Re: Crappy books and publishers' pressure to write sequels

On 27/09/25 13:49, Steve Hayes wrote:
> On Sat, 27 Sep 2025 10:25:32 +1000, Peter Moylan <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>> This pressure from publishers acts to hurt the reputation of
>> authors. "Foundation's Edge" is not a particularly good book, and
>> that's probably because it's not the book that Asimov wanted to
>> write. Sequels are rarely as good as original novels.
>>
>> Piers Anthony is an extreme example of this. He's written some
>> good novels, but he's also written lots of sequels, and the sequels
>> are crap. So he gets remembered as the author of a lot of crap
>> books.

> I've only read one of his books, "Mascroscope", which I thought was
> crap when I first read it in 1973. I reread it in 2003 because I
> could remember a couple of scenes from it and thought it couldn't
> have been *that* bad, but it was. So I'd be interested in knowing
> what his good ones are. I've seen some in our local library, but I've
> avoided them.

Actually, I would have nominated Macroscope as his best book I'd better
leave the recommendations to someone who likes Anthony better.

>> For a while I refused to read anything by Philip Jose Farmer,
>> because of what he did with the never-ending Riverworld series.
>
> Yes, I read the first in the series, and wondered what was going on.
> Someone said all was revealed in the final book, so I skipped to
> that, and the promised great revelations were absent.

What I hated about Riverworld was that you didn't find out that there
was a sequel until the end of the first book; and then you had to get to
the end of the second book to discover that it was a trilogy. I gave up
by about the fifth book of the trilogy. Each time, there was a hint that
the unresolved details would be resolved in the next book; but they
never were.

> Another sequel that should never have been written is "Wild Horse
> Woman" by Walter M. Miller, a sequel or spin off to "A Canticle for
> Leibowitz". Some people have only one book in them, and Miller was
> one of them.

Totally agree. The first book was excellent. The next one was a big
disappointment. And a lot thicker, which makes the disappointment worse.

But he wasn't entirely a one-book author. I have his "The View From the
Stars", a collection of short stories, and some of those are worth reading.

-- 
Peter Moylan       [email protected]    http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW