Question

[james_davis_nicoll]

Noticed because this mentions me and the review I am going to link to in the next sentence.

This raises an interesting question: what is the worst Nebula-winning novel that you've read?

A list of winners and nominees.

I wonder if we could get Jo Walton to do for the Nebulas what she did for the Hugos?

Comments

[eagle]

My list says The Terminal Experiment was the worst Nebula winner I've read, with Rendezvous with Rama a close second.

[wild_irises]

I haven't read The Terminal Experiment, and I don't hate Rendezvous with Rama; I just thought it was boring.

My two "worsts" would be Ender's Game, which I never liked, and Camouflage, which I only read because it also won a Tiptree Award. (I haven't read Forever Peace either.)

[mishalak]

I am going to agree with you on the subject of Ender's Game in that it is the worst I have read all the way through. I tried to read Neuromancer and could not get more than a little way in so if it continues in the same vein as the first chapter I would call that the worst.

[eagle]

It gets better. Not sufficiently so that I would recommend that you read it, but it turns into a relatively decent technological thriller and becomes somewhat less in love with its atmosphere.

[mishalak]

I suppose that is good to know, though I will keep on disliking it for inspiring movies like Hackers. I recognize that this is unfair of me and I am going to do it anyway. Someone has to pay for it and it might as well be Neuromancer.

[eagle]

Yeah, I know what you mean. Although after re-reading it, I was surprised that there was a lot less of that than I had expected. The computers are a bit hand-wavy, but most of the handwaving is actually in other places, and apart from some stupidity around not having decent feedback controls on the neural interfaces, many of the abuses of cyberpunk aren't actually in Neuromancer. For example, programs don't randomly wander around the net as if they were bears in a forest, a pet peeve of mine.

[seawasp]

First link says "Page was not found."

[joenotcharles.livejournal.com]

The first link is broken.

I should probably say Red Mars, which is the only book on that list I started but didn't finish. But I just remember it being really dull, not actually bad, so I'm going to say Ringworld instead.

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

Of the winners that I've read, the worst was, I think, Ender's Game.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Link should be fixed now. Could not see the problem so I just redid it from scratch.

[(Anonymous)]

The Quantum Rose, by Asaro.

I've read at least 68 of those books....wow....


--Awesome Aud

[jamoche]

Tehanu. My copy had an extra dozen or so pages of advertising, of which I was unaware. I remember thinking "if it ends in the next page it really will be as bad as everyone says, but there are at least a dozen pages to go, so... oh. That's the end. Well, that sucks."

[nelc.livejournal.com]

I never finished Rite of Passage, though I wouldn't say it was a bad book. I think the trouble was that I tried to read it a dozen years or so after publication, and it had already influenced a generation of writers. I haven't finished The Wind-Up Girl either, though it's still on my iPad. Maybe one day. I didn't enjoy Timescape much, though I did finish it. Blackout/All Clear is one I never want to read, thanks to the bad press it got.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I think that I read The Terminal Experiment in its Serialized By Analog format. If I'm right, it has a part where a guy's mind is uploaded to a vacuum cleaner (well, a robot vacuum cleaner). At least that's my snarky recollection of the scene, anyway.

I had generically good memories of Man Plus although coming across a review in the past couple weeks pointed out enough ways the plot doesn't make sense that I'm not sure I want to re-read it.

Also, what the heck happened in 1975 that they decided every book ever made by anybody in any language, ever, deserved a Nebula nomination?

[davidgoldfarb.livejournal.com]

I think my vote would go to Forever Peace.

[nelc.livejournal.com]

I can see that this may be one of those posts where everybody stares at everybody else in confusion over how they could dislike X or like Y.

[jamesenge.livejournal.com]

I like lots of Delany's work, but I didn't think much of The Einstein Intersection. I can't claim to have read all the winners though. Wasn't crazy about Moving Mars, either, though I forget now why I disliked it.

I'd be more interested in people's notions of what was the best novel nominated that didn't win. I have two candidates from the annus horribilis of 1975 when, if Mr. Wikipedia isn't lying, there were eighteen novels nominated: Calvino's Invisible Cities and Russ' The Female Man.

[gareth-wilson.livejournal.com]

That's The Modular Man by Roger McBride Allen.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

Dune.

It has the plot of a short story.

In 800 pages.

[mondyboy.livejournal.com]

Why so many novels in 1975?

[thebluerose.livejournal.com]

Amazed to find I have read (or started reading) 66 books on that list!

Towing Jehovah would be a contender but the Connie Willis Blackout books were just dire.

[wakboth.livejournal.com]

I'm waffling between this and "Ender's Game".

Ender is obviously massively more problematic, but Tehanu has to struggle with comparisons to the first three Earthsea books that are just plain better in every way.

[wakboth.livejournal.com]

Those are good choices, yeah. Also "Lord of Light" and "Stand on Zanzibar".

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

The Eskimo Invasion - never realised it had won any awards, it's dreadful.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

I have finished Rite Of Passage and I think it was a pretty good claim to being the worst Nebula winner. Nothing surpasses Blackout/All Clear though.