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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?

Crossposts: http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/4276302.html

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From: (Anonymous)

Yes.

Damned if I can remember anything about it, though.

But then I liked our reviewer's "Tintagel" read more recently by a few years, and remember nothing of that. (Do I dare read both again?)

Except that the latter book inspired me to get a copy of the tone poem by Bax called "Tintagel", and his fourth symphony, and ... so that Bax, formerly known to me only as an author of a few short piano pieces, became a favourite composer. Thank you, Mr Cook.

Cook's other recommendation, by Shostakovitch, I already had, but it gave credibility to the Tintagel blurb.

Did you ever do "The novels of Paul Cook" on usnet?

Oh yes, the topic:

"2150" by Thea Alexander - I actually saw a used copy of this for sale in Durham. I now understand that I am an evil person, for I didn't buy it and burn it. Someone else suffered.

"The sea is boiling hot". The amazon reviews make me wonder if I have been overly harsh but my recollection is of an appalling mash.

And of course:

"The Terror from Planet Ionius", which also goes by some other name according to the late Gharlane. Oscillating electric fields make ships faster than aircraft!

William Hyde

From:

mmcirvin.livejournal.com

"2150" by Thea Alexander

I've seen that one in the wild. Looked amazingly bad.

From: (Anonymous)

As I recall it was an excuse for some kind of pop-psychology/self help. There are, you see, no "failures", only "failure-successes", a long string of which can lead (or is that "will lead"?) to an actual success. I'm unclear on whether they called that a "success success".

All of which is bad enough, but the rest of the book stank too. Hard to understand how it got published.

There was actually a time when there could be only one book on the SF rack that I had not read. And I would inevitably buy it. This was one of those times, a lesson learned (Who's this Hardy guy, anyway?).

William Hyde

From:

florbigoo.livejournal.com

Hardy - that would be the Master of Five Magics guy? (actually, it was the second SF novel I ever read, at age eight, a gift from my babysitter)

From: (Anonymous)

I'd forgotten about that Hardy, whose work I rather liked.

One of the bookstores I used to frequent had, for some reason, Thomas Hardy right beside the SF racks, and this was at the time of a massive reissue of Hardy's books. I wound up buying (and reading) a lot of Hardy, which naturally led to reading others in the same category. I can't swear that "2150" alone drove me to the classics racks - I'd already started obsessing on Dostoyevsky (I got better)- but I think it helped.

William Hyde