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I would argue that the worst English language novelist, among those of reasonable renown, was Anthony Trollope (but this kind of statement is fraught with issue
by frostburg 6y ago
I would argue that the worst English language novelist, among those of reasonable renown, was Anthony Trollope (but this kind of statement is fraught with issues, due to inclusion criteria - I'm not counting people that write for, say, Castalia House - and inherent subjectivity).
- lordgrenville 6y agoCare to expand on this? Never heard this opinion before, and I quite liked the one novel of his I've read (The Warden).
- frostburg 6y agoI find that his alleged realism is mostly a fixation with the trivial (there are exceptions, but they tend to be drowned out). Besides often reading like the compiled research material of someone doing research on historical inflation rates, the structure of his works suffered from his large output.
- sbierwagen 6y agoI'd nominate Hugo award winning author Liu Cixin.
- JohnStrangeII 6y agoI've got to agree, The Three Body Problem was the second worst science fiction novel I've ever read - to be honest, I only read 3/4 of it. But he's not an English author so he doesn't count.
- yeellow 6y agoWhich was the worst? I am not a great fan of this trilogy but I've read many worse scifi books, including some considered classic.
- JohnStrangeII 6y agoI found it almost unreadable, and I can tolerate a lot. Maybe something gets lost with the translation. As for the worst, I forgot the author's name. It was a military sci fi novel with an alien invasion theme, so you'd expect it to be bad. However, I love the topic and was willing to tolerate the focus on right wing US prepping. I'm fine with all of that, but, SPOILER AHEAD: The problem of the novel was that the fight was pretty much unwinnable, so in the end the author simply just introduced vampires who allied with the paramilitary preppers and swiftly eliminated all aliens in the last chapter. That was by far the worst plot I've ever seen.
- a_bonobo 6y agoSounds like David Weber's Out Of The Dark
- ralfd 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_the_Dark_(Weber_novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_the_Dark_(Weber_novel) > With nearly every Shongairi base on Earth destroyed, Thikair orders his remaining forces off the planet, while planning to outright destroy Earth from orbit. However, as the last fleeing units reach their ships, the Shongairi dreadnoughts suddenly destroy the rest of the warships, all but one. Thikair is confronted on his own ship by same enemy that had destroyed the bases and smashed his fleet: vampires, who need no air to breathe, and can travel as mist. > Their leader, Mircea Basarab, is actually the immortal Vlad the Impaler, whom humans remember as Dracula. He and his kind have been hibernating, and kept hidden before the Shongairi's arrival forced them to "protect" the people of Earth by creating more vampires and build an army to eliminate the Shongairi. Thikair is told that the hijacked dreadnoughts are being sent to each of the Shongairi worlds to destroy their Empire. Thikair is slain by one of the vampires, Stephen Buchevsky, whose human family was killed by the initial bombardment. Humanity now possesses Shongairi and Hegemony technology from the Shongairi industrial ships, and is fully united under the newly established Terran Empire, becoming a mighty adversary to the Hegemony which had so casually sent the invaders against and innocent and unsuspecting world. Haha!
- frostburg 6y agoWho doesn't write in English, however.
- Panoramix 6y agoThat's just ridiculous. His trilogy is good, in the vein of Asimov. It's riddled with issues, yes - such as poor characters, unbelievable human behavior, etc. But the big ideas (which is what a lot of the people reading science fiction are after) are very cool and fairly novel. Come to think of it a lot of this could be said about Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke. Their characters sucked too, yet their books are classics. You know, Cixin won the Hugo award? This fact alone should tell you that he cannot be the worst, not even close. A lot of people enjoyed his novels. You could argue that he's over rated and that's about that.
- frostburg 6y agoIt must be said that he won his Hugo in part due to the consequences of a openly hostile voting campaign for the nominations organized by people who did, in fact, write for Castalia House.
- psychometry 6y agoMost sci-fi is terrible, so it's not surprising that a terrible novel could win a sci-fi award. TBP is the worst novel I've ever read. Even his big ideas are terrible and absurd.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoTrollope's The Way We Live Now is a classic, and still very relevant today. I doubt there's a single unique absolute worst novelist. But self-publishing has allowed people with no talent for English, never mind for fiction, to hawk their efforts through the Kindle Store and Wattpad. The results vary from "That was... not great" to "OMGWTAF."