A game everyone can play!

[james_davis_nicoll]

When Paul Cook says

I’ll go ahead and say it: this is as close to an unpublishable novel as I’ve ever seen that’s actually achieved print.

he is talking about Niven and Benford's Bowl of Heaven. I deduce from this that he has never read the Tor edition of Norman Spinrad's He Walked Among Us or (oddly, also Tor) Ken Shufeldt's Genesis, which attracted reviews like

You want an example of how NOT to write a book? This is it. And every author who sold his soul to include a quote on the cover should be ashamed.

and

Quite possibly the worst book ever published. A couple of hours of my life that I'll never get back. Amazon, is there a reason I am forced to give it one star? It presumes that this book has some redeeming qualities.

What would be your candidate for the novel that is as close to an unpublishable novel as you've ever seen that actually achieved print?

Comments

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Memory says they weren't just conventionally terraforming, they were pretty much building the moon from near scratch, but it's been a while.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

True, but I still have it stuck in a different drawer than BDO.

I think part of it is I expect BDOs to have been built by someone other than the protagonists' people.