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  4. Possibly the worst sci-fi I've read

Possibly the worst sci-fi I've read

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    Chris Austin
    wrote on last edited by
    #1

    Has to be "The Saga of Seven Suns" by Kevin Anderson. What's the worst you've read?

    Sovereign ingredient for a happy marriage: Pay cash or do without. Interest charges not only eat up a household budget; awareness of debt eats up domestic felicity. --Lazarus Long Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece. --Ralph Charell

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    • C Chris Austin

      Has to be "The Saga of Seven Suns" by Kevin Anderson. What's the worst you've read?

      Sovereign ingredient for a happy marriage: Pay cash or do without. Interest charges not only eat up a household budget; awareness of debt eats up domestic felicity. --Lazarus Long Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece. --Ralph Charell

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      Rama Krishna Vavilala
      wrote on last edited by
      #2

      "The Saga of Eight Suns"

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      • C Chris Austin

        Has to be "The Saga of Seven Suns" by Kevin Anderson. What's the worst you've read?

        Sovereign ingredient for a happy marriage: Pay cash or do without. Interest charges not only eat up a household budget; awareness of debt eats up domestic felicity. --Lazarus Long Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece. --Ralph Charell

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        Oakman
        wrote on last edited by
        #3

        Tie between "Battlefield Earth: by Hubbard and "House Atriedes" by Brian Herbert and, interesting enough, Kevin Anderson.

        Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Both democrats and republicans are playing for the same team and it's not us. - Chris Austin

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        • C Chris Austin

          Has to be "The Saga of Seven Suns" by Kevin Anderson. What's the worst you've read?

          Sovereign ingredient for a happy marriage: Pay cash or do without. Interest charges not only eat up a household budget; awareness of debt eats up domestic felicity. --Lazarus Long Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece. --Ralph Charell

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          Gary Kirkham
          wrote on last edited by
          #4

          I have seen many horrible sci-fi movies. My pick for the worst is actually a classic that won an academy award and is ranked as one of the best movies of all time. Nevertheless, 2001: A Space Odyssey was a monumental snoozer. [edit] Having re-read the subject line, I now realize my response is OT. :doh:

          Gary Kirkham Forever Forgiven and Alive in the Spirit The men said to them, "Why do you seek the living One among the dead? He is not here, but He has risen." Me blog, You read

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          • C Chris Austin

            Has to be "The Saga of Seven Suns" by Kevin Anderson. What's the worst you've read?

            Sovereign ingredient for a happy marriage: Pay cash or do without. Interest charges not only eat up a household budget; awareness of debt eats up domestic felicity. --Lazarus Long Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece. --Ralph Charell

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            kmg365
            wrote on last edited by
            #5

            Any of Tom Clancy's "Net.... yadyada" books.

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            • G Gary Kirkham

              I have seen many horrible sci-fi movies. My pick for the worst is actually a classic that won an academy award and is ranked as one of the best movies of all time. Nevertheless, 2001: A Space Odyssey was a monumental snoozer. [edit] Having re-read the subject line, I now realize my response is OT. :doh:

              Gary Kirkham Forever Forgiven and Alive in the Spirit The men said to them, "Why do you seek the living One among the dead? He is not here, but He has risen." Me blog, You read

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              Chris Austin
              wrote on last edited by
              #6

              Gary Kirkham wrote:

              Having re-read the subject line, I now realize my response is OT

              No worries :) I thought it not only boring but vapid and banal.

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              • O Oakman

                Tie between "Battlefield Earth: by Hubbard and "House Atriedes" by Brian Herbert and, interesting enough, Kevin Anderson.

                Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Both democrats and republicans are playing for the same team and it's not us. - Chris Austin

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                Chris Austin
                wrote on last edited by
                #7

                Oakman wrote:

                interesting enough, Kevin Anderson.

                Yeah, his characters are the absolute worst. Supposed smart people that can't put 2 & 2 together.

                Sovereign ingredient for a happy marriage: Pay cash or do without. Interest charges not only eat up a household budget; awareness of debt eats up domestic felicity. --Lazarus Long Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece. --Ralph Charell

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                • R Rama Krishna Vavilala

                  "The Saga of Eight Suns"

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                  Chris Austin
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #8

                  Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:

                  "The Saga of Eight Suns"

                  Considering how bad the one with Seven was I am glad I missed it.

                  Sovereign ingredient for a happy marriage: Pay cash or do without. Interest charges not only eat up a household budget; awareness of debt eats up domestic felicity. --Lazarus Long Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece. --Ralph Charell

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                  • K kmg365

                    Any of Tom Clancy's "Net.... yadyada" books.

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                    Chris Austin
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #9

                    kmg365 wrote:

                    Any of Tom Clancy's "Net.... yadyada" books.

                    I tried reading Clancy once, never again. [Edit] Or was that Grisham?

                    Sovereign ingredient for a happy marriage: Pay cash or do without. Interest charges not only eat up a household budget; awareness of debt eats up domestic felicity. --Lazarus Long Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece. --Ralph Charell

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                    • C Chris Austin

                      Has to be "The Saga of Seven Suns" by Kevin Anderson. What's the worst you've read?

                      Sovereign ingredient for a happy marriage: Pay cash or do without. Interest charges not only eat up a household budget; awareness of debt eats up domestic felicity. --Lazarus Long Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece. --Ralph Charell

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                      0x3c0
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #10

                      Worst one I forced myself to read is 7 Seconds. It's so rubbish that even Wikipedia doesn't have an entry. In the first third of the book, the characters just walk around with no intention of furthering the plot. The second third teleports a brand new character in, with a friendly, distributed, living computer intelligence, in the middle of the US desert, with a massive-bandwidth broadband connection. He can solder USB connections from scratch and has built a 3D Xray scanner from spare parts. He finds a book and sends it over to a lab, and what a coincidence! By completely reversing the effect of a vast soaking (the story said that the last few hundred pages were one solid mass), he finds a secret photo. By getting the computer (he named it Kate) to do an optical zoom on the 80-year old photograph, he reads a tiny inscription. Then some black helicopters loosely linked to the first third's characters come and bombard the house with his adopted kids in it. Apparently, mentioning a single name three times, distributed across three different phone calls has that effect. He survives a massive blast (which is so powerful that the warhead was used against tanks), and gets rescued. He then gets taken to some other Holes-like wilderness. By following the clues he finds his way to a geeky underground Armageddon survival shelter, conveniently located just by the rim of Yellowstone's volcano (Mt. St. Helens I think). This shelter ALSO has a computer intelligence named Typhon. This starts the last third, where the computer geek's lung cancer (which he diagnosed with the 3D Xray scanner) is cured by a mystic force which produces the effects of gravity as it weaves around and through reality. Typhon then decides that humans aren't dealing well with Earth, and primes a nuclear bomb to drop and detonate at the base of aforementioned volcano. Then, the character from the first third gets killed in about three lines. All this is happening during the 10 minute countdown. Fortunately the main character has an eidetic memory and so remembers the formula of payload something. He then gets some other random people to help him get rid of the ionising material, which reduces the explosiveness of the bomb. Then, he notices a 7-second time lapse between two countdowns, and drops the bomb at exactly the right moment to save the world. Random sex-person shows up and they drive back to his house's remains. The mystic radiation has cured his lung cancer, and extended his life somewhat. His house turns out to have a basement, which somehow

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                      • G Gary Kirkham

                        I have seen many horrible sci-fi movies. My pick for the worst is actually a classic that won an academy award and is ranked as one of the best movies of all time. Nevertheless, 2001: A Space Odyssey was a monumental snoozer. [edit] Having re-read the subject line, I now realize my response is OT. :doh:

                        Gary Kirkham Forever Forgiven and Alive in the Spirit The men said to them, "Why do you seek the living One among the dead? He is not here, but He has risen." Me blog, You read

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                        Stan Shannon
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #11

                        Gary Kirkham wrote:

                        Nevertheless, 2001: A Space Odyssey was a monumental snoozer.

                        OK, pal, now you've done it. 2001 was a life changing experience for me... An absolutely incredible movie. :mad:

                        Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

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                        • S Stan Shannon

                          Gary Kirkham wrote:

                          Nevertheless, 2001: A Space Odyssey was a monumental snoozer.

                          OK, pal, now you've done it. 2001 was a life changing experience for me... An absolutely incredible movie. :mad:

                          Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

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                          Ilion
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #12

                          Stan Shannon wrote:

                          OK, pal, now you've done it. 2001 was a life changing experience for me... An absolutely incredible movie. :mad:

                          Well, sure. But what were you smoking at the time? ;)

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                          • I Ilion

                            Stan Shannon wrote:

                            OK, pal, now you've done it. 2001 was a life changing experience for me... An absolutely incredible movie. :mad:

                            Well, sure. But what were you smoking at the time? ;)

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                            Stan Shannon
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #13

                            Ilíon wrote:

                            Well, sure. But what were you smoking at the time?

                            Nothing! Honest, I was a 15 year old kid in a small town in Western Oklahoma. As a lifelong science fiction fan, 2001 was a monumental movie. It is easy to poke fun at it now, but at the time, it was really quite an amazing experience.

                            Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

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                            • C Chris Austin

                              Has to be "The Saga of Seven Suns" by Kevin Anderson. What's the worst you've read?

                              Sovereign ingredient for a happy marriage: Pay cash or do without. Interest charges not only eat up a household budget; awareness of debt eats up domestic felicity. --Lazarus Long Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece. --Ralph Charell

                              S Offline
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                              Stan Shannon
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #14

                              I haven't read any good science fiction in 20 years. I agree with Clarke that the genre is just kind of locked into a kind of derivative repitition now and not nearly as much fun as it once was.

                              Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

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                              • S Stan Shannon

                                I haven't read any good science fiction in 20 years. I agree with Clarke that the genre is just kind of locked into a kind of derivative repitition now and not nearly as much fun as it once was.

                                Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

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                                Oakman
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #15

                                Stan Shannon wrote:

                                I haven't read any good science fiction in 20 years

                                I have. I think there are a number of authors coming along who are just as good and have just as much of a sense of wonder as the guys we both grew up reading. The problem is that there's a lot more crap out there, too. As Sturgeon said, "90% of everything is crap," but as SF became Sci-Fi I think the percentage slipped to 95%

                                Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Both democrats and republicans are playing for the same team and it's not us. - Chris Austin

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                                • C Chris Austin

                                  Has to be "The Saga of Seven Suns" by Kevin Anderson. What's the worst you've read?

                                  Sovereign ingredient for a happy marriage: Pay cash or do without. Interest charges not only eat up a household budget; awareness of debt eats up domestic felicity. --Lazarus Long Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece. --Ralph Charell

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                                  Captain See Sharp
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #16

                                  I thought only mega-nerds actually read sci-fi books.

                                  ENDGAME[^]

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                                  • C Captain See Sharp

                                    I thought only mega-nerds actually read sci-fi books.

                                    ENDGAME[^]

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                                    Oakman
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #17

                                    Intel 4004 wrote:

                                    I thought only mega-nerds actually read sci-fi books.

                                    I'm not surprised you thought that (and I use the term, "thought," loosely.)

                                    Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Both democrats and republicans are playing for the same team and it's not us. - Chris Austin

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                                    • S Stan Shannon

                                      I haven't read any good science fiction in 20 years. I agree with Clarke that the genre is just kind of locked into a kind of derivative repitition now and not nearly as much fun as it once was.

                                      Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

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                                      Brady Kelly
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #18

                                      Greg Bear's Eon was momentous for me.

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                                      • R Rama Krishna Vavilala

                                        "The Saga of Eight Suns"

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                                        Chris Maunder
                                        wrote on last edited by
                                        #19

                                        I knew I shouldn't have removed the voting buttons ;)

                                        cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP

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                                        • S Stan Shannon

                                          Ilíon wrote:

                                          Well, sure. But what were you smoking at the time?

                                          Nothing! Honest, I was a 15 year old kid in a small town in Western Oklahoma. As a lifelong science fiction fan, 2001 was a monumental movie. It is easy to poke fun at it now, but at the time, it was really quite an amazing experience.

                                          Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

                                          K Offline
                                          K Offline
                                          kmg365
                                          wrote on last edited by
                                          #20

                                          Sorry, I thought Fantasia was better than 2001. 2 cents.

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