On a related note

[james_davis_nicoll]

What should go on a Top Ten "In retrospect, what the hell were we thinking" list of once-popular SF?

Comments

[avram]

Hey, here's a convenient list of Hugo-winning novels! Let's see, which ones do I look back at and wince...?

• 1959: A Case of Conscience, Blish
• 1965: The Wanderer, Leiber (I should probably re-read this one)
• 1973: The Gods Themselves, Asimov
• 1974: Rendezvous with Rama, Clarke
• 1988: The Uplift War, Brin
• 2003: Hominids, Sawyer (Haven't actually read this, but I did read Sawyer's Calculating God, which I hated so much that I'm assuming that everything he writes just sucks)

...plus probably a few others I haven't read.

[eagle]

The Wanderer, Leiber (I should probably re-read this one)

I wouldn't bother. Just insert your giant multi-viewpoint disaster novel here, and then add catgirls.

I'm also in the camp of being mystified why people keep giving Sawyer awards, and I have read Hominids. I don't recommend the experience. He's 0.5 for 3 with me (Rollback was kind of a meh but failed to completely suck). The Terminal Experiment was even worse than Hominids, particularly with the incredibly cringe-worthy relationship bits. To paraphrase David R. Henry, you know your novel is in trouble when your characters start complaining about how bad their dialogue is.

[(Anonymous)]

Rendevous with Rama? Sure you aren't being influenced by the godawful sequels? I still find it a pretty good Humans Encounter Big Uninformative Alien Object story.

Bruce

[(Anonymous)]

[i]Rendezvous with Rama[/i] remains a good and interesting novel.

There were no sequels.


Tony Zbaraschuk

[rpresser.livejournal.com]

IF YOU DON'T SEE THE FNORD IT CAN'T EAT YOU

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I never read A Case of Conscience, but I've read lots of Blish and found most of it quite good, but there are admittedly definite exceptions. I think Rendezvous with Rama was good for what it was, but it would have been a better fit 15 years before, and I'm also not certain what you are objecting to in The Uplift War, like most of Brin's work, I didn't think it was in any way great, but it seemed fun and moderately good. OTOH, I'm with you on the others - I was 3 through most of 1965, so I can't say what the state of SF fandom was like then, but I'm betting The Wanderer got a Hugo for the catgirl sex, I definitely found it pretty darn cool when I read that novel at age 14, but I've never had any desire to read it again.

[skington.livejournal.com]

Sawyer's Neanderthal trilogy starts with "an accident happens when a quantum computer is pushed too hard and opens up a rift between our world and a world where the Neanderthals survived and Homo Sapiens didn't" and then degenerates rapidly into "Neanderthals are much better than us in every way, except that they didn't think to go into space". It's OK in the first novel, but by the third it gets really annoying.