Books with Great Premises that failed utterly to carry them out

Petike

Petike

Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut. :( Good grief on a stick !!! :mad: Good premise, but incredibly ruined by the pretentious* and repetitive writing and rampant ridiculously idiotic plots/characters.

* by "pretentious" I mean : When Kurt Vonnegut decided he'll start acting and writing like Kurt Vonnegut.

Also, the Neanderthal Parallax trilogy by Robert J. Sawyer. No, scratch that. Pretty much anything by Robert J. Sawyer...
 

Finn

B_Munro said:
PS-any overlap between those who die in hugest numbers and people I don't like or am uninterested in, is of course PURE COINCIDENCE
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...said SM Stirling, writing the crucial chainmail-wearing lipstick-lesbian death scenes and wondering how he can add some veiled reference to how much he thinks Muslims are just terrible.

Also cannibalism.
 

Clibanarius

Banned
Finn said:
...said SM Stirling, writing the crucial chainmail-wearing lipstick-lesbian death scenes and wondering how he can add some veiled reference to how much he thinks Muslims are just terrible.

Also cannibalism.
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This.

Yeah, Dies the Fire was readable in spite of its (many and hideous) flaws but then it just descended into a "MWA-HA-HA-HA! I have LESBIANS! Look how enlightened I am! Oh and I have my little Wiccan Empire thingy." fest.

Oh and Dark Tower, the ending made me want to throw Grenades at baby Squirrels.
 

Finn

I guess I'm actually alone in the fact that I didn't mind the Wicca (or the lesbians, despite my jokes) at all in that book, I was just annoyed at the unrealistic aspects of the plot. I mean, insta-feudalism? Really?
 

Clibanarius

Banned
Finn said:
I guess I'm actually alone in the fact that I didn't mind the Wicca (or the lesbians, despite my jokes) at all in that book, I was just annoyed at the unrealistic aspects of the plot. I mean, insta-feudalism? Really?
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Oh yeah, the Insta-Feudalism.

Just SCA nerds and stir!
 

Super Parker Brothers

Banned
Part of the Wicca issue is how so many people grasp at it and the snobbish way that they said that while they could do magic they chose not to. As well as how there isn't even some Pony Express for communicating between the various state remnants. The thing that I liked the least was Mr. Mackenzie and how he get sighing to himself unconvinvedly about how being the leader of three states (apparently due to half a dozen companions of his). Him going on repeatedly about it being his cross to bear and how he seems to not recognize how he is being shoehorned into the role of the Messiah, minus actual suffering or moral consistency on his own part, makes me wish that they would follow the parrallel closer and then stop after the end of Good Friday. Him ruling over lands which he will almost certainly be considered diety of is pointedly ridiculous considering how most of the Northwest believe that people of that sort to be California's problem with themselves being made up of agnostics, athiests, and Christians. Or so I've heard. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Anyways, if S&M Stirling is going to go prancing about homosexuality and his enlightenment then he may wish to consider more than lesbians from grade school growing up with one dieing during kidnapping/attempted murder with the other rather quickly finding some servant and abusing her position. Only twice in the series do I recall male homosexuality mentioned.
 

Uriel

Super Parker Brothers said:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Anyways, if S&M Stirling is going to go prancing about homosexuality and his enlightenment then he may wish to consider more than lesbians from grade school growing up with one dieing during kidnapping/attempted murder with the other rather quickly finding some servant and abusing her position. Only twice in the series do I recall male homosexuality mentioned.
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You learned how to use pharagraphs. Keep it up! ;)

This is probably because of the standard male reactions to descriptions of homosexuality ...

male h: slight uncomfortability to disgust
female h: hmmm sexy, give me more details

Don't know how women look at it, but I doubt these books have many female readers anyway.
 

Tocomocho

Robert Harris' Pompeii - Yep, Mr. Harris, I saw Titanic as well. And it was written better than your book.

All of the Earth's Children books save the first one.

The war that came early
 

Polish Eagle

ChucK Y said:
Turtledove's Atlantis series. Instead of a real alternate history, a slightly disguised rehash of OTL American history.
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Even the first book of that series wasn't too bad. You had Basque colonies, Englishmen, piracy, giant eagles, all in the late 15th century. There was a lot of room to worldbuild and come up with a full world (giving the civilizations of Mesoamerica a few extra decades as a result of Atlantis existing is an example of big changes!). Then he ruined it with a thinly-disguised French and Indian War. :( And then with a "Who gives a shit I'm just gonna make it obvious" American Revolution. :mad:
 

B_Munro

Polish Eagle said:
Even the first book of that series wasn't too bad. You had Basque colonies, Englishmen, piracy, giant eagles, all in the late 15th century. There was a lot of room to worldbuild and come up with a full world (giving the civilizations of Mesoamerica a few extra decades as a result of Atlantis existing is an example of big changes!). Then he ruined it with a thinly-disguised French and Indian War.
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And WTF happened to the rest of North America, anyhoo?

Bruce
 

Polish Eagle

B_Munro said:
And WTF happened to the rest of North America, anyhoo?

Bruce
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Something about Spaniards in Mexico (as IOTL...) and British colonies roughly matching the area of the IOTL 13 Colonies. After the Atlanteans export Tom Paine to North America, that region rises up in rebellion as well.
 

Polish Eagle

Petike said:
Anything by Kurt Vonnegut. :( Good grief on a stick !!! :mad: Good premise, but incredibly ruined by the pretentious* and repetitive writing and rampant ridiculously idiotic plots/characters.

* by "pretentious" I mean : When Kurt Vonnegut decided he'll start acting and writing like Kurt Vonnegut.
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Fixed it for you. I still can't believe that he's what my English professors think of as "good" "science fiction." :mad:
 

Polish Eagle

Petike said:
:D

Well, you have to cut him some slack : He does hate being labelled a sci-fi writer. ;) :rolleyes:
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And I hate him soiling the good name of science fiction! :mad: Goddammit, the day Cat's Cradle was published is the day that it became possible to power all of Europe by hooking an electrical generator to Jules Verne's grave!
 

B_Munro

Polish Eagle said:
Something about Spaniards in Mexico (as IOTL...) and British colonies roughly matching the area of the IOTL 13 Colonies. After the Atlanteans export Tom Paine to North America, that region rises up in rebellion as well.
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Huh? The area of the IOTL 13 colonies is in Atlantis...do you mean there are British colonies along the east coast of *Louisiana?

Bruce
 

Polish Eagle

B_Munro said:
Huh? The area of the IOTL 13 colonies is in Atlantis...do you mean there are British colonies along the east coast of *Louisiana?

Bruce
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Actually, the geography isn't quite splitting the eastern US off. It's actually a bloated version of the Azores Islands, I think. At the very least, the general geography of the US, even east of the Mississippi, still holds. They reference a "Great River" to the west in Terranova at some point, which I took to mean the Mississippi. This implied to me that the OTL eastern US is roughly the same shape as it was IOTL, though perhaps lacking Florida and maybe a bit narrower. Either way, the British colonies in Terranova were east of the Great River and in North America.
 

B_Munro

Polish Eagle said:
Actually, the geography isn't quite splitting the eastern US off. It's actually a bloated version of the Azores Islands, I think. At the very least, the general geography of the US, even east of the Mississippi, still holds. They reference a "Great River" to the west in Terranova at some point, which I took to mean the Mississippi. This implied to me that the OTL eastern US is roughly the same shape as it was IOTL, though perhaps lacking Florida and maybe a bit narrower. Either way, the British colonies in Terranova were east of the Great River and in North America.
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So all the maps we see on the covers are crap?

Bruce
 
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