Worst Books (you never finished or wished you hadn't)

Discussion in 'SciFi & Fantasy' started by barsoom, May 17, 2003.

  1. barsoom Registered Member

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    20
    Someone on another thread mentioned "Timeline" and I had to confess that I didn't like it enough to even bother finishing it. This prompted me to start this thread in order to warn prospective readers that they might not like certain books.

    "Timeline" - I found the premise interesting but the characters were so wooden and uninteresting... that I couldn't care less what happened to them. I didn't finish it.

    barsoom
     
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  3. DouBTlessWonDer socially inferior to TV Registered Senior Member

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    I really don't like The Fifth Child. We had to read it for a class and write a paper about it though. But I never finished it..or never wrote that paper....

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  5. CounslerCoffee Registered Senior Member

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    "Bored Of The Rings" Author Unknown

    I had never read LOTR before. So I read this parody that was made in 1970. It was horrible and had so many inside jokes that I didn't understand.
     
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  7. Gifted World Wanderer Registered Senior Member

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    "Ethan of Athos" No, don't read it.
     
  8. LucidDreamer Registered Senior Member

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    Timeline

    Barsoom, I have to agree with you about Timeline. I finished the book but was disappointed with it. The book starts out as very intriguing. Michael Crichton obviously spent some time researching quantum physics and time traveling to parallel universes.

    He used the “Tree of Life Theory” to explain how time travel might be possible. This theory states that every change in the Universe, whether at the macroscopic or sub-atomic level creates a parallel universe. There might be an infinite number of these parallel universes.

    His concept of a time machine is rather ingenious. People are scanned into a quantum computer and their bodies are disassembled and transformed into a stream of sub-atomic particles. Then they are beamed through the quantum foam that separates the various universes and finally reassembled in the other universe, which may have a separate timeline from our own. While Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle would make this whole process impossible, it at least was a good attempt at coming up with a scientific explanation of time travel.

    Then his story falls apart. I won’t give anything away, except that he completely abandons the “Tree of Life Theory” and resorts to a typical, Hollywood style time travel story with the usual causality violations. These causality violations are used to further the plot in a way that would not have been possible had he stuck to his original scientific explanation.

    Another problem that I had with the book was that it appears that he was writing it with the idea of adapting it into a big budget Hollywood movie. Therefore he needed to include all of the usual stereotypes and clichés that those movies require to please a mass audience but insult the intelligence of any serious sci-fi fan.
     
  9. guthrie paradox generator Registered Senior Member

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    4,089
    I would like to warn people off Greg Bears "Eon" and "Eternity"

    I think eon was the first, and just about ok, but then eternity took it further and got dull, so I never finished it.
     
    Last edited: May 21, 2003
  10. %BlueSoulRobot% Copyright! Copyright!! Registered Senior Member

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    2,294
    Oh, you must read this other LOTR parody, if the first one hasn't scarred you for life: http://flyingmoose.org/tolksarc/book/book.htm

    It's great, much better than Bored of the Rings maybe. And have you read the Secret Diaries? They're fun too.
    http://home.nyu.edu/~amw243/diaries/
     
  11. airavata portentous Registered Senior Member

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    1,352
    i thought timeline was good. crichton's new book 'prey' is also good. i hated bored of the rings as well. it was a joke.
     

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