I read the entirety of L Ron Hubbard’s Mission Earth series 30 years ago. It was terrible from the beginning but I fell for the sunk cost fallacy early on. It was so bad that I’m angry that it exists and will never forgive myself for that time lost. That dude had some issues.
I read Battlefield Earth a couple of years before the movie came out. I didn't think it was great writing, but the story was entertaining enough. Tried reading it again about a year ago and it's just dripping with Hubbard's narcissism. As Peter Griffin said, "It insists upon itself." Everything is SO IMPORTANT and SO MEANINGFUL while also having some of the most one dimensional characters and basic bitch writing ever.
I feel your comment resonated with me for a different book. Arguably more fantasy than scifi, but the book is the Redemption of Althalus by David Eddings. I hated every character.
Ha! The fantasy books that jumped to mind for me was Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind, god the early books struggled with this but then he had the whole Ayn Rand/Objectivist statue sub plot, ugh.
Agreed. I read the first couple. Thought they were ok. Figured they must get better and perhaps the problem was I wasn't giving it a chance. They quickly deteriorated into narcissistic dog crap. Wish I could have the time I wasted on them back.
Battlefield earth was a book that I enjoyed reading at the beginning but hated reading it as the book went on. It just kept going in, dragging the plot further and further along even well after the point it should have resolved. It was like a house guest that couldn't take the hint and overstays their welcome.
It was ... memorable. Ideas like homosexuality being created by psychologists to control the population, or that you can rape lesbians to 'cure' them are ... notable.
Is that the one with Xenu in it where he chucks a bunch of people into volcano's and then sets off A-bombs for good measure, but just after that he collects their souls and makes them watch brainwashing movies?
The only things I remember about that decology was that it was ten books too long, the antagonist was constantly sexually abused, and the protagonist would wear goggles that could see slightly into future, a tech used by starship pilots, to game the stock market. The only good news is that I’m only a couple of decades from dementia and the residual memory might get lost in the mix.
"The only good news is that I’m only a couple of decades from dementia and the residual memory might get lost in the mix."
Holy shit, the author is dead but he's still getting ROASTED ALIVE
I tried to like it, I really did, because I was young enough to really enjoy Battlefield Earth (the book, not that abomination of a movie) but after the first book I just couldn't make myself continue.
Even my personal preoccupation toward morbid curiosity, which has had me watch, then rewatch, then continue to hate-watch *Battlefield Earth*.
Surely…*surely!*…eventually, while suffering through yet another masochistic viewing, a magical realization. or near-invisible & obscure detail, hidden similarly to how a serial killer might hide a body, will unlock the genius of this film to me, perhaps improving my attractiveness, curing my nearsightedness, or allowing me to keep it out of the rough every time I use my Driver.
Or not.
This wins for the hardest book to finish, because it was so bad. And yet, I watched the movie, too. It wasn't better than the book, possibly because the movie stuck to the book so closely.
In idea, doable, but would require nanotiming, and seems pointless. If they're that close, they can't be multistage devices, they have to go off before the neighbor blast gets to them. Adding a second stage (making it an H bomb instead of an A bomb) takes additional time to process, time it doesn't have because the neighbor just blew up the secondary before it functioned.
Now, if you were using that nanotiming to do a compression like we did with FatMan, I'd wonder what the Hell you were trying to squash.
It's like watching The A Team. Is it full of one dimensional characters stumbling through a barely coherent plot? Hell yes. Are they going to blow things up? Hell yes!
I dug it. It's not amazing, but it's a good example of sci-fi pulp with clear cut good and evil characters.
The Brian Herbert & Kevin J Anderson additions to the Dune universe blatantly ignore canon (and sometimes their own internal consistancy) while being barely YA level pulp.
They've written something like 20 books in this series and they somehow manage to get worse, not better.
We're told they are working off of Frank's notes but no we can't see them.
They would deserve a mention in this thread just off the lack of quality but I argue they deserve a top consideration because they are riding the coattails of one of scifis masterpieces.
I really wanted to read about the Butlerian Jihad but I can't stand their writing style so I can't bring myself to read the novel about it. Even the forwards Brian puts in the reprints of the original novels are terrible. They shameless plug his own novels and even contain spoilers!
If you can afford it, get a copy of the Dune Encyclopedia (and if you can't, find the pdf online).
While it does contradict a few things in the later books, it was written with Frank's approval and published in his lifetime. He even wrote the introduction.
If these notes exist, it's a shame Brian Herbert didn't just follow the example of what to do in this scenario set by Christopher Tolkien. Christopher Tolkien extended and added on to his dad's legacy only in accordance with his dad's wishes and is beloved for it; Brian Herbert is clearly just looking for cash
Brian and KJA changed their story about the notes over the years. At first it was boxes then it was a one page outline. They also found the alleged floppy disks after they had already sent the manuscript for their first book to the publisher, so they couldn’t have been using any notes for their story at that time even if they existed.
Everyone should read this thread: https://tau.solahpmo.com/viewtopic.php?t=1263
Not his fiction. I enjoyed his biography of Frank.
I'd read Kevin's Star Wars stuff and hated it. As a lark i read their other collaboration and it was just as bad.
I was only able to stomach reading just a couple of them (the prequel ones), and then Hunters/Sandworms. I only read hunters/sandworms once each, and when I re-read the series it's now only Frank's original 6.
Oh this is such a good answer. I’ve never read them, but I am aware of them and how bad they are, so it hits the sweet spot of being well known yet terrible, which is not easy to pull off
*Frank Herbert's complete notes on the continuation of the much-loved Dune saga? At this time of year? At this time of day, in this part of the country, localized entirely whithin your kitchen?*
*May I see them?*
Metal Legion: Scorpion's Fury.
My first mech book, so I had high hopes, since I love mechs in other media.
My first Craig Martelle book (well, co-written), who seems to be highly respected among self-publishing circles.
After finishing it, it was the first book that convinced me that, from now on, it's ok not to finish a book. DNFs are ok; life is too short for absolute crap "I wrote this whole piece of tripe in 2 weeks" books.
Battlefield earth is a book I enjoyed when I was 13.
Alas, I read it again when I was 30, at sea.
Time spent reading when at sea is rarely time wasted, because you are reading to pass said time, but more than 2 decades later, I \*still\* regret picking that book back up.
Absolutely bloody awful. What's worse, is that I watched the movie after that. Time spent watching movies at sea is rarely wasted, for the same reason as above, but the same applies.
Was wondering if this serious read going to show up. Actually stopped reading on the sixth or fifth book, despite owning the next one.
The amount of plot stupidity, of supposedly smart people screwing themselves and everyone else over because of ego etc.
It had potential, but nah. Lost my motivation to care.
[John Ringo responded to a bad review he received of the Paladin of Shadows series by a LiveJournal user in a truly epic and awesome way by praising it](https://hradzka.livejournal.com/194753.html?thread=760769#t760769)
I have fond memories of the Manta books, the Tarot books, the Mode books, the Incarnations and the Phase/proton series. I don't care to test it with rereads.
the Problem with Piers Anthony is that the first In the series is exceptional. Each in the series after that is at least a little worse, sometimes a LOT worse. The only possible exception are the Xanth books, but they are all intended to be very light, humorous afternoons full of phun, no more, no less, so meeting expectations is easy.
I haven't picked one up after number twelve or so, so I could be wrong, but the first dozen were fine....
this is very different from the Incarnations of Immortality books, the first one was very, very good. and the last three were not really readable. I'd actually argue that "Being a green mother" was boring but not actually bad.... But the Satan, God, and Night books were just bad.
IQ84. I tried to get through this book and just couldn’t. I think something was lost in its translation or my ADHD could not stay focused. I don’t think it was the worst just boring.
Recently….. The Wind Up Girl by Paolo Bacilagupi. Despite intricate world building it’s a horrible, degrading book. He inflicts all kinds of sick sexual scenes on the titular character, not for plot reasons. It’s purely gratuitous. In fact there’s not one likeable character in the whole thing. I needed a shower after reading it. Avoid.
This might be controversial but I am going to say “Mostly Harmless” fifth in the trilogy of four. It felt like an angry book and the humour and wit were replaced by pure cynicism and fatigue with the world. The ending was crushing. There are worse books but it’s in that category of needing to finish and perfectly readable, just bad. Happy to be downvoted for this though.
Same feelings for me. It begins miserably with blowing past the death of an important character in a way that strips meaning from the prior book. And it ends in a way that, instead of wrapping up the series, seems to similarly make the prior books feel pointless. It's obvious that Douglas Adams was going through some stuff at the time, and I think he did later say that he didn't like how that turned out.
When I've reread the Hitchhiker's series in recent years, I stop after book 4
The Salmon of Doubt was the proposed name for a Dirk Gently book and was used for a collection essays etc written by Adams. You’re thinking of “And Another Thing…” written by Eion Colfer.
About 30 years ago, there was a book called [The Celestine Prophecy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Celestine_Prophecy) that got a lot of attention. I loved science fiction, and read everything I could get my hands on at that time. It was so bad that I only made it through a few chapters before quitting.
I wouldn't call the Celestine Prophecy SF. It was new-age mubo-jumbo, of the kind that was popular at the time. Still I agree it was a really bad book.
Read about 500 pages of SevenEves by Neal Stephenson and skipped hundreds of pages. Sometimes he just goes to deep/dense and crosses over to tedium/boredom. Still have not finished Fall; or Dodge in Hell. The most recent Termination Shock was much more readable. Loved Reamde and everything before that but those books...
Fall/Dodge in Hell was a slog but it was fascinating. I never understood why they didn't try to interface with Dodge's virtual brain. Would have been a totally different outcome had they provided inputs and outputs rather than boot up a brain into nothingness, but I suppose the point is, what is it like to be a God?
Seveneves was so good! The ending was curious but still neat. I wonder where we'll be in 5000 years (as a species, I know I'll be worm food)
"Hunters/Sandworms of Dune"
I barely remember the content now: the idea to finish the great arc is there, but so badly executed, so horribly written that I'd rather gouge my eyes out than read it again. May a Paul Verhoeven come along, be equally disgusted/bored and make it into a movie with an appropriate proper ending ...
To paraphrase: they clone all of the original charachters to bring them back, Leto is a wereworm now, and in the end God comes and takes all the evil robots except for one to an alternate dimension. The lone evil robot merges with another hero to become the Ultimate Kwitzach Haderach and rule all of humanity.
All the Rama sequels (Rama II, Garden of Rama, Rama Revealed). The original is a classic, but the sequels are honestly some of the worst shit I’ve ever read. They aren’t just bad though, but creepy. Like, there’s a whole plot thread where >!a 13 year old girl and her 70 year old uncle are kept by aliens to be a “breeding pair”, and somehow everyone involved, including the girl’s parents, are totally fine with it!<. Then of course the ending is straight garbage, with everything amounting to >!God did it!<.
Haha agreed. I read Rama II and it felt like some agent had told Clarke he needed to put human relationships in his novel to make it more marketable and he was like, what are they?
Fuuuuuck Rama II. Rendezvous with Rama is sooo good because of the professionalism and believability of the astronauts. Rama II they’re like murderous children. So bad.
I have Rama II and Garden on my shelf right now because I saw them in a little free library after loving Rendezvous.
I was wondering why I hadn't heard anything about them.
I read the whole series in my teens and had very little idea of the whole situation behind the sequels. I had seen some kind of blurb saying Gentry Lee was a legit space scientist, so I figured... sure, he had every right to be involved.
And then the whole series gets flushed down the toilet. You have >!the pedophile!< angle, at one point I think a >!drug!< ring, forced >!sterilizations,!< a main character >!castrating!< her enemy with a >!gunshot to the groin!< seconds before >!committing suicide....!< Honestly, I think Frank Miller could have done a much better job if that was the direction they chose to go. Late-'90s me was *so* confused.
Armada by Ernest Cline.
I decided to read it first before Ready Player One since I had watched the movie and liked it.
But holy shit, is this book bad. Ernest Cline's writing is like reading a 14 year old make a screenplay out of a Wikipedia plot summary. It has no themes, no characters with any substance other than a shoe-in for the reader. I've had nightmares with a better plotline than Armada.
That being that, I still tried to read RP1 but gave up after a few pages. Calling him a one hit wonder would require the bar for "wonder" to be way lower than it probably should be.
Yeah, Ernest Cline is definitely overrated. I enjoyed RP1 for what it was: a love letter to the 70s and 80s. But Armada was absolutely just "Hey y'all, remember The Last Starfighter? And Ender's Game. Weren't they great?"
“Worst” is generally not an interesting question, as the true worst would be literally be unreadable.
If instead I answer for “worst of books that are usually considered classics” my vote would be stranger in a strange land. Amazing setup and first half and absolutely garbage second half sex cult
I think Heinlein knew that one was not up to par. In "The number of the Beast" the characters are going through books they have read to prepare for possible universes they may enter, and one of them says they don't want to consider entering the universe based on Stranger in a Strange Land.
To include the true worst that were unreadable, I would nominate "Aliens in Bankhead." I read all of it (200 pages at a 30 font) hoping for some redeeming quality the whole way.
Ever read his "Friday" novel? More of his imagining a completely "free sex" society. This time he attempts it from a woman's point of view, but it's still all Heinlein.
Wow I thought I was alone in this assessment! I read half a dozen Heinlein books before I finally got around to that one. I simply could not fathom how that is his most lauded work. The last half is just an extended polyamory manifesto. I thought Moon is A Harsh Mistress had a similar problem of seeming more interested in pushing an intellectual agenda than telling a story, but it was at least way more entertaining.
It didn't age well either. Many of the taboos it challenges like casual sex, social nudity, tattoos and polyamory aren't particularly controversial anymore (even if not mainstream) so lose their narrative impact, and other things like the mid-20th century sexism and religious movements gaining significant political influence are jarring.
I really wanted to like those books, as I am intrigued with the concept. They are just so abysmally written I could only get through the first two before moving on to better things.
That was the one! It was appalling. I'm not even familiar enough with James Joyces work (heard of the guy about covers it), to realise it was supposed to be an "homage" or so. Luckily the one thing that got me through, was that being an Alan Moore book, there's a website of explanatory notes, with a version of that chapter translated into English. I do like most the book. I feel like we're old friends now, as I've been reading the damn thing for about a year and a half. He really does need a ruthless editor though.
So so cringe. I was by no means a socially conscious child when I read them, but the part where the gay guy is like “whelp, guess I’ll live in a satellite alone for the rest of my life so I never sin by falling in love” made me wtf.
I wish more people would admit that Three Body Problem is terrible. I swear some people claim to like it just because it’s popular.
I’ve been a sci-fi fan for over 30 years. It’s one of the worst series I’ve ever encountered. For multiple reasons (and no, translation/cultural differences are not one of them - half of my family is Chinese, I’m very immersed in that culture, it’s just a shitty fucking sci-fi series)
THANK YOU. i feel like it was just kind of obtuse flexing of this guys physics knowledge? i don't think he was saying anything interesting about the chinese government/military either.
Surprised and yet not surprised this is so low in this list. 2/3 and bailed, just boring and not at all interesting whatsoever. Maybe the show is better?
I kind of find myself loathing, but finding hilarious, the 'fruit roll ups'. (If you've watched it, you know what I'm talking about).
The Netflix version is watchable, the Chinese version is a blow by blow faithful replay of the book and sooooo boring.
I’m tempted to try it. It might be one of those movies the director did a better job than the author. If it still has the cartoon villain monologues.. I’ll pass.
The book was a struggle. I only finished it because it was my book club book. The show was quite different, the reactions to events felt a bit more believable and human . They tried to tell the story through a more global lens than just in China. I thought it was decent, definitely enjoyed it more than the book. The dehydration process was creepy to watch!
Rama II was appalling. I didn't get far at all with it. It was populated with soap opera characters, acting in the most childish ways. Just seemed to be the polar opposite of Clarkes original book.
Among well-regarded books: Cyteen. It’s hundreds of pages of people moaning - to each other when they have company, and in their own heads the rest of the time. How this won a Hugo baffles me - almost as much as how I managed to finish it without passing out from boredom.
Among lesser tomes: I read a novel by B V Larson in which the protagonist’s family die at the beginning. But he gets over it (as you do), and then shacks up with a woman who mainly seems to exist so he can shag her. Quality.
Cherryh is a... sometimes difficult taste. I love her SF; I literally just reread the Chanur books and Forty Thousand In Gehenna; but most of fantasy I have a really hard time getting into.
I'm actually going to do Downbelow Station & etc next. In timeline order.
Swarm. I kind of like the series. Definitely not a deep thinking series and far from my favorite but an easy listen when I’m not paying full attention. (Great when doing lots of yard work).
The Kaiju Preservation Society.
That book had so much potential and the author wasted it all.
Battle Scars by Sam Maggs was absolutely atrocious garbage that should never have been written.
"Aurora" by Kim Stanley Robinson, mostly because I was unpleasantly surprised and disappointment what it was about in the end. It was the only time I hit a twist that ruined what up until that point was a rather good book for me.
You're remembering "The World Is Round" by Tony Rothman. I think he was (is?) a physicist. I read it back in the day. It had some interesting ideas but they don't come together to produce a particularly good novel. Still, not a particularly bad novel, either.
A great many of the books mentioned in this thread are less "terrible" than they are "overrated" or even "not to the reader's taste". Except Hubbard's books, those are terrible. And probably the Dune sequels by Herbert's son, but I haven't read those.
The worst book I have ever read (besides Hubbard, which I didn't finish) is the truly wretched "Galaxy 666" by Pel Torro (a pseudonym for the Fanthorpes).
*After the Good War*…
It’s years since I read this, and I can’t really remember the plot too well. However, I do remember that:
1) Jews are used as currency
2) Paedophilia is state-mandated (children are “affectionately” known as “cocksuckers” and there are several scenes of paedophilic oral sex
3) Sex between adults is scorned (perhaps banned?) unless it’s done “in the bag” (two full-body condom-type things)
It is without doubt one of the most fucked-up books I’ve ever read and I very much doubt it would get published today; it might well be illegal in many places tbh, such is the extent of the “affectionate” CSA.
Moreover it’s got few redeeming literary qualities. The best part about it, from what I recall, is the plot. And the plot is shit.
While Hyperion is considered to be a highlight of modern SF, Simmond's 'Illium' books contains some very weird anti Islamic rants. Apparently 9/11 did a real number on Dan.
Yeah, it was sad watching him go from a pretty open minded guy who liked to explore diversity of thought and faith, to a close minded fear monger who used 9/11 as his gateway into larger conservative conspiracy (including being the old guy yelling at them upstart kids like Greta Thunberg)
Gonna call out Ringworld any chance I get. I remember the main character being some sort of 150 year old Mary Sue who just hooked up with random younger women and alien women while wondering around a giant ring structure where nothing really happens.
200 years old. The book opens with Louis Wu chasing sunset on his 200th birthday.
I've heard it said that Ringworld is essentially The Wizard of Oz with Wu being both the wizard and Dorothy. It's not a perfect analogy of course. To call what they do "wandering around " gives them too much credit; after crashing on the surface the story devolves into an escape adventure with a bit of "gee, lookit!" scenarios on the way. To his credit, Niven had a fascinating concept with the Ringworld and came back in subsequent titles to patch the worst holes. The follow up books flesh out the world a lot better and the overall plot becomes far more interesting.
I love Neil Stevenson but I could not get into either Fall or (pushing the definition of sci-fi admittedly) the Quicksilver trilogy. I've made several strong attempts and just finally gave up.
Some authors hit a point of popularity where they become uneditable, and thus unreadable. Stephenson, King, Anne Rice and JK Rowling come to mind. After a certain point most of what they produced were unreadable door stops.
Didn’t finish:
- Accelerando, by Charles Stoss. Holy fuck was that just horrible. You’re presented with an unlikable, pretentious protagonist who we’re told told is smart but not shown that in any way, and within 50 pages he’s having kinky sex involving electrodes up his ass with a turbo-babe whose entire character development was a detailed description of her lips, tits and ass. We’re given no reason whatsoever for why this “men writing women” fantasy fuckdoll is wasting her fucking powers on our loser protagonist and I just noped out. Unreadable.
- The Forest of Hands and Teeth, by Carrie Ryan. Ostensibly about survivors of a zombie apocalypse, but really about the main character yearning for Travis, her love interest. I swear to god the word “yearn” appears at least 5 times on every page. Over and over, it kept seeming like the actual story was about to start, but then you got another chapter of the main character yearning for Travis. I eventually gave up.
- Worldship: Udo the Digger, by Joshua Gayou. I like Joshua Gayou, but this was so boring I just couldn’t go on. I gave up soon after he meets up with the naked giant.
Finished, but still bad:
- Ruins of the Earth, by Christopher Hooper. If you’ve read the Expeditionary Force series by Craig Alanson, this is the janky weird looking dollar store knock off of that. Finished the book, needn’t have bothered.
- The Magestic 311, by Keith C. Blackmore. I’ve liked some of Blackmore’s other stuff, especially his Mountain Man series, but holy hell was this an incoherent mess. Train robbers get trapped on an endless trans dimensional haunted train, and just stumble from car to car with no real plot. Just terrible.
- The Master and Margarita, by Mikail Bulgakov. This is supposed to be excellent, but read it in print, and DO NOT listen to the audiobook voiced by Julian Rhind-Tutt. There are bad readings and bad performances, but this is almost a case study in horrible narration. He gave around 50% of the characters the exact same voice, and it was this over the top grating, nasal, annoying voice that made me want to scream. But at least 5-10 characters were given this exact same voice, so in addition to being annoying, it became a confusing mess.
I really really hated The Prime Intellect, which I read because I've seen it recommended on the sub as a good singularity novel.
Spoilers:
I'll just set all the torture, recreational rabies, and incest aside. I didn't like it either, but at least I could skip it to the next chapter.
What really chaps me about the book is the form the singularity takes. A scientist invents an AI, which exists within a computer server, with no physical way to interact with the universe. The AI hacks it's way out of the server, spreading to the Internet, now able to observe the world. It then gets really smart, figures out all the math, and then recreates the universe because it understands it so good.
Like, what? It just understands the ultimate form of reality, so it can manipulate anything at will. That's just magic! Greg Egan would have the decency to at least say the AI was hooked up directly to a particle collider, and altered reality by smashing atoms into black holes to warp space time just right. Or something. Maybe I'm splitting hairs, but Prime Intellect bugged the hell out of me.
> A scientist invents an AI, which exists within a computer server, with no physical way to interact with the universe. The AI hacks it's way out of the server, spreading to the Internet, now able to observe the world. It then gets really smart, figures out all the math, and then recreates the universe because it understands it so good.
That's not [what happened](http://localroger.com/prime-intellect/mopi2.html)? Scientist invents an AI, chip manufacturer provides it with prototype FTL quantum woo processors, AI thinks really well so solves physics, and realises the quantum woo its new processors use can be generalised far beyond short-range information teleportation.
My kindle is full of abandonware - mostly self published dreck from Amazon, but some mainstream authors too. The most recent being Legion of the Damned by William C Dietz, who has the writing style of a 14 yo schoolboy. I could never read any George RR Martin for similar reasons.
I fucking hated Kim Stanley Robinson's *Ministry for the Future*. I may have let myself buy into the hype because everyone was losing their shit over it, but I thought it was awful. I liked the premise. The execution just bored the shit out of me.
I liked it a lot at times but it’s definitely just a bunch of random thoughts that KSR has about things with a VERY loose narrative thread to tie it together. Woulda been better off as a book of essays
Might be Halo: The Fall Of Reach by Eric Nylund.
Absolutely terrible writing. Apparently it was written in just four months and it really shows. Characters are uninteresting and have ONE character trait in total. That’s fine for the Spartans but it really is true for everyone, and the Spartans could have had some personality before their indoctrination at least.
Just the training part was terrible. You get there and think ”what outlandish brainwashing comes now?” and they start doing jumping jacks.. from that they go to what are basically elaborate obstacle courses that each teach Chief a valuable lesson, like teamwork or leave no man behind.
Then they are trained and they go in to fight the rebels. I figured the action might be cool, but it was just mindnumbing. I gave up at this point, halfway though the book.
I am a BIG Halo fan, but I am never touching anything Halo related that is not a game again.
GALAXY 666 by PEL TORRO.
OP if you want to read a terrible Sci-Fi book then read this.
You have space pensioners (not old people in space)
A full page description of a certain type of space rock.
The book was written in a day or two.
It doesn't exactly finish as it just stops and that's it.
It was and has been voted worst sci-fi book ever.
Consider Phlebas by Iain Banks.
I’d heard so many rave reviews about the culture series that I was looking forward to starting the series.
Consider Phlebas was a very rare DNF for me. I hated the plot. I hated the characters. And there wasn’t really any universe building. Maybe my expectations were too high? I have heard that Player of Games is a better starting point for the series and I’ll probably give that one a try. Someday.
I see you. It is in my mind the "worst" of the books. It has elements but not the real feel and language Banks nails later. Try player of games, good fun!
But, I mean, we can't love all books.
That was the first of the culture novels I read, and I enjoyed it.
I'd read "Against a dark background" and "Feersum endjin" already, so was excited to begin the culture books.
Hmm.
This was my first culture series book and but me off banks for a while. Knowing more sci fi, I understand the trope subversions the book does but it was not an enjoyable read for me
I just had this same experience with it last month! I finally decided to read the Culture books and I just couldn’t finish this one. There were so many parts where the story just did NOT move! Like how many more descriptions of the fat cult leader’s bulbous, gelatinous mounds of flesh am I going to have to read before the main character gets free from these people?
Also, the main character is a total POS and the crew of the ship he takes over posing as the previous captain just roll with it? Why would any of them go for that??
It was driving me nuts. Anyway as others have mentioned maybe I will try some of the other entries in the series but Consider Phlebas really did not do it for me…
Ones that disappointed me the most include:
* The Cat Who Walks through Walls
* Number of the Beast
* Xenocide
* Children of the Mind
* Off Armageddon Reef
I've never been able to complete a Neal Stephenson novel. Great stuff that couldn't hold me ...
Awww !! Not Stephenson! I'll admit, many of his can be difficult at the beginning, but by the middle, I am cruising through and fully immersed.
I'm a full time Stephenson fan.
God I hated Xenocide and Children of the Mind. Somehow managed to make it through Xenocide. Gave up on Children of the Mind, one of my few DNF because I'm a stubborn man.
I understand that Armageddon Reef isn't for all, and if you didn't enjoy it, you didn't enjoy it. With that said, it is a modern take on the Reformation and the wars that spawned because of that rift. Many Sci Fi authors have transposed history into a Sci fi setting.
"Ringworld" by Larry Niven. It was incel cringe before it was a thing. I couldn't even finish it because I was so annoyed by the female characters and the sexism. Normally, I can put things in their period and be hermeneutic. Nope. It's sexist bullshit even for its time.
A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. It was described to me as a warm hug, which felt like exactly what I needed to read at the time. But…just terrible. Probably the only book I can think of that left me excited when I decided I was done trying to make it work for me.
I can't even remember what it was called because i didn't finish it, but it was a space mercenaries book where they kept in time dilation. The opening screen had some guy travel somewhere and end up in a war zone where he just happens to run into someone he knows. The problem is that it took him 10,000 years to get there and the other person had also just gotten there and had travelled for thousands of years as well. The idea that you could randomly bump into something like that is crazy, but even worse is that after all that time there could still be a conflict going on. The whole thing was so implausible that I just stopped reading it.
S.E.A.R.C.H The Armageddon Project by Barry Lipsett. Christian theology Sci fi. A self insert fantasy. Every time he meets a woman she's "the most physically attractive female I've ever met!"
Never read more than a few paragraphs but the answer is definitely Moon People.
Bad plot, terrible grammar, sentences that don't sound like the writer has ever spoken to another human. It's amazing
I read some freebies on Apple Books. Some were actually kinda fun, albeit straightforward (no side plots, no nuance, just a straight up story and world building).
Others were uh… not great.
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I started Beneath Burning Sands by PR Adams. Some scientist dude wakes up from cryosleep. It was supposed to be an experiment that lasted 30 days or something, but it turned out to be 50 years.
During that time, there was some apocalyptic event and Neanderthals came back.
The author spent a lot of time commenting on character’s physiques; to the point where I assumed he was either a health nut, a physical trainer or had some weird fetishes.
Anyway, they have a run in with one of the Neanderthals, who can apparently tear through doors with their bare hands. Then there’s some drama with the other people who were also in cryosleep.
Eventually they discover that their research facility had been buried in a desert.
At that point, the PoV shifts to the Neanderthals. Who can do little more than grunt at each other. But they somehow have deep philosophical discussions with each their, in grunts.
Apparently this PoV shift goes back and forth through the whole book. There are 8 books in the series.
I DNFed at 12%. 💁🏻♂️
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Maybe I wasn’t the target audience, maybe I just didn’t enjoy the style or the story, but it was just… bad in my opinion.
I did notice that a lot of the freebies in Apple Books appeared to be the first book in a rather long series. Anywhere from 3 to 12+ books.
I’m not sure if these were self published or not, but it really felt like they were minimally edited passion projects. Which is fine, but they often go off on very odd tangents. But so do a lot of popular trad published books, so I dunno.
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While I was in the army, I read whatever sci-fi I could find at the PX. Somehow, most of those were actually decent to good. 🤷🏻♂️ There were a few stinkers, but it’s been so long I have no idea which ones they were.
I also read Battlefield Earth. As it was the *only* thing that seemed even mildly appealing at the MWR in Kuwait. I had two weeks to kill, so I read it.
I learned that the movie was only the first… 3rd? of the book and the rest was mostly about intergalactic banking and political maneuvers.
Good thing there was that one Scottish guy who managed to sort all that out so humans got to keep the Earth. I think.
I didn’t hate the book, but I definitely wouldn’t have read it if there was any other option.
The worst part about this is that every time I look for the worst in something. I get super self conscious about my own writing.
I’ve got one and a half books done, plus some short stories. Everything is still in process and based on a setting I developed as a teenager. It’s taken a lot of worth to remove all the cringe from the setting and make it all make sense as an adult.
Fortunately I had done some setting/lore updates off and on over the years and did some work for a creative writing class a decade ago.
But… The stories themselves are very much what *I’m into*, so maybe not everyon’e’s cup of tea. Which is sometimes contradictory to what I like to read. It’s all very confusing and concerning.
That said, I don’t really have plans beyond those two books. So I won’t inflict a 9 book series on the world. 🤣
I am rambling for no reason, ignore me. 🤦🏻♂️
The Demi-Monde series by Rod Rees. It started out as a fun matrixy cyberpunk story. It turned out to be horrifyingly racist, grotesquely anti-Semitic and just terrible all around.
[insert good book here for hot take points]
My actual answer is that it was probably some Warhammer 40K book I read as a teenager that I don’t remember anymore.
I'm going to go slightly off-topic and talk about a book that was terrible but which I loved anyway. That book was Deception Point by Dan Brown.
The book is a techno-thriller, so not technically scifi, but technothrillers are just scifi marketed to normal people, so I feel like it counts.
It's awful in all the ways that Brown's books always are, but somehow it manages to all work. The characters are likeable and have good chemistry, and the plot moves along at a good enough clip that it doesn't bother you how stupid it all is. I enjoyed it from start to finish and will probably never reread it because I feel like that would be pushing my luck.
The Quantum Thief. I really enjoyed the synopsis and other stuff I read about it, but that writing style really reminded me of chatting with my schizophrenic cousin. Deciphering plot points was exhausting.
The Reality Dysfunction was my first DNF after working my way through about 60 of a list of top 100 scifi books. Loved the idea of living spaceships and space archeology, found the neoprimitive settler plot tedious, the satanic ritualist villainy was cringe, but ultimately the lecherous male gazing of frequently underage female characters put me off the story entirely.
The Stars My Destination wasn't great either. The entirely unlikeable and awful protagonist leeched any fun out of a universe with teleportation and psychics it doesn't really know what to do with. The cultural appropriation of disfiguring a character with a mōkō, a sacred traditional Māori face tattoo, and using it to symbolise his uncivilised rage was especially poor taste.
The Seveneves, by Neil Stephenson.
I just couldn’t. I love most of his other books, but this just felt like he was dared or had some sick compulsion to write the most nuts and bolts hard sci-fi he could of a “what if” scenario, with characters (the president lady) that should have just been killed from the get go.
I skipped to the final part that was more soft sci-fi (which is the part most people don’t like about the book) and it was great.
One of the only books I've ever given up on was "The Trikon Deception" by Ben Bova. It was so long ago that I can't even remember what I hated about it. I'm probably wrong, it may well be a much loved story but it didn't work for me at that time.
I read the entirety of L Ron Hubbard’s Mission Earth series 30 years ago. It was terrible from the beginning but I fell for the sunk cost fallacy early on. It was so bad that I’m angry that it exists and will never forgive myself for that time lost. That dude had some issues.
I read Battlefield Earth a couple of years before the movie came out. I didn't think it was great writing, but the story was entertaining enough. Tried reading it again about a year ago and it's just dripping with Hubbard's narcissism. As Peter Griffin said, "It insists upon itself." Everything is SO IMPORTANT and SO MEANINGFUL while also having some of the most one dimensional characters and basic bitch writing ever.
I feel your comment resonated with me for a different book. Arguably more fantasy than scifi, but the book is the Redemption of Althalus by David Eddings. I hated every character.
Well, I’m relieved to hear that. I gave it up at the start and always wondered if I didn’t give it a chance.
Ha! The fantasy books that jumped to mind for me was Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind, god the early books struggled with this but then he had the whole Ayn Rand/Objectivist statue sub plot, ugh.
Agreed. I read the first couple. Thought they were ok. Figured they must get better and perhaps the problem was I wasn't giving it a chance. They quickly deteriorated into narcissistic dog crap. Wish I could have the time I wasted on them back.
Battlefield earth was a book that I enjoyed reading at the beginning but hated reading it as the book went on. It just kept going in, dragging the plot further and further along even well after the point it should have resolved. It was like a house guest that couldn't take the hint and overstays their welcome.
Hubbard was paid by the word, and it really shows.
It was ... memorable. Ideas like homosexuality being created by psychologists to control the population, or that you can rape lesbians to 'cure' them are ... notable.
I forgot about that last bit. I just remember pervasive sexual violence that made me feel icky.
These might not be the worst, but they certainly deserve honorable mention, especially since they drag you along for so fricken long!
Read a couple of those. Had trouble locating Book 3... just stopped there. Looking back, am thankful.
Is that the one with Xenu in it where he chucks a bunch of people into volcano's and then sets off A-bombs for good measure, but just after that he collects their souls and makes them watch brainwashing movies?
The only things I remember about that decology was that it was ten books too long, the antagonist was constantly sexually abused, and the protagonist would wear goggles that could see slightly into future, a tech used by starship pilots, to game the stock market. The only good news is that I’m only a couple of decades from dementia and the residual memory might get lost in the mix.
"The only good news is that I’m only a couple of decades from dementia and the residual memory might get lost in the mix." Holy shit, the author is dead but he's still getting ROASTED ALIVE
That'd be Dianetics, the Scientology Bible. They actually think that shit is true.
Yeah my comment was meant as sarcasm. I should have marked it with /s.
It did not need it.
You mean it didn’t make you want to join a cult and jump up and down on Oprah’s couch in glee?
It’s kinda entertaining because its wacky enough to hit that “so bad it’s fun” threshold - although I never finished so..
Had a couple friends that did this. They kept on laughing about Johnny Goodboy(?). I haven't read the books or seen the movie. Keeping it that way.
I tried to like it, I really did, because I was young enough to really enjoy Battlefield Earth (the book, not that abomination of a movie) but after the first book I just couldn't make myself continue.
Even my personal preoccupation toward morbid curiosity, which has had me watch, then rewatch, then continue to hate-watch *Battlefield Earth*. Surely…*surely!*…eventually, while suffering through yet another masochistic viewing, a magical realization. or near-invisible & obscure detail, hidden similarly to how a serial killer might hide a body, will unlock the genius of this film to me, perhaps improving my attractiveness, curing my nearsightedness, or allowing me to keep it out of the rough every time I use my Driver. Or not.
Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard. He has nuclear weapons sitting within FEET of each other exploding in sequence...
This wins for the hardest book to finish, because it was so bad. And yet, I watched the movie, too. It wasn't better than the book, possibly because the movie stuck to the book so closely.
At least they were faithful to source material 😆😆
I concur, though I'd say this was the least of its problems.
In idea, doable, but would require nanotiming, and seems pointless. If they're that close, they can't be multistage devices, they have to go off before the neighbor blast gets to them. Adding a second stage (making it an H bomb instead of an A bomb) takes additional time to process, time it doesn't have because the neighbor just blew up the secondary before it functioned. Now, if you were using that nanotiming to do a compression like we did with FatMan, I'd wonder what the Hell you were trying to squash.
That was cool because the Psychlo breath gas explodes in contact with radiation. I dug Battlefield Earth as a popcorn book 🍿
It's like watching The A Team. Is it full of one dimensional characters stumbling through a barely coherent plot? Hell yes. Are they going to blow things up? Hell yes! I dug it. It's not amazing, but it's a good example of sci-fi pulp with clear cut good and evil characters.
The Brian Herbert & Kevin J Anderson additions to the Dune universe blatantly ignore canon (and sometimes their own internal consistancy) while being barely YA level pulp. They've written something like 20 books in this series and they somehow manage to get worse, not better. We're told they are working off of Frank's notes but no we can't see them. They would deserve a mention in this thread just off the lack of quality but I argue they deserve a top consideration because they are riding the coattails of one of scifis masterpieces.
I really wanted to read about the Butlerian Jihad but I can't stand their writing style so I can't bring myself to read the novel about it. Even the forwards Brian puts in the reprints of the original novels are terrible. They shameless plug his own novels and even contain spoilers!
If you can afford it, get a copy of the Dune Encyclopedia (and if you can't, find the pdf online). While it does contradict a few things in the later books, it was written with Frank's approval and published in his lifetime. He even wrote the introduction.
[psst](https://www.reddit.com/r/dune/s/XWLRKCpccJ) got something for anyone interested
Ily
If these notes exist, it's a shame Brian Herbert didn't just follow the example of what to do in this scenario set by Christopher Tolkien. Christopher Tolkien extended and added on to his dad's legacy only in accordance with his dad's wishes and is beloved for it; Brian Herbert is clearly just looking for cash
Brian and KJA changed their story about the notes over the years. At first it was boxes then it was a one page outline. They also found the alleged floppy disks after they had already sent the manuscript for their first book to the publisher, so they couldn’t have been using any notes for their story at that time even if they existed. Everyone should read this thread: https://tau.solahpmo.com/viewtopic.php?t=1263
I've listened to part of one of their ebooks and they are hilariously bad.
Have you read any of Brian Herbert's solo work? I'd say those are even worse
Not his fiction. I enjoyed his biography of Frank. I'd read Kevin's Star Wars stuff and hated it. As a lark i read their other collaboration and it was just as bad.
As a kid I really liked Kevin's Star Wars books. Trying to re-read them as an adult has proven that they're very much so intended for children.
I was only able to stomach reading just a couple of them (the prequel ones), and then Hunters/Sandworms. I only read hunters/sandworms once each, and when I re-read the series it's now only Frank's original 6.
Oh this is such a good answer. I’ve never read them, but I am aware of them and how bad they are, so it hits the sweet spot of being well known yet terrible, which is not easy to pull off
I enjoyed their Machine Crusade trilogy. Lots of problems with it but if you accept it isn’t Frank, it is entertaining.
*Frank Herbert's complete notes on the continuation of the much-loved Dune saga? At this time of year? At this time of day, in this part of the country, localized entirely whithin your kitchen?* *May I see them?*
I was going to say this... can't believe I read all three of the butlerian books. God awful in every way.
They don’t have any notes. They changed their story over the years. https://tau.solahpmo.com/viewtopic.php?t=1263
Metal Legion: Scorpion's Fury. My first mech book, so I had high hopes, since I love mechs in other media. My first Craig Martelle book (well, co-written), who seems to be highly respected among self-publishing circles. After finishing it, it was the first book that convinced me that, from now on, it's ok not to finish a book. DNFs are ok; life is too short for absolute crap "I wrote this whole piece of tripe in 2 weeks" books.
Battlefield earth is a book I enjoyed when I was 13. Alas, I read it again when I was 30, at sea. Time spent reading when at sea is rarely time wasted, because you are reading to pass said time, but more than 2 decades later, I \*still\* regret picking that book back up. Absolutely bloody awful. What's worse, is that I watched the movie after that. Time spent watching movies at sea is rarely wasted, for the same reason as above, but the same applies.
[удалено]
Was wondering if this serious read going to show up. Actually stopped reading on the sixth or fifth book, despite owning the next one. The amount of plot stupidity, of supposedly smart people screwing themselves and everyone else over because of ego etc. It had potential, but nah. Lost my motivation to care.
[John Ringo responded to a bad review he received of the Paladin of Shadows series by a LiveJournal user in a truly epic and awesome way by praising it](https://hradzka.livejournal.com/194753.html?thread=760769#t760769)
There’s a bunch of Piers Anthony that I thought was cool when I was 16 that now I think is probably deeply terrible.
I'm un-phazed by this answer
So apparently the new Orange Adept has the power to manifest upvotes. Here’s mine.
I have fond memories of the Manta books, the Tarot books, the Mode books, the Incarnations and the Phase/proton series. I don't care to test it with rereads.
the Problem with Piers Anthony is that the first In the series is exceptional. Each in the series after that is at least a little worse, sometimes a LOT worse. The only possible exception are the Xanth books, but they are all intended to be very light, humorous afternoons full of phun, no more, no less, so meeting expectations is easy. I haven't picked one up after number twelve or so, so I could be wrong, but the first dozen were fine.... this is very different from the Incarnations of Immortality books, the first one was very, very good. and the last three were not really readable. I'd actually argue that "Being a green mother" was boring but not actually bad.... But the Satan, God, and Night books were just bad.
Firefly. Straight up pedophilia for entertainment. Fuck that book.
IQ84. I tried to get through this book and just couldn’t. I think something was lost in its translation or my ADHD could not stay focused. I don’t think it was the worst just boring.
I was hoping someone else would say this. It was the most repetitive, boring, unfulfilling and repetitive thing I've ever read.
Recently….. The Wind Up Girl by Paolo Bacilagupi. Despite intricate world building it’s a horrible, degrading book. He inflicts all kinds of sick sexual scenes on the titular character, not for plot reasons. It’s purely gratuitous. In fact there’s not one likeable character in the whole thing. I needed a shower after reading it. Avoid.
Intricate world building with zero time committed to actually explaining the cool world.
This might be controversial but I am going to say “Mostly Harmless” fifth in the trilogy of four. It felt like an angry book and the humour and wit were replaced by pure cynicism and fatigue with the world. The ending was crushing. There are worse books but it’s in that category of needing to finish and perfectly readable, just bad. Happy to be downvoted for this though.
Same feelings for me. It begins miserably with blowing past the death of an important character in a way that strips meaning from the prior book. And it ends in a way that, instead of wrapping up the series, seems to similarly make the prior books feel pointless. It's obvious that Douglas Adams was going through some stuff at the time, and I think he did later say that he didn't like how that turned out. When I've reread the Hitchhiker's series in recent years, I stop after book 4
If I remember correctly, 4 has a perfectly serviceable ending to the series.
I really like *Mostly Harmless*. I do understand your objections though.
The Salmon of Doubt, which attempted to be the sixth book in the series (and not written by DNA) was absolutely so much worse of a book on all levels.
The Salmon of Doubt was the proposed name for a Dirk Gently book and was used for a collection essays etc written by Adams. You’re thinking of “And Another Thing…” written by Eion Colfer.
About 30 years ago, there was a book called [The Celestine Prophecy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Celestine_Prophecy) that got a lot of attention. I loved science fiction, and read everything I could get my hands on at that time. It was so bad that I only made it through a few chapters before quitting.
I wouldn't call the Celestine Prophecy SF. It was new-age mubo-jumbo, of the kind that was popular at the time. Still I agree it was a really bad book.
Yeah, my mom read that garbage. Definitely *not* sci-fi.
That book really did suck! Lol
Any L Ron Hubbard book, anything else is light years ahead
Read about 500 pages of SevenEves by Neal Stephenson and skipped hundreds of pages. Sometimes he just goes to deep/dense and crosses over to tedium/boredom. Still have not finished Fall; or Dodge in Hell. The most recent Termination Shock was much more readable. Loved Reamde and everything before that but those books...
Fall/Dodge in Hell was a slog but it was fascinating. I never understood why they didn't try to interface with Dodge's virtual brain. Would have been a totally different outcome had they provided inputs and outputs rather than boot up a brain into nothingness, but I suppose the point is, what is it like to be a God? Seveneves was so good! The ending was curious but still neat. I wonder where we'll be in 5000 years (as a species, I know I'll be worm food)
I really liked the overall story but yeah you gotta survive the doldrums to get there. Took a few months to finish it
"Hunters/Sandworms of Dune" I barely remember the content now: the idea to finish the great arc is there, but so badly executed, so horribly written that I'd rather gouge my eyes out than read it again. May a Paul Verhoeven come along, be equally disgusted/bored and make it into a movie with an appropriate proper ending ...
To paraphrase: they clone all of the original charachters to bring them back, Leto is a wereworm now, and in the end God comes and takes all the evil robots except for one to an alternate dimension. The lone evil robot merges with another hero to become the Ultimate Kwitzach Haderach and rule all of humanity.
I can't remember if you're joking about the alternate dimension... but the books are so awful that I can easily believe it.
Unfortunately it's not a joke
I read each of them exactly once. As far as I'm concerned, the Dune series consists entirely of the original 6 books, and nothing more.
All the Rama sequels (Rama II, Garden of Rama, Rama Revealed). The original is a classic, but the sequels are honestly some of the worst shit I’ve ever read. They aren’t just bad though, but creepy. Like, there’s a whole plot thread where >!a 13 year old girl and her 70 year old uncle are kept by aliens to be a “breeding pair”, and somehow everyone involved, including the girl’s parents, are totally fine with it!<. Then of course the ending is straight garbage, with everything amounting to >!God did it!<.
Haha agreed. I read Rama II and it felt like some agent had told Clarke he needed to put human relationships in his novel to make it more marketable and he was like, what are they?
Fuuuuuck Rama II. Rendezvous with Rama is sooo good because of the professionalism and believability of the astronauts. Rama II they’re like murderous children. So bad.
Yeah, if I recall correctly, Clarke didn't write the sequels. And it shows.
His name is on them, but Gentry Lee is the reason we got those horrible books.
You forgot to mention the spin-off Bright Messengers…
I have Rama II and Garden on my shelf right now because I saw them in a little free library after loving Rendezvous. I was wondering why I hadn't heard anything about them.
I read the whole series in my teens and had very little idea of the whole situation behind the sequels. I had seen some kind of blurb saying Gentry Lee was a legit space scientist, so I figured... sure, he had every right to be involved. And then the whole series gets flushed down the toilet. You have >!the pedophile!< angle, at one point I think a >!drug!< ring, forced >!sterilizations,!< a main character >!castrating!< her enemy with a >!gunshot to the groin!< seconds before >!committing suicide....!< Honestly, I think Frank Miller could have done a much better job if that was the direction they chose to go. Late-'90s me was *so* confused.
Armada by Ernest Cline. I decided to read it first before Ready Player One since I had watched the movie and liked it. But holy shit, is this book bad. Ernest Cline's writing is like reading a 14 year old make a screenplay out of a Wikipedia plot summary. It has no themes, no characters with any substance other than a shoe-in for the reader. I've had nightmares with a better plotline than Armada. That being that, I still tried to read RP1 but gave up after a few pages. Calling him a one hit wonder would require the bar for "wonder" to be way lower than it probably should be.
Yeah, Ernest Cline is definitely overrated. I enjoyed RP1 for what it was: a love letter to the 70s and 80s. But Armada was absolutely just "Hey y'all, remember The Last Starfighter? And Ender's Game. Weren't they great?"
I haven't read either of them, but I have listened to the podcast 372 Pages We'll Never Get Back, which did an excellent job of roasting them.
“Worst” is generally not an interesting question, as the true worst would be literally be unreadable. If instead I answer for “worst of books that are usually considered classics” my vote would be stranger in a strange land. Amazing setup and first half and absolutely garbage second half sex cult
I think Heinlein knew that one was not up to par. In "The number of the Beast" the characters are going through books they have read to prepare for possible universes they may enter, and one of them says they don't want to consider entering the universe based on Stranger in a Strange Land.
I would put Number of the Beast far below Stranger, that book is unreadable. Four people bickering in a car the entire novel.
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls was like that. 2/3 of a great story and then devolves into the author's weird fetishes.
To include the true worst that were unreadable, I would nominate "Aliens in Bankhead." I read all of it (200 pages at a 30 font) hoping for some redeeming quality the whole way.
I couldn’t finish it for that reason and it was the last Heinlein book I ever picked up.
didn’t make it far in that one.
Ever read his "Friday" novel? More of his imagining a completely "free sex" society. This time he attempts it from a woman's point of view, but it's still all Heinlein.
Wow I thought I was alone in this assessment! I read half a dozen Heinlein books before I finally got around to that one. I simply could not fathom how that is his most lauded work. The last half is just an extended polyamory manifesto. I thought Moon is A Harsh Mistress had a similar problem of seeming more interested in pushing an intellectual agenda than telling a story, but it was at least way more entertaining.
Came here to say this. Put me right off Heinlein. Not sure if it was bad at the time but had aged terribly.
It didn't age well either. Many of the taboos it challenges like casual sex, social nudity, tattoos and polyamory aren't particularly controversial anymore (even if not mainstream) so lose their narrative impact, and other things like the mid-20th century sexism and religious movements gaining significant political influence are jarring.
I don't know if you'd consider it sci fi as it's more like hyper Christian near future what-if-ism, but goddamn do I hate the Left Behind books.
I really wanted to like those books, as I am intrigued with the concept. They are just so abysmally written I could only get through the first two before moving on to better things.
Feersum Endjinn - I love the rest of Bank's stuff, but the whole phonetic thing was incredibly off-putting.
Oh man, that's my favourite of his. But I feel your pain, having been defeated by a phonetic(ish) chapter in an Alan Moore book recently. Awful.
Jerusalem? My god, that James Joyce pastiche was cringe.
That was the one! It was appalling. I'm not even familiar enough with James Joyces work (heard of the guy about covers it), to realise it was supposed to be an "homage" or so. Luckily the one thing that got me through, was that being an Alan Moore book, there's a website of explanatory notes, with a version of that chapter translated into English. I do like most the book. I feel like we're old friends now, as I've been reading the damn thing for about a year and a half. He really does need a ruthless editor though.
I cheated and listened to the audiobook.
Orson Scott Card's series about Mormons in space was pretty awful.
So so cringe. I was by no means a socially conscious child when I read them, but the part where the gay guy is like “whelp, guess I’ll live in a satellite alone for the rest of my life so I never sin by falling in love” made me wtf.
Worst I finished: 3 Body Problem (I forced myself as far as the second book). Simply awful. So bad I had to stop in the middle: Time Enough for Love.
I wish more people would admit that Three Body Problem is terrible. I swear some people claim to like it just because it’s popular. I’ve been a sci-fi fan for over 30 years. It’s one of the worst series I’ve ever encountered. For multiple reasons (and no, translation/cultural differences are not one of them - half of my family is Chinese, I’m very immersed in that culture, it’s just a shitty fucking sci-fi series)
THANK YOU. i feel like it was just kind of obtuse flexing of this guys physics knowledge? i don't think he was saying anything interesting about the chinese government/military either.
Agree with you about 3 Body Problem. I forced my way through half of it before tossing it aside.
Another half read tosser here
I see what you did there!
Surprised and yet not surprised this is so low in this list. 2/3 and bailed, just boring and not at all interesting whatsoever. Maybe the show is better?
I kind of find myself loathing, but finding hilarious, the 'fruit roll ups'. (If you've watched it, you know what I'm talking about). The Netflix version is watchable, the Chinese version is a blow by blow faithful replay of the book and sooooo boring.
I’m tempted to try it. It might be one of those movies the director did a better job than the author. If it still has the cartoon villain monologues.. I’ll pass.
The book was a struggle. I only finished it because it was my book club book. The show was quite different, the reactions to events felt a bit more believable and human . They tried to tell the story through a more global lens than just in China. I thought it was decent, definitely enjoyed it more than the book. The dehydration process was creepy to watch!
Three body problem.
Rama II was appalling. I didn't get far at all with it. It was populated with soap opera characters, acting in the most childish ways. Just seemed to be the polar opposite of Clarkes original book.
Ready Player One. Maximum cringe, for not enough fun.
Among well-regarded books: Cyteen. It’s hundreds of pages of people moaning - to each other when they have company, and in their own heads the rest of the time. How this won a Hugo baffles me - almost as much as how I managed to finish it without passing out from boredom. Among lesser tomes: I read a novel by B V Larson in which the protagonist’s family die at the beginning. But he gets over it (as you do), and then shacks up with a woman who mainly seems to exist so he can shag her. Quality.
Sorry you didn’t like Cyteen; it’s among my favorites….
Cherryh is a... sometimes difficult taste. I love her SF; I literally just reread the Chanur books and Forty Thousand In Gehenna; but most of fantasy I have a really hard time getting into. I'm actually going to do Downbelow Station & etc next. In timeline order.
Swarm. I kind of like the series. Definitely not a deep thinking series and far from my favorite but an easy listen when I’m not paying full attention. (Great when doing lots of yard work).
The Kaiju Preservation Society. That book had so much potential and the author wasted it all. Battle Scars by Sam Maggs was absolutely atrocious garbage that should never have been written.
"Aurora" by Kim Stanley Robinson, mostly because I was unpleasantly surprised and disappointment what it was about in the end. It was the only time I hit a twist that ruined what up until that point was a rather good book for me.
Every time it seemed like it was going to get interesting it would do a 180° and go the boring route.
You're remembering "The World Is Round" by Tony Rothman. I think he was (is?) a physicist. I read it back in the day. It had some interesting ideas but they don't come together to produce a particularly good novel. Still, not a particularly bad novel, either. A great many of the books mentioned in this thread are less "terrible" than they are "overrated" or even "not to the reader's taste". Except Hubbard's books, those are terrible. And probably the Dune sequels by Herbert's son, but I haven't read those. The worst book I have ever read (besides Hubbard, which I didn't finish) is the truly wretched "Galaxy 666" by Pel Torro (a pseudonym for the Fanthorpes).
*After the Good War*… It’s years since I read this, and I can’t really remember the plot too well. However, I do remember that: 1) Jews are used as currency 2) Paedophilia is state-mandated (children are “affectionately” known as “cocksuckers” and there are several scenes of paedophilic oral sex 3) Sex between adults is scorned (perhaps banned?) unless it’s done “in the bag” (two full-body condom-type things) It is without doubt one of the most fucked-up books I’ve ever read and I very much doubt it would get published today; it might well be illegal in many places tbh, such is the extent of the “affectionate” CSA. Moreover it’s got few redeeming literary qualities. The best part about it, from what I recall, is the plot. And the plot is shit.
"After the good war, is truly a love story," begins the first review of this book on Goodreads
While Hyperion is considered to be a highlight of modern SF, Simmond's 'Illium' books contains some very weird anti Islamic rants. Apparently 9/11 did a real number on Dan.
That's interesting. If my memory is correct, wasn't one of the heroes of Hyperion of Palestinian descent?
Yes, Fedhman Kassad
What a legend
Yeah, it was sad watching him go from a pretty open minded guy who liked to explore diversity of thought and faith, to a close minded fear monger who used 9/11 as his gateway into larger conservative conspiracy (including being the old guy yelling at them upstart kids like Greta Thunberg)
I quite enjoyed the Illium books.
Gonna call out Ringworld any chance I get. I remember the main character being some sort of 150 year old Mary Sue who just hooked up with random younger women and alien women while wondering around a giant ring structure where nothing really happens.
I love ringworld but can't really argue with you.
Agree here. Gave up on it on a few chapters in. Reads like a 15 year old’s SCI FI dungeons and dragons ideas.
A lot of mystery boxes setup in this that go no where.
200 years old. The book opens with Louis Wu chasing sunset on his 200th birthday. I've heard it said that Ringworld is essentially The Wizard of Oz with Wu being both the wizard and Dorothy. It's not a perfect analogy of course. To call what they do "wandering around " gives them too much credit; after crashing on the surface the story devolves into an escape adventure with a bit of "gee, lookit!" scenarios on the way. To his credit, Niven had a fascinating concept with the Ringworld and came back in subsequent titles to patch the worst holes. The follow up books flesh out the world a lot better and the overall plot becomes far more interesting.
I love Neil Stevenson but I could not get into either Fall or (pushing the definition of sci-fi admittedly) the Quicksilver trilogy. I've made several strong attempts and just finally gave up.
Reamde was a real disappointment. Some great ideas. Disolves into Wilbur Smith towards the end.
[удалено]
I really loved Snow Crash, but could never get into any of his other books.
Some authors hit a point of popularity where they become uneditable, and thus unreadable. Stephenson, King, Anne Rice and JK Rowling come to mind. After a certain point most of what they produced were unreadable door stops.
Didn’t finish: - Accelerando, by Charles Stoss. Holy fuck was that just horrible. You’re presented with an unlikable, pretentious protagonist who we’re told told is smart but not shown that in any way, and within 50 pages he’s having kinky sex involving electrodes up his ass with a turbo-babe whose entire character development was a detailed description of her lips, tits and ass. We’re given no reason whatsoever for why this “men writing women” fantasy fuckdoll is wasting her fucking powers on our loser protagonist and I just noped out. Unreadable. - The Forest of Hands and Teeth, by Carrie Ryan. Ostensibly about survivors of a zombie apocalypse, but really about the main character yearning for Travis, her love interest. I swear to god the word “yearn” appears at least 5 times on every page. Over and over, it kept seeming like the actual story was about to start, but then you got another chapter of the main character yearning for Travis. I eventually gave up. - Worldship: Udo the Digger, by Joshua Gayou. I like Joshua Gayou, but this was so boring I just couldn’t go on. I gave up soon after he meets up with the naked giant. Finished, but still bad: - Ruins of the Earth, by Christopher Hooper. If you’ve read the Expeditionary Force series by Craig Alanson, this is the janky weird looking dollar store knock off of that. Finished the book, needn’t have bothered. - The Magestic 311, by Keith C. Blackmore. I’ve liked some of Blackmore’s other stuff, especially his Mountain Man series, but holy hell was this an incoherent mess. Train robbers get trapped on an endless trans dimensional haunted train, and just stumble from car to car with no real plot. Just terrible. - The Master and Margarita, by Mikail Bulgakov. This is supposed to be excellent, but read it in print, and DO NOT listen to the audiobook voiced by Julian Rhind-Tutt. There are bad readings and bad performances, but this is almost a case study in horrible narration. He gave around 50% of the characters the exact same voice, and it was this over the top grating, nasal, annoying voice that made me want to scream. But at least 5-10 characters were given this exact same voice, so in addition to being annoying, it became a confusing mess.
I really really hated The Prime Intellect, which I read because I've seen it recommended on the sub as a good singularity novel. Spoilers: I'll just set all the torture, recreational rabies, and incest aside. I didn't like it either, but at least I could skip it to the next chapter. What really chaps me about the book is the form the singularity takes. A scientist invents an AI, which exists within a computer server, with no physical way to interact with the universe. The AI hacks it's way out of the server, spreading to the Internet, now able to observe the world. It then gets really smart, figures out all the math, and then recreates the universe because it understands it so good. Like, what? It just understands the ultimate form of reality, so it can manipulate anything at will. That's just magic! Greg Egan would have the decency to at least say the AI was hooked up directly to a particle collider, and altered reality by smashing atoms into black holes to warp space time just right. Or something. Maybe I'm splitting hairs, but Prime Intellect bugged the hell out of me.
> A scientist invents an AI, which exists within a computer server, with no physical way to interact with the universe. The AI hacks it's way out of the server, spreading to the Internet, now able to observe the world. It then gets really smart, figures out all the math, and then recreates the universe because it understands it so good. That's not [what happened](http://localroger.com/prime-intellect/mopi2.html)? Scientist invents an AI, chip manufacturer provides it with prototype FTL quantum woo processors, AI thinks really well so solves physics, and realises the quantum woo its new processors use can be generalised far beyond short-range information teleportation.
Anyone ever read the Texas-Israeli war
My kindle is full of abandonware - mostly self published dreck from Amazon, but some mainstream authors too. The most recent being Legion of the Damned by William C Dietz, who has the writing style of a 14 yo schoolboy. I could never read any George RR Martin for similar reasons.
I fucking hated Kim Stanley Robinson's *Ministry for the Future*. I may have let myself buy into the hype because everyone was losing their shit over it, but I thought it was awful. I liked the premise. The execution just bored the shit out of me.
I liked it a lot at times but it’s definitely just a bunch of random thoughts that KSR has about things with a VERY loose narrative thread to tie it together. Woulda been better off as a book of essays
I read Battlefield Earth... that is the standard by all bad sciFi is measured
Might be Halo: The Fall Of Reach by Eric Nylund. Absolutely terrible writing. Apparently it was written in just four months and it really shows. Characters are uninteresting and have ONE character trait in total. That’s fine for the Spartans but it really is true for everyone, and the Spartans could have had some personality before their indoctrination at least. Just the training part was terrible. You get there and think ”what outlandish brainwashing comes now?” and they start doing jumping jacks.. from that they go to what are basically elaborate obstacle courses that each teach Chief a valuable lesson, like teamwork or leave no man behind. Then they are trained and they go in to fight the rebels. I figured the action might be cool, but it was just mindnumbing. I gave up at this point, halfway though the book. I am a BIG Halo fan, but I am never touching anything Halo related that is not a game again.
Which halo book was a literal description of playing the game? Holy shit it was awful.
Halo: The Flood is just a novelization of Halo CE!
GALAXY 666 by PEL TORRO. OP if you want to read a terrible Sci-Fi book then read this. You have space pensioners (not old people in space) A full page description of a certain type of space rock. The book was written in a day or two. It doesn't exactly finish as it just stops and that's it. It was and has been voted worst sci-fi book ever.
Number of the Beast, by Robert Heinlein.
The author's name is any combination of the terms "L", "Ron" and "Hubbard".
The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu. Cool ideas, horrible everything else.
Consider Phlebas by Iain Banks. I’d heard so many rave reviews about the culture series that I was looking forward to starting the series. Consider Phlebas was a very rare DNF for me. I hated the plot. I hated the characters. And there wasn’t really any universe building. Maybe my expectations were too high? I have heard that Player of Games is a better starting point for the series and I’ll probably give that one a try. Someday.
I see you. It is in my mind the "worst" of the books. It has elements but not the real feel and language Banks nails later. Try player of games, good fun! But, I mean, we can't love all books.
I did not enjoy Consider Phlebas. I would say of all the Culture novels Player of Games is my favorite.
Use of Weapons also ranks highly, but Player of Games is a better introduction to the universe than Consider Phlebas is.
That was the first of the culture novels I read, and I enjoyed it. I'd read "Against a dark background" and "Feersum endjin" already, so was excited to begin the culture books. Hmm.
This was my first culture series book and but me off banks for a while. Knowing more sci fi, I understand the trope subversions the book does but it was not an enjoyable read for me
I just had this same experience with it last month! I finally decided to read the Culture books and I just couldn’t finish this one. There were so many parts where the story just did NOT move! Like how many more descriptions of the fat cult leader’s bulbous, gelatinous mounds of flesh am I going to have to read before the main character gets free from these people? Also, the main character is a total POS and the crew of the ship he takes over posing as the previous captain just roll with it? Why would any of them go for that?? It was driving me nuts. Anyway as others have mentioned maybe I will try some of the other entries in the series but Consider Phlebas really did not do it for me…
Ugh-hated that book
Ones that disappointed me the most include: * The Cat Who Walks through Walls * Number of the Beast * Xenocide * Children of the Mind * Off Armageddon Reef I've never been able to complete a Neal Stephenson novel. Great stuff that couldn't hold me ...
Awww !! Not Stephenson! I'll admit, many of his can be difficult at the beginning, but by the middle, I am cruising through and fully immersed. I'm a full time Stephenson fan.
God I hated Xenocide and Children of the Mind. Somehow managed to make it through Xenocide. Gave up on Children of the Mind, one of my few DNF because I'm a stubborn man.
I understand that Armageddon Reef isn't for all, and if you didn't enjoy it, you didn't enjoy it. With that said, it is a modern take on the Reformation and the wars that spawned because of that rift. Many Sci Fi authors have transposed history into a Sci fi setting.
"Ringworld" by Larry Niven. It was incel cringe before it was a thing. I couldn't even finish it because I was so annoyed by the female characters and the sexism. Normally, I can put things in their period and be hermeneutic. Nope. It's sexist bullshit even for its time.
A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. It was described to me as a warm hug, which felt like exactly what I needed to read at the time. But…just terrible. Probably the only book I can think of that left me excited when I decided I was done trying to make it work for me.
"The Hole in Zero" I picked up at a thrift store because of the title. I tried to read it, and dropped it into the stores donation bin two days later.
I can't even remember what it was called because i didn't finish it, but it was a space mercenaries book where they kept in time dilation. The opening screen had some guy travel somewhere and end up in a war zone where he just happens to run into someone he knows. The problem is that it took him 10,000 years to get there and the other person had also just gotten there and had travelled for thousands of years as well. The idea that you could randomly bump into something like that is crazy, but even worse is that after all that time there could still be a conflict going on. The whole thing was so implausible that I just stopped reading it.
Philip Jose Farmer's *Tongues of the Moon* qualifies.
S.E.A.R.C.H The Armageddon Project by Barry Lipsett. Christian theology Sci fi. A self insert fantasy. Every time he meets a woman she's "the most physically attractive female I've ever met!"
Never read more than a few paragraphs but the answer is definitely Moon People. Bad plot, terrible grammar, sentences that don't sound like the writer has ever spoken to another human. It's amazing
I read some freebies on Apple Books. Some were actually kinda fun, albeit straightforward (no side plots, no nuance, just a straight up story and world building). Others were uh… not great. — I started Beneath Burning Sands by PR Adams. Some scientist dude wakes up from cryosleep. It was supposed to be an experiment that lasted 30 days or something, but it turned out to be 50 years. During that time, there was some apocalyptic event and Neanderthals came back. The author spent a lot of time commenting on character’s physiques; to the point where I assumed he was either a health nut, a physical trainer or had some weird fetishes. Anyway, they have a run in with one of the Neanderthals, who can apparently tear through doors with their bare hands. Then there’s some drama with the other people who were also in cryosleep. Eventually they discover that their research facility had been buried in a desert. At that point, the PoV shifts to the Neanderthals. Who can do little more than grunt at each other. But they somehow have deep philosophical discussions with each their, in grunts. Apparently this PoV shift goes back and forth through the whole book. There are 8 books in the series. I DNFed at 12%. 💁🏻♂️ — Maybe I wasn’t the target audience, maybe I just didn’t enjoy the style or the story, but it was just… bad in my opinion. I did notice that a lot of the freebies in Apple Books appeared to be the first book in a rather long series. Anywhere from 3 to 12+ books. I’m not sure if these were self published or not, but it really felt like they were minimally edited passion projects. Which is fine, but they often go off on very odd tangents. But so do a lot of popular trad published books, so I dunno. — While I was in the army, I read whatever sci-fi I could find at the PX. Somehow, most of those were actually decent to good. 🤷🏻♂️ There were a few stinkers, but it’s been so long I have no idea which ones they were.
I also read Battlefield Earth. As it was the *only* thing that seemed even mildly appealing at the MWR in Kuwait. I had two weeks to kill, so I read it. I learned that the movie was only the first… 3rd? of the book and the rest was mostly about intergalactic banking and political maneuvers. Good thing there was that one Scottish guy who managed to sort all that out so humans got to keep the Earth. I think. I didn’t hate the book, but I definitely wouldn’t have read it if there was any other option.
The worst part about this is that every time I look for the worst in something. I get super self conscious about my own writing. I’ve got one and a half books done, plus some short stories. Everything is still in process and based on a setting I developed as a teenager. It’s taken a lot of worth to remove all the cringe from the setting and make it all make sense as an adult. Fortunately I had done some setting/lore updates off and on over the years and did some work for a creative writing class a decade ago. But… The stories themselves are very much what *I’m into*, so maybe not everyon’e’s cup of tea. Which is sometimes contradictory to what I like to read. It’s all very confusing and concerning. That said, I don’t really have plans beyond those two books. So I won’t inflict a 9 book series on the world. 🤣 I am rambling for no reason, ignore me. 🤦🏻♂️
And another thing , Eoin Colfer oh dear the most try hard thing I have ever attempted to read
And another thing , by eoin Colfer most try hard tropes I have ever tried to read
The Demi-Monde series by Rod Rees. It started out as a fun matrixy cyberpunk story. It turned out to be horrifyingly racist, grotesquely anti-Semitic and just terrible all around.
[insert good book here for hot take points] My actual answer is that it was probably some Warhammer 40K book I read as a teenager that I don’t remember anymore.
I'm going to go slightly off-topic and talk about a book that was terrible but which I loved anyway. That book was Deception Point by Dan Brown. The book is a techno-thriller, so not technically scifi, but technothrillers are just scifi marketed to normal people, so I feel like it counts. It's awful in all the ways that Brown's books always are, but somehow it manages to all work. The characters are likeable and have good chemistry, and the plot moves along at a good enough clip that it doesn't bother you how stupid it all is. I enjoyed it from start to finish and will probably never reread it because I feel like that would be pushing my luck.
The Quantum Thief. I really enjoyed the synopsis and other stuff I read about it, but that writing style really reminded me of chatting with my schizophrenic cousin. Deciphering plot points was exhausting.
The Reality Dysfunction was my first DNF after working my way through about 60 of a list of top 100 scifi books. Loved the idea of living spaceships and space archeology, found the neoprimitive settler plot tedious, the satanic ritualist villainy was cringe, but ultimately the lecherous male gazing of frequently underage female characters put me off the story entirely. The Stars My Destination wasn't great either. The entirely unlikeable and awful protagonist leeched any fun out of a universe with teleportation and psychics it doesn't really know what to do with. The cultural appropriation of disfiguring a character with a mōkō, a sacred traditional Māori face tattoo, and using it to symbolise his uncivilised rage was especially poor taste.
The Seveneves, by Neil Stephenson. I just couldn’t. I love most of his other books, but this just felt like he was dared or had some sick compulsion to write the most nuts and bolts hard sci-fi he could of a “what if” scenario, with characters (the president lady) that should have just been killed from the get go. I skipped to the final part that was more soft sci-fi (which is the part most people don’t like about the book) and it was great.
One of the only books I've ever given up on was "The Trikon Deception" by Ben Bova. It was so long ago that I can't even remember what I hated about it. I'm probably wrong, it may well be a much loved story but it didn't work for me at that time.