Just Can't Stand

[mrissa]

One of the worst nausea days I've had with the vertigo, and a great many small things happening, none of which I feel like talking about. Instead, you get a poll! Here's the deal: I will be able to see your answer. No one else will. Tell me the science fiction or fantasy author whose work you like the least. After a few days -- let's say, around noon on Monday -- I will make a list of the answers with the lj names removed. This can be someone whose single offering you found staggeringly bad, or someone other people love and you just can't stand, or someone whose influence you think is pervasively odious, or whatever -- but it should be their work, not their person, inasmuch as those things are separable. I'm not looking for, "You would not believe what he said to my sister when he was GoH at InsertConHere!"

[Poll #1200426]

I will be interested to see if my theories about categories of response are correct.

The comments section to this post and Monday's post will be unscreened, so if you want to say, "Oh, that Marissa Lingen, I know she's just got short stories out, but I hate every one of them," in the comments, go right ahead, but it will be public.

Comments

[columbina.livejournal.com]

This is a surprisingly difficult question to answer because I would hate to tar someone as overall bad on the basis of one book ... but if I read a book of theirs and thought it was bad, then I probably never read anything else of theirs. Get it? In other words, I have never really allowed myself to be exposed to bad-writer recidivism.

(In fact it is often difficult to get me to read even ONE book by a writer if I so much as suspect it might be bad. This, coupled with the death of the bookstore, is why my F/SF reading has gone to virtually nil. Traditionally, in the absence of personal recommendations, I'd go to the store and browse around until something seemed interesting. Cain't do that much these days. But I digress.)

I also think "bad" may have mitigating factors. I do not hold that the Adept series from Katherine Kurtz and Deborah Turner Harris are good books. They are vrai fromage. But they're bad books whose badness I happen to LIKE. In fact, I've read a great deal of Kurtz' lifetime output and I don't consider her a fabulous writer, but it doesn't stop me from reading the books. I don't consider McCaffrey a fabulous writer and yet I adore the darned Talent series which critics love to bash on (the series starting with The Rowan). For counterpoint, the only books of hers I refuse to read are the dragonrider ones, which are the seminal ones for everybody else on the planet - there the material doesn't interest me enough to allow me to get past the essential woodenness of the work. See?

I do have an answer for your poll, though, and it is important because it's the last time I let someone else's opinions sway me into CONTINUING to read a series even though I knew it was bad. Three books in I got, because everyone else was telling me how good it was, and I was thinking, "OK, I'll get to the good part ANY MINUTE NOW I'm sure," and it never came.

I have glanced through his other works since then, off and on, enough to conclude that he is consistent, and that his popularity must be an extraordinary delusion and the madness of crowds.

No, I don't mind also giving his name out loud. Stephen Donaldson.

P.S. I'm glad you made explicit the distinction of not rejecting an author because you discovered you disliked him personally, because I have one in that category too, and that name I am NOT giving out loud, nay, not even with him dead for some years now.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

One? Just One? UNpossible. I think I limited myself to four, but even that was sort of hard. There's just such a vast universe of suck out there.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

It's funny. There are lots I dislike. Lots! A lot! I mean, lots that I dislike a lot.

That being so, it entertains me how immediately and unambiguously my response popped into my head. I think it's a synergistic combination of really bad writing, really offensive writing, autobiographical arrogance, popularity which I consider damaging to our nation's youth, and--

--the fact that I really liked his books when I was a teen. It's harder to forgive that than all the others, I think.

[snickelish.livejournal.com]

This sounds suspiciously like Piers Anthony, although he wasn't my pick.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

That being so, it entertains me how immediately and unambiguously my response popped into my head.

I had one pop instantaneously into my head, but that's because I had literally just been discussing them elsewhere, five seconds before reading Mris's post. But that writer falls more under the "dislike of the person" header, so I went with the one that popped into my head 1.82 seconds later.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I agree: if I haven't finished a book, the author is not going to make my "worst authors EVAR" list. I will view their other books with suspicion. Sometimes this is even unjustified, though; I can come up with a handful of examples without even really trying. So.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The comma is our friend.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Sadly, I had half a dozen people spring to mind when callunav wrote this.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

<lol> That's who I read it as, too.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Wow, you made it through three? I finished Lord Foul's Bane so I could have more evidence to back up my assertions about it. And I don't see much sign of change since that book.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

The author I listed is one that I've read multiple books from, partly because as a teenager I liked the works but grew to hate them as I matured, and partly because they're the ones that I can guarantee that when I read them, I'll be inspired in that "You handled that so badly, I could do better than that!" way.

There are many others but, as you and others say above I've never managed to finish reading any of their books, or they miss that reverse-inspiration thing which sort of puts the cherry on the top for me.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

*whistles innocently*

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Sooooo...you discarded Harlan Ellison/Orson Scott Card, in favor of--?

Mm. Yes, I could understand how that would happen.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Me too on the Donaldson - but I will still give him the benefit of the doubt enough to suppose that his series other than the Covenant books might be OK. Just not enough of it for me to actually, like read them,

My problem in answering this survey. otherwise, is that most of the authors who popped into mind are not of the "Shouldn't have written" ilk, but rather of the "Stop already! Please!" variety. For instance, I did love Pern, for about four books, and liked it for another two. After that, not so much. Even the Xanth books were fun for a trilogy or so.

[sensational.livejournal.com]

I would probably say Donaldson if I had ever managed to get through any of his books.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

'S funny, I gave up on Donaldson after the first book, having concluded that he was Bad, but when I got to college some friends I trusted talked me into reading the next one on the solemn promise that the books got better. Yes, the second book is marginally less bad when the main character is offstage, but this is hardly worth banking on as a trend since, hey, he's the main character. Otherwise it's the same dizzying farrago of heroic godawfulness. I gave up firmly and finally after the second book, so I salute you for plowing through the third.

[akitrom.livejournal.com]

My choice wasn't for an offensive writer (that would probably go to Raymond Kaminski or, oh, John Norman) but rather to someone whose work I feel I should like. Someone popular, with what sound like interesting plots, but with a writing style I find impossible to wade through and characters I cannot help but dislike.

Piers Anthony's books offend me here and there, and his decisions grate on me, and I am still literally ashamed for reading more than the first two Xanth books, ... but he's entertaining while he does so.

I read fiction by Piers Anthony for the same reason I listen to talks by Harlan Ellison. I won't agree with him, and by the time it's all over, I may want to punch him, but it's fun getting there.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

This sort of over-devotion to fairness did not stop me -- one of the authors I listed was so startlingly bad that I gave up somewhere in the first chapter of his first book. I have faith in his consistency.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Commas are good, but I wonder now if I should have used semicolons instead.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Hmmm; four? I guess that's about right -- Dragonflight, Dragonquest, Dragonsong, Dragonsinger? I thought it all went bad at White Dragon, and stopped checking shortly thereafter. Dragondrums was probably good, I'm not sure any more. Haven't reread anything that I recall since White Dragon came out.

[snickelish.livejournal.com]

Now she tells us. (g)

*goes off to add a couple names*

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Oh, damn. Forgot Jim Butcher. I was reminded by telophase's remarks about inspirational badness.

Commas? Or semicolons?

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Well, either way -- can I add Ian Banks to my vote?

Stephen Baxter is annoying, but doesn't really achieve the visceral hatred, so it'd be wrong to list him.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I've been meaning to take a look at those, they get a fair amount of moderate pleased comment among people I've polled. Your remark will not, obviously, raise the priority of getting to them!

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

It is so hard to recover from the realization that the books that shaped teenagerhood are no longer suitable for adulthood. It's really hard to evaluate Mercedes Lackey, for example, because just about every SFF reader I know loved her as a teen... and now a significant number of us want to copyedit and be part of her crit group so we can fix things. And that runs straight into the temporal portion of good and bad-- what is a bad book now was a good book then. 'Good' and 'bad' apply to specific people at specific times.

There are many books I dislike but read anyway because there's enough there that I like that I can have great fun complaining about the bad parts-- which are very bad in some cases-- and sort of skim my brain around to keep just the good parts. Good parts in this case are mostly angst and melodrama.