toomanyhelicopters wrote:Antero wrote:L. Ron Hubbard is the fucking worst science fiction writer I've ever read.
(I was in a bookstore and bored.)
Crap.
really? i read the first two (or was it three) books in the Mission Earth decology, and liked them just fine. then again, i was maybe 20 at the time, still into that whole "reading" thing. meh.
the only two things i can remember about the books at this point are, 1, i thought his future-tech spaceship propulsion system sounded pretty awesome, and 2, the praise for the skill of the future-tech baseball player. his future-tech baseball was pretty dope, too.
I'm kind of a sf/f dork, which means that I have this whole mess of qualifications for a Decent Alternate World, such as a logical structure to technology and so forth, but his prose is simply atrocious, purple as hell and awkward as a boner in gym class. He lacks the subtlety and immersion of the greats. Someone like Gibson or Dick can wrap their words around you, building the universe by degrees of resolution rather than clumsy chunks. My personal favorite in the sci-fi arena, Gene Wolfe, is a brilliant writer by any standard, and creates worlds and characters of tremendous scope and detail, blurring the image at just the right spots to force the reader to participate in this construction.
Here's an excerpt from a book of his:
Alan Corday stopped, momentarily blinded by the flash of a Mars-bound liner getting free from Earth. For an instant the skeletal racks had flashed red against the ink of sky and the one used now pulsated as it cooled. Corday did not like to be blinded here in this place, even for a moment. He wiped a tired hand against his blouse, carefully reassuring himself that his papers and wallet were still in place.
To the north glowed New Chicago, a broad humming city hiding beneath its five stages its hungry, its sick and its uncared-for lame. Civilization was mushroomed up from a mire; the columns were pretty, the fountains in the rich gardens played in many hues, cafes winked their invitations to the rich and under it all was the beggar's whine, a shrill, lost note, but steady enough to someday bring these towers down in wreck.
This is the first passage from "To The Stars." If you actually want to subject yourself to more, you can read the whole first chapter here:
http://www.tothestars.com/chapter1.htmBasic thing to notice is that his phrasing is clumsy as hell, and creates confusion simply by being bad - "...the one used..." the one WHAT used? Fuck if I know. Worse, he tells rather than shows. See that passage about New Chicago? Someone good would have had no need to say that at all. If it was actually of any importance, it would be woven into the very fabric of the story, and quickly make itself apparent to the reader. Hold it up to the city that Case roams in Gibson's
Neuromancer and it withers and dies - Gibson's is vibrant and organic, Hubbard's is a bloated tour guide.
A black cat leaped with a startled squall from his path, crossed it and vanished; Alan laughed nervously at the way the sudden noise had made his hand shake. Jumping from a cat!
Ah hah hah oh you cheeky narrator! Wait, narrator? Why the hell would he insert such a comment unless he was intentionally writing for the developmentally disabled? It's clear from the action, which he describes in horriffic gouts of adjectives and adverbs.
Also, he's a shitty poet.
CONSCIENCE
Racking sobs
Of
A heart
Which cannot cry
This just goes to show that livejournal poetry predates the livejournal.
L. Ron Hubbard's Writing: CRAP.
http://www.myspace.com/leopoldandloebchicago
Linus Van Pelt wrote:I subscribe to neither prong of your false dichotomy.
