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Worst Sci-Fi Novel: And the Winner Is…


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?Other than half the entries ignoring my plea for brevity (yet again, sigh) and the other half not doing the proper research to win a free nerd shirt (“I forget what it was called, but it was really shitty!”) I thought this contest went swimmingly. There’s lots and lots of horrible sci-fi crap out there, which I knew, and the multitude of Honorable Mentions reflects that.

? Abraxas, for informing me of how fucking pretentious Doom novels could be

? MrFoo for “It’s a disgusting wish-fulfillment ARARAR FIGHT THE MAN novel with a hacker hero named w1n5t0n (SUBTLETY!!!)”
? Scarred for revealing the E.T. novel was basically horrible erotic fan fic
? Derio, for “Of all the things to think, he never thought he’d think that.”
? Mysterys, for “Janet is mistakenly abducted by aliens who meant to snatch Einstein but were off by a few years.”
? The Great A’Tuin for calling out how bad Mostly Harmless sucks
? DeAnn Rossetti, for bringing everybody down
? mrm1138, for “Still, when the sentient, flying killer Coke machine appeared, it took all of my will to keep going.”
? Kprl Kool, for saving me money by letting me know Deathtroopers is terrible before I picked it up
? Strangeman, for the Godopus
? The Shadow, for “I gave up around page 350, where the heroine spends THREE WHOLE PAGES waxing philosophically on the pungency of her vaginal odor.”
? Mishi, for “Unpleasant as a fish, she is stretched out like someone expecting a disagreeable medical examination. The grey doctor touches his arm. You will give her a baby, Klar-2 instructs him”
? ZeroCorpse, for the Millennium Falcon’s coffee cups
? Maximum Rebo, for calling Heinlein out for being utterly obsessed with incest for the last part of his career
? limnephilidae, for almost kicking R.A. Salvatore in the nuts
? Erixander, for the magic smegma
? Talanic, for the return of the fetus-slap
? T-Mack, for “Why not just call him Toughguy McExplosionman or Gunny Punchinface?”
? J-me for getting molested by Timothy Zahn
? HollowedOut, for “Come on Ender’s Shadow, the Hedgemon, Ender’s Colostomy, Ender’s Toilet Paper Collection. All the same story but from different views. I got it already from the first book!!!! Silly Mormon!”

The winners are after the jump.



Thane888 wrote the fourth entry in this weekend’s contest, but everyone pretty much agreed his entry was the one to beat. I couldn’t agree more:

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?Thane888 said:

The Night’s Dawn Trilogy by Peter Hamilton.
Somehow strange alien creatures on a backwater planet create a rift in the universe that let’s the souls of dead people possess the living. These possessed get super powers where they can zap other people into being possessed by other souls and before long this spreads like a disease and half the universe is taken over by statically charged possessed people.
Then the ghost of Al Capone takes over a space fleet and he and his ghost mafia try to take everything over but they have to hurry because once enough possessed souls get together in any one planet they magically make it dissappear – so whole planets vanish.
Normal weapons don’t work on the possessed so they are pretty much unstoppable and go on a rampage – except for the ghost hippies who sit around on a magic schoolbus and smoke imaginary marijuana all day. They believe in peace and love and won’t get with the program of taking over the universe with the rest of the ghosts. But – like most hippies, they don’t actually do anything to help, they just sit around and get high.
Meanwhile, a satanic cult leader get’s possessed and starts taking over the earth.
Since nothing can stop them, the universe is pretty well screwed.
While all this is going on, the good guy, who has sex with every female character in the book (including underage girls) has to hurry up and fly to the other side of the universe to find an alien god to ask for help.
Fortunately he finds the alien got just in the nick of time and the god makes all the ghosts go away.
The End
It took me 3 years to read this because I kept giving up in disgust. Unfortunately, I’m compelled for unknown reasons to finish every book I start so I kept going back for more torture.
Seriously – the ghosts of gangsters, hippies, and a satanic cult try to take of the universe.

I seriously cannot read Thane888’s summary without laughing so hard I cry. It makes me so unbelievably happy to know this is out there, and that someone wrote about mobster ghosts taking over spaceships. But I always feel bad when someone locks up the winning entry very early in the contest, so I decided to pick out another winner, because I am a kind and benevolent nerd god.

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?Fallen in a Floyd Hole said:

Alright, I’m just going to start by saying that I like the Wild Cards series. I really do. I’ve read nearly every book in it and still think it presents a unique and in-depth look at superpowers in the real world. Unfortunately, the books were wildly uneven and swung around from gangster stories to space opera to a boring story about a were-crocodile’s attempts to revitalize Buddy Holly’s career. Among other things.
The ninth book, “Jokertown Shuffle”, contained some interesting plot points and a couple of cool fight scenes. But I remember it far more for all of the horrifying violence and gratuitous sex it featured in an attempt to be “dark” and “gritty”. Basically, the book contains the following. Be warned, it’s pretty gruesome:
*An alien scientist named Dr. Tachyon, and previously one of the more interesting characters, is assaulted by his psychic teenage grandson Blaise, who has the power to “jump” people and switch bodies with them.
*He then uses this power to put Tachyon in the body of a teenage girl, whom he then rapes.
*The “jumped” Tachyon is held prisoner on Ellis Island (now a haven for deformed mutants), where he is raped again and impregnated.
*He slowly develops a relationship with the nerdy fat man-slug in charge of the island, who manages to engineer an escape for him…
*…but Blaise catches him, RAPES HIM AGAIN, and he is captured once more.
*I forgot to mention that Blaise and his friends get their powers by having butt-sex with a gross older lawyer named St. John.
*Oh, and there’s also a guy with superpowers who has sex with an underaged cat-girl. THREE TIMES.
I honestly can’t believe I read through all of this one. It was the only book in the series I wanted to throw across the room. I know what the authors were going for, and I fear that they succeeded. They succeeded far too well. If you do choose to read this series, know the sort of thing you’re getting into. And trust me, there are some great, compelling, worthwhile points to Wild Cards. Honest.

Oh, Floyd Hole. You had me at “guy who rapes his alien grandfather.” Congrats to most of the entrants (brevity, people, brevity!) and, as per your requests, I will do a Worst Horror Novels contest at some point in the semi-near future.