Re: Crappy books and publishers' pressure to write sequels

On Sat, 27 Sep 2025 14:50:49 +1000, Peter Moylan <[email protected]>
wrote:

>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.

Wow! The only thing I remembered from the first reading and which got
me to reread it was the idea of turning people into glup and
reconstituting them for intergalactic travel. And 20 years after my
second reading, that's still the only thing I can remember. 

>>> 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.

Yes, that's why I skipped to the last one, when I found it. And when
the denoument of that one didn't reveal all I've avoided his books
ever since. 

>> 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.

Ah, I haven't seen that. Will look out for it. 


-- 
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web:  http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://khanya.wordpress.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk