[Scifreak]

Not content with churning out substandard xfiles/stargate/startrek novels, Kevin commited an unforgivable sin.

He pissed on the memory of Frank Herbet, by writing those awful Dune prequels. Now I love Dune, and all the Frank written Dune books are fantastic. I waited with ill-concealed impatience for those prequels only to find that any flair and style had been completely stifled by the heavy hand of Kev.

Perhaps Kev is a nice fella, and a good person. On that I can only speculate. But I can say with certainty that he is a poor writer

[RodeoRanch]

He's also likely pretty wealthy.

If I could get a gig of writing poorly for big bucks, hell I would do it too!

[Illuyankas]

Now, now, he has written some independant books that are unconnected to any previous fictional universe, which are stand-alone and unique in every way.

They just suck.

[Scifreak]

Illuyankas;179694 said:

Now, now, he has written some independant books that are unconnected to any previous fictional universe, which are stand-alone and unique in every way.

They just suck.

those Praxis novels?

I wouldn't sully my arse by using those as toilet paper

[Wiggles]

Scifreak;179689 said:

Not content with churning out substandard xfiles/stargate/startrek novels, Kevin commited an unforgivable sin.

He pissed on the memory of Frank Herbet, by writing those awful Dune prequels. Now I love Dune, and all the Frank written Dune books are fantastic. I waited with ill-concealed impatience for those prequels only to find that any flair and style had been completely stifled by the heavy hand of Kev.

Perhaps Kev is a nice fella, and a good person. On that I can only speculate. But I can say with certainty that he is a poor writer

It appears my pre-emptive positive reppage was well deserved for once. good on you.

[Kurt Montandon]

I'd like to say that you can add Alan Dean Foster to the hack list, in case you all hadn't caught on years ago. Anyone who does so many movie novelizations simply can't be counted upon to produce quality material, even when they do something else original.

Which is a shame, because I like the Flinx/Commonwealth stuff.

[Tif the Barber Boy]

Scifreak;179698 said:

those Praxis novels?

I wouldn't sully my arse by using those as toilet paper

The Praxis novels were written by Walter Jon Williams and while I haven't read them, I've heard good things about them. I think you might be thinking of Kevin J. Anderson's 'seven suns' series.

I'm not sure why anyone who loved the original Dune books would touch the new lot of books. They were merchandising spin-offs of the computer games from a few years back, entirely in the same league as other merchandising spin-offs like X-Files books and so on.

[Binder of Demons]

Quote

I'm not sure why anyone who loved the original Dune books would touch the new lot of books.

Well personally, it's because i did love the original books so much that i've read the various prequels and now sequels. Now my expectations weren't very high for the books, but I was just hoping for a reasonably well fleshed out explanation of some of the various background stories that were hinted at in the original novels. So on this score the books achieve their goal, some background stories told and plenty of money made, but God, they are badly written.

But despite all this, I still really wanted to see how Herbert planned to continue the series past Chapterhouse. Therefore I am forced to struggle through another several hundred pages of mediocre fare for the resolution of a story I love(d). But why, oh why, do they both have to be such poor authors?

I agree with the title of the thread, Anderson is a godawful hack!!!

Can anyone think of any good interpretations of others work, since this focused completely on the negative?

[Sir Thursday]

I've only read some of the Saga of Seven Suns...but I didn't think it was THAT bad...the first couple of books anyway. Starts to drag as you get into the third one.

Sir Thursday

[McLovin]

Sir Thursday;182112 said:

I've only read some of the Saga of Seven Suns...but I didn't think it was THAT bad...the first couple of books anyway. Starts to drag as you get into the third page of book one.

Fixed for accuracy.

[paladin]

Dune has been awful since God Emperor Dune(other than the funny torture of a million duncan idahos), so I don't know why you expected anything

[Kazz D'Avore]

i agree, while they clear up some of the backstories, (although they contradict some as well) they're rubbish compared to the originals, and are generally very poorely written.

[stone monkey]

The very obvious answer to this thread title is:

You don't say...

[councilor]

in my opinion, all dune books sort of went downhill after the first one. mind you, i haven't read any of the prequels, so my opinion probably doesn't count there

[Sir Thursday]

longhorn;182170 said:

Sir Thursday said:

View Post
I've only read some of the Saga of Seven Suns...but I didn't think it was THAT bad...the first couple of books anyway. Starts to drag as you get into the third page of book one.

Fixed for accuracy.

Hehe, nice fix. But seriously, I thought it was semi-decent. Sure, there's the obvious Air (well, gas), Water, Fire, Earth thing going on with the aliens, but in my (albeit limited) ventures into the Space Opera genre I have yet to encounter anything else like them. And yeah, the prose isn't particularly riveting, but I've never been particularly concerned with the quality, as long as it isn't too jarring to read.

I think there's a migration of hate from the Dune sequels/prequels (which I haven't read, and by the sound of it am lucky to have avoided) to his other work...I stand by my opinion that the first two books weren't too bad. Nothing great, just not bad. There's a serious pace dropoff after that though.


Sir Thursday

[Glass]

God you people are whiney bitches. NO ONE is Frank Herbert. You go in expecting Frank Herbert, you are going to be disappointed. It is simple logic.

Bitch and bitch and bitch and then moan about it. Do it. But get over yourselves. You are bitching about something that you can't even BEGIN to compare. There is only one Frank Herbert, and he's in the grave. If you don't like what Brian and Kevin are doing, DON'T READ IT. Is that spelled out enough for you?

[Wiggles]

no... not really. people who cant measure up shouldn't try to carry on something. simple as that.

[paladin]

Glass;185490 said:

God you people are whiney bitches. NO ONE is Frank Herbert. You go in expecting Frank Herbert, you are going to be disappointed. It is simple logic.

Bitch and bitch and bitch and then moan about it. Do it. But get over yourselves. You are bitching about something that you can't even BEGIN to compare. There is only one Frank Herbert, and he's in the grave. If you don't like what Brian and Kevin are doing, DON'T READ IT. Is that spelled out enough for you?

The problem is that when you touch someone elses work, you should be able to do it justice. He doesn't. Tolkeins son does a decent job with his dads work, decent enough to make it worth the time(to me). Expanding into film, Jonathon Mostow did a good enough job with Terminator 3 to make it worth the time.

If it were, say, Dragonlance, I wouldn't give a damn. Dragonlance isn't a classic piece of literature. Dune is(at least in its genre if not overall), and you don't mess with it unless you are of the caliber of writer that can do it justice.

[Glass]

You don't touch it. Others don't feel the way you do, obviously.

People for two decades have wanted to know how Dune 7 ended for closure. Now they got it. Is that a bad thing? No one ever will be Frank Herbert, therefore under your opinion those people who wanted to know how Dune 7 ended should suffer for eternity. I simply don't agree with that.

The writing may not be up to the level of Frank Herbert, but I think the storytelling in the new novels is massively improved over Frank. More twists and turns. The writing is very different from Frank -- I don't think it is worse, just a different style -- but the rest of it is fine as far as I am concerned.

And as I said, if you don't like what is going on, then don't read it. You have that power. And your opinion shouldn't dictate the needs of the many who may have a different opinion than you share.

[paladin]

Question: Did he write the story himself? Did he take existing drafts and arrange and edit? What exactly did he do?

The established norm I've seen of "telling the rest of the story" is to take the drafts and arrange and edit them, usually done by someone very familiar with the writer(the editor I believe for the Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams[which they didnt attempt to create any new material for to finish the book] and Tolkiens son for many of the post-LotR works).