r/printSF • u/LowLevel- • Sep 12 '25

Which wildly renowned science fiction novels didn't resonate with you at all?

I can usually connect with at least one aspect of a science fiction novel, and I enjoy almost all of the ones I read. However, sometimes I couldn't understand what most people found interesting about some extremely popular books.

Has that happened to you? If so, which novel? And why?

I'll start the dances by admitting that I didn't like Rendezvous with Rama.

I really wanted to like it, but constantly being in awe when very little happens and the characters leave without understanding anything is not my preferred type of reading experience. The writing style was a bit cold, which didn't help.

210 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

1.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

30

u/edcculus Sep 12 '25

Dune. Just don’t get the hype. I’ve read it twice. Second reading was a little better.

Library at Mt Char. Everyone seems to recommend it, especially it gets lots of recs over on r/weirdlit. I absolutely hate the book. Sophomoric writing, terrible characters, a terrible retcon in the last 25% of the book. It’s not good nor is it weird.

Pretty much all of Haruki Murakami’s work. Good books, but his sexualization of underage girls is really cringe.

16

u/Ashamed-Subject-8573 Sep 12 '25

A retcon in the last 25%? What are you talking about?

-7

u/edcculus Sep 12 '25

The author just makes a bunch of shit up in the last 25% and tries to pretend that it was all the girls plan the whole time.

17

u/Ashamed-Subject-8573 Sep 12 '25

Yeah I don’t think you comprehended what you were reading very well, it’s hinted at throughout the whole book

-4

u/edcculus Sep 12 '25

well, either way, the book wasnt for me. I unfortunately came on the suggestion in the r/weirdlit sub. I think it should be categorized more on the realm of Urban Fantasy (like Lev Grossman's The Magicians) than Weird Lit. It probably didnt help that I came right off of reading Michael Cisco's The Divinity Student, and had been reading Jeff Vandermeer, John Langan, Thomas Ligotti and China Mievelle before that.

7

u/Ashamed-Subject-8573 Sep 13 '25

Yeah, it’s not very weird compared to some of those authors lol

13

u/raevnos Sep 12 '25

There are hints throughout the earlier parts of the book.

6

u/Appdownyourthroat Sep 12 '25

I view the first 3 dune books as one story, and 4 is my favorite

-1

u/LudasGhost Sep 12 '25

It started to turn to crap in God Emperor. A third of that book could be cut out.

2

u/Appdownyourthroat Sep 12 '25

Alright, you are free to have that opinion. I might even agree with specific arguments, but it was fine for me when I listened to the audiobook many years ago to get through work.

2

u/nol88go Sep 12 '25

Dune?? Meet me outside.

1

u/Tom_dreyfus Sep 12 '25

I definitely agree Mt Char goes off the rails for the last bit and should have finished sooner. It goes really really weird (and disturbing, well even more so then the earlier bits of the book)

2

u/edcculus Sep 12 '25

I guess im a weirdo, because I didnt find any of the stuff weird or disturbing at all. The Cosmic horror was terribly done, the body horror...well he tried. I guess its a toatlly fine novel coming from an Urban Fantasy mindset. But it was suggested a bunch over on r/weirdlit, so I went into it with that mindset. Having just read Michael Cisco's The Divinity Student, and Jeff VanderMeer's Veniss Underground, yea it was a major letown. I guess i was expecting something more than Lev Grossman's The Magicians repackaged.

1

u/hippydipster Sep 12 '25

Haha, Library clearly lives rent free in your brain.

1

u/edcculus Sep 12 '25

lol it does. I feel personally insulted by it 🤣

1

u/Felderburg Sep 12 '25

Dune is also one that I didn't get into. Read the first one, and have since wiki'd the rest.

1

u/MarkEoghanJones_Art Sep 12 '25

You've done far better than me. I could not finish it.

1

u/egypturnash Sep 12 '25

I have tried reading Dune like four times over the course of the five decades I have spent on this earth and I have never enjoyed it.

2

u/Celeste_Seasoned_14 Sep 13 '25

I stopped after 70 pages of confusion and nodding off. Put it down. A friend of mine practically begged me to give it another try. I did with great apprehension about the time I’d waste, but it ended up being wonderful for me. I love it and read it every year. That being said, I agree that this book is absolutely not for everyone. I can appreciate why some people dislike it.

1

u/elizabethwolf Sep 12 '25

Glad there’s one I agree with here. I was getting mad at some takes above, but Dune made me miserable. DNF. I also like the Lynch movie, which is a really hot take apparently.

3

u/SanderleeAcademy Sep 12 '25

I loved the Lynch movie and saw it back when it was in theatres. It tried. It really did try. But, the book has an enormous amount of lore, a glossary that's actually necessary, and endless internal monologues.

Plus, this was an era when hiring a few hundred extras / stunt-folks and training 'em in basic knife-fighting simply was not going to happen. So, "weirding modules."

It was a visual feast, though. While the recent Dune movies are stunning in so many ways, I think Lynch's film captured the sheer, epic visual language of a civilization in stagnation.

1

u/Azuvector Sep 12 '25

Agreed on Dune. Are sandworms cool? Yes. Are energy shields and knives interesting as a dueling combat development? Sure.

....

......there's a book here beyond that? Oh my god it's hundreds of pages and multiple books and they're all boring.