Most Overrated SF

Okay, my generic best and worst message got nowhere, but since there has been very little activity in this group, I thought I'd give it one more try to get an interesting discussion going (and then I'm definately giving up). Most overrated. I'll start with a story from my favorite author as a kid, Asimov. Nightfall. Many have chosen this as the best all time SF story (much like Citizen Kane in the film area). It was a very good story, with a brilliant premise, and said a lot about human nature (even though the characters weren't human). But as good a story as it was, in my view, it wasn't as transcendently great as its reputation. In short, it is quite good, but also overrated. Anyone else have a SF work they think is overrated?

The Andromeda Strain is wildly overrated.

I'll go even further with 'Nightfall' - it's not even a good story. The world-building is perfunctory, the characters are cardboard, the prose is lumpen, and the inventiveness extends only to the central premise.

I'd also suggest Asimov's Foundation trilogy is greatly over-rated. Likewise Card's Ender's Game, and anything by Ray Bradbury or Neil Gaiman.

Ian Banks - at least the first three culture novels (I couoldn't face reading any others) are at least as bad as Iansales description of Nightfall.

Heinlan - again some interesting ideas occasionalyl but disguised in hateful wooden characters and turgid prose.

#4 Would agree with Heinlein, although his prose was always very readable. But disagree most strongly about Banks.

#5 - many people do. But they're all wrong. Take the only one I've re-read recentlyish. Consider phlebas

Worldbuilding - practically none. A few snippits here and there as our hero lands on a world and runs away again. No sense of how the universe actually functions, why one habitat is different from another, nothing. Just here's some buildings/people can you kill them/blow them up in a new way.

Characterisation - again none. We don't know or care anything about our hero, his past, his thoughts desires or motivations (other than staying alive) no supporting characters last more than a chapter, and we get even less detail about his nemesis.

prose - slightly better than above, it's sometimes interesting. But there's an awful lot of blowing things up and killing, and very little actual tension or interest. OK it doens't actively throw the reader, as truly bad text sometimes does.

Which leaves inventivness - this is the only bit where Culture is interesting. It's such a shame that he didn't do anything with it.

OTOH, it could be you that's wrong :-)

It's a bit unfair to accuse Consider Phlebas of poor world-building given that a) it's a widescreen space opera, b) Banks's first Culture novel, and c) the frenetic plot doesn't allow much room for world-building anyway.

The characterisation I'd describe as an order of magnitude better than that common in sf novels - although not as good as it is in literary fiction (or even Banks's non-M novels).

I also find it odd that you dislike Banks's prose when you name Ken MacLeod as one of your favourite authors. They're very similar - understandably, given that they've known each other for years. Of course, MacLeod has long since carved out a career a very much his own.

#3 & 4

I'll fully agree with Heinlein, Asimov, and Gaiman. Personally, I can't see how Gaiman keeps getting a writing contract with such horrible prose.

I can't add to the discussion of Banks, as I've not read any of this works.

Though I'd also like to add L Ron Hubbard to the list of grossly overrated SF authors.

Who 'rates' Elron's works?

Scientologists?

Terry Pratchett?

only read a couple of Pratchetts, never quite 'got' it. Probably just me. OTOH I loved RAH when I was a kid (still reread a select few of his books), Asimov.. meh, not sure I ever read the whole Foundation set. I keep trying to read Banks, but have trouble getting into it.

I think it's an english v. american thing. The english love their Pratchetts and Banks, we americans like Heinlein and Card.

But you Americans also seem to love Gaiman. So much so, he now lives over there and gets paid $45,000 to give talks...

I recently read Consider Phelbas, my first Banks, and found it rather disappointing, particularly in terms of characterization and a plot I actually cared about.

I've heard such fantastic things about Banks' Culture, though - does it get better from here?

Definitely.

I will pile on here and concur that Foundation is overrated. I 'liked' the series, but it didn't really grab me like I thought it would. I think that Heinlein has a pretty wide spread of quality. He is one of my favorite authors, but I couldn't finish some of his books.

Also on the subject of Heinlein, I think Stranger in a Strange Land is overrated - I appreciated the "message" of the story, but couldn't really get into it.

I've actually picked up my first Neil Gaiman American Gods. I'll keep you posted...

> 14 Care to elaborate? I'll give him another book or two - should I keep reading in order, or skip forward a bit?

#15 I think Stranger in a Strange Land is so highly rated mostly because it was so shockingly different compared to the time, and how it hit us then. Remember Vietnam protests and lots of anger in my generation then particularly on campuses after Kent State. It sort of became a symbol for many of us who discovered it in the late 60s.

Otherwise, I think Heinlein sucks rocks, and have literally thrown his books across the room in disgust.

I'm not going to argue about Heinlein's later stuff... I never finished Job, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, The Number of the Beast. I read but didn't care for Friday, Farnham's Freehold, and Glory Road... I think that I started sensing that he was a sexist dirty old man by that time. I enjoyed his juveniles and some of his earlier stuff and will still reread Puppet Masters and The Door Into Summer for examples.

indeed my anger was at that sexist dirty old man vibe that came out in those later books. I confess to not having read any of his juvenile stuff.

20: Heinlein built his reputation on the juveniles for the most part, and they are generally good. He was still writing in the 1950s for the most part, so he does have a patronizing attitude towards women (Double Star is a good example of this, with a stereotypical secretary/love interest). Given the time frame they were written in, I just laugh at the attitudes of the age and get on with the story.

His depictions of women in his later books all end up amounting to an idealized verion of Ginny anyway. Or a version of Ginny that is always up for orgiastic sexual Olympics.

16> It's often said by many, the author included, that American Gods is not the best novel to judge him on. Plenty of his fans don't like the book. I've never read it, but I thought I'd pass it on.

This whole thread just goes to show what I've already known - in so many things, one man's treasure is often another's trash. It always gets me when folks try to claim that novels have inherent worth that have nothing to do with their readers. Therefore when someone doesn't recognize their particular favorite books as the treasure that they see them as, they're just wrong.

#17 there's no fixed order to the books. Use of Weapons is generaly reckoned one of the best, although Look to Windward and The Player of Games also get high marks. His last Culture novel, Matter, is pretty good, although a bit flabby in the middle.

#21 Some of Heinlein's juveniles are still entertaining reads, in a dated sort of way. But it still amazes me that his dirty old man books seem to be held in such high regard even now.

Some of Heinlein's juveniles are still entertaining reads, in a dated sort of way. But it still amazes me that his dirty old man books seem to be held in such high regard even now.

I think that it may be because they were the first introduction a lot of boys had to alternative sexual arrangements. And the later books do have some somewhat interesting ideas sprinkled amidst the never ending orgy. His juveniles are still all better than his later work. And lest anyone be confused, most of his "juveniles" would probably not be marketed as such today.

22> I've heard that about American Gods as well. ah well, it's the book in my stack... I might try Good Omens, is that a better representative?

21> I read Grumbles from the Grave last summer and was struck by how mercenary a writer he was, and also how hard he was to work with and for... and the 60's came too late in life for him I think.

Dune is without a doubt the most overrated work ever published.

Asimov was the self-proclaimed dirty old man of science fiction. See his article 'The Sensuous Dirty Old Man'. Heinlein and Burroughs have a surprising, to me, number of female fans. I would leave it to them to judge their treatment of female characters.

I'm going to mention Michael Crichton as a wildly over-rated author. While I enjoyed the Jurassic Park movies as much as anybody, his books portrayed science and scientists as arrogant and overconfident... and I blame him as much as anybody for the anti-intellectual, anti-science culture movements that will likely doom our planet and species.

#25

Good Omens isn't representative of Gaiman's output either.

22 -- Well said. I've become absolutely fascinated by this one man's trash is another’s treasure phenomenon. While you would expect differences of opinion, it is astonishing to me how often you see opinions that are polar opposites. Many people think Dan Brown's work is awesome, while others think he's virtually unreadable. Sites like Amazon and Rotten Tomatoes (which collects hundreds of movie reviews) have really brought home this point. You can find blockbuster bestsellers on Amazon that have 90% five star reviews, but even these will have a few one and two star reviews thrown in. There have been movies I've hated that everyone in the world has loved, and vice versa. As an author, this is encouraging and discouraging. Discouraging because you know that no matter what you do, you can't please everyone (and shouldn't try), and that someone out there is going to disparage your work. Encouraging, because if 90% of the people really like it, you can take solace in the fact that this is as good a batting average as almost any book ever gets.

As I mentioned, I've become fascinated by this over the past few years. If I really love a book, I often go to Amazon and read just the one star reviews. If I hate a book, I'll read the 5-star reviews to find out how these people failed to see the gaping plot holes and general horribleness that I did. What could they have possibly liked about it? It's easy to surround yourself with people who think like you do and convince yourself that everyone does -- but boy is this not the case.

ok so two of Neil Gaimon's most recognizable books are, neither of them, good reads?

Fantastic Fiction has eight novels and two books in a series ("Odd" series) listed. His other books must be doozies to justify his reputation.

edited to add: now I see, it's his graphic novel output that's built his reputation

29: One thing to remember about Amazon reviews (and LT reviews, or any reviews on net sites) is that there are some authors out there who try to game the system. Some will write glowing reviews for their own books under an assumed name (or names), get their friends to write great reviews, or (in one verified case) have their wives write glowing reviews for them and reviews that trash their competitors. So you have to take the outlier reviews with a grain of salt. Mostly, I find that you should find a handful of reviewers that your tend to agree with and use their work as a barometer for whether you will find a book worthwhile or not.

30: I liked American Gods, so take that for what it is worth. It probably could have been cut down a little, but other than that it was quite good.

#30 - Good Omens is a superb read, funny and satirical. However it isn't representative of the rest of Gaiman's style. I'm not sure that stardust is even though it's also an enjoyable read - and another of his 'famous' works - recently made into a film.

Another author I don't intend to try anything else by, no matter how much hype they garner: Connie Willis Just Not Funny.

31 -- Did you say gaming the system or gaiman the system? :)

29> I'm pretty skeptical that that could actually work on books that have over, say, fifty reviews or so. I'm not saying people haven't tried, I'm just questioning the efficacy. It just seems highly unlikely, especially on a frequent basis. I usually ignore ratings for books that only have handfuls of reviews.

In any case, I've long used a greasemonkey script that displays the MEDIAN review score on the reviews page along with the average. I find this can be quite helpful, both for books as well as all the other stuff amazon sells.

ETA: I'm especially skeptical it would work over anything other than the very short term. Otherwise, you get people who read it based on the glowing reviews, hate it, then are mad enough to ride completely dreadful reviews. It could actually wind up giving you a worse overall score than you would get otherwise.

Most over-rated as the topic suggests is a bit of an extreme.

I find it interesting also when my like or dislike of a book is at wide variance from the norm. I really liked early Heinlein. I couldn't stand to read his later stuff, and could never figure the grandmaster status - it is like he trashed his legacy to me. He's perhaps the only one I would call "most over-rated". I always thought Asimov was over-rated to some extent, but it didn't interfere with my enjoyment of a number of his works. Plus I give him some brownie points for helping get me interested in science fiction.

I do think that there is a divide between Brit and US authors and tastes thereof. I've only read two Banks books - the first, Look To Windward I found OK. The Algebraist I can't recommend (but I may re-read it strangely enough). Consider Phlebas I picked up a while back and started and then got distracted. I'll give it a fair read one day. Maybe I got my hands on two or three weak works - I don't know, but I'm not sure he deserves high praise based on my experience. I'll give him another chance just in case my head was in the wrong place when I read him before. And I do tend to like Brit authors.

Speaking of one man's trash being another man's treasure: my first reaction to the OP was Science Fiction. I was a real SF fan when I was thirteen. The last SF I read that I thoroughly enjoyed was when I was about twenty five. It was just when Rendezvous with Rama came out. I read Cities in Flight, Stand on Zanzibar and Macroscope in fairly rapid order and was blown away. I thought I had reached the pinnacle of SF. I still feel that way. I was put off by Stranger in a Strange Land and disgusted by the world vision of some piece of trash about drugs and virtual life turning us all into Zombies to be manipulated and abused, by Robert Silverberg. It put me off dystopias, although I had read some rather imaginative dystopic short stories. The next SF I read was KSR's Mars Trilogy, talk about world building! I enjoyed it, but this was thirty some odd years later and by that time I had discovered what I think of as real fiction writing, the nineteenth century. To my taste, a period awfully hard to beat, and just didn't feel I had the time nor the inclination to step out of such a delicious time period for something that at best would be hit and miss. I tried to get back in to SF a couple of years ago and, at other people's advice read some rather unremarkable works, the best of which featured a world of pack dogs, sentient palm trees, and a space chase that got slower and slower as it reached the slow zone. Needless to say I was not overly impressed. I read The Stars My Destination and thought I probably would have liked it more if I had read it when I was thirteen. I read Neuromancer and really didn't care for it much at all. Cyber-reality just doesn't do it for me. I find the real world way more fascinating. I've read a handful of PKDick short stories some of which were pretty good and I may read something like Sheep or Castle at some point in the future, particularly if LOA comes through with a volume of his for me. My favorite SF of all involves the Hogben family stories by Kuttner and Moore (they may more rightly be fantasy), But they are both dead and their stories unlikely to be reprinted anytime soon, and they may suffer from the "when I was young" syndrome. Anyway, I've tried with SF several times and it just doesn't crack the kind of writing one finds elsewhere.

I took a bunch of Chrichton with me on vacation once. I devoured it at the rate of one a day for nearly an entire week. Real page turners, but, like cotton candy, when it was gone, I felt somewhat queasy and unsatisfied.

I like to hang out here for some of the discussions in an attempt to discover what I'm missing about the genre, and the above is all my opinion, and I hope not the basic opinion of people in this group. But, to re-coin a trite phrase: It is what it is.

37> It put me off dystopias

I find this quite hilarious. :D

Personally, I'm not offended. On the contrary, I find it quite marvelous that people have such disparate tastes. What a dreadfully boring world were people to all like and dislike the same things in equal measures. Some of the most interesting conversation is between people who have conflicting views on the worth of some piece.

It's funny that you wrote, "Cyber-reality just doesn't do it for me. I find the real world way more fascinating" because I feel exactly the opposite (well, about scifi in general rather than specifically "cyber-reality"). And I certainly can't explain why I feel that way. It's just a core part of my personality that I usually become bored reading "real-life" stories. I want to read something fantastical that isn't happening already or could plausibly have happened in the past, which doesn't contradict anything we already accept as "reality". It's just what turns my mental crank. It doesn't matter how great the prose is or how excellent the characters are, the setting just doesn't interest me to begin with. I'm a bit similar with movies and plays, though I'm more likely to enjoy something "real-life" there than in books. But it takes more of an effort on the part of the creator/actors. With a book, it's much more about what your own imagination brings to it, and if I'm bored by the setting then my imagination isn't likely to cooperate very much.

I think the same is true even within a particular genre, and may account for some of the treasure/trash aspect. If you're reading a work and it doesn't fire your imagination, your imagination in turn doesn't fire the work. Yet someone else will have the opposite experience.

odd post Gene. I do understand, and I've had this discussion with friends, that the "WOW" factor of our youth never seems to be recaptured. That I think is just a consequence of growing older. Our tastes change. Our world changes.

I've never been completely away from SF, but have taken extended breaks. I always seem to be able to find good stuff when I dip back in. Not a "WOW" but maybe a "wow" here and there. I feel I am a lot more critical and unforgiving now of weak science fiction. LT has helped rekindle my enjoyment of SF this past year or so. I've gotten turned onto some stuff like the Patrick Ness young adult books that I would have completely missed, and which I really like, for example.

39 -- okay, if there is a discussion of the "wow" factor of SF, I have to mention that I wrote an article entitled "bringing the "wow" factor of science fiction into the classroom" for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (and read it on their radio show). I am so trying to keep anything that could possibly smack of self-promotion off these discussion threads, but since the discussion is talking about the "wow" factor of SF we experienced as kids, I would have pointed out this article, even if I had nothing to do with it. Really.

Anyway, I don't know how to get a link in here, but if anyone is interested, I guess they can cut and paste this into their browser.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/ockhamsrazor/stories/2010/2873766.htm

40> First off, as you can see LT will auto-link things that look like URLs. If you want to explicitly link them, you use html. So you'd type this in your edit box:

<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/rn/ockhamsrazor/stories/2010/2873766.htm">Here's my link<a>

And it'd give you:
Here's my link

You might also want to read this great thread that gives a lot of ins and outs on how to do more advanced editing:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/59470

And don't worry, I think you did the self-promotion thing right, in that you aren't promoting so much as acknowledging the existing of your work.

ETA: And then, no matter how "right" you get it, sometimes LT will decide to be an idiot and screw it up. Like above, where it turned "You might also want to read" part into a link, even though there's nothing at all in my post (bad html syntax) that would make it do so.

#25 I read Grumbles from the Grave a while ago, and was struck by the same thing.

Thanks!

Maybe my use of the term "wow factor" was askew here. When I was younger, the WOW part for me mostly came from the adventure part of the story. The science wasn't un-important - there had to be science in science fiction, but as long as the science wasn't "dumb", it was more about the adventure to me. It was only later in life that hard sf developed some appeal to me. But even still now, the telling of the story is the trump card for me. So, using my prior example of the Patrick Ness stories, the wow part of the books is not the effect that they are off-planet developing a new world after huge ships have been dropping off colonies - the wow part was the inventive dystopian story that Ness wrote.

In older days, as a big fan of the Earl Dumarest trying to find lost Terra stories, I remember them as good adventure stories, not as science stories.

In opposition, Forward's Dragon's Egg was great hard SF such that it trumped some very bland human characters.

Riverworld - lost me, first was a fascinating idea, Farmer continued the series and pounded it to death.

#45

Amen. The Fabulous Riverboat and To Your Scattered Bodies Go were great but the other two or three books were very, very bad. Farmer had no idea how to tie up the story.

How about the TV show LOST? Turning into bad SF. Talk about ending a story badly....

I recently reread To Your Scattered Bodies go, and it didn't seem as good as I remembered it - see here.

> 26 Re Dune.. since we are dealing in personal tastes, I respectfully disagree. I find it a strong, compelling work. It can stand alone as a complete work without any of the other Dune books.

I am in agreement with those who mention Heinlein as over-rated. I read Stranger in Strange Land, due to general praise for it and Heinlein, but was not moved to read any other Heinlein.

> 45 Yes, Farmer definitely did not finish or close that series well.

#26 - I agree, I could never get into Dune.

I also think Kim Stanley Robinson is over-rated and only really liked Years of Rice and Salt which is not SF.

I was a bigger Heinlein fan until I read enough to get tired of the same character types in so many of his books. I actually enjoyed Glory Road and Job more than several of his works that are typically better regarded. Of course I did happen to read those before I got my fill of Heinlein so maybe they'd be more lackluster if I revisited them.

Years of Rice and Salt is one of the few books I've started and never finished. I'd gone to the library intending to check out Red Mars because I'd heard so many good things about it and Robinson. It wasn't in so I checked out Years of Rice and Salt instead. The description sounded intriguing, it started out promising enough, but it never quite hooked me. Maybe if I had more detailed knowledge of Eastern history and tradition I could have been more diverted by the alternate history extrapolations... and spent less time thinking "Hurry up and die so we can get on with it."

Haven't been near Kim Stanley Robinson since. I intend to read the Mars Trilogy eventually though.

Overrated:
Ringworld by Larry Niven, especially the sequels. - Bland
Stranger in a Strange Land by Heinelin - Preach & wildly misogynistic
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman - Puerile
Neuromancer by William Gibson - Lack of internal verisimilitude
Chronicles of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever by Stephen Donaldson - Boring; vacant of motivation; absence of any empathy with the characters; nothing behind the fantasy world
A Conneticut Yankee in Arthur's Court by Mark Twain - Too preachy and tedius

Not overrated:
Iain M. Banks works. They are all of a high quality; no duds in the bunch. Consider Phlebas is a great yarn and is the book that hooked me on Banks's writing. It was a great, fun adventure; not a workshop on world-building.

I agree with Thomas Covenant — I never met a protagonist that I disliked more. I just wanted to grab him ("Don't touch me" notwithstanding), shake him and yell "Just stop whining!"

#51 - I wanted to like KSR's Mars trilogy - I like the concept of the trilogy, but just didn't get on with the execution and the characters didn't appeal. I read two thirds of it, but not Blue Mars. I had the same "like the concept, not the execution" feeling about his Icehenge and Antarctica.

This has turned out to be a really interesting thread. I think the obvious conclusion is that tastes differ. While I recognize the criticisms of Donaldson, for example, I really love his books, especially the first trilogy. Personally I think Neal Stephenson is overrated, but I read several of his books after a friend of mine raved about them!

55> Exactly. While most people talk about them as if the definitions were:

Overrated=Things a lot of people SAY they like, but I bet if they re-read them and didn't know who the author is, they really wouldn't

Underrated=Things almost nobody has ever read, or if they had they don't give them high reviews, but I bet they would if only they'd read them or just give them a chance

But often, I think what they really mean are:

Overrated=Things everybody likes but me
Underrated=Things nobody likes but me

#55 I think the obvious conclusion is that tastes differ.
I agree wholeheartedly with that comment.

We will have to differ on Donaldson (I had a life changing moment due to reading Donaldson's two Thomas Covenant trilogies - documented elsewhere & I will link later if you like) but I can see what you mean about Neal Stephenson.

I like Stephenson's books, but can see some issues. My first introduction was Cryptonomicon about which two of my friends raved. I found it a good read, but not brilliant.

I then tried Snow Crash and found that great fun. One had to relax into it.

I found many of his ideas in Anathem very thought provoking.

While I enjoy reading his books, and will make my way through most, if not all, of his other books, I recognise flaws and do not shout, "You must read this!" (Except for Snow Crash.)

In my opinion he has problems with endings. (Even with Snow Crash)

I read the first five, I think, Thomas Covenant books and lost interest between the last one I read and the next one. I had to wait for it to be published and by the time it was... oh, well. As with most series, for me, the arc of interest tended to curve steadily downward.

I don't generally bring Thomas Covenant up as SF because it's fantasy and when I first came to the SF group there was a big discussion raging over whether the two genres should be combined as SF&F or separated and I think most of the participants wanted them separated. The SF purists were put off by all the vampires, werewolves, and other fantastical beasties falling into the realm of SF.

I lied in my post above when I said Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep was the best SF I had read as a result of others' suggestions, actually the one I liked the most was The Day of the Triffids. But then it was written some time ago.

#57 Anathem I liked. Although it took me a few pages to get into it ... a common comment about that book I think. Snow Crash was also enjoyable but it just never passed the plausibility test for me ... always seemed forced.

On Donaldson, I like the earlier ones, the more recent third trilogy I've found extremely difficult to get into. Maybe its just that I'm older now?

#58 I don't generally bring Thomas Covenant up as SF because it's fantasy

I thought about that just after I posted my list. When someone responded to it I thought I had gotten away with it. "Fair cop, Guv. I'll come peacefully."

BTW I had to wait for the second to sixth to be published.

one I liked the most was The Day of the Triffids. But then it was written some time ago. I don't think how long ago something was written really matters, if it was good, and you enjoyed that. (Have you read The Midwich Cuckoos?

#59 Snow Crash got off to a good start with me as it made fun of management science by applying it to the pizza take-away. I have worked as a management consultant for over 30 years and his description of the folder with all the standard operating procedures; the college for working out the best way to make & deliver a pizza, all rang true with me.

I then adopted a total, "just go with the flow" approach to the book. I also thougth his ideas about outsourcing services (police, etc...) are the natural progression of existing practices in business. I thought it very tongue-in-cheek, but with a ring of truth.

I agree that names mentioned in this post are overrated authors, but I do like Stephenson, even if he is overrated. I just finished Snow Crash. It seem pretty good, but it felt like it was written in two pieces and sewn together sloppily. Love his use of language, though. Guess you can't have everything.

A agree with most of what has been said about Heinlein. I like alot of his juvenilles, but not his later works. I couldn't finish Stranger in a Strange Land I never understood the hype about it. Maybe I am just in the wrong generation. I felt like Heinlein was drinking the Kool-Aid or high when he was writing it.

I hated The Princess of Mars by Burroughs. Couldn't finish it and I cannot get myself to read anything else by him.

#45,46 Completely argee about Riverworld

I think 2001: Space Odyssey is very overrated. I found it uninteresting and boring. I am sure alot of people are going to disagree, but I don't like Clarke and his writing does nothing for me.

As for Asimov, he is one of the first sci-fi authors I liked. I did enjoy the Foundation series, but do not find it as great a many appearently think it is. I don't think it is even his best work. (I may be wrong, but I got the impression that Asimov didn't understand the hype about the Foundation books) I think Asimov's biggest problem is that he keep adding sequels to books that should should have been left by themselves. Case in point: Caves of Steel is a very good book, but the subsequent books got progessively worse. I like how Asimov explains things and appreciate his efforts in making his books scientifically accurate. His non-fiction is well written. I found it interesting that his introduction to Wandering Stars was far better than the story he had in this collection.

A agree with most of what has been said about Heinlein. I like alot of his juvenilles, but not his later works. I couldn't finish Stranger in a Strange Land I never understood the hype about it. Maybe I am just in the wrong generation. I felt like Heinlein was drinking the Kool-Aid or high when he was writing it.

I hated The Princess of Mars by Burroughs. Couldn't finish it and I cannot get myself to read anything else by him.

#45,46 Completely argee about Riverworld

I think 2001: Space Odyssey is very overrated. I found it uninteresting and boring. I am sure alot of people are going to disagree, but I don't like Clarke and his writing does nothing for me.

As for Asimov, he is one of the first sci-fi authors I liked. I did enjoy the Foundation series, but do not find it as great a many appearently think it is. I don't think it is even his best work. (I may be wrong, but I got the impression that Asimov didn't understand the hype about the Foundation books) I think Asimov's biggest problem is that he keep adding sequels to books that should should have been left by themselves. Case in point: Caves of Steel is a very good book, but the subsequent books got progessively worse. I like how Asimov explains things and appreciate his efforts in making his books scientifically accurate. His non-fiction is well written. I found it interesting that his introduction to Wandering Stars was far better than the story he had in this collection.

That's one I tried after hearing rave reviews, the A Princess of Mars book. Could not get past first chapter. I still have it (well, the omnibus Under the Moons of Mars) listed as currently reading. I've been "currently reading" it since August 19 2009. I think I actually stopped reading it August 20 2009 but never got around to removing it from currently reading.

I have to jump in here to defend Dejah Thoris, The Princess of Mars. Before I do let me say that I read all of Burroughs books that I could find, over seventy, I believe, before I could drive. That is the key. Read them when you are young or leave them alone. The fact that his works were published for adults is a good indication of how much society has changed in the last hundred years. Tarzan of the Apes was published 98 years ago.

#11 -- While I know lots of Americans who love their Pterry I wholeheartedly agree with you -- I just don't get him.

#52
Agree with you re Neuromancer. I found it leaden, forces and self-consciously 'out there' without every being interested in any of the characters. The world-building felt to me like a theater-set -- flimsy and more paint and special effects than real depth.

#66 I did start The Princess of Mars when I was young. I still hated it. To me (and I know people may give me a hard time for saying this) the popularlty of this book and series is similar in type to the popularity of the Twilight books, only from a male viewpoint written in a different time period. (I don't like the Twilight series)

I once read that whatever ERB series you read when you were young is the only stuff you will like later in life, which rings true for me, as I can't really get into the Mars series, probably his most well-liked (started it as an adult), though I love the Pellucidar series (started it as a stoned teen).

Also, Dune. Yes, overrated, I couldn't agree more. Didn't like Stranger in a Strange Land either, although I was pretty young when I read it, so I have to question my judgement on that one.

I was a fairly young adult when I attempted Stranger in a Strange Land. I thought it was just so much b*llSh*t. I think he thought he was satirizing New Ageism (a cultural aberration that truly deserved all the satire that could be heaped its way) but to me he was just being obtuse with regard to various late sixties sub-cultures. I didn't finish it. I don't like books whose main outlook is essentially cruel, as I thought was the tone of this book.

I think he thought he was satirizing New Ageism (a cultural aberration that truly deserved all the satire that could be heaped its way) but to me he was just being obtuse with regard to various late sixties sub-cultures.

When he wrote Stranger in a Strange Land new ageism was in a pretty embryonic stage and most people probably had never encountered it, making it a pretty lousy subject for satire. I think that he was being earnest, but that the era was so much more innocent that it seems like satire now.

I thought that Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land helped start the New Age insanity. I read it in the sixties and thought that only the first third was worth the effort.

I agree that EGB is almost unreadable for an adult these days, I don't think I would enjoy rereading them but they will always remind me of the fun I had the first time I read them.

>56 brightcopy: Overrated=Things everybody likes but me
Underrated=Things nobody likes but me

Well said.

I love gaiman personally. But his style is so varied from book to book it's hard to judge based soley on one book.
(I loved The Graveyard Book- though technically it's YA. And I would consider him more fantasy than Sci-fi...)

Donaldson I liked but I don't think he should be as pushed in the sci-fi world as he is. I remember when I first got into sci-fi I was pushed to read it because "he's awesome!" and yeah it was good, but not as amazing as people said...

I think that Good Omens is a much better book than American Gods, which I read this weekend oddly enough. I was underwhelmed after Good Omens and begin to think that Gaiman is over-rated.

I agree that the many sequels to Dune are overrated, but disagree about the first book of the series. Perhaps franchising ruins many a novel that would have been good as a stand alone work.

I also tend to agree with the ideas about Robert Heinlein - he definitely showed his colors as a sexist dirty old man in his later works, but I can't forget the enchantment of reading Podkayne of Mars when my grand-father gave it to me as a young girl. Nor can I forget the nascent description of the internet yet to come in Friday when I read it as a teenager. I wanted a computer that would link me to any book ever published. I was too young to understand the sexist characterization of Friday marrying her rapist and loving every sexual encounter. But then everybody has to have their wish-fulfillment fiction - otherwise the romance and bodice ripper genres would be out of business.

"I think it's an english v. american thing. The english love their Pratchetts and Banks, we americans like Heinlein and Card."

Crazy talk. Pratchett is amazing, Banks is good. Heinlein is bad, Card is shit. If its an English v. American thing, then I am defecting.

then I must be English. anyone want to change my passport? I hear they're a little prickly about such things on this side of the Atlantic.

#77. Uhm. You know what they say about assumptions.

Over-rated? Ender's Game. Anything written by Heinlein.

I actually very much like Iain M Banks' Culture novels.

I just finished my first Culture novel by Iain Banks; The Player of Games and was favorably impressed. I'm not sure I care for the over-emphasis on sex and sexual opportunities, customs, fetishes etc... but that may simply be because I'm a prudish American ;-)

#81
I really liked The Player of Games. I think the main reason I liked it was Banks's ability to have me on the edge of my seat with excitement as I was reading about a game that I couldn't fully understand. I really felt I was at the tournament. He had just enough information that I could feel the atmosphere, and know the stage of the game, without knowing the detail. Good writing on his part, or an over active imagination on mine. Either way, I enjoyed the book.

#82 I'm a big boardgame & computer game fan and so the book definitely appealed to me on that level.

#52 menitons "internal verisimilitude."

What's that?

>85 dcozy:: It doesn't hang together internally, given the premises of the world depicted, it isn't credible.

AKA "rigour".

Dune is a book I found myself wishing had been written by someone else. I don't know, but someone. I loved the idea, the characters were fascinating, but something just felt off about it.

An unusual definition of 'overrated', but I remember reading Battlefield Earth on the grounds that various people had said that it was so bad, it was good. In particular, Dave Langford had me holding my sides with laughter with his analysis of the book. Alas! It wasn't so bad, it was good - it was just so bad. Langford is a better humourist than Hubbard was a bad writer, obviously.

I don't think I'll ever understand taste. I have tried 2 Gaiman (American Gods and Graveyard Book) and thought they were an absolute complete waste of time. Both of them. Horrible. poke poke at eyes

And I tried the first Banks Culture book (some phlegmy-sounding thing) and thought the word phlegm was appropriate. (heheehe, I'm gonna get in Trou-ble for that comment).

And while I think Prachett has his place, I just don't *get* his work; same with the Hitchhiker's Guide books - I think I like my humor and my sci-fi to be separate.

But, then, I really like(d) Card's writings.

So do I think any of these are overrated? nah... just can't understand why people's tastes are so darn different.

Now, Justin Bieber... THAT'S overrated.

#89

I have read people online (not many of them mind ) who believe that Battlefield Earth is a great book. Indeed compared to the Mission Earth drek it probably was. But in the grand scheme of things - not so much. Its length stood out at the time, but it was a barely competent story of the sort that had been told many times (and often better) before.

Banks isn't overrated, he's ...just...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I'm in the group that go with "tastes vary". There are books I like more than some other people do and vice versa.

However, I'm posting to present this link title: "Greatest sci-fi novel ever* to FINALLY be filmed"

Yes indeedy that's the title. And I invite you to guess the novel before looking at the link. I'm sure our guesses would vary. As do the commenters at the end of the article. They actually have some of the same disagreements we are having here!

http://scifiwire.com/2010/05/greatest-sci-fi-novel-ever-to-finally-be-filmed.php

#93

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

Thanks for posting that link. Now I can die knowing there is no logic or taste in the movie industry.

... as is my wont I feel compelled to point out that no works by women authors have been mentioned.

because works by women tend rather to be underrated rather than overrated? or just another example of unnoticed bias towards male authors? (in choice of reading, in remembering, in identifying ....)

#94 glad you enjoyed it!

#95 Hmmm, you have me thinking. I happen to like her writing, but I imagine someone with different tastes could find a novel by Ursula Le Guin and make an argument for it being over-rated.

over rated women... Stephenie Meyer's stuff. but that's not scifi I guess... otherwise, I can't think of women who are famous enough to be over rated... hmmm...

#97 Actually there's at least 3 women who've written SF that are more famous than many of the men mentioned: Atwood, Lessing, Piercy

all right... I think Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea trilogy was overrated. Nice world, slow stories.

98: Atwood claims she doesn't write science fiction. She's wrong, she just doesn't understand what the genre is. And her science fiction is kind of weak, so it probably doesn't deserve the effusive praise it is given.

Dahlgren was absolutely deadly. Interminably dull.

101: You misspelled "Unbelievably brilliant".

hahahahaha... hahahahaha...

hahahaha...

I don't have statistics, but I'm going to guess that there are many more male SF authors than female.

I suppose there may be those who don't care for Le Guin or C. J. Cherryh (pretty much my favorite living author).

For overrated, or just not to my taste, I'll mention Heinlein also. It's been a long time since I read Stranger in a Strange Land but mostly what I remember is not getting what the excitement was about.

Agree that the first Dune novel was wonderful; the original trilogy okay, later works pretty flagrant attempts to cash in.

Although I don't remember much about it, I remember enjoying The Galactic Milieu by Julian May. I may have missed her, but I don't think she's been mentioned in the list of women SF writers.

Doug

#101 I'm with Storm on that one: Dahlgren is an excellent novel.

Over-rated female authors? Lois McMaster Bujold. The Vorkosigan saga is dull. And she won how many Hugos?

Didn't think much to Tanya Huff's Valor series either; and I quite liked Elizabeth Moon's Familias Regnant, but she's dragged that series out way past its sell-by date.

#105 - gods I hated that. Really loathed the entire thing. Definetly overrated.

Cherryh... I forgot all about her (Cyteen is on my all-time fav list and I'll have to reread it this summer). And I liked the Vork. series by Bujold (though her foray into fantasy-romance with the Sharing Knife nearly made me throw my iPod in the river, ick, I still don't like thinking about it)

So, I might agree that Bujold and/or Atwood *could* be considered overrated, but... I think that Cherryh, Piercy, and Lessing can't be considered overrated - sure, we've heard of them (actually, if I were being honest, the only time I've ever seen/heard of Piercy or Lessing were in university classes), but when's the last time you've seen one of their books on a local Chapters "display" table? (unlike Atwood, Heinlein, et al,)

Though I agree that Atwood isn't normally considered a scifi writer - at least here in Canada... she's one of our great heroes you know, her and Celine :-)

Wasn't Céline French?

and male too, apparently...

105>

Now I think about it, I found May's Saga of Pliocene Exile definitely over-rated. I enjoyed the introduction to volume one, with the extended chapter set in the future introducing all the characters; but that was mainly anticipated schadenfreude because all these cosy, comfortable people were going on about the fantastic life they were going to have in the Real Life of the distant past blah blah blah, and because I'd read the blurb, I knew they were going to get their come-uppance, and I enjoyed that.

Once they got back into the past and found themselves in the middle of this feud between two alien races with no chance of escape, things got tedious. The only other thing I remember was that somewhere in the third book (I think), one of the Firvulag went on at length about how excellent sausages were. I can relate to sausages.

#111 What sort of sausages?

Yep, put me in the pro-sausage camp!

111>

Any sort.

SF = Sausage Fandom!

I hear the very best (and rarest) sausage is made with long pig.

Whereas I adore the Pliocene Saga and re-read it quite often. I think May created the greatest villain of all time in Marc Remillard.

So, as usual, YMMV

115 > ewww.

what does it say about how sheltered I am that I had to go look up what Long Pig was.

#115 No! They are the wurst!

#119 LOL! That made my day!

That's just offal.

I agree with #117, Lquilter. Eww, indeed. Ugh. Did not need that in my head.

95> ... as is my wont I feel compelled to point out that no works by women authors have been mentioned.

As is my wont, I feel compelled to point out that Connie Willis is, indeed, a woman. (see post #33)

123 > You're right! I missed her.

She's pretty funny in real life ... I haven't found her writing to be particularly funny, though she does get that hype.

#119 gets a million internets.

There isn't enough time for me to disagree with all the utterly wrong statements on this thread, so I will take the easy way out and agree that one mans poison is another womans treasure.

And TALKING about Cherryh :P There you go , an over rated sci-fi writer.

Neil Gaiman is often far too thoughtful and profound for people, I have a few friends with a modest understanding of literature, history and human life, and yes, they don't enjoy Gaiman either. A lot of his writing is on the surface very simple, but references spread from his pen out and back through the history of literature and especially mythology, to a degree unmatched by almost all his contemporaries.

So if you don't enjoy his work, fine, maybe you should read stuff by Stephanie Myers instead?.

Ah, the old argument that if one doesn't share your taste, it's because they are too stupid (uneducated, unread, etc.) to "get" it. That's convincing . . .

I attended a management seminar last year. One of the sessions involved the audience viewing a drawing of an elephant. Two people, conveniently named “A” and “B”, were included in the picture; one looking at the elephant from the trunk end, and the other looking at the elephant from the opposite end. (I’m trying to be polite here.)

We were asked to make two sketches; one to represent the image “A” would have of the elephant, and the other to represent the image “B” would have of the elephant.

Hey presto! The images were different.

Hence the differences we find in reviews and people’s views of books and authors, etc… It all comes down to where you are when you’re looking at the elephant; and there’s always an elephant.

I know which end of the elephant most people are looking at it when they read Dan Brown...

I have never yet gotten as much out of a book reading it from the end as I do when I read it from the beginning.

>128 iansales: and >129 geneg:

Thank you for the laughs. I believe you both make very valid points!

Maybe this group should try to find an individual who could have the absolute and final say on what is and is not over overrated. It would help the rest of us avoid the pitfalls of getting involved in, and enjoying, a book that is not properly rated.

Unfortunately, I have wasted a lot of time reading and enjoying Fahrenhiet 451 as well as Asimov.

#131
I see your point. One wouldn't want to commit the sin of enjoying a book that everyone says is rubbish.

My problem is the reverse. I often commit the sin of disliking books that everyone says are wonderful.

Steady now. We're in danger of dimly groping towards a truth here - that all labels of 'best' and 'worst' are completely subjective and potentially meaningless to any other individual.

And if we stopped arguing over those points, what would happen then? We'd be adrift and rudderless in uncharted territory with nothing to disagree on except disagreement itself. At which point, time would come to a full .

Or we'd think of something else to argue about.

if we all agreed there'd be no reason for 51,982,038 books!

I'm not sure I want to open this debate again, but I'd disagree with "completely subjective" and say, perhaps, "somewhat subjective." I do think there are some standards, not mathematically precise nor absolute but identifiable, by which we can rate works. For example, the most basic would be whether it is written with correct spelling, punctuation, and grammar.

I'd also include questions such as:

* Are the characters recognizable as individuals rather than being one-dimensional, caricatures, too perfect, etc?

* Does the dialog sound like real people talking?

* Is the plot interesting; is the ending telegraphed early in the book; is it so convoluted that most readers can't follow it; is it logically consistent?

* Are basic facts right--did the author do research? If set in this world, for example, does the author place real things where they actually are (e.g., the White House is on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., not in NYC)? If historical, are there glaring anachronisms (e.g., Roman centurion with a wrist watch)?

* If science fiction, does the science bear some resemblance to scientific fact as we currently understand it?

* Is the world presented, whether more or less real or completely fantasized, logically consistent? If a character is blind on page ten, he should not suddenly be able to see on page thirty-seven without some explanation.

And so on . . . some of my examples are over-the-top, but similar errors are plentiful in fiction.

There are also many more nuanced issues, such as whether there are subplots and if so, are they completely extraneous, are they wrapped up, etc.; are there layers of meanings; does the author use language imaginatively/poetically, with images, similes, and metaphors that add to the story; and so on.

So, yeah, I studied English literature.

ejj makes my point for me, I think!

Some of ejj's most basic points should be tackled by the publisher - but aren't always, or to our individual satisfaction, to take spelling, punctuation or grammar. As for the bullet points, I have some 'Golden Age' sf on my shelves - and some more recent - that fail each of those tests, yet I find something in each book of sufficient value for me to keep it (and no, I don't keep every book I've ever bought, and some of my disposals might look a bit philistine to others). And some of those remain favourites of one sort or another, even though I recognise their faults and would not presume to stack them up against other, "more worthy" books (according to other people) except in comparison rather than competition.

This conversation is ending up in exactly the same place as the 25 identical threads on this subject that preceded it. One man's junk is another man's treasure. Take that however you want.

>137 geneg: Yes, I know this has been discussed before. Wasn't sure I wanted to go there . . .

>136 RobertDay: I agree that I have many beloved books that are weak in one or more of these areas, but to some extent I can say that one book is better than another using some of these criteria. I also didn't mention sheer inventiveness--is it something I haven't read before? There are a lot of different reasons to love various books.

To return to the subject of the thread, I was surprised to see so many people cite Heinlein. I didn't care for his work, but he seems in general to be highly regarded.

Naturally, everone has their own tastes and the one man's treasure thing applies. But when I started this thread, I was hoping for lively discussion (which there has been), and did expect disagreements, but in general I was looking to uncover a few authors/works that had previously been protected by the Emporer's new clothes phenomonon. You remember the tale, the Emporor and his subjects all get conned into believing he is wearing awesome clothes when he is, in fact, naked. I don't know how this all gets started, but it's a conventional wisdom thing that gets passed along and most people are afraid to challenge it, or convince themselves they see the clothing. Is Citizen Kane really the best movie of all time? Conventional wisdom would say so --- but what if suddenly enough people begin to say it has no clothes? I look up grammar and word usage quite a lot when I'm writing. And I've discovered countless times where words have been used incorrectly by so many people for so long that the official dictionary finally gives up and begins to say they are now correct. If enough people finally stand up against conventional wisdom, the conventional wisdom changes.

So I wondered if there were examples of this in SF works? I began with Nightfall, considered the best SF story ever. Is this still true? I didn't get anyone to comment.

But I have learned something (at least I think I have). I think the biggest insight is that (judging from an admittedly small statistical sample) Heinlein may really not be as great as conventional wisdom has us all believing. And Stranger in a Strange land may not be the masterpiece we've all grown up believing (it may have just gotten this badge during a specific social period in history). I must say, I read a lot of Heinlein as a kid (until he discovered sex and his books all became 900 pages -- 100 page of plot and 800 pages of rambling and sex). Anyway, the first 10 of his books I read all said "author of Stranger in a Strange Land" on the cover. When I got it and read it, let's just say it wasn't my favorite Heinlien. Anyway, I now believe this bit of social wisdom is ready to be overturned. And Gaimon? He strongly appeals to a certain group, true, but his genius isn't as universally recognized as some of the hype would lead us all to believe. Doesn't mean he isn't a genius, just that there is far less unanimity than I had realized previously.

Doug

Sorry for the digressions, Doug. I'll reiterate Asimov and the Foundation series as being overrated. It's enjoyable on some level, sure, but is it great? Not so much. I think his robot stories are much better.

#126

No, I never said anything of the sort.

In the specific case of the inarguably profound and deep cultural complexity and worth of Gaimans work, which is apparently a fact because so many well educated writers and critics and academics and also lowly fans, have explored the meanings and significance of his work at great length, one bloke saying "meh, I don't see what all the fuss is about" is quite obviously just an ill formed opinion.

140, ejj 1955, I hope you didn't misinterpret the reason for my message. I just thought I'd throw my two cents in once again. I don't consider your posts to be digressions at all, and I thought they were quite thoughtful and interesting.

Doug

#135

I loved the list. It does bring some objective criteria into the discussion; some of which could be regarded as hygene factors, i.e. setting a basic threshold beneath which one would not consider a given document to be worthy of consideration; the proverbial, "bad book". (Some of your points are very dear to my heart; e.g. getting the basic facts right.)

Such hygene factors should be enforced by the editorial process in the publishing house. If a book gets through to the bookshelf and is still in breach of these basic standards, well...

Also, in the case of translations, the work of the translator is vital. I have read some wonderful translations, and some not so wonderful translations. I don't think tranlsators get sufficient credit. As a person who only speaks and reads one language with any fluency, I would not have access to some of the wonderful French, Russian, Arab, Chineses, etc... books that are available if it was not for the work of translators.

So, yeah, I studied English literature.
Don't worry about that. We still love you and won't hold it against you. :-)

OFF TOPIC ALERT (sorry)

143,
pgmcc, you reminded me of a translation question I was curious about. This year a Korean publisher bought Korean-language rights to the first book in my series and will publish it later this year. I was really surprized by this because there are word puzzles in the book that don't translate (at least I can't figure out how this would be done). One word-puzzle example the kids in the book discuss is HOrobOD. The answer is Robin Hood. The word Rob in the word Hood. ROB in Hood. This can't translate to Korean (the Korean word for "in" isn't the same). So what do they do in these cases? Rewrite? Leave it out? I'm sure this is something translaters often face. Do you have any insight into this?
Doug

#144
Hi, Doug,
While I enjoy reading translations I am no expert in translation. However, (this is a great trick used by advertising agencies - state clearly that you have no expertise in the subject whatsoever, and then go on to give detailed advice and insight) I do know that the type of thing you describe would not translate.

If one has a really great translator, they may be able to come up with equivalent puzzles, but in general, linguistic jokes and puzzles are not likely to translate readily.

The first time I realised the importance of translators was when I read the Penguin edition of The Three Musketeers. I know French is a very poetic language, and when I read the English translation I found it very poetic. I can't remember the translator's name, but it struck me that he must be very talented.

Poetry is another thing the does not translate well. People I know who translate poetry (French to English; Irish to English; Enlish to Irish; English to French; etc...) try to translate the idea rather than the words. I suspect the translation of a poem becomes another entity entirely.

#144

Wordplay is hard to translate - but can be done look at Kandel's translations of Stanislaw Lem's wordplay.

#145

Actually with poetry it isn't just translated the idea and not the words, you sometimes have to translate 'form' as well.

Things get even harder when you have made up words. Imagine a translation of Jabberwocky - words such as slithy and brillig aren't just complete nonsense but have undertones of meaning (in English).

If you are at all interested in this sort of thing then I would heartily recommend Le Ton Beau de Marot by Douglas Hofstadter. It isn't all about translation but a great deal of it is.

thanks

>141 Annodyne: I'm sorry if I misinterpreted your first post--perhaps I took exception to your dissing Cherryh (whom I love) and then the Meyer comment, which I thought implied . . . well, what I responded to. I'm much more in agreement with what you express in #141, with the caveat that wide agreement among fans doesn't always equal truth (think of the hordes of teenage girls sighing, "I think Twilight is the most romantic story ever!!").

>142 DouglasE.Richards: No problem, Doug, I just know I have a tendency to wander rather far afield at times . . .

>143 pgmcc: Thanks!

I have always wondered about translated poems for exactly the reasons you guys talk about.

I can understand spoken Tokyo Japanese pretty well ( Speaking myself, not so good, but I can get by ) so I know how ropey even good translation work can get around slang or hyperbole or poetic references.

Watching news reports where they offer text translation of Japanese officials or scientists I often throw up my hands in amusement. My Japanese friends say the same holds true often in the other way.

So you can really suspect an entire poem is just someones poetic ideas of the first poem imo.

#148 No worries mate, it is a very easy media to fail to get ones point across clearly in, I obviously didn't express myself well enough in the first place.

I read the second thing I wrote and it also fails in a way. I am not trying to say young people don't have a right to an opinion, or even are unable to have maturity beyond their normal fellows, or even that the limited opinion they do have is worthless. I am saying it counts for nothing against the more mature, knowledgeable opinion of adults, with their vastly more encompassing experience, just from pure duration .

Of course we all know young people who are erudite ( lots of us here must have been I think. Not me by any means, I cringe when I remember how sure of myself I was at 18, and man, I really was ignorant of life, deeply profoundly inexperrienced of all the major human matters. I had never travelled, never lost in love, never loved in a mature way, never worked with needy people and I myself come from a fairly happy settled home so what possible chance did I have of gauging hardship. All I knew was the soft life of the nursery. For me to have expressed an opinion about some adult literary work would have been just the mouthing of a babe. ) but most young people have limited experience, they can never properly judge the worth of a grown artists work. They simply lack the ability.

And when you see someone GROWN who says "Neil Gaiman is not profound" as an absolute statement, you have to suspect they also simply lack the comprehension necessary to make a valid judgement. Because he is, it is his lifes study to BE profound. Saying he doesn't do it stylishly might be a valid ( terribly subjective ) comment, but to say he fails completely is just wrong, ignorant.

I think The Left Hand Of Darkness by Ursala K. Leguin was over rated. I have to say, I was bored to tears. I liked her Earthsea trilogy as a kid though.

25> Why shouldn't he have been mercenary about his writing? That is how he made his living.
He freely admitted he was not some tortured "artist" with a quill and scroll, he cranked out thousands of words per day when he was working on a book, then tried to pare down the pearls from the dreck and distill it into some kind of readable form.
He also was aware that some of his material did not measure up and published them under a number of pen names, Anson MacDonald, Lyle Monroe, John Riverside, Caleb Saunders, Simon York being the most notables. It would seem the editors and publishers had a higher opinion of some of his work than he did, they still bought it.

#152 - yes, writers come in differing types. Some churn out books every year, or more frequently, others spend ages torturing themselves to write one book. Neither habit is intrinsically good or bad, except perhaps at the extreme outer edges of each pattern of behaviour. I don't think one should assume that a writer who spends ages writing a book has necessarily produced a better (or worse) one, or that (s)he is necessarily a better (or worse) writer.

I found Peter F. Hamilton, as a writer, to be both mediocre and cliched. The Dreaming Void is, however, the only work of his that I have read. Character development was mechanical, and in places read like nothing more than soft erotica. Of course Space Opera is inclined toward grand narrative and the broad brush of events, though some writers can balance this demand for drawing contours with the shading of details. I simply felt that he had not achieved this in the work, and so I have not returned to others of his works.

Similar problems, of balancing these contours and shades, are met in other notable Space Operas, so as not to single Hamilton out unfairly. Asimov's Foundation series also seemed to suffer from this, at least when Asimov seemed to shift the focus too heavily from the broader Seldon plan to the improbably vital actions of a few characters. It seemed to compromise the entire premise of a Seldon plan.

#154
Can't you at least try other books by the man?. I mean, the world won't stop if you continue to think some particular way about his writing ( and admittedly he is quite the uber-Space Opera singer, so you are not actually going to find otherwise by reading more of his works ) but I think it is a shame just for the sake of your own enjoyment, that you don't try some more of the man.

His books about Greg Mandel http://www.peterfhamilton.co.uk/index.php?page=greg_summary are substantially different novels to the one you read, and quite good for what they are, which is basically a sci-f- setting of detective novels, with a side order of social speculation.
The only motive I have is wishing you not miss out on a pleasure.

155> I'd definitely give him another try, should I see any of the Mandel titles at the bookstores I frequent (used books, generally). The problem is all I typically see are his sprawling sagas, like TDV or Night's Dawn or just the hefty Fallen Dragon. It looks like the first Mandel book is around 400 pages (though by the third, he appears to have crept up to 600ish), so that might be more likely to get a second chance.

I have only read the Night's Dawn series, and I thoroughly enjoyed some aspects of it (being a space opera fan). But I simply felt it needed a serious edit. He went past the point of diminishing returns with all the extra characters and plots. We can all agree that there is such a thing as "too much", and for me this series was firmly in that territory. For others, perhaps not.

Of course, I couldn't help but feel the ending was a colossal cheat after investing the time to read the 3000 or so pages leading up to it. The series deserved far better.

oh, I thought you hadn't read but the one book of his. Anyone who reads all the way through Nights Dawn, is entitled to having a firm, fixed opinion on his works. :)

See if you can get the mandel books from the library. People still use the library don't they?.

:) Actually, ours sold half its books and instead put in Internet machines and a proper, three counter, five espresso machine coffee shop!. They even hold musical concerts with OPERA ( they got a grand piano! and once a Carribian Steel Band! )

I can imagine the librarians of my youth are a twirlin' in their graves.

I've read all of the Night's Dawn trilogy. And a couple of the Greg Mandel novels. Not to mention a load of short fiction. Oh, and I even published one of his stories back in the early 1990s when I edited a small press magazine (the story seems to have disappeared from his bibliography, though...).

Despite all that, I don't think his fiction is very good.

Dune and Emphyrio for me, tho at least I finished the latter!

>3 iansales: I'll agree about Foundatiuon but not Nightfall-I enjoyed that story and even loved the later novel co-written with Silverberg!

#155

I appreciate your good will. In fact, I was not aware that he had turned his hand to noir SF (something which I enjoyed from Alastair Reynolds in Century Rain, and more recently in The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov). Perhaps at some point I will return to his work, but not to the Void series; I stand by my critique of it, being medicore, in places quite inspired and creative, Space Opera, but nothing more. Where I have enjoyed modern space opera more is with Dan Simmons, in his Hyperian cantos. I thought that he handled the transition from the starting and personal voyage to the wider events of the later novels, never feeling as fragmented as the Void. With Hyperion the universe seemed more consistent, even if he did ruin and eventually abandon the Shrike as a force within the series.

>139 DouglasE.Richards:
I'd like to pile on against Heinlein and suggest China Mieville as another over-rated author. I've only read Perdido Street Station but I dislike it so much I'm torn between removing it from my library and leaving it in because I'm happy to have given it one star. I especially loathed how my edition featured a - misquoted - rave review from Neil Gaiman on the front cover, making it seem as if Gaiman thought Mieville was the future of fiction.

Perhaps that's my big problem: based on the cover (mis)quotation, I was bound to be disappointed.

162> You could always create another account for "books I loathed enough to get rid of."

Isn't that what collections are for?

No.

I have a collection category called,"Hated".

There are only two books that have earned the honour of being placed there.

Um, looks like 6 in there in your profile...

Yes, that is what collections are for. I have one called Quit, Yuck, Ptooey.

Collections? what is this 'collections' business?

#167 Ian, thanks for pointing that out.
For some reason my default collection is "hated" and I normally change it on set up of a new book. A few slipped through last week.

Now the collection has the two books that should be there.

Your default is "hated"?! You must be hard to please...

No, wait. Should that be "easy to please"?

#171 Perhaps that collection is under-populated!

Another author that keeps getting a writing contract who isn't worth the pages he's written (and you'd think he'd improve with so much output):

Kevin J Anderson

Its as if because he has the output, publishers want him to rate higher.

Whereas I despise Stephen King. Don't even ask me why. It's his writing I hate. I admit he has some good ideas though.

#161 I've never been able to get past Hyperion itself, since I hated that book when I read it and still do to this day. I enjoyed Carrion Comfort, but Hyperion just left me cold. I hated every one of the characters, I didn't care about the Shrike, I saw no reason for any of the events in the book to take place. Granted, I can say that now without any memory of specific events in the book other than the stopping point at the end, which I presume makes slightly more sense if I were to read the sequels, but I wasted enough of my life on the first volume that I won't be going back.

174> Whereas I despise Stephen King. Don't even ask me why.

Because he's a best-selling writer who couldn't control himself enough to keep from doing a self-insert in one of his greatest works and completely ruining it thereby? I hate the man with a passion for having ruined The Dark Tower, a story I'd been following for thirty years.

I like Gaiman, I'd recommend Neverwhere and then maybe The Graveyard Book as good places to start. It's fantasy that draws heavily from myth, folklore, and history, which isn't exactly SF in the strictest sense and maybe not for everyone.

I also disagree on Ender's Game. I think the original was one of the best SF books I've read, and generally have always heard great things when I've lent the book out. The immediate sequel(Speaker for the Dead) is good as well, but it goes downhill from there, and he's still milking those stories with side novels 25 years later unfortunately.

KSR's Mars Trilogy is also great in my opinion, though the third book is by far the weakest. Its heavy on pop science and left wing politics though, so maybe not for everyone, but it was one of the high points of SF in the 90s as far as I'm concerned.

>176 wombat-socho:
Talking of the Dark Tower series....
http://www.walkerofworlds.com/2010/09/news-dark-tower-coming-to-big-small.html

Thanks for the suggestions regarding the creative use of collections, I will implement.

I enjoyed 'American Gods', and I hated myself for missing 'Lowkey Liespinner'. I also liked the videos for Neverwhere and the movie Stardust. But that's where my Gaiman experience ends. As a kid I tried to like Stephen King and failed.

>177 skip:
I loved Ender's Game when I read it, and I guess I would hate it if I re-read it today. I stalled in the first of the Mars Trilogy - didn't hold my interest.

If I can suggest an UNDER-rated author: Yevgeny Zamyatin. I'm two-thirds of the way through We and I already know I'm going to track down everything ever written by and about him and his peers.

And hey, this is a great thread, I like having the default set to 'negative'.

hahaha. I also kicked myself again and again for missing Liespinner, I couldn't believe I had done it. I mean, the minute you meet A masterly old man who is prone to wearing old, weather-beaten wide brimmed hats and HAS A FALSE EYE, you think anyone awake would think back and say Oh, DOH!, Lowkey!.

But no, I went all the way till his actual reveal.

Shadows wife was one of the best characters in the book, imo.

>180 Annodyne:
I'm going to read American Gods again. I have an inkling I might like it even more this time.
Very happy to hear I'm not alone - perhaps we should start a 'most obvious clues I missed' thread?

Hey, what are you trying to do to me?.

I pretend I am intelligent when I am posting here.

If we made the thread you suggest, and I was anything like honest in it . . .

So much for my reputation as insightful!.

Hahahaha.

( It is a god idea though. )

Anything by Ray Bradbury? Really? First of all, Bradbury isn't technically a science fiction author, so you can't judge him in that sense. As a science-fantasy author, he is probably without peer. A prose stylist if I ever saw one.

My other half, who is an out-and-out Bradbury fan, admits and complains that his recent stuff is too much into the realm of whimsey. On the other hand, she accepts his sf AS sf and not science fantasy; just because he's elegiaic and full of the wonder of spaceflight and other worlds, that doesn't disqualify him as an sf writer as such.

>177 skip: For what my opinion is worth, I like the newer sequels (Ender's Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets) a lot better than the original sequels to Ender's Game - which I loved ever since reading the original short story in Analog all those years ago. As do my kids. :)

I think Orson Scott Card has gotten better as a writer.

The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe is one of the most overrated sci-fi works ever produced. I read all four books expecting some kind of revelation that would explain why these books were so great. I finally realized that it's all a vindictive scam to trick people into reading them. No one can actually enjoy his books.

Some of the ones on the list here are baffling. Enders Game? Foundation? I admit Foundation can be a little tiresome at some points, but you have to remember Asimov was one of the first to produce high quality sci-fi. It's not going to be as good if you use today's standards to judge it. And for me, Ender's Game is brilliant from start to finish.

The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe is one of the most overrated sci-fi works ever produced. I read all four books expecting some kind of revelation that would explain why these books were so great. I finally realized that it's all a vindictive scam to trick people into reading them. No one can actually enjoy his books.

Not no one. I enjoyed the books.

# 186
I loved the New Sun books also. They are some of the highest art that exists in Sci Fi, from a literary standpoint. The pure writing craft for one thing, the thematic aspect for another, the mythological reach for a third.
Dozens of men and women famous entirely for the fact that they have laboured their working lifetimes, crafting words, writers from all genres, say that Wolfe bears away the brass ring.

And then on the other hand we have your opinion.

It is not impossible that you are right, and people like Gaiman and Farmer are completely up the creek without a clue. What sort of odds are you offering though?.

#186 IS right, in that he/she is right that New Sun did nothing for them (the rest of the post was quite obviously just kidding around). I think we already had this whole overrated/underrated discussion fairly recently...

Art is entirely subjective. Sometimes there is a consensus of agreeing opinions, other times not so much. And the consensus usually changes over time. I try not to worry about it and just stick to the art that fulfills my subjective opinion of "goodness."

We probably did have it recently, and in this thread maybe?. =\
However, not liking it, and claiming it "is one of the most overrated sci-fi works ever produced" are two different comments, and the very least one could expect would be some particular EXAMPLE from the work, to support the courageously over the top claim. Or even a link to someone other than himself, supplying a reason from the work, in support of the claim.

Which, when topped by the offensive "No one can actually enjoy his books", it transcends a just personal opinion to become mere nonsense.

In my honest opinion, this is just another ( of the too many ) example of someone not being capable of understanding THEMSELVES the worth in a book, who then extends their own incomprehension to mean everyone else who DOES enjoy the book to be the ones at fault.

What he ( and all the people who similarly SAY "such and such a book is over rated" but never offer, from the text, a single example of failing ) really mean was "I read all four books and I did not understand where the worth is".

None of them like admitting out loud, that the fault is theirs, not the books. So instead they imply, and in this instance he actually SAYS that the fault is in everyone else.

I think you're overreacting (another one of those "over" words ;) and taking the original post far too seriously. Clearly the poster realized they were in the minority and were writing some funny explanation of why the majority likes it. In my opinion, you should lighten up. :D

chain = successfully yanked

In a way all books are over-rated in as much they mean so much to one person, but thats not to say theyre going to mean that much to someone else- even though that is the expectation.

One of the things a person learns after hanging around LT for a while is the subjective nature of taste. It takes some time from that point to begin using that knowledge regularly in making the kinds of assessments found in #186. Blanket statements about what are essentially issues of personal taste aren't really a very effective means of making a point. It takes time and a few episodes like this to learn that.

I love Henry James, all the Russky tomesters, and Charles Dickens immensely, but I realize they are just not everyone's cup of tea. While it's tempting to bash authors I've never read based on reputation, such as Dan Brown, Stephanie Meyer, and others of their ilk, I don't make blanket statements about them.

However, I tried The Book of the New Sun myself, I just couldn't get more than about halfway through the Sword of the Licker. So I can appreciate the POV expressed in #186. I felt like I was spending my time in a Renaissance Faire Carnival. I might have a different opinion were I to read the entire thing, but life's too short to spend it reading stuff I don't care for all that much.

re: 151. I remember trying to read "Left Hand of Darkness" when I was younger. I could not get past the first few pages. Recently, I tried again and found it very rewarding, albeit the opening scene was still rough going. After that, however, there were so many flashes of brilliance. In particular, the traditional Gethenian tales are stunning. LeGuin used the concept of kemmer very effectively to create sexual tension. I loved the book!

When it comes down to it, I wonder how much difference there is between that we regard as a masterwork and what we regard merely as a well-crafted work. I think the tipping factors are subtle. I think we have different opinions about what is "overrated" because everyone responds to such factors differently.

Also, I subscribe to the notion that not all works should be held to the same standard. For example, although I would not say Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote "masterworks," he definitely had talent as a narrator, and his achievement as a pulp artist is virtually unmatched.

If something is a masterwork or a mere well crafted work, can be, probably has to be, a matter of opinion.

And taste is subjective. All that is a given.

I put it as an entirely different category though, when someone claims that something is "over-rated", but doesn't attempt to explain where the crafting fails. Then it is just opinion, and my first thought is, the persons experience wasn't up to the task.

My suspicion is always aroused when someone does it that way. Sure, their taste MIGHT be as justified as Mr Gaimans', as any of the other, the PROFESSIONAL judges that the critic sets himself up to say "You over-rate" to. It certainly is possible, maybe everyone's opinion is equally valuable when judging literature ( except, NOT. Someone who can make literature, understands it from the inside, ought to carry more weight with any rational person on the topic OF literature. )

But, when you hear hooves, look for horses. When you hear someone pop up with a wildly divergent opinion, and one they don't even try to support with any kind of reasoned, studied, thoughtful points, doesn't it instantly say, that this person not only was incapable of appreciating the work, but doesn't even know what they missed?. Doesn't it suggest someone who simply didn't get it, and conflates their failing into an opinion?.

Then add, "No one can actually enjoy his books" as an opinion of this same person, and you can even guess exactly what KIND of horse you are looking at. It is a Donkey. Some call them "asses" I think?.

When you hear someone pop up with a wildly divergent opinion, and one they don't even try to support with any kind of reasoned, studied, thoughtful points, doesn't it instantly say, that this person not only was incapable of appreciating the work, but doesn't even know what they missed?. Doesn't it suggest someone who simply didn't get it, and conflates their failing into an opinion?.

it could also be called successful trolling ;-)

and insofar as asses go, it has been suggested many times that it takes one to know one

I don't know if I would necessarily call it over-rated (that's not a term I normally use) but I read all four novels of The Book of the New Sun in my college days and wasn't impressed. I thought they were very average at the time and haven't had any desire to re-read them since.

As to whether they are well written (or even wonderfully written), I don't have any idea. If I notice the writing and I'm not re-reading the book then that's a problem because I'm not drawn into the story.

re: 195

I realized after reading your post that it has been 25 years since I read the book, and maybe it's status deserves giving it another look. I just remember reading it, knowing it was a "great book" and not being all that impressed.

re: 196

In the spirit of the original thread, throwing out a title of a book/story you thought over rated, I threw out this title and waited to see what people had to say. I didn't realize I had to include an exhaustive rendition of justification for my opinion. However, I will reread The Left Hand of Darkness and see if I still feel the same. If so I will put together a full persuasive essay (including footnotes) and submit it for your approval. Personally, I hope I reread it and find I absolutly love it now.

>197 clif_hiker:
yeah, this corner of the internet seems troll-unready and I have come to the conclusion it's done on purpose. who knows, maybe many great conversations resulted from the 'trolling of the time'.

>198 pjfarm:
What term do you normally use for 'over-rated' and could you explain 'very average' (i.e. is it better than 'average')

I read The book of the new sun as a kid and didn't realize it wasn't a fantasy novel. I also hated LeGuin. Now I think they are both spectacular. Perhaps as we get older we do shed the need for the sweet coating of adventure on our ideas? (thanks Zamyatin).

I'd happily lump Card in with Heinlein. A pair of eager fascists whose misunderstanding of human sexuality is laughable. There's no way I'm rereading anything by them though, so this is as detailed as I'm prepared to get.

200> Perhaps as we get older we do shed the need for the sweet coating of adventure on our ideas?

I think that's a bit simplistic. When I was much younger, I tried reading West of Eden. It wasn't short on adventure, that's for sure. But for whatever reason I just couldn't get into the story. Then I picked it up a decade later and loved it.

Sure, there are plenty of times when you revisit a book you liked in your youth that you now regard as utter dreck improved only by naivete. But it's often more complicated than that.

A pair of eager fascists whose misunderstanding of human sexuality is laughable.

You should probably skip Wagner's Ring cycle, then. Downright racist jew-hater, that one. I'm sure anything he created wouldn't just be a waste of time to watch. ;)

>200 StunnedTuna:
Now you've got me thinking about language. I don't know if it's just me or whether it's colloquialisms for my part of the US but if I went to a hyped movie and didn't like it, I wouldn't say it was overrated, I'd say I didn't think it was as good as I'd heard it would be (or I'd say it was bad :-)) Outside of this discussion, I can't think of the last time I've used the term overrated. It all means the same thing, it's just not the same words.

As to 'very average' as opposed to 'average', no, average and very average mean the same thing in terms of a rating. What I didn't realize until you questioned me is that stating that it was very average is a way of implying that it was overrated. (At least to me. I don't know if anyone else would understand my thinking. :-) )

Sorry you had to take this trip through my sometimes opaque thought processes.

>201 brightcopy:
Sure it's simplistic; this medium doesn't support much more (although someone above seems keen to prepare papers to support his position). But I do think it is a good place to start a discussion about how tastes change over the course of a lifetime.

I don't know anything about Wagner. To quote Gob though "Come on!".

>202 pjfarm:
You've got me wondering if the marketing of movies specifically, and media in general, have made the expression 'overrated' redundant. I dunno, Rotten Tomato rates the movie 'Appaloosa' at 76% but the review I most agree with starts "Ed Harris' howler of a vanity piece..." so that's a literal example of overrated being a useful word for me.

It's hard (impossible) to tell, but I did catch a wiff of 'mother-in-law' from your "very overrated".

I'm beginning to suspect this entire thread is a meta-troll. Should ensure its success.

Overrated, underrated, average, above average, below average, very overrated, super overrated...
These are terms on a sliding gray scale that's different for everyone.
Why not just use -- I liked IT or I didn' like IT?

>204 LamSon:

"I liked it" or "I didn't like it" are useful, certainly, but mostly if you already have a good idea of the other things the speaker/writer likes or doesn't like.

It also presupposes that all criticism is a matter of opinion, a view I reject. I think there are objective, if not scientific, standards. I even think there are good, maybe great, books that I personally don't like (anything by Joseph Conrad, for example).

205> What's wrong with all criticism being a matter of opinion, but recognizing that there are cases where the opinion will be (for example) 95% in one direction?

If there are objective and scientific standards, who determined them? Why was one standard left out and others included? The guys in the room filled with smell of cigar smoke and sweat probably argued a lot and tried to drive home their opinion about which objectives should be included in the list.

"I liked IT" is only good for people who know me and what I like to read. For those who don't know me, reading a book based on 'I liked IT" is a crap shoot and likewise for me relying on someone else's "I liked IT".

I have to say that every major author listed in this thread can be perceived to be overrated. Wolfe,Reynolds, Asimov, Heinlein, Gaiman, etc.
What should be noted is they sold a lot of books so a lot of people thought they were worthwhile at some point. I've read or tried to read all the major titles listed thus far. Some I couldn't stomach (Gaiman, Dune ), others I loved, (Heinlein, Asimov). it really comes down more to taste (which can change over time) rather than a codified "rating" system.

Objective but not scientific. For example, it's possible to judge writing on grammatical grounds. That's relatively simple. Beyond that, it's possible to say that some characters are better drawn and more realistic than others. Scarlett O'Hara is a better drawn character than most of the ones in Harlequin romances--more distinctive, more individual, more flawed, more interesting, more human.

It's possible to look at some plots and say yes, this makes sense that action Y would follow action X, that personalties A and B would clash, that some kind of disaster is likely or not likely to happen (earthquake in southern CA, yes; blizzard in southern CA, no). For some events, the reader is willing to suspend disbelief; for others, the reader is saying, "aw, come on, seriously?"

There's a difference between a conflict or challenge being resolved by the character learning and rising to the challenge in a believable way and the "deus ex machina" solution in which the difficulty is resolved by some outside agency--if not literally by a god, by winning the lottery or having a previously unknown magician come along in the last chapter.

Some writers are better than others at using the right words to convey what they mean; some are better than others at drawing the reader into the action. Some write seemingly endless amounts of description, some only enough to enhance the story. Some tell you things, others show them.

Then there are things like foreshadowing, simile, metaphor, etc., that enhance the writing of good writers. There's style, whether it's Hemingway's short sentences or Faulkner's long ones--but a distinctive style (if not dreadful) is generally better than writing that one can't identify as coming from a specific author.

209> None of these things you have listed fit the definition of "objective." This is rather obvious when you say "objective but not scientific." That should have clued you into the fact that what you're talking about is simply a consensus of subjective opinions.

It isn't a science, nothing remotely like it. The act of writing is a craft, it can be taught and learnt, and all writers are artists to a greater and lesser extent that work AT a craft to produce their art.

A sentence can be correct, or it can be not so. It can be technically correct but not mellifluous, or not evocative or not resonant, or not stirring, or it can be all these things.
The art is separate from the craft, but without the craft the art is simply a failure, unreadable.

The rules of a craft are pretty well ironclad, and we can all think of writers who have the craft down unexceptionably, but are boring, talentless, not artists.
you don't use a hammer to carve glass normally, someone who sets out to make a glass statue is a failure if the only tool he knows is hammer. But a great artist probably could craft a glass statue with a hammer.

It might not be a popular fact, but it is the truth that young, or simply inexperienced people simply don't have the what it takes to appreciate most art. Thus we have some of the people who simply claim "Dickens is overrated", and the reality of it is, they themselves know nothing about the world. Funnily, often the same person likes the "Twilight" novels. :rolleyes:

How do we know whose opinion is a mature one we ought not simply discard?.

They also say, "Dickens is overrated" , but they then give examples of why they think so, either other writers his contemporaries, or examples of literary crafting failure in his work.

EVERYONE else who offers an opinion unsupported, can be simply dismissed, as merely one more opinion that carries no more weight than someone who says "I don't like Dickens". Probably many of the people who say so, simply are incapable of explaining where the "failing" is, because they know nothing about writing as a craft, or as an art. They just "Know what they like".

The two statements "Dickens is overrated" and "I don't like Dickens" are equivalent in every possible way, and have as much worth.

> 209, 210

Brightcopy makes a good point: "Better drawn character" and "more plausible ending" are subjective judgments. That said, though, one item in ejj1955's list *does* point to an area where you can assess writing objectively: fidelity to the "real world."

At least in genres where fidelity to reality-as-we-know-it is expected I'd say you can objectively "grade" authors according to that standard. Tigers in Africa, pancakes on your breakfast plate at Waffle House, silenced revolvers, native Bostonian characters calling their city "Beantown" without irony, and blizzards in Southern California are, it seems reasonable to say, the mark of a sloppy (and thus less-good) writer . . . unless done deliberately and for fantastic or ironic effect.

That's a pretty thin thread of objectivity, though, except in certain genres -- historical novels, hard science fiction, police and legal procedurals -- where playing the get-your-details-right game is part of the deal you make with the reader.

One of the other supposed "objective" aspects is grammar. Yet some of our most brilliant novelists and poets have given grammar the finger. Shakespeare created a large chunk of the English language, rather than letting it enclose him. Ah, but you say, those are the exceptions. Why is that? If it's objective and rule-based, why are some people able to get away with it and be "good", while others fail and are "bad"?

And that doesn't even address the fact that grammar itself is a consensus. It has varied quite a bit over time, and there have always been a lot of wiggle room in the "rules", such as they are. As much as prescriptive grammarians try to stop it, descriptive grammar always wins.

>211 Annodyne:
"The two statements "Dickens is overrated" and "I don't like Dickens" are equivalent in every possible way"
Well, one has more 'd''s.

I've heard even recent graduates in 'English' score no better than average when asked to rate poems without the clues of title and author (no source, just my memories of yet another 'study'). Maybe an individual is not able to determine the 'value' of a book, perhaps it has to be the result of many readers and many years? (which is what I think brightcopy said at the end of >209 ejj1955:).

I agree with Annodyne >211 Annodyne:. If we want to have a real conversation, we should share how we arrived at our conclusion about a the merits of a specific book/author. Who wants to moderate?

Not me.

>215 ejj1955: aww!
Logged on to share an anecdote: in Surely You're Joking, Richard Feynman describes how he, without any training in drumming, went all the way to world finals before being caught out as being completely unschooled.

Makes me think of The Emperor's New Clothes and the little remembered bit that not seeing the clothes meant you were admitting your stupidity.

That's not quite what I remember that story meaning. As I recall, the emperor actually had no clothes, and it took the simplicity/honesty of a child to point that out when the adults were all pretending that he had on a gorgeous new outfit. I thought that point was that people are mostly sheep and will go along with whatever seems to be the prevailing opinion.

217> "The Emperor's New Clothes" (Danish: Kejserens nye Klæder) is a short tale by Hans Christian Andersen about two weavers who promise an Emperor a new suit of clothes invisible to those unfit for their positions or incompetent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes

From the same source:

"An Emperor who cares for nothing but his wardrobe hires two weavers who promise him the finest suit of clothes from a fabric invisible to anyone who is unfit for his position or "just hopelessly stupid". The Emperor cannot see the cloth himself, but pretends that he can for fear of appearing unfit for his position or stupid; his ministers do the same. When the swindlers report that the suit is finished, they dress him in mime and the Emperor then marches in procession before his subjects. A child in the crowd calls out that the Emperor is wearing nothing at all and the cry is taken up by others."

I'd forgotten the "hopelessly stupid" aspect of the tale, but I think I remembered the point of it.

>217 ejj1955:, 219
Sorry I wasn't more clear. The 'stupidity clause' does change the moral of the story.

Feynman also finds himself on a board to choose textbooks for LA area high schools. On the first day of the meetings, he discovers he is the only one who has read all of the books.

Anyway, the point I'm stumbling towards is that to even start being a decent critic, you have to have done the work (read everything) AND have some moral courage.

I recently bought The Republic of Childhood: A Critical Guide to Canadian Children's Literature in English published in 1967 (the touchstone looks like it goes to a sequel) anyway, why isn't this sort of thing published routinely for other sorts of literature?

Could it be the vast majority of what we read, like what we watch, is - despite the redeeming quality we hold up as the reason we choose it as our poison - pure crap?

Who defines crap?

Should we read for our own edification and enjoyment or to improve our image in the eyes of others? Why not rely on you own views rather than the ivory tower occupants who determine what is overrated?

If anything, this group has shown how much disagreement there is about what is a good science fiction novel, just look at the vast range of views about Isaac Asimov.

> 214

"The two statements "Dickens is overrated" and "I don't like Dickens" are equivalent in every possible way"
Well, one has more 'd''s.

No it doesn't

#13 I've been reading a lot of negative comments about Ian M Banks. He's one of my favorites right now. I put him and Alastair Reynolds (and Ken MacLeod perhaps) in the same genre ("ultra SF" perhaps). I'm totally into Brit hard SF right now and can't wait for more...because I've eaten it all. The thing about Banks is sometimes its great and sometimes not so much. His stuff is dense like neutronium and assumes a fair knowledge of the physical sciences.

Now about "over rated" SF: I'd say Ben Bova is overrated.

# 223 Hear! Hear! for Mr.Banks. His Science Fiction is excellent. The Mainstream books do, however, contain a couple of below par volumes.

Ken MacLeod was much more in the political arena. His latest three novels demonstrate his move into near-future science fiction without left/right political comment.

I've only read Alastair Reynolds' "Century Rain", which I enjoyed very much.

Your "ultra SF" description is appealling; I would go along with it as long as you agree each of the three authors each has his own particular style and themes.

Ah well. I can't be bothered really

almost all Heinlein. Some of PK Dick (though when he was "on" ..he was hot.

I find it hard to distangle my dislike for OS Card as a public person and my changing opinions about Ender's Game - which is still a good "recruiting" book for 7-8th graders. Speaker for the Dead is probably the one OSCard book i'll keep.

Lots of Asimov - he just couldn't write fiction.

Anything other than Dune by Herbert.

A lot of Greg Bear gets awfully tedious..but again some very good books too --eg Blood Music

Cory Doctorow - though i liked little brother a lot

RUDY RUCKER

Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle,

Samuel Delaney Babel-17 excepted.

Robert ANTON Wilson (Robert Charles Wilson is often v. good)

Gene Wolfe - i've tried and tried to like books of his..always failed.
Silverberg.

I've enjoyed several of Sherri Tepper's novels, but as a body of work they seem far too highly rated (all these choices are just each person's view here - no point, really, in defending a defamed favorite)

That's enough...i try to concentrate on authors i like, or think i'll like..Best recent SF novel by an author who was new to me was, the windup girl (i'd read several short stories in magazines, but the novel is >> his short stories. Ship Breaker is up for a National Book Award in YA fiction this year (though it's not on the level of the windup girl

Everything I don't like.

I'm gonna get lynched for this but . . .Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.

What a steaming pile of crap.

Get the rope for #228
Gather the mob!
Happy Halloween weekend!

:-)

I kind of agree with you on Snow Crash. Maybe it's because I only read it this year so it feels... well, not so much dated as just not as explosive and innovative as it might have when it first came out. I thought that a lot of the concepts were intriguing and thought-provoking, but the plot fell flat for me.

Snow Crash wasn't so bad. Whenever a story invokes a "cross-platform" device like a virus written in code commandeering a human brain I'm incredulous. Beyond that, I actually enjoyed the story.

Joe Haldeman really let me down with Marsbound and Starbound

I'm with #229: Happy Halloween

Nevermind the plot falling flat, the guy couldn't keep his settings or characters or timeline straight.

I can't get any more specific, as it's been a few years since I threw it across the room in disgust.

Oh, another one, Star Wars. Don't like it AT ALL. Can't see why people like it.

#233 - A lot of that may be the most prolific author of those books: Kevin J Anderson. He puts out so many books a year that his prose is pedantic at best.

There are a lot of subpar Star Wars novels, but I actually like Kevin J. Anderson's Jedi Academy Trilogy. Second only to Timothy Zahn's stuff.

I enjoyed Kevin J. Anderson's The Saga of Seven Suns but didn't read the last 2 books because it began to feel grinding and predictable.

#234 I think you mean pedestrian. And Kevin J Anderson doesn't write, he dictates as he hikes across mountains. Which is why his books are so shit.

>237 iansales:
Hmm, guess that saves me precious time ian ;)

I agree about cross-platform technologies, but have a couple of reservations: first, much technology criticism depends on that plot device (think of the brain-programming in "Dollhouse", for instance), and it can be useful as either an imaginative extrapolation or a metaphor; second, it's not always implausible, even if fictional (I recall one story that had a mad scientist, kept away from technology for the good of society, reproducing genetic engineering pathways in the form of model-train switching layouts, then biding his time . . .). Given the concept of the "universal computer", it's not entirely unbelievable that some forms of platform-switching are possible, even if infecting an alien spaceship with a Mac computer virus, 'a la "Independence Day", is unlikely.

Regarding Snow Crash specifically, the technology he proposes is actually based upon a real (though highly dubious) theory of human neurology. "Neuro-linguistic programming" - a self-help fad from the 70s - posits that language is the "programming code" of the human brain/computer, and therefore that stating certain things to yourself will "program" your mind into accepting and acting on them. The characters in the book are triggered into programmable states by a very powerful code phrase wired into human brains early in the evolutionary history of language; electronic computers can be used to inject more complicated programming by feeding input into the brain/computer through the retina. All this is possible because of the basic evolutionary susceptibility of the brain/computer to neuro-linguistic programming. It's fanciful, but far less divorced from reality than, say, FTL drives on spaceships, which we all accept as a matter of course even though they are not just unlikely but impossible.

About "Nightfall" and other Golden Age short stories: I agree that the story-telling is often blandly descriptive, and the stories are plot-driven to the point of stereotyped and vapid character development. The best authors of that time were often clever plot-wranglers - Asimov, most notably - rather than masters of language, scene, tone, pace, dialogue, or naturalistic psychology.

But I would argue this is both a strength and a weakness. Clearly it's a weakness for all the obvious reasons - many great sci-fi authors, brilliant as they were, simply weren't very good writers. (Recall Sturgeon's Revelation: 90% of science fiction is crud, because "90% of everything is crud". Most people aren't very good writers. Even most published authors aren't very good writers. There's no reason sci-fi authors should be better than average; conceivably, there are good reasons why they are likely to be worse.) On the other hand, it's a strength (or at least an indivisible consequence of one of the great strengths) of science fiction, too. Plot makes science fiction what it is, far more so than characterization, pacing, tone, or elegant use of language; to a first approximation, plot is everything that makes sci-fi what it is.

That's not to say that great characters (and language, and dialogue, and pacing . . .) don't make sci-fi great - they do, as any fan knows. But it's the distinct elements of sci-fi plots that create the genre and allow it to comment on the kinds of things that non-sci-fi literature or movies don't touch on. So a clever idea clearly communicated goes a long way in sci-fi - vastly further than in other good literature. Laying out what that idea is and what it implies provides the stimulation for the mind that is sci-fi's great, and unique, strength; making it palatable as literature is another, separate skill, one that should be greatly honored, but not required.

Asimov gave us a haunting picture of a kind of psychological weakness that overpowers reason and destroys its benefits (one that, perhaps, is becoming more relevant today). We will remember that theme far longer than we will remember the specific words he used to convey it. That's enough to do him honor, even if it could be rightly said that there are other authors who are better word-smiths.

Possibly overrated things I have learnt from this:
Anything you read as a teenager seems to be overrated when you re-read it as an adult.
Authors who flog a series to death then become overrated, (eg Dune, Foundation etc.)
Gaiman and/or Gene Wolfe are either genius or overrated.
It may or may not be a British/American divide.
Some SF does seem to belong to a particular era (and should be read with that in mind.)

It all seems to boil down to:
One persons overrated SF is another persons favourite.

241> One persons overrated SF is another persons favourite.

If a book is over-rated then someone must be rating it highly. So I think this statement is true by definition.

>241 IntangiblesInc: I generally agree, however I did read Brave New World in 7th grade, but you're right about the rest being crap. Maybe overrated SF is SF that is ubiquitous as a SF classic but has not substance (whatever that means)

If you worry about something being overrated, then it seems like you're letting others dictate what you read.
Read what you want and screw what others think.

>244 LamSon:

It's not a matter of letting others dictate what one reads, but quite often one does read things because others rave about them or they are best-sellers or the cover blurbs make the book sound great or they have been deemed classics of the genre . . . all of which are basically just other people's opinions with which you may or may not agree. I think the "overrated" designation is a measure of disappointment. One hopes the book will be as great as advertised, and when we don't find it so, "overrated" is a valid descriptor.

>245 ejj1955:
I agree.
Perhaps dictate was not the correct word to use.

Yeah, what he said - in ktkeith's post #239. I was very young when I read "nightfall" but the level I appreciated the story at, stepping outside my normal mode of thinking and putting myself in an alien's shoes, worked for me. Just learning a bit of science and what the galaxy could look like from a different perspective was neat, at a different level using the whole experience as a metaphor for the effects of change as in culture shock is fine also.

I agree wholeheartedly with this. I read the entire series ( talking about Thomas Covenant here)and it's as close to self-flagellation as I ever want to get. Disagree about Dune but the rest of the series after the second one was un-readable.

#248 I read the entire series ( talking about Thomas Covenant here)and it's as close to self-flagellation as I ever want to get.

We are at one!

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v467/n7319/full/4671146a.html

I liked that, that was possibly the greatest story ever written, but it is somehow familiar...

#250
Thanks for sharing.

#250 That's funny. The fact that Nature used it is just too cool.

And the moral of this tale is.... don't bother submitting to Analog!

Time Enough for Love by Heinlein. Read it years ago, and I remember being so disgusted, I actually got a stomach ache, threw the book across the room.

IMO, Heinlein in general is overrated, and very dated as well.

Based on comments here and reviews in LT, I'd propose that Heinlein's Stranger may in fact be underrated. A lot of that probably has to do with the abominable second edition (i.e. the "original uncut" one) which has been the only one in print for a couple of decades now. The shorter original edition was not bowdlerized, just properly edited, and included good material not in the original AMS. Also, the religious dimensions of the book often seem somewhat lost on people who are not looking for commentary on existing religions, but rather fanciful exotic sf mysticism (like Dune or Star Wars). As far as people being "disgusted" by it goes, there's something to be said for literature that can inspire strong revulsion. I'll admit, I couldn't get 20 pages in to Naked Lunch, and I think what I did read there was an impressive feat of writing that taught me things about myself.

I'll concur with StormRaven in defense and praise of both Dhalgren and the Book of the New Sun, both of which I've been meaning to re-read for years because of their respective awesomenesses.

because of their respective awesomenesses

The truly frustrating thing to me is that the whole overrated/underrated debate brings up the hype issue. How much you've heard something is good/bad can often affect how much you love/hate it. And it's typically opposite. If everyone tells you a book is the best novel every written, I think you're statistically more likely to find it underwhelming. The opposite is also true (though you're probably less likely to try a book everyone says is horrible).

As such, I often try to read as little about a book before starting it, usually only enough to try to avoid the terrible ones (see above point) that I might find a waste of time after finishing. I also try not to put too much stock into even a near-unanimous 5-star rating of a book. I find this principal to be true for movies as well. Not sure about music.

It's annoying that the truth is that not only is our personal evaluation of a work influenced by the time we live in and the works we've read before it, but also by everyone else's opinion about it.

>258 brightcopy: You're right about hype, of course. Although I'm enough of a contrarian to fully avoid some books and movies just because everyone tells me I must read/see them.

In defense of my quoted remark, it was an aside to point out that the books had made a deep impression on me. Since it's been many years since I read either, I don't feel equipped to give them proper reviews right now. But if you look at my actual reviews, you'll see that not only don't I typically dwell on how much I liked or didn't like a book, I don't even use star ratings. (Except on ER books.)

259> I quoted it only because that's the form hype usually takes. People expressing their own opinion. I've seen similar things about BotNS many times. It's building up a certain expectation of it in my mind, and I'm actually getting a little leery of pulling it off the bookshelf and starting it for the first time. Not blaming you or anything; it is what it is.

As such, the concept of "overrated" is probably a good thing. It helps knock our expectations down a few pegs. BotNS has also been called overrated in this thread. Hopefully, that will help keep my expectations in check.

#257 Nope, Stranger in a Strange Land is most certainly overrated - this is what I thought to it. OTOH, both Dhalgren and The Book of the New Sun are excellent - the former more so than the latter, I think.

Dhalgren has been catching my eye for a long time. I'd pick it up...read the jacket...and put it down. So I checked the reviews using the touchstone in #261 and decided I should give it a try. The point I'm trying to make is that since Ian frequently has similar opinions about books I've read, he should be a fairly reliable source of info on books I haven't. There's a shortlist on members I consider to have similar tastes as myself.

There are many highly rated books that I find absolutely unreadable. So I generally ignore ratings unless its a very low rating.

As for Stranger in a Strange Land; I thought it was very good. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was better. Not everything RAH wrote was gold.

It's strange to look at this list, and see so many classic sci-fi novels. I agree that some of them should be on there, and I completely disagree with others. I think the point may be that individual taste has more weight when deciding if a book is truly classic than actual merit.

I was thinking of trying Dhalgren till I dicovered its over 800 pages. Boy would that be a trial!

Some of us here routinely read eight hundred page novels, but I daresay little if any of it is SF.

Fantasy, though . . . has anyone calculated the number of pages in the entire Wheel of Time series? Not that I got past book five . . .

265> Speak for yourself. :D Each of Hamilton's Night's Dawn doorstops topped 1000 pages. Each of the Otherland books fell just short of 800, but the final one made up for it with over 1000. King's Dark Tower series had fattened to 800+ pages per about mid-way through.

Unfortunately, I'd say none of those were justified in their length. I love to sink my teeth into a long novel, but when they start reaching that length I find that the quality per page tends to go down. In just about every art form, what you take out is just as important as what you leave in.

There was a British Sit-Com in the 1960s about two tailors in partnership, one Irish and the other Jewish (Cohen & Kelly). The title of the show relates to brightcopy's comments in #267 about thick books.

"Never mind the quality. Feel the width!"

##265
Yes well some on here have plenty of reading time-I have to squeeze mine in

I actually just read a pretty long SF called Pandora's Star. It broke 1,000. Of course, when I was reading it I didn't bother to find out if it was a one off or a series. Turns out it's part of a series, which is really the only reason he was forgiven for the extremely loose ending.

So yeah.

270> Brevity is not one of Hamilton's strong points. I'm loathe to start another one of his bookshelf-busting series after my experience with the Night's Dawn. I love long books, but only when the length doesn't come by spreading the plot and pacing too thin.

270> Yes. Hamilton writes massive tomes. And once in a while it feels like work. However, I really enjoyed his Commonwealth books (I include the Void Trilogy). Also enjoyed Fallen Dragon, which is not part of this collection. I'd like to see him do more in the Commonwealth universe. Lot's of interesting characters: Troblum, Paula Mayo, Marius, and of course the delightfully wholesome and good natured "The Cat". I'd like to see her character and that of Troblum more fully developed.

To summarize: massive time commitment but good hard SF (sub-genre Ultra SF)

I'll go with a classic for "most overrated" and say Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World"... I liked most of it, but the ending completely ruined the entire novel.

#272 that would be a sub-sub genre. Or maybe an ultra-genre?...;)

I'd go with anything by Bujold. I've read the first two Vorkosigan novels -- Shards of Honor and Barrayar, and they were pretty hacky (and one won a Hugo!). I've dipped into several more but been unable to get more than a few tens of pages in.

My complaints? Improbable societies; unbelieveable relationshsip between Cordelia and whatsisname (Miles' father); hackneyed characters; lack of wit or spark in dialog (in the books generally) and so on and so on.

Perhaps the later books in the series were better?

#274 I've kicking around the designation "ultra SF" for a while to included hard SF with characters that are heavily augmented or wet-wired like the Ultras in Alastair Reynolds (Revelation Space etc.).

Ultra SF: The Culture universe of Iain M Banks, The Commonwealth universe of Peter F Hamilton, The Chasm City universe of Alastair Reynolds, and a few others.

#275 Yeah. The Vorkosigan books are light fare. I like them but I wouldn't call them great SF

272: I thought Marius was a vampire . . . .

273: Brave New World is really just 1984-lite. My perception anyway. (EDIT: I meant Animal Farm, not Brave New World. Please disregard).

272: Relax son, it was a joke ;)

Is it just me or does this entire thread seem like a waste of bandwidth? Everyone doesn't like something - that's just human nature. If you don't like something someone else (or a lot of someone elses) does, it automatically makes it overrated according to this thread. The thread certainly doesn't merit all the posts - I wish there was an "ignore" function.

I wish there was an "ignore" function.

There is. It's the little "X" at the top of the thread or next to the thread title in which ever talk page you're on. It will permanently place that particular thread right at the bottom of the list for you so you don't get to see new posts.

#277: Not vampire but is a "Higher" which kinda rhymes I know, but one is a vampire and the other is a heavily augmented human tha's in tight with the senate, blah, blah, blah. Neither would make for a very good dinner guest.

and all pigs are equal...but some are more equal than others

I'll have to say Battlefield Earth is quite overrated. It's nowhere near as good as the attention it's received.

Actually, my reaction to 'Battlefield Earth' was that wasn't as bad as had been suggested.

Someone told me that it was so bad, it was good, whereas I found it merely bad.

The only reason Battlefield Earth did not disappear into the obscurity which it truly deserves is that members of Elron's cult were told they had to buy copies, and that made it seem much more popular than it really was.

Battlefield Earth is on my "readings in bad fiction" list. I'll get to it one of these days, and probably end up writing a scathing review.

> 283

Not to mention members being told they had to make a feature film out of it.

#282
Robert, that is a resounding recommendation!

Well, I'll speak up for it. I think it's a nice piece of work. I sure enjoyed it much better than I did the first chapter of Perdido Street Station.

283> I remember at the time it came out a Fan reported over hearing someone in a bookshop saying "Now we have bought it do we have to read it?"

Rumour has it they were told to buy several copies each, and still Bridge Publications had warehouses full of unsold copies.

I read Battlefield Earth when I was in high school, and actually kind of liked it at the time. Sooo, I decided to tackle LRon's next installment, the Mission Earth "dekology".

BIG mistake.

10 books in the series, and I may have read 2-1/2. That's saying a lot for someone who usually soldiers on to the bitter end when reading a book or series.

I own all the books in the "dekology", One of these days when I am feeling sufficiently masochistic I'll read it and take out my annoyance in a series of ripping reviews.

>289 iansales: The rumor that I heard was that members were buying multiple copies, giving them back to the publisher and the publisher was shipping them back to stores to be sold again, sometimes with the tags still on them from the first time around.

#291 I knew someone who read all ten of them. He comes off the drugs in a couple of years...

#292 So it was popular. It must be good then :-)

293> Only if you count a single person buying 800 copies of a book the same as you count 800 people each buying one copy.

When I read it and liked it, I had no preconceptions of its goodness/badness or of LRH being a wacky old charlatan. Perhaps this helped a bit.

The first part of Battle Field Earth the book wasn't that bad . . . the second part was just baaaaaaad.

I'm so ashamed. I had the misfortune of seeing the movie in a theater. Only afterward did I notice the movie poster and who wrote the story. I was victimized! Aliens that looked like members of the band KISS without the face paint. Who is responsible and why are they not being beaten with a rancid mackerel?

296: Well, Travolta's obsession with Scientology probably killed his son, so I'd say that he's being punished quite a bit.

#297, THAT really was a stupid comment!
And I suspect you are NOT a stupid man.

The movie was so bad that I eventually succumbed and had to to watch it just to see how bad.

298> I wonder if you actually know that StormRaven isn't making this up out of thin air.

298: Travolta's son had a seizure disorder and may have had undiagnosed autism. One of the tenets of Scientology is that medication for these sorts of conditions is not necessary and they should be treated solely with auditing to remove "body thetans" and vitamins. So Travolta and his equally Scientology-loving wife Kelly Preston appparently didn't give medication to him, and he had a seizure and died. So saying Scientology killed his son seems pretty accurate.

301> Actually, in court under oath, Travolta finally said for the first time that he did have autism.

#293 I read all ten as each one of them came out in the 1980s. I remember most of the plot line - easy enough to do as it was so simple. What was most interesting was the way LRon would stretch out story in each book. I remember one interlude where one of the characters was flying to another city and his flyer broke down, stranding him in a valley. He spent the time shooting songbirds and 100 pages later was rescued. All LRon had did was generate 100 pages of prose that had nothing to do with advancing the plot line or providing a indepth look at a character. Once I finished the series, I stopped reading LRon.

#302 Wasn't it the last thing he wrote before he died? In fact, IIRC, his son sued the publishers and claimed he'd died before writing it so they were falsely selling it under his name. He lost the case, although if the prose had been used in evidence I'm sure the judge would have realised the author must have been dead...

#304 Correct. Several of the series were published after he died in Jan 1986. I hadn't read much of his works before this series (Battlefield Earth and maybe a couple of others) and didn't feel a need to go back and read anything I had missed.

#284 - Do yourself a favor and read Fear instead. It is awful, but it will give you a taste of how terrible a writer LRon was without having to slog through however many hundred pages Battlefield Earth is (which is the only way reading Fear is doing yourself a favor).

I never got all the hype about The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Yes it is funny and Douglas Adams was a great guy, but the book just meandered on and on. I understand that the lack of a central plot was due to the book's origin, so I blame the fans. And who didn't know ahead of time that a movie adaptation was bound to be a disaster?

#305 THGTTG started life as a radio play, and that is where its popularity started.

305> This just goes to show how it's different strokes for different folks. I quite liked both Fear and HHGttG.

Fahrenheit 451 is certainly one of the most overrated sf novels of all time. Bradbury is esteemed by sf readers to an unjustifiable degree, and this book has an undeservedly good reputation even in the mainstream. It is ridiculously didactic, it has cut-out character portrayals, and its message is diluted by stuffy conservatism with a sprinkle of misogyny.

>308 bkhl: It's been a long time since I read that book, but it was published in the early 1950s, so the conservatism and misogyny might just be owing to that.

Sorry. It's not that The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy isn't worthwhile. I just don't think it's good enough to justify its popularity. And I understand about the radio script origins and all. That doesn't change the fact that it isn't so good as a book (or series of them. I've only read the first).

I did like Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, so I do like Douglas Adams. DGHDA had the humor of THHGttG, but with a plot.

Fear now... no. Just no. It's put me off of ever reading anything else LRon has written (well, that and the whole 'crazy' atmosphere surrounding his legacy).

Oh, and lest I be accused of not understanding the psychological Rube Goldberg machinery underpinning Fear (I like Neil Gaiman, I swear!), I wrote a review to justify my one star rating.

The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy was probably an excellent radio play. As a book, it never struck me as very good. Some amusing jokes; an engaging pair of heroes. But the series goes downhill fast. I've never understood why it's remained as popular as it is. It has a fanbase that's as obsessive as Star Trek's.

#308 Agreed - Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is vastly over-rated. Truffaut's film adaptation, however, is excellent.

I first became acquainted with Hitchhiker's Guide through the radio. It was an okay radio show, I thought. It's most annoying feature were the names. It was okay. I saw the movie some years later, some years ago, and didn't think much of it. It was okay for the young whippersnappers in the house, but that's because they lacked experience. I've never read the book(s).

I thought the BBC (or British, anyway) miniseries was better than the movie and possibly better than the books, perhaps owing to the pitch-perfect tones of the narrator. I can remember the voice-over better even than the actors, and the miniseries better than the books, too.

#313 The TV series was my first exposure to the show, and it is definitely better than the recent movie.

I think the HHGttG is as popular as it is because humorous science fiction is relatively rare. When your competition is stuff like Asimov's awful pun-driven stories or Niven and Gerrold's The Flying Sorcerers, anything half-way decent is going to look really good.

314> I watched some of the TV series. Couldn't really get very much farther than when they hitch a ride on the vogon spaceship. If that show had been my first exposure to HHGttG, I would never have read the books. I would likely have avoided being in the same room with them.

The TV series of HHGttG used many of the same actors as the radio series. Sadly, the effects were typical BBC for the period (cheap). I know that effects do not a brilliant sf tv show make, but seriously! Having designed a marvellously lugubrious Marvin, for instance, they couldn't figure out how to make him limp, which the radio sound effect certainly described. (Mind you, the Book itself was excellent. Even if the BBC cheated and drew all the 'computer' graphics.)

The sad thing about Douglas Adams is that he wasn't really a writer; some of the prose in the novelisations is definitely clunky.

317> some of the prose in the novelisations is definitely clunky

Yes, they is. ;)

The funny thing is that there are many great writers who weren't really writers in that sense.

I'm considering therapy, Thresher. Well, at least my younger self is. I haven't read Bradbury in a long time, but books like Dandelion Wine and The Martian Chronicles really grabbed me.

My son is a big Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fan, having read all the books (me, too). When we rented the BBC DVD, we both found it remarkably horrible. The movie, it is true, was worse. Is it unfilmable?

Why Hitchhikers Guide was popular with the general population will probably never be known, just as with every other book that becomes a mass audience hit. There were two reasons why I, as a science fiction fan of long-standing, liked both the radio series and the books. First, there were the occasional interesting humorous twists on science fictional ideas. One of my favorites is the pre-cognitive elevators. Second, there were the occasional twists of phrasing, such as "It hung in the air exactly the way a brick doesn't." Stuff like that either resonates with you or falls flat. For me, they worked. And while there's been a fair deal of humorous SF before (Padgett anyone?), none of it was like what Adams did.

Hitchhiker's Guide worked for me as a teenager, but a lot of books that did that fall flat with me now. I liked the absurdism elevated to cosmic scale.

I agree. I think part of it is that HHGttG isn't quite as funny to me in a post-HHGttG world. Oh, I still get a chuckle from some of it, but not like the fits of giggles I got the first go-around about 15-20 years ago.

On the other hand, I recently re-read the first Dirk Gently book and got quite a lot out of it. It wasn't nearly as over-the-top as HHGttG, and I think that held up better.

I suppose Rachel Bloom needs therapy? I don't think so.

(Link NSFW)

I must admit I've never understood all the adulation Bradbury receives. I find his books boring, and Fahrenheit 451 didn't impress me at all. And, being British, I've never bothered booking a session with a therapist in the hope of an explanation...

I kind of agree with one of the very first posters: Banks has a very compelling idea in The Culture but after just a few tomes it's all about one essential joke - science, rationalism and action trump philosophy, religion and reflection; he's playing to the gallery of spotty secularists whose sole function in life is to consider hedonism and mutability to be the height of individuation.

Peter F. Hamilton after the Greg Mandel and Night's Dawn work (although he did come close to redeeming himself again somewhat with Pandora's Star/Judas Unchained). The Void stuff is world-building at its turgid worst, and its self-aware smugness at the possibility of being epic in nature brings me to tears. Hamilton should have just left it at the name-dropping of Tolkien in his earlier fiction instead of trying to be a contender for that throne.

>324 StormRaven:. She definitely needs therapy.

I won't say these are overrated but I do agree with others in that why they are popular is a complete mystery to me.

Hyperion - Couldn't care enough about any character to get past the first book or even make real sense of it, never mind the remaining 3 books.
Ender's Game - Seemed like something that would appeal to 7th grade boys maybe?
Neverwhere - I...uhhh... just wasn't impressed, I was... I think the word I'm looking for is bored.

My tastes run more towards:
Stephen Baxter, Moonseed was a particular favorite
China Mielville, I've only read Unlondon and Perdido Street Station but I adore his prose.
Robert Charles Wilson, I feel like the only person that enjoyed Julian Comstock.

I read Enders Game in 10th grade and I still like it. Not to say your opinion isn't valid, though. I don't mind liking an overrated book. :)
My view on it is that it has the ability appeal to younger crowds as well as adult, without infantilizing adults and without making the children randomly mature for their age - there's actually a reason for it.

Oh, I don't know if it's overrated as I said, just that I don't understand the appeal. But I can totally respect still loving a book years later. I am not ashamed to admit (well maybe a little) that I read Flowers In The Attic... a truly egregious gothic something-or-other when I was about 12 and was absolutely enamored with it. I haven't reread it since for fear that I will destroy my fond memories of sitting on top of the playground slide at dusk in the winter, the book clutched in my hand, barely able to wait to turn the next page.

Ahh.... youth.

I read that one too, at around the same age. Can't believe my parents let me read it! They probably didn't know what was in it!

There's a dormant thread around here somewhere on things our parents wouldn't have let us read if they had known. I'm pretty sure my mother was unaware of my eight-year-old self wondering why James Bond was kicking his swim trucks off and carrying some girl into the cabana . . . though she did take both Rosemary's Baby and Valley of the Dolls from me (I got them back, though).

Oh, I KNOW my mother didn't know what was in it, but even so I doubt she would have stopped me reading it. She often disapproved of my reading and movie choices, her tastes ran more towards the Laura Ingalls Wilder books and Anne of Green Gables, but she never forbid me to read anything that I recall. Still, child abuse, murder, incest.... yikes!

My dad's kinda odd that way. His philosophy was, "Do you know what's going on? Do you know why it's happening?" If I answered yes to both, have at. I only read what was on his book shelves (at one point we had four 6ft by 3ft shelves, double stacked, but had to downsize as we moved) so he always knew what I was up to. If he thought there was something else I'd like better, or that I should read before reading the book I had, he'd point me to another. He could very well have not wanted me to read a couple of the books, but I highly doubt it. And my mom gave me Clan of the Cavebear when I was 13. It's one of her favorite series, but I only really care for that first book.

I spent a couple weeks out of one summer organizing those bookshelves. Alphabetically and by series. I also wanted to organize by genre, but I'd already found a couple books that I wanted to read, so I became more intent on finishing the initial project.