Battlefield Earth - L. Ron Hubbard
Close the thread.
I've never been brave enough to read this. I saw the movie, belatedly, and it was awful. Some forms of awful are actually good, like a fantastic thunderclap fart with the aroma of heaven's middens, the one for which you want to graciously accept the blame because it's really quite something. Other forms of awful, on the other hand, lie there in the pan, coiled reminders of one of the worse meals of your life, a solid lump that lingers unforgettably after the third flush. You can't flush the fourth time, it's not your house, you are the guest and it would be tantamount to walking into the dining room and announcing I BLOCKED YOUR TOILET. It was that sort of movie.
While we're on sci-fi, a shout out for Heinlein's
Starship Troopers which I was persuaded to read a year or two back. Deeply, deeply awful. Unironically fascistic, stodgily written, with characters you wanted to drop an asteroid on, and – worst of all – criminally dull. In the movie, they're fighting monstrous aliens, there's a nice stream of sarcasm. None of that in the book, it's a po-faced boys-own guide to fascism. Hang on, we're going to do a rundown of military ranks again.
I should mention
Twilight. Firstly, let's be clear, it was research for my own creative writing project. It's toilet blockingly awful. It's on a par with being invited to tea with the Queen, having the urge to excuse oneself, and then dropping something the size of a family hatchback onto the Royal porcelain. It's not going to flush without the help of JCB. It's that bad. Basically, an immensely stupid girl falls for a boy so bad he's a vampire because he watches her sleep. I'm so dangerous, he says. You smell nice, she says. I don't think you think you need to be a card-carrying feminist to detect something deeply toxic to that plot. It's written by a grown woman too. But, there's actually something even worse in there. You want to know what it is? Sparkly vampires. Vampires that fucking sparkle in the sun. The absolute fuck of it.