading any more of Robinson's works, which is a shame.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by brecklundin

If you haven't read CoG it's a fun RAH read. But Variable Star should never be taken as an RAH work.

Thanks, I'll add Citizen of the Galaxy to my list.

[Renaldo]

Originally Posted by fiver

Anything written by Arthur C Clarke after 2061 - but especially...

Anything written by Clarke and Gentry Lee - Cradle is one of the worst things I've ever ready by an SF grand master..

Ha! You beat me to it! I was going to say Clarke and Lee's Rama sequels. Rendezvous with Rama is and probably will continue to be one of my favorite scifi books. IMHO, it captures almost perfectly what that type of scifi is supposed to be. Rama II and the rest are complete and total crap. Not even in the spirit of the first book!

[EatingPie]

Originally Posted by radius

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.

Unconventional family structures? How about totally screwed up philosophies of life!

I submit as evidence a quote from Stranger in a Strange Land.

"...But I was coping with wolves when you were still on Mars. Nine times out of ten, if a girl gets raped, it's at least partly her own fault. That tenth time - well, all right. Give him your best heave-ho to the bottomless pit. But you aren't going to find it necessary."

I am ashamed to say I read right over this, and it was not until a girl in my SF class expressed her anger at such a statement. Justifiably so. This is delivered in all seriousness, and it's difficult to conclude that RAH didn't really believe this was true.

Having read several Heinlein books, I cannot conclude anything but is an old-school scumbag. "That tenth time"? Give me a freakin' break.

Starship Troopers was not a novel, but his treatise on military theory -- again, espoused by a fictional character -- sandwiched between three short stories. He leveraged atheistic-Scientology as the philosophical backbone for a military society. I'm absolutely sure the movie had RAH spinning in his grave, which was the only reason I liked the movie!

Like L. Ron Hubbard, he is on my list of Golden Agers avoid at all costs (sad that I even have such a list, since that is my favorite era of SF).

-Pie

[radius]

Originally Posted by EatingPie

Unconventional family structures? How about totally screwed up philosophies of life!

I submit as evidence a quote from Stranger in a Strange Land.

"...But I was coping with wolves when you were still on Mars. Nine times out of ten, if a girl gets raped, it's at least partly her own fault. That tenth time - well, all right. Give him your best heave-ho to the bottomless pit. But you aren't going to find it necessary."

I am ashamed to say I read right over this, and it was not until a girl in my SF class expressed her anger at such a statement. Justifiably so. This is delivered in all seriousness, and it's difficult to conclude that RAH didn't really believe this was true.

Having read several Heinlein books, I cannot conclude anything but is an old-school scumbag. "That tenth time"? Give me a freakin' break.

Starship Troopers was not a novel, but his treatise on military theory -- again, espoused by a fictional character -- sandwiched between three short stories. He leveraged atheistic-Scientology as the philosophical backbone for a military society. I'm absolutely sure the movie had RAH spinning in his grave, which was the only reason I liked the movie!

Like L. Ron Hubbard, he is on my list of Golden Agers avoid at all costs (sad that I even have such a list, since that is my favorite era of SF).

-Pie

Wow!





Wow!

I was planning a reply to Dennis saying that I agree not all of RAH's books were equally good, but that none were bad enough to say that overall he is an author to avoid entirely (ie: the topic of this thread) but it looks like you do feel strongly enough to avoid him entirely.

However, I think that you also have mistaken some of his characters' viewpoints for his own.

With respect to your quote from SiaSL, don't forget that in many, many other stories the women go about in extremely scanty, or even scandalous, clothing without the expectation that they might be raped, and that they deserved it if so.

The context of the quote that you seem to be ignoring is that most of Heinlein's protagonists believe that a) you need to be responsible for your own choices and actions, and b) you must take the universe as it is and not as you wish it to be. So in the above quote, the character is saying that behaving a certain way may make it more likely that a rapist may choose you as a target instead of someone else (ie: the world as it is) but this is entirely separate from saying that it is legally or morally your fault if that happens (ie: the world as it should be).


In the case of Starship Troopers, I don't believe that Heinlein thought that was any kind of ideal basis for society at all. In fact, in the novel itself I think one of the characters says that they stick with it because it works, not because it has any kind of theoretical basis for good government (again, take the universe as you find it...) I don't see any connection to Scientology personally.

Don't forget that there are many other kind of societies in RAH's stories as well. Some are slave-based. Some are quasi-monarchies. There is at least one theocracy. And so on...

How is this any different from, say, Margaret Atwood's work?

[KarateMonkey]

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.)

Because I will never miss an opportunity to pass on a link to one of the best reviews of a book I have ever read: Oh, John Ringo, no.

[Bilbo1967]

Originally Posted by KarateMonkey

Because I will never miss an opportunity to pass on a link to one of the best reviews of a book I have ever read: Oh, John Ringo, no.

Just a couple of warnings about that link:

• Spoilers (if you want to read those books)
• Very strong language and themes (we do have kids here I believe)

Otherwise, very entertaining review!

[KarateMonkey]

Originally Posted by Bilbo1967

Just a couple of warnings about that link:

• Spoilers (if you want to read those books)
• Very strong language and themes (we do have kids here I believe)

Otherwise, very entertaining review!

Good point.

ETA:
In fact "strong languange" is probably not a sufficient warning. This is a review of the Paladin of Shadows series. At one point the protaganist brutalizes and then buys an underage prostitute. If your constitution isn't up for that don't click through.

If you do click through don't miss the comments where John Ringo himself makes an appearence, and basically agrees with the entire review.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by EatingPie

Starship Troopers was not a novel, but his treatise on military theory -- again, espoused by a fictional character -- sandwiched between three short stories. He leveraged atheistic-Scientology as the philosophical backbone for a military society. I'm absolutely sure the movie had RAH spinning in his grave, which was the only reason I liked the movie!

Absolutely not. Neither atheism nor Scientology are part of the underpinning. (To my knowledge, RAH was agnostic and Libertarian.)

Starship Troopers is a "coming of age" story, which I believe was originally intended for the Scribners Juvenile/YA line he did an assortment of earlier books for. Johnny Rico grows up and learns to take responsibility, first for himself, as a Trained Private in the Mobile Infantry, then for others, as a non-commissioned officer in the MI, and finally for the human race, as a commissioned officer. His moral development can be charted by the different answers he gives to "Why we fight" at different stages of the book.

You may disagree with the author's philosophy, but you won't get very far if you don't at least recognize what kind of book the author was writing.

Like L. Ron Hubbard, he is on my list of Golden Agers avoid at all costs (sad that I even have such a list, since that is my favorite era of SF).

-Pie

Hubbard isn't "avoid at all costs". He was a competant pulp writer, who did some nice stuff for John W. Campbell's Unknown Worlds fantasy magazine, and some at least readable SF. (I carefully exclude the "Old Doc Methuslah" stories from that list.) By all means do avoid Dianetics and all things subsequent to it.
______
Dennis

[Greg Anos]

For those who want a sampler of Hubbard's early Fantasy/SF pulp, I would recommend the following three novella/novels. Typewriter In The Sky, Slaves Of Sleep (avoid the sequel like poison!) and a really grim SF story Final Blackout.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Absolutely not. Neither atheism nor Scientology are part of the underpinning. (To my knowledge, RAH was agnostic and Libertarian.)

Starship Troopers is a "coming of age" story, which I believe was originally intended for the Scribners Juvenile/YA line he did an assortment of earlier books for. Johnny Rico grows up and learns to take responsibility, first for himself, as a Trained Private in the Mobile Infantry, then for others, as a non-commissioned officer in the MI, and finally for the human race, as a commissioned officer. His moral development can be charted by the different answers he gives to "Why we fight" at different stages of the book.

You may disagree with the author's philosophy, but you won't get very far if you don't at least recognize what kind of book the author was writing.


Hubbard isn't "avoid at all costs". He was a competant pulp writer, who did some nice stuff for John W. Campbell's Unknown Worlds fantasy magazine, and some at least readable SF. (I carefully exclude the "Old Doc Methuslah" stories from that list.) By all means do avoid Dianetics and all things subsequent to it.
______
Dennis

Yes. And even the Writer's of the Future Contest seems to be legit, though they will send you flyers to try to sell you his fiction.