SF Signal: Worst SF/F Book Ever

Worst SF/F Book Ever

This article on the worst songs ever made me wonder what were some of the worst sf/f books people ever read. The only requirement is that it you had to actually finish the book. Otherwise, slam away.

For me, I would say that Battlefield Earth is the worst book I've ever finished. I though the first half was good. But then, at the halfway point, the main bad guy (Terl) gets killed off. The last half of the book details the efforts of Earth's survivors to wrestle control of the planet from...shark bankers. Lame. Every page was a tough decision to persevere or give up. Unfortunately, I continued. After the read, I had no inkling to see the Travolta movie (although I did catch part of that train wreck on SciFi).

Hands down, for me its Dhalgren. I know a lot people like this book, but I found it dense, impenetrable, confusing and boring. I tried to read it 3 times before I was able to read stright through. Delany seemed more interested in how 'literary' he could write then in actually writing a decent story. Admittedly, I was 16 or so when I read it and at that time I was more interested in reading 'big' novels than in what was inside them so it might be better now (as I discovered The Difference Engine is/was (choose your own verb tense)). I read Battlefield Earth as a freshman in high school and remember it being light mentally (certainly not physically!) and a quick read. But it isn't great. And the reviews on the cover seem to have been literally ghost written by L. Ron himself...

Posted by jp on Tuesday April 20, 2004 at 4:32 PM

Worst book I've ever finished? Hmm, that's tough really because the worst books I usually quit reading. Dune maybe for me - a book about religeon and politics hiding as sci-fi. Of course, I was 15 or so.

Really the worst is probably some book that my wife bought that I read on vacation because I ran out of books of my own. I can't even remember the titles though - I've tried so hard to block them out.

Posted by Scott on Tuesday April 20, 2004 at 8:52 PM

That's it? Only 4 posts about the worst SF you've ever read? How about opening it up to books you couldn't finish they were so bad. For me that would be the huge deca-ology, Mission Earth from Hubbard. The first book was so lame, so horrible that I couldn't finish it. And to think there are 9 more books in the series!

I have to toss in the Robert Jordan snore-fest, The Wheel of Time series as well. Although I read the first one, it made me realize CSPAN really isn't that boring.

Its amazing to compare Hubbard against Iain Banks (with or without the M.) or Jordan against George R.R. Martin. Quality always wins...

Posted by jp on Wednesday April 21, 2004 at 10:07 AM

Books I could not finish:

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursual K. LeGuin

The Merchant War by Frederik Pohl

Little, Big by John Crowley

Vortex by Chrish Bunch & Allan Cole

The Breeds of Man by F.M. Busby

The Fabulous Riverboat and The Dark Design by P.J. Farmer

The Forest House and Lady of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley - I liked Mists of Avalon so much, I thought I'd like the sequels. Wrong!

Back Into The Time Trap by Keith Laumer - Another case of "liked the first one, hated the sequel"

The Big Time by Fritz Leiber - Too lyrical for a good time travel book

That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis

Last Call by Tim Powers

The Adolescence of P1 by Thomas P. Ryan - The source of why reading books recommended by Garly sucks.

A Door into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski

Dracula by Bram Stoker

December by Phil Rickman

Boy's Life by Robert R. McGammon

Imajica by Clive Barker

Posted by John on Wednesday April 21, 2004 at 10:50 AM

my first impulse is to pick on the previous posts: Dune and The Left Hand of Darkness would both be on my favorite books list (after EEWBGW* of course). but that's not what you're asking for, so i won't.

worst (well bad enough anyhow): The Female Man by Joanna Russ

--------
*Everything Ever Written By Gene Wolfe

Posted by chris hall on Thursday April 22, 2004 at 9:03 AM

Dune and The Left Hand of Darkness I can see people not liking. I can also see why they are considered classics. We'll chalk Scott's feelings up to a youthful indescretion. John we can't excuse....

I think anything by Hubbard, including Dianetics, is pretty much unreadable. And the rest of the Dune books sort of devovled into a massive, and obtuse, treatise on religion and man's place in the universe. Maybe interesting to some, but not enough Sci in the Fi...

Posted by jp on Thursday April 22, 2004 at 10:12 AM

Books 3 and 4 of the Hyperion series by Dan Simmons.

The Cat Who Walks Through Walls.

Door into Ocean, by Joan Slonczewski. This is the opposite record--I think I quit after three pages. After the Dolphin-women humble the rowdy soldiers by looking really miffed, I knew I was not the target demo!

Posted by VMSmith on Thursday April 22, 2004 at 9:55 PM

I have a world-beater here, a Champion from Australia. Called "The Space Train", I originally read it when it was re-published, as "The Claw".

What "Plan 9 from Outer Space" is to SF movies, this is to written SF. Here's one reader's description of it :

"Except for the 3000 mph train which uses both rockets and a magnetic effect to keep it on the track but somehow is immune to inertial effects, it is just a mildly silly soap opera - at least so far. I have not yet reached the giant crabs (`as large as buses') promised by the back cover blurb. On p.104 the train, which has just gone into passenger service from London to Glasgow, has suddenly left the tracks and headed off into space instead of making the planned stop at Birmingham - thus justifying the title at last. The Prime Minister and his entire cabinet are on board, along with a horde of VIPs. On p.115, our hero is found in the cab - the Earth looking like `a football, with great undulations and cracks spreading over it' and finally buckling his seat belt and fixing his tie as an extra precaution ! On p.117 we see that the author's notions of a vacuum are as deficient as his feel for gravitation and inertia - the hero injects oxygen from a pressure bottle into the air system of the train, and sees a cloud of `foul air' appear from the exhaust:
"The cloud of foul air hung in space, and Mike wondered, idly, if some future generation of space adventurers would find that tiny air pocket in the gigantic vacuum of the universe. It might even be the means of saving someone's life!"
On p.142 the giant crabs from the blurb finally appear, and, the author having run short of idiocies, the typesetter is forced to increase the interline spacing about 16% to make the book come out the right number of pages...

The writing is, if anything, even more execrable than the science. That it was ever published at all is remarkable. That it was re-published is astonishing. But, like "Plan 9", it exerts a hideous fascination on the reader, you can't believe just how bad it is, and that page-by-page it's actually getting worse...

Posted by Alan E Brain on Friday April 23, 2004 at 9:08 AM

For kicks (because I get my kicks from this sort of thing), I googled Galaxy 666. Some intersting results:

Pel Torro, the attributed author, is the pen name of Lionel Fanthorpe.

Cover images. Check out the Enterprise ripoff.

A review citing Galaxy 666 as the worst SF book ever.

An excerpt:

...There were pinkish streaks among the rock, and it seemed that some of the chromatic tint from the atmosphere owed its origin to these. There were a number of white veins in the rock, which bore some kind of resemblance to marble, but the majority of it was grey. It gave an over-all impression of greyness streaked with pink and white, rather than an over-all impression of whiteness tinged with grey and pink, or an over-all impression of pink streaked with grey and white.
Greyness was the dominant background shade; neither black nor white, but something midway between the two. It was a light rather than a dark grey, yet could never have been so light that it might be mistaken for an off white.

Another excerpt:

The things were odd, weird, grotesque. There was something horribly uncustomary and unwonted about them. There were completely unfamiliar. Their appearence was outlandish and extraordinary. There was something quite phenomenal about them. They were supernormal; they were unparalleled; they were unexampled. The shape of the aliens was singular in every sense. They were curious, odd, queer, peculiar and fantastic, and yet when every adjective had been used on them, when every preternatural epithet had been applied to their aberrant and freakish appearence, when everything that could be said about such eccentric, exceptional, anomalous creatures had been said, they still remained indescribable in any concrete terms.

More samples of Fanthorpe's writing.

Insight into the writing of the book:

Lionel Fanthorpe ran a charity auction while being guest of honour at a US convention, and sold a copy of his legendary Galaxy 666 for $40 -- twice as much, he wept, as he was paid to write the book in 1963....

Posted by John on Friday April 23, 2004 at 10:12 AM

I certainly would agree with Silveberg's The Alien Years as being up there on the list. The aliens just show up -- take over -- and, after 60 years, leave. And nothing the protagonists do during that time makes a lick of difference.

Granted, if aliens did invade, it probably would be a lot more like the Alien Years than Footfall, but Footfall was considerably more entertaining.

Another couple of bad books. While I like Alan Dean Foster's Humanx stuff well enough, I loved Icerigger when I was 11, but I found the second two books in that Tran-Kee-Kee series a few years ago, and they were just indigestible.

Posted by Andrew on Friday April 23, 2004 at 12:25 PM

Mollbot, to be fair Battlefield Earth the book did not use any 1000 year old jets, that was purely an invention of the movie. The movie contradicts the book in some aspects. (In one example, Ft Knox in the book had been cleaned out by the Psychlos, but in the movie it hadn't).

The book is not great, but is light years better than the movie.

In the book, it's more like Terl is killed off 2/3rds through it, however his last actions have significant implications on the "twist" at the end. I'll agree with the original poster that the second half of the book is not nearly as good as the first half, but I thought the end twist made up for it.

Posted by Matt on Saturday September 11, 2004 at 11:35 PM

The worst books I ever finished were Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons. I read them because I am trying to read my way through the Hugo and Nebula award winners. The fact that Hyperion won a Hugo makes me question the validity of my idea that reading the winners will lead me into reading great, classic SF. Hyperion wasn't a complete story, damn it! Only together did both books form a complete story ? a confusing and ridiculous one at that. Together these two books combined to form the worst book I ever finished. Hyperion is a thinly disguised novella collection with one great story in it, one good one, a few okay, and one or two really bad. The one haunting story that sticks with me doesn't make up for the rest of two books I had to slog through. I had part 2 in my possession when I started part 1, but I still was irate when the Hyperion ended with what amounted to a "to be continued". (In fact, these two books have made me incredibly leery of any series for fear that a single book does not form a complete story.) The only reason I finished both was because I was deployed in support of OEF at the time and had nothing better to do when I got back to my tent than read. These are the only award winners I have removed from my book collection. I want to forget I ever read them, but then I might accidentally read them again, and I'd hate for that to happen.

Posted by Kristen on Sunday May 29, 2005 at 11:53 PM

Oops lost a paragraph above.

Another bad book I finished was Childhood's End. I was reading my way through the classics of SF and accidentally read this mystical fantasy. Somehow I didn't get the word that this is not science fiction. Practically no science at all. I didn't like it. I kept waiting for it to get better, but it kept getting worse until it reached its horrible conclusion.

Posted by Kristen on Sunday May 29, 2005 at 11:58 PM

Ack, Kristen!

Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion are two of my all time favorites. I did just re-read them though and they weren't as good the second time around. Simmons has a tendency to be dense and long-winded, which hampers the reading experience. I still like them though (I'd still rate them at 4/5) and their exploration of religion, AI, consciousness and quantum effects is fascinating.

And, as luck would have it, I just re-read Childhood's End as well. The first time through I was deeply affected by it. This time, not at all. Maybe because I knew what was going to happen, I could focus on the storytelling rather than the story. CE has a very dry style, and there isn't a single character for the reader to get attached to. Rather, you're supposed to empathize with humanity as a whole. The second time through, I'd rate it about a 2.5-3/5. Its really 3 short stories strung together, which makes for a disjointed story.

On the plus side for you Kristen, I hear the Bujold books are supposed to be excellent. I don't know though, I've never read them. Let us know what you think of them!

Posted by jp on Monday May 30, 2005 at 9:59 AM

What makes a good SF book good is a delicate combination of things: authetic or semi-authentic science, an interesting extrapolation, a sense of wonder, a good plot, engaging characters, a satisfying ending, writing that is either poetical or at least serviceable.

A bad book should lack all these qualities to be purely bad: junk science, trite or stereotyped ideas, a dull sense of having seen these ideas done before (and done better), a confused plot, repellant characters, a broken ending, heavyhanded and tin-eared writing style.

Now, I will point out that a purely bad book is so bad and so forgettable that it does not offend the reader by being bad: the reader picks up some pulpish space-opera and reads it and forgets it.

No, I submit that an impurely bad book is worse than a purely bad book. When a good writer has some good qualities in his work, and then ruins the effect by injecting some truly bad ideas, or prose, or plot, the reader's expectations are high and his downfall is deep.

In other words, I say that the worst books actually always have something very good going for them, a goodness that the author betrays before the end.

For example, I would list TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE or TO SAIL BEYOND THE SUNSET as impurely bad books. They had clever dialog, written in Robert Heinlein's clear and crisp prose style. But because they were self-indugent books praising incest, with no structure and no plot, I felt not merely disappointed, but betrayed. And yet I read them all the way to the end.

The Merlin books by Roger Zealazny, PRINCE OF CHAOS and so forth, were, again, written in an engaging style: but the author loses control of his characters, turning them dull and flat. The main character's motivation (to avoid kingship) is surely one of the stupidest and least heroic of all fantasy. The author's acute powers of description and invention seem to have failed him: he suffers by having no clear idea of what his main character can and cannot do with his magic. He makes the classic blunder of someone writing a mystery in a SFF background: instead of explaining the unlikely events in terms of some clever use of powers or technology already introduced, he arbitrarily invents a new power to explain it, cheating the reader of any ability to figure out the mystery.

Posted by John C. Wright on Tuesday May 31, 2005 at 1:33 PM

For bad books I could not finish, Pournelle and Niven's Footfall and Oath of Fealty, Footfall is boring and OoF is trite political SF, promoting the odious idea that justifying loss of personal freedom to gain personal security is a good idea. Then there is Pournelle's Janniseries which is the worst kind of military SF. BTW, my experience with OoF and Footfall made me reluctant to read The Gripping Hand, However I'm very glad I read that.

Posted by Allan Rosewarne on Tuesday May 31, 2005 at 11:32 PM

I agree that Footfall was a disappointment too. I greatly enjoy the apocalyptic/disaster genre and read Footfall all the way through, but didn't enjoy it much. It had so many characters unmemorable characters that I had to refer to the character listing in the front regularly. And I remember finding the end disappointing.

Lest you think I don't like any of the award winners ... Bujold is one of my favorite authors and the Vorkosigan series is my favorite series. She?s just great fun. I don't get the same feeling of intellectual accomplishment and betterment that I got from Le Guin's award winners, but Bujold provides the same "I can't put this book down" feeling that Asimov's stories provide.

Posted by Kristen on Wednesday June 01, 2005 at 10:21 PM

Harry Potter, first book, don't see what the fuss is about these. Think a scholastic type book I read as a kid was far better.

Bad writing (and perhaps aimed to be ok for 5-6 year olds?)

No way was I going to finish that.

Dune one of my favorites, Hyperion is my wife's.

Posted by Richard on Tuesday July 19, 2005 at 5:01 AM

Just finished Snowcrash for the first, and only, time. WTF? Rubbish. The mytho-historical language virus that eats up much of the book has no bearing on the story, the big bad A-Bomb that gets mentioned repeatedly turns out to be of no concern, and the climax is a mob guy beating the bad guy with a skateboard. Roundly disappointing.
Finished Night's Dawn. The Ex Machina ending (which Hamilton keeps telling you is coming) didn't bother me nearly as much as the 150 page first contact/alien habitat scenario that leads up to it. That was just stupid. Don't start another story that late in the game.
I love the Hyperion books, but the Endymion books were flat.
Perdido Street Station also pissed me off. What started off as a neat ensemble piece in a strange world devolved into a monster hunting story. And the ending blew. I'm giving Meiville another chance and am about to start The Scar, and do this on the strength of his style and world-building skills alone.

Worst thing I EVER read was the novelization of Krull.

Posted by Jeff on Tuesday July 19, 2005 at 6:11 AM

I guess this is just another example of why we're all unique individuals. I didn't like Dune and others thought it was their favorite book. I loved Snowcrash and Jeff found it rubbish (the 'mob guy beating the bad guy with a skateboard' is a hilarious line Jeff!)

I like the Vorkosigan series - and yet I think pretty much everything Dan Simmons has written is good (although I admit some of his thrillers leave a little to be desired and Darwin's Blade is an odd.)

We're all different and we each have thoughts on what's good and what isn't. There might be universally agreed upon 'bad books' but I doubt it.

Posted by Scott on Wednesday July 20, 2005 at 4:59 PM

The ones I finished:

"Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand" by Samuel Delany. It was horrible, pretentious drek. There's one good scene in it. The rest is just a bunch of random ideas strung together, sprinkled with annoying stylistic innovations.

"End As A Hero" by Keith Laumer. It sucked big time. It must be one of the ones he did after the head injury. Still, I can't believe this is by the same guy who did the Retief stories. Compared to this, "Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine" is like Golden Age Asimov.

"Macroscope" by Piers Anthony. It shows imagination, but it still sucks big Rocky Mountain oysters.

One I didn't finish:

"Hart's Hope" by Orson Scott Card. One scene early on was so offensive that I wanted to hurl for the next three days. It could have been done differently.

Posted by Alex on Friday April 20, 2007 at 8:23 AM