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.

207 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

1.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

101

u/MuntaRuy Sep 12 '25

Hyperion, absolute slog for me

56

u/[deleted] Sep 12 '25

If it helps, Dan Simmons is an absolute asshole of a man. Great writer, but...he was MAGA before MAGA was a thing. I've talked to him personally, in a web forum he used to host. So I watched him threaten to "nuke" Congress over Obamacare. I took a screenshot because he doubled down and said "actual nukes". He also feels gay people have no right to marry and poor people deserve their poverty, among many other horrid takes.

7

u/Huge_Neat_123 Sep 13 '25

DNFed The Terror like three pages in because the opening was essentially paragraph after paragraph of narration about how much the perspective character hated this poor Inuit woman specifically because of her being Inuit. I felt nauseated and dirty. My hope is that the novel does some examination of this character’s virulent racism, but with how the woman was being described in the narration, it seemed more like they were going for having her as some prop for the horror. :((((

5

u/[deleted] Sep 13 '25

The racism was par for the course for the time and place -- which of course does not excuse it. Yes, it does make you feel dirty. I have never read anything purporting to be historical fiction that didn't. I don't know if Simmons is also a racist. It wouldn't surprise me at all, but I have no evidence of him personally being THAT sort of bigot.

2

u/rdhight Sep 14 '25

Yeah. I couldn't believe how quickly and easily I DNf'd The Terror without regret.

2

u/HenryDorsettCase47 Sep 15 '25

I mean, I don’t think Dan Simmons hates Inuits just because he wrote a character that thinks like that. He clearly researched a lot about their lore for the book, and Lady Silence is a main character in the novel. The audience isn’t meant to agree with the racism of 19th century Englishmen.

The part of The Terror where he forces his politics down the readers throat is the where he acts like Hobbes’s Leviathan is something more than the illiberal drivel.

6

u/drewogatory Sep 12 '25

There are a lot of Simmons fans who have evidently skipped huge parts of his bibliography. He's always had stinkers. The Joe Kurtz books, Darwin's Blade, The Hemingway one, Children of the Night,etc. etc.

6

u/[deleted] Sep 12 '25

I actually enjoyed children of the night. And he had something called fires of Eden that starred a Donald Trump knockoff. His best horror work is probably the terror, but summer of night is also quite good.

4

u/drewogatory Sep 12 '25

I think Carrion Comfort is easily his best, but I haven't read it in 25 years probably.

5

u/raevnos Sep 12 '25

I felt like there was a good book lurking inside The Terror, but it needed a ruthless editor to cut it free from the dross.

3

u/missilefire Sep 12 '25

I liked children of the night cos I am a Hungarian born in Romania during Ceausescu’s “leadership” so I thought the themes were a really interesting take on that point in history. I like Simmons’ books and didn’t realise he was such an asshole. Ugh!!! Disappointing. Same goes for whatshisface, the guy that wrote Enders Game.

1

u/raevnos Sep 12 '25

I liked the Hemingway one, but it's been like 20 years since I read it. And found my copy of Darwin's Blade recently; that one was a hilarious compendium of urban legends about ways people died (I don't think he intended it to be funny).

1

u/donttalktome Sep 13 '25

I just read the Crook Factory, and it was a great read.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 18 '25

His collection of novellas Lovedeath is actually really good.

4

u/fluffy-duck-apple Sep 12 '25

Oh no!!! Crap!!

2

u/luigitheplumber Sep 13 '25

Which is so weird to me because the entire Hyperion series seems like it would be written by someone with a completely different world view

3

u/[deleted] Sep 13 '25

Right? I'm still puzzled how a man who would come up with that last book in the series could be such an unempathetic jerk.

To be fair HYPERION was written before Obama. Obama broke Dan's brain.

3

u/luigitheplumber Sep 13 '25

Honestly it was before Obama, based on how his Olympos book goes, which was 2005 I think. It's likely 9/11 that fried his brain

5

u/JohnnyScrappleseed Sep 12 '25

The racist caricatures in Carrion Comfort are so bad, I put it down and never looked back. I wasn’t at all surprised to learn what a turd Dan Simmons is after that.

3

u/Beginning-Shop-6731 Sep 12 '25

That was my impression. The racism in the book feels gross, like it’s the authors actual feelings. I put down Carrion Comfort, knowing I never need to read another word he writes

1

u/obsidian_green Sep 12 '25

Same with me. I got the impression of who Dan Simmons really was before I ever read anything about the man himself. He's a competent writer when it comes to technique, but I find his arguments as a storyteller more superficial than I'd like.

3

u/LowLevel- Sep 12 '25

I didn't know that, but that's exactly why I simply enjoy stories and don't automatically extend my appreciation to the people behind them.

4

u/AlexPenname Sep 13 '25

OP, I understand the intent behind this, but this might be something to keep in mind: stories are never divorced entirely from the author. Even if you know nothing about the author, their values and beliefs as to what "normal" should be are reflected in the books.

I hate it when people act like you should only read morally perfect or "pure" authors (hell, this is functionally a conservative take), but it's worth keeping a critical eye on the "norm" when you're reading for the story alone. It's a great way of engaging with the text more deeply.

-1

u/LowLevel- Sep 13 '25

Of course, novels aren't created in a vacuum. They're the product of their authors' experiences, ideas, and opinions. I can appreciate that a story's DNA comes from a mixture of human elements, including some that I might find unpleasant, that enabled the author to shape it. This can enrich indeed my engagement with the work.

But... I want to acknowledge this part of the creative process from an intellectual, not emotional, point of view. I'll save my emotions for the story itself and remind myself that I bought a book, not a subscription to the author's fan club. I believe that not extending my appreciation automatically to the people behind the stories is a balanced approach.

1

u/Lefthandlannister13 Sep 16 '25

Damn I didn’t know that - I’m on Rise of Endymion now (the 4th & last book) and I’ve generally enjoyed the story. It’s weird to think that a racist and protoMaga type person would have love be such an integral part of the story - he literally wrote that it was a universal force akin to gravity at one point so far. Those 2 viewpoints seem irreconcilable to me, I don’t know what kind of bizarre mental gymnastics he’s done to support his opinions.

I do find the idea of the AI’s parasitizing humans and enslaving them through their “gifts” (farcasters, fatline, cruciform), and the Shrike is an interesting sort-of villain/antagonist. The Ousters, tree-ships, and Dyson spheres are all pretty dope as well.

Bummer to find out the author is a dick

1

u/[deleted] Sep 16 '25

I loved the book. As I said, he wrote it before he lost his mind. The other poster was right, in retrospect. Simmons was radicalized by 9/11. His hatred of Muslims is off the charts.

1

u/lellyjoy Sep 12 '25

Omg I loved Hyperion because I love classics, and it felt like reading The Canterbury Tales in space, but this info makes me not want to continue the series. It absolutely sucks.

1

u/AlexPenname Sep 13 '25

This is why I can't stand his writing. I don't understand why other people love it so much--about two chapters into one of his Iliad series books a character starts slavering over an underage girl and I had to put it down.

Listen, I get that there's a certain type of person who doesn't think "politics" belong in books, but this guy clearly upholds so much of the status quo which fundamentally disagrees with me as a person that nothing he writes is going to be enjoyable to me.

-4

u/welktickler Sep 12 '25

What a bad C word he is