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

[michael j. walsh (from livejournal.com)]

Then again, maybe not:

"In an interview with Theis on 8 March 1984 on Hour 25, a talk show on KPFK, the presenters of which would periodically stage a reading of The Eye of Argon, Theis stated that he was hurt that his story was being mocked ..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eye_of_Argon#The_author

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

I never thought it could have been written with a straight face; it's hard enough getting through reading a page of it without laughing. The man who wrote of "a many-fauceted scarlet emerauld" was serious about it? Oh, my...

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

He was a kid when he wrote it.