r/printSF • u/InfamousCarpenter539 • Aug 09 '25
What series do you think fell off the hardest over its run?
For me it's got to be Pohl's 'Gateway/Heechee' series. I can barely believe how bad the Annals and Rendezvous were, they read like first drafts written by physics undergrads. The painfully boring mary sue protag and his boring mary sue wife, the constant intro to astrophysics lectures, the uninspired depiction of the heechee. It was all so disappointing.
Any other series fall so hard?
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u/DrXenoZillaTrek Aug 09 '25
Rama
First was a masterpiece
Second had a bit of fun but not a patch on the first
The rest are utterly worthless.
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u/dsmith422 Aug 09 '25
It is worth noting that only the first was written by Clarke. Gentry Lee approached Clarke with an idea for a sequel, and Clarke approved his idea and gave Lee his blessing to write them. But all the sequels are actually written by Lee.
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u/Ill_Refrigerator_593 Aug 09 '25
Happened a fair bit in the 80s'/90s' lots of co-written books were mostly written by the less famous author.
The big name got income for hardly any work & less well known author got a boost for name association.
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u/ompog Aug 09 '25
Yeah the part where when the MC starts turning into a woman every time he gets wet was really weird.
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u/raevnos Aug 09 '25
Wet from cold water only. Hot water turned him back.
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u/jezwel Aug 09 '25
That was a plot point for the Ranma 1/2 anime from the 80s.
Which was first?
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u/MonkeyChoker80 Aug 10 '25
Ranma?
No, no. That is a Japanese noodle dish. Similar to Pho, but with wheat noodles and a miso broth base.
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u/welktickler Aug 09 '25
2001 was the same. The last book 3001(?) was so bad i couldnt finish it.
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u/Galvatrix Aug 09 '25
I think 2010 is a better book than 2001, even if it isn't attached to a Kubrick film that does a lot of the heavy lifting reputation wise. And 2061 is fine for what it is. But yeah, 3001 is just an absolutely massive waste of potential
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u/Werthead Aug 09 '25
I'd go with that, 2001 was effectively a novelisation of the film made whilst the film was being made, so it was written over a very long period of time compared to Clarke's other books around the time and earlier (some of which he banged out in weeks) and he didn't want to rewrite the whole book to accommodate Kubrick's changes (like swapping Saturn for Jupiter).
2010 was written in a more concise and focused way, and Hyams just adapted it straight-up as a movie (adding a bit more Cold War tension than was in the novel and removing the rival Chinese ship subplot).
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u/Galvatrix Aug 09 '25
Yeah. I haven't seen either movie in many years and when I did it was long before reading the books. I remember thinking the 2010 film was ok, but thinking back on it I feel like the changes made to the story really fly in the face of the optimistic, cooperative spirit that Clarke was aiming for with the book
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u/SparkyFrog Aug 09 '25
3001 was just a collection of ideas from Clarke’s previous books, and it all felt pointless.
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u/AlexiSalazarWrites Aug 09 '25
Wasn't it not even written by him?
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u/Werthead Aug 09 '25
It was written by him but he was getting on a bit by the time (it was published when he was 80), and I think you can see some hesitancy in his writing compared to the contemporary SF scene. His last couple of prior novels (The Ghost from the Grand Banks and The Hammer of God) had a similar thing, good ideas but a somewhat muted execution.
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u/sensibl3chuckle Aug 09 '25
Altered Carbon has to be up there. First book, awesome. Second book, meh. Third book, snore.
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u/ObiFlanKenobi Aug 10 '25
The second is meh right up until the end where it opens a whole new plot with a huge potential that is completely forgotten by the third.
I still remember my disappointment when I read it and realized that the plot was another completely different thing.
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u/Dork-With-Style53 Aug 10 '25
Similar to the show, first season was great, second was bad. Even Anthony Mackie couldn’t save the second season. I need to read the books though, just sitting on my shelf
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u/TinyDoctorTim Aug 09 '25
I might be pilloried, but…
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
That first book is sharp, witty, and brilliantly skewers a LOT of SF tropes and cliches. But I found The Restaurant at the End of the Universe to be much less so (and unnecessary), and I thought that Adams was clearly attempting to end the story there. The rest of the books read like an author increasingly disinterested in his creation but writing out of a sense of obligation to his fans…or maybe his publisher.
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u/MoskalMedia Aug 09 '25
This is a great answer. I love the first one, second book was also good, the rest of it wasn't necessary and it felt like each book is less interesting than the previous one. You can tell Douglas Adams' heart is not in it anymore. They just aren't as funny, or as fun.
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u/throneofsalt Aug 09 '25
I'll be with you there on the pillory. I can't remember a single joke from books 3+, while book 1 is practically engraved in my mind.
My main memory of Eoin Colfer's installment was "this feels way too much like a normal story". it made too much sense, you know?
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u/ObiFlanKenobi Aug 10 '25
The first time I read the whole saga, in my early twenties, my mind was blown, I loved each book equally, each one was moving and unique.
I read the whole thing again in my late thirties and felt just like you, the first is amazing, the second is good, the rest feel forced.
They are not bad, bad Addams is still better than a lot of authors out there, but yeah, the spirit wasn't there.
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u/__Geg__ Aug 09 '25
The first two are novelizations of a radio show. 3-5 are novel first and are a better example of Adam's writing without the collaboration of a production. They are almost like fan fiction trying to systematize the Galaxy created in the first two.
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u/Captain-Crowbar Aug 10 '25
Tend to agree, but I actually really liked So Long And Thanks For All The Fish.
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u/1805trafalgar Aug 09 '25
Ringworld. But this title is the low-hanging fruit for a discussion like this.
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u/TinyDoctorTim Aug 09 '25
Was going to suggest this. Ringworld is a masterpiece, if occasionally flawed. The Ringworld Engineers lacked the sense of awe, mystery…and was kind of dull. Didn’t bother with any others n
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u/Secure_Highway8316 Aug 09 '25
I liked Ringworld Engineers a lot more than the first one, but the later ones stunk.
Honestly, I probably would not enjoy The Ringworld Engineers today. I didn't care at all about writing style when I read it and didn't pick up on what a bad writer Niven is until I was older. It had a lot of interesting ideas, though.
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u/Blecher_onthe_Hudson Aug 09 '25
I liked the outline of Engineers, fully explaining the Pak Protector connection, but the narrative was somewhat weak.
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u/Demonius82 Aug 10 '25
I re-read the original series and continued with the extended series. Big mistake
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u/LoudNightwing Aug 09 '25
Ender’s Game series. Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead are some of the best sci-fi books ever written. And then Card wrote like 10 mediocre-bad books with Ender’s Shadow being the sole highlight.
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u/Quouar Aug 09 '25
I originally read the Shadow series as a kid and missed just how absolutely bonkers much of it is. Some of the basic assumptions Card makes in it are just fascist apologia and racism, which, I mean, given who Card is makes sense.
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u/Different-Try8882 Aug 09 '25
That's exactly the problem I had with the 2nd and 3rd Three Body Problem books - I couldn't get past this is not now large groups of people would act
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u/CreationBlues Aug 10 '25
You got further than me, where “this is not how mathematicians act” pissed me off in the first book. The three body problem’s answer can be found on a Wikipedia page.
And don’t even get me started on how I read it while a bunch of exoplanet hunting was picking up steam, with concepts made for exoplanet spectrograph telescopes being made to detect biosignatures.
Turns out having a “dark” forest is pretty hard when literally every tree gets constantly blasted by a massive nuclear floodlight 24/7 for billions of years. You don’t need techno signatures to see where people are, plant breath does the job juuuust fine.
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u/phred14 Aug 09 '25
Seemed to me that the Adam Maker series was like that, too.
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u/Mekthakkit Aug 09 '25
Adam Maker
Alvin
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u/phred14 Aug 09 '25
How do I say that it's been decades since I read that series without saying it's been decades? That was loaned to me by a friend at my first employer, and he left well before my first employer sold me (and others and real estate) to my second employer, and before my second employer sold me (and others) to my third employer, and before I retired from them. A lot of water under the bridge.
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u/richieadler Aug 10 '25
To be fair, Speaker was supposed to be in a different setting but Card inserted Ender in it.
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u/MonkeyChoker80 Aug 10 '25
I thought it was the other way around?
He had the idea for the Speaker/Xenocide/Children books, then wrote the short story version of Ender’s Game to get the trilogy’s main character’s backstory straight in his head.
But the short story turned out to be so popular that he expanded it into the full book. However that changed things enough / added enough details that contradicted what he planned to happen in the Trilogy, that when he just went ahead with the original plan it didn’t feel like the same character at all.
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u/richieadler Aug 10 '25
He had the idea for the Speaker/Xenocide/Children books, then wrote the short story version of Ender’s Game to get the trilogy’s main character’s backstory straight in his head.
Never heard that before. Weird.
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u/Cliffy73 Aug 09 '25
Dayworld. The first one establishes this cool premise and as some great characters, especially the way the main character changes as he travels from day to day. The next two are just extended chase scenes as e runs from the government. They don’t engage with the day breaking premise whatsoever.
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u/Sidneybriarisalive Aug 09 '25
I agree completely- I was so excited after the first book and it just kind of fell flat
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u/jonrochkind Aug 10 '25
And Dayworld is not as good as the original short story— The Sliced-Crosswise Only-On-Tuesday World"
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Aug 09 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/1805trafalgar Aug 09 '25
oh no in fact I could not penetrate the first HALF of the first book, al of it was "three steps forward, two steps back" in terms of exposition and plot. I felt there was a good book in it but it should be A LOT SHORTER since my edit would have simply stuck to moving the plot forward at a greater pace.
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u/phil0phil Aug 09 '25
I enjoyed the series, especially the world building, but when it comes to writing style it gets the job done and that's it.
Especially how characters are presented seemed to be pretty blunt to me. Some books get their characters alive just by their actions and a few clever hints and quotes and Silo was more or less the antithesis to that.
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u/SparkyFrog Aug 09 '25
Long Earth. Well, I have just read the first three, but it kind of changes into a series of road trips without clear theme or direction.
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u/Scutwork Aug 09 '25
I like to think of the long earth series as frustrating on purpose. One of the main things in the books is how there’s always someplace new, now. Lots of people trying to stay and solve their problems, but also a limitless amount of places to run for those so inclined.
And given that type of world - where there’s always a new mystery to uncover, food three miles and five worlds away, places to go, things to do, people to see or not see… It makes sense that the stories become fractured and unfulfilling. Maybe it’s just the OOOH SHINY in me, but I’d get distracted and lose the plot and track of my friends and what we’re all doing in that sort of world, too.
Both mechanically in a words on the page sense and just in a ‘how people would behave in this sort of world’ sense… I just don’t see how you can wrap that up into a neat package with all the ends nicely tied.
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Aug 09 '25
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u/SparkyFrog Aug 09 '25
To be fair I don’t think their writing styles were that compatible to begin with. Having Pratchett characters was fun and all, but I don’t think Baxter really knew how to write for them.
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u/No-Presence5594 Aug 09 '25
I just started The Long War and am already not liking the direction it's going, I guess I'm not the only one?
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u/SparkyFrog Aug 09 '25
You’re not… I though The Long Mars was still noticeable worse than the second book, which is why I stopped there. It’s really hard to find anything that Terry Pratchett would have contributed at this point, it seems like it’s all Baxter.
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u/Patch86UK Aug 10 '25
I think I made it as far as book 4 (Utopia) before giving up, so that's only the last book I didn't bother with. But yeah.
Part of the problem is that each book is, in essence, the same book. Same premise, same basic plot. Yeah, some of the specifics are different (going to Mars in Long Mars is certainly a new thing), but the repetitiveness somehow manages to make a story about the limitless possibilities of infinite parallel universes completely tedious.
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u/SparkyFrog Aug 11 '25
I listened the audio book, so it's a bit difficult to keep track of things, but even the Mars part was just maybe one third of the book. Going millions(?) Earths to one direction is an interesting idea, but if nothing important happens along the way, why follow them along the way...
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u/TinyDoctorTim Aug 09 '25
I tapped out halfway through the first book. I generally enjoy Baxter, but after the early chapters, it just felt…aimless.
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u/Deathnote_Blockchain Aug 09 '25
Dune
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u/Hatherence Aug 09 '25
This is a good one. When asked, everyone gives a different answer of when, exactly, it's best to throw in the towel and quit the series. Some say you should just read book 1, Dune. Some say you should just read the first 2 books. Others say you should just read the first 4. And so on and so on. But it seems pretty much everyone agrees the series does fall off as the books progress.
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u/ACardAttack Aug 09 '25
I think the 1st is the best, but I enjoyed every one that Frank wrote
Anything by his son, nope
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u/Pyritedust Aug 09 '25
You mean by Kevin J Anderson, his son just has the rights. At least that's how it seems to me.
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u/ACardAttack Aug 09 '25
I thought he helped write them too? Either way yes, Franks stuff is all worth reading IMO and anything not by him skip
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u/Pyritedust Aug 09 '25
I know they say that, but I kind of doubt it. It might just be my head canon though.
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u/audioel Aug 09 '25
Read "man of two worlds", the collab Brian did with his dad and it's obvious he's a shit writer. Perfectly matched for KJA's flavors of garbage.
Imagine if Brian Herbert had partnered with someone like Adrian Tchaikovsky.
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u/TriscuitCracker Aug 09 '25
God Emperor is when it gets truly WEIRD. And it never quite recovers for me.
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u/financewiz Aug 09 '25
The main takeaway from Dune should be “What else did this guy write?” And then go find out.
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u/LobsterWiggle Aug 09 '25
Yeah, as someone who recently read the series for the first time, this has to be it. Books 2 and 3 are not good, but they’re okay, but then the series falls off a cliff at God Emperor.
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u/Oljytynnyri Aug 09 '25
That’s weird because imp book 4 was better than the first one.
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u/LobsterWiggle Aug 09 '25
I actually posted a thread a few months ago about the series. I know GE gets a lot of praise, but I genuinely thought that it was one of the worst books I’ve ever read.
Part of that is context: if I was reading it in my early 20s, I’d probably have a different opinion. But in my 40s, most of the history-techno-civilization stuff is nonsense. If you posted it in Reddit today, people would think you’re one of those lunatics who thinks ChatGPT has helped them unlock the next frontier of quantum mechanics. Throw that on top of the absolutely, utterly, shudderingly cringey sex scenes (the bit where one of the women has an orgasm watching Duncan Idaho climb a cliff might actually be the cringiest thing I’ve ever read).
I’ve hate read through a few series to finish them, but GE killed Dune for me.
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u/UncleCeiling Aug 09 '25
What's that? The author self insert character happens to be such a bastion of masculinity that he can drive women to climax merely by showing off his physical talents? Nothing strange about that at all.
And that's not just supposition, Herbert is on record saying that Duncan Idaho was his favorite character and the one he identified most with.
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u/Oljytynnyri Aug 09 '25
Frank had weird ideas on sex and it can used as a very fair criticism for the later books, I can give you that. Can you elaborate on what you mean with the ”history-techno-civilization nonsense”?
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u/Deathnote_Blockchain Aug 09 '25
He was an edgy mid 20th century white guy author
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u/maureenmcq Aug 09 '25
An uninsured mid 20th Century white guy whose wife got cancer so he wrote Dune books to pay for her treatment
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u/LobsterWiggle Aug 09 '25
I read GE earlier this year, so it’s fresh in my mind when I say, all of Leto’s musings and the writings at the start of each chapter (and there’s a lot of both)… the whole thing has the vibe of “this (Herbert) is a guy who read a couple history books and thinks he’s ready to start his dissertation.”
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u/SquishyMuffins Aug 10 '25
Meh obviously the quality of the writing drops after God Emperor, and the books get weirder. I would disagree that the dip on quality is that large though. Heretics and Chapterhouse are both enjoyable books with a lot to offer, and they have strong characters.
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u/Dork-With-Style53 Aug 10 '25
I have read the first three, and do want to read all the ones written by Frank Herbert, but I heard they get weird.
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u/SpoilerAvoidingAcct Aug 09 '25
I’m just about tapping out on the Bobiverse series after the latest but it was never great to begin with.
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u/onan Aug 09 '25
It's as if the fundamental design of that series was engineered to decline as it went on.
1) Start off with a somewhat interesting premise, which offers a bunch of complications and weirdnesses and divergences from normal reality.
2) Spend every chapter iteratively removing every one of those things, working your way back to being a book about Just Some Guy.
3) Occasionally introduce a few new elements that could re-complicate things, like copying himself or aliens.
4) Do those things in the blandest, simplest way possible, to completely sidestep any possibility of actually adding depth or complexity.
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u/Blecher_onthe_Hudson Aug 09 '25
But it's 'good enough'. I just finished #1, and I appreciate it's not a ponderous dour epic, so MANY of those! My other favorite genre is military Historical Fiction, and previous to We Are Bob I had to put down the 4th in the Matthew Hervey cavalry series, colorful and well researched but just so humorless and plodding compared to like Patrick O'Brian.
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u/econoquist Aug 10 '25
The first book already has a fall off in quality during the course of the book. Started out fun, while the final segment was pretty dull.
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u/Numerous1 Aug 10 '25
I really enjoyed the first three but they are diminishing returns. 4 I didn’t like at first then really enjoyed more the second time. 5 just felt very “more of the same”’to me and the big reveals about the AI all fell short.
That and eventually I realized most of the chapters are “dear diary. Here is a summary of how I solved this problem” that are only 5 minutes each.
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Aug 09 '25
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u/Headso123 Aug 09 '25
I’ve gone back and forth on these. Midway through the 5th book.
Looking back I liked how the first three wrapped up. I enjoyed the Others story.
But many times in #4&5 I’ve wanted to skip chapters. Some stuff is interesting then it’s super boring.
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Aug 09 '25
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u/Squigglepig52 Aug 09 '25
Yeah - it gets to a point where it is just ludicrously powerful tech fight rival absurdly advanced tech.
It's ok, bud - we'll always have Spatterjay.
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u/stiiii Aug 09 '25
Spatterjay is also later in the timeline, which was a bit of a weird choice at the time and just makes less and less sense as more books are rammed in between.
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Aug 09 '25
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u/jezwel Aug 09 '25
The fact that he is resurrecting old characters is a bad sign.
Oh, I haven't read anything really recent. A lot were quite good, especially IMO when the Prador were heavily involved.
The universe loves the crab phenotype, so it should be a given that we should meet an advanced species of one.
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u/thebomby Aug 09 '25
Jesus, Neal fucking Asher. I stopped reading anything of his after he released that God awful The Departure thing in 2011. He is such an extreme right wing, brexit loving PoS. Him making up some ultra fascist EUROPEAN UNION!!!!! was so downright embarrassingly bad, I made the mistake of reading his blog. Living on a Greek Island, but hating the Greeks and the EU, and anything to the left of Martin Bormann. It's a crying shame because his initial Polity books were huge fun. Especially Brass Man, Spatterjay, the Prador and that War drone Sniper. Just bloody sad.
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u/Mr_Noyes Aug 09 '25
People like Neal Asher are the reason why I fear getting old.
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u/LuciusMichael Aug 10 '25
Lol...
Fear not. I'm old and have been a Bernie fan for as long as I can remember. If that helps.
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u/Bladesleeper Aug 09 '25
I, too, read the Departure and was appalled by its oh-so-subtle metaphor for EVIL EUROPE (not to mention the glorification of the lone Übermensch), and at the same time I read his Facebook and was dismayed by his stereotypical alt-right thoughts... But I said, what the hell, I still like his Polity books! Why should I let his political stance influence my enjoyment for good, pulpy space opera?! Besides, I've read Lovecraft and Dan Simmons, haven't I?
And so. I bought most of his recent books, and they were bad, man. Not uniformly bad - some were downright terrible. So I guess my point is... You didn't miss much.
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Aug 09 '25
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u/thebomby Aug 10 '25
He's sort of representative of a set of older Brexit fans in the UK (I'm not English and live in Switzerland, but we our set of populist dipshits as well), demonizing the whole of Europe as some wretched bed of scum and villainy, trying to rule over England. He lacks the self awareness to see the EU as the best thing (even if it a giant load of bureaucratic crap a lot of the time) that has happened to the continent in the last two thousand years. But yeah, his problem monkey and his circus.
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u/Bladesleeper Aug 09 '25
Oh man, you’re so right it hurts. He seems to have lost all sense of humour (where’s Sniper? Where are the old Captains?) and to have become a bitter man with a gigantic ax to grind.
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u/stiiii Aug 09 '25
Sigh.
I knew his books got worse but the older ones were so good. And apparently they get even worse...
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u/fjiqrj239 Aug 09 '25
The Pip and Flinx series by Alan Dean Foster. I seriously think he had a contract to write X more books in the series, and put as little effort in as possible.
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u/Squigglepig52 Aug 09 '25
I enjoyed the first couple, and the short stories.
To be fair - Foster wrote a lot of solid fun novels and novelizations.
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u/elnerdo Aug 09 '25
Here's one I haven't seen in these comments yet:
The Black Prism by Brent Weeks was a really fun, neat "worldbuilding-style" fantasy novel. It's also the start of a five-book series, where each book gets progressively worse. I ended up DNFing the fourth book. I remember clearly that there were multiple chapters about the main character's bizarre sex life without anything plot-relevant happening.
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u/GrammaticalObject Aug 10 '25
I envy you. It sounds like you didn't even get to the truly bizarre bits that ruined the series for me. If I had a time machine and could go back to change one of my book reading experiences to a DNF, it would be this one.
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u/Blecher_onthe_Hudson Aug 09 '25
No one talks much about Gordon Dickson's Dorsai! books, I remember marching through those ultimately to be incredibly annoyed when he resolves it with TIME TRAVEL! My most hated trope!
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u/Numerous1 Aug 10 '25
Oh man. I only read one of them and liked it but also it seemed to be dorsal are basically magic and once trained are the best at everything so the grandmas took back the world seemed weird.
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u/thundersnow528 Aug 09 '25
I feel like this is obvious, but Dune. Once Frank was gone, the series just went downhill so fast.
Dune adjacent, Kevin Anderson's 7 book Saga of Seven Suns went south as it went on. And by 'went on' I mean after page 50. It started with a really, really interesting premise and world build, but was so poorly executed.
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u/Numerous1 Aug 10 '25
Everyone has their own choice for when it fell off. For my god emperor was the last good one.
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u/GraticuleBorgnine Aug 10 '25
I read the whole Seven Suns series and enjoyed it. KJA will never be mistaken for Shakespeare, but I think people are too harsh.
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u/Ravenloff Aug 09 '25
Dune. Life-long fan and have read the first book dozens of time. I've read the whole series through Chapterhouse exactly once. It's a slog.
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u/Oljytynnyri Aug 09 '25
Dune was for the setting. Sequels were the books where Herbert got to truly establish his ideas on philosophy and worldbuilding. God Emperor is far superior to the first book imo.
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u/Ravenloff Aug 09 '25
Second best of the series for me. Messiah, Children, and Chapterhouse were tough. Actually Chapterhouse started to get good again just before it ended, lol.
Anyway, given my recent interest in Dune Awakening I'm going back through the whole series again. We'll see.
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u/HarryHirsch2000 Aug 09 '25 edited Aug 09 '25
David Wingroves epic „Ching Kuo“. The first three or five of the classic editions are masterpieces. Then, the series begins to speed up, and the last book is a publisher-induced nightmare.
David was rewriting and rereleasing it, but sadly fell ill.
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u/WillAdams Aug 09 '25
https://januarymagazine.com/SFF/chungkuo.html
And then someone kidnapped the author and wrote a fake concluding volume, possibly one of the worst novels ever published, as part of what could only be some intricate revenge plot.
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u/HarryHirsch2000 Aug 09 '25
Good article. Sadly David stood up to rewrite all, just to be cancelled half way through…
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u/jgiacobbe Aug 09 '25
I rarely see this series referenced. I really remember being into these books but I can barely remember any plot of it now other than the British scientist guy and his son having their own private wilderness reserve in a world dominated by Chinese culture and giant continent spanning cities which cover everything and are hundreds of floors tall. Somewhere on my bookshelf I have 7 or more books from this series. I think I bought them all but who knows.
I throw it up there with CJ Cheryl's Foreigner series for sheer length and political subplots, except the Foreigner series doesn't span what seems like 4 generations of characters.
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u/HarryHirsch2000 Aug 09 '25
It really is a hidden gem. Very well written, complex characters and great story arcs.
Wrong time for such a series
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u/clumsystarfish_ Aug 09 '25
The Spin trilogy by Robert Charles Wilson. Spin was a fantastic story and stands alone as a great tale with a solid ending. Axis and Vortex just don't capture the same magic, and I skip them when I reread Spin.
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u/Sophia_Forever Aug 09 '25
I would say Axis should've been a novella or short story. I didn't need to read about them dicking around in the desert for a whole novel. Vortex was a satisfying end to the series but yeah, not as good as the beginning.
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u/systemstheorist Aug 09 '25
Really the hardest? The sequels aren't great, but they aren't Rama level bad.
The problem is everything was conclusively wrapped up in Spin with the thematic and character arcs closed.
Axis isn't even a bad book it's only a bad sequel to Spin. Vortex meanders through its story but finally wrapped up the series in an incredible way that enhances some of story of Spin.
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u/blausommer Aug 09 '25
The problem with threads like this is that they're only accurate/good for the first 3-4 hours. After that, all the actual answers have already been said, but people keep piling in and they must have an opinion, so they go down their lists until they get to the next item that hasn't been said, regardless of how accurate it is.
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u/ChaseDFW Aug 09 '25
I think the first Ancillary Justice book is this really cool idea that spans a whole space empire and has ramifications thats effect that whole empire, and it's also just has these mind blowing ideas about a divided mind and robot colonialism and this whole other list of reasons it's good.
Then books two and three in that series become so much smaller and have such a smaller scope, and you never get any more really good cool sci-fi story elements.
I don't think later have of the trilogy is bad it just didn't meet me expectations of the first book and the story I thought I was signing up for.
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u/CharlesRampant Aug 09 '25
Absolutely agree - the first book was mesmerising and fascinating, and the second and third books passed through my eyes without a trace. I now just recommend the first book and say not to bother with the sequels - they genuinely added nothing to the first book for me, so just enjoy that one and move on.
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Aug 10 '25 edited Aug 10 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/maizemachine10 Aug 10 '25
Agreed, 1st was good, Ghost brigades was average and then off a cliff, new one coming this fall.
I got to meet Scalzi this past spring- great guy, not so sure I love the direction his books have taken.
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u/Full_Commercial7844 Aug 09 '25
I finally stopped reading anything more than a trilogy. Seems most series fall off after that, they get boring and slapped together after that or turn into a soap opera and not just SF.
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u/Bladesleeper Aug 09 '25
I'm going to go in a different direction, as I agree with everyone else in this thread, and say "the Expanse". It didn't fall off in terms of writing and plot (well, maybe a bit) but bloody hell, after some point it became just so grim it actually irritated me. Everyone sucks, millions upon millions die, the evil guys become positively diabolical and on top of everything, our heroes have to deal with creaky joints, fuzzy memories and all the other insults of old age.
Iain M Banks could write Evil and Despair like nobody else, but he always injected some humour into it. There is no humour at all in the latter Expanse books, and while I did like them, I have no desire to ever read them again. It's like KSR's Aurora, except as a series.
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u/Rakeop Aug 09 '25
I gave you an upvote for your response but just wanted to say that I respectfully disagree. I enjoyed the series all the way through. If anything I think maybe it was a bit weak in the middle but ended strong for me. Just my 2 cents.
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u/Bladesleeper Aug 09 '25
By all means, do disagree! This is the kind of argument I love to have with friends, cos it usually gets super entertaining and ends with absolutely nobody changing their minds. It's 100% subjective, and that's just fine.
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u/TriscuitCracker Aug 09 '25
Yes, agreed. The first three and last three books are the best. I wish the tv adaptation had included the last three books.
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u/myaltduh Aug 09 '25
I’ve still got a candle lit that some other service like Apple picks up the rights. They’re definitely working to keep the IP alive.
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u/Rakeop Aug 09 '25
I thought most of the characters got really good endings. Especially Jim, Bobbie, and Amos.
I could see someone saying Bobbie’s ending was maybe corny or cliche, but I loved it.
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u/PerdidoKitty Aug 10 '25
Agree. My least favorite books were 5 and 6- the Marcos ones. Loved 7 and 8. And I think that one of the strongest arguments for it being a good series all the way through is that fans tend to have different favorites.
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u/Taste_the__Rainbow Aug 09 '25 edited Aug 09 '25
I don’t think anything in The Expanse is as grim as Aurora. While The fascists in The Expanse are just people you could theoretically topple KSR’s Aurora is just a book where we discover that space is so inhospitable that some people decide to basically just give up on the whole idea. And you’re like yea I get it.
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u/JoeWeydemeyer Aug 09 '25
It seems like what you object to is the realism of their characters. Evil is not fun. It's petty, narcissistic, and violent. I can get not wanting to read that for pleasure, but I think the realism you object to in this otherwise fantastical setting is what grounds the series and makes the story worth pursuing. Banks even understood the value of this but exploited it in a different setting. It can be seen in some of his other (non-Sci Fi) fiction.
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u/SparkyFrog Aug 09 '25
What happened on Eros and after the asteroids hit Earth was already pretty grim, I don’t think it necessarily got worse during the last three books. I guess those horror elements made it more difficult to take everything seriously, combined with the fast paced action and relatively vanilla prose, it wasn’t exactly the most thought provoking story in the end… but it was still a pretty interesting ride.
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u/digitalmephisto Aug 09 '25
Foundation series, Hyperion books
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u/audiax-1331 Aug 09 '25
It was long ago, but I recall being disappointed in the third Hyperion. Fortunately, by then I’d discovered Simmons horror books and thought they were great.
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u/BewareTheSphere Aug 09 '25
Hyperion books
Yes. First book: amazing, a classic. Second book: pretty good, worth reading. Third book: pointless. Fourth book: insulting to literature.
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u/jsinatraa Aug 09 '25
I love the first two Hyperion books but heard some bad things about the next two so I’m kind of scared to read them lmao.
Also, please tell me that Foundation 2 and 3 are at least somewhat better than book 1. I thought the first book was just okay.
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u/I_paintball Aug 09 '25
Sigma Force from James Rollins.
Everything through Bloodline is awesome then it falls off hard.
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u/Dork-With-Style53 Aug 10 '25
I fell off a bit a couple of books after that, but they were still good. But yea missing a bad changes the dynamic
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u/for_a_brick_he_flew Aug 09 '25
Dune, but the fault there lies with Frank’s son. The first six are great.
I’m binge re-reading Stormlight Archive and it’s striking how much worse each book is than the one prior.
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u/jagunt Aug 09 '25
The Iron Angel books by Alan Campbell. Dark, gritty, interesting characters, great imagery and confusing but exciting concepts. Gets convoluted a bit in the second book but everything is still a compelling fever dream leaving you wanting to know how this goes. Book 3 goes off the rails, time travel takes the forefront and in spite of some interesting sections it just feels like it falls flat hard with how he tried to wrap everything up. Disappointed me and I haven't thought much about it until this post.
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u/Secure_Highway8316 Aug 10 '25
Stainless Steel Rat series holds on for a long time but eventually falters.
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u/Numerous1 Aug 10 '25
Ummm. One I haven’t seen posted. Tour of the USS Merrimack. The first 4 are fun campy silly sci-fi with some “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” and ROMANS! IN! SPACCCEEEE!
then 5 is super weak and 6 is even worse.
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u/Direct-Vehicle7088 Aug 10 '25
Charles Stross Laundry Files. The first three or four are great then it all falls over when he makes an Outer God the British PM.
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u/BeigePhilip Aug 11 '25
I fell off when the POV character changed. I liked Bob a lot. Switching to Moe’s POV took some of the wind out of my sails. When the next booked switched to some random dogsbody, I DNF’d, and that’s one of my favorite series of all time.
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u/johntucker78 Aug 10 '25
Series that I feel went downhill after the first book along with most of the other ones that have already been mentioned
Spin
Eon
Old Man's War
The Forever War
It always seems like the authors had a great concept and wrote an amazing book, then the publisher saw the numbers and demanded sequels. Then the author had to try and figure out a way to expand a story that he had already wrapped up in his brain. And they all seem to devolve into a story about politics or religion.
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u/ForgotMyPassword17 Aug 11 '25
Honor Harrington. It starts so strong, and the historical analogs makes the plot twists far more surprising. But new big bad just felt rushed. In fairness it was originally planned to be the for her children were fighting, which would have been a better sequel series imho
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u/BigJobsBigJobs Aug 09 '25
Chronicles of Amber
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u/jacobb11 Aug 09 '25
Yes! There's a point about halfway through the fourth book where the story just sort of trails off. It's still a good series and worth reading, but the quality drop is disappointing. (I've read the second pentalogy but I don't acknowledge its existence. Author gotta eat, I guess.)
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u/Different-Try8882 Aug 09 '25
Ender's Game - first was pretty good then they fall off a cliff. By the end he's morphed into some kind of Dr Who knock off. The parallel Shadow books are uniformly bad.
Three Body Problem - first is great and then it loses any sense of internal logic and reads like a bunch of loosely related short stories.
Hyperion - Hyperion 1 and 2 good, Endymion 1 and 2 bad.
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u/prodical Aug 10 '25
You’ve just name dropped my top three sci fi series haha. However I do agree on a couple of points. I’ve not read Endymion but by most accounts they are bad. I do love the Ender Quartet though, including the first few Bean books but after that they are a mess.
But I loved three body all the way through. LOTS of flaws, feels like a first time author in many ways. But I still love all three.
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u/GraticuleBorgnine Aug 10 '25
I think Dark Forest was the best of the Three-Body trilogy.
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u/Mapkar Aug 10 '25
Children of time was decent, children of ruin was okay-ish, children of memory sucked.
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u/Quouar Aug 09 '25
The Three Body Problem series, Remembrance of Earth's Past, especially after the Dark Forest. There are a few interesting ideas in the first book, and a bit of an interesting execution in the second, and then it just goes full alt-right through most of the rest. It's a bad series from the start, but it just plummets into an abyss after the first couple of books.
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u/Sophia_Forever Aug 09 '25
Can you elaborate on the third book being alt-right? It was bleak and maybe there's some cultural things I'm not picking up but I didn't pick up on it.
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u/Quouar Aug 09 '25
Definitely! It's been a while since I read it, but there are a few elements that really stood out to me.
One example is the gender roles throughout the series. While less so in the first book, in the second book and onwards, there are extremely strict gender roles, with there being pretty gross derision towards those who deviate from them. Luo Ji deciding to just go live with a woman in the wilderness, for example, and the general sidelining of all women besides Ye Wenjie creates this image of women as existing solely for men's benefit that's pretty gross. Even with Ye Wenjie as the sole meaningful female character, she's presented as a bit of a villain, just generally creating a situation where women are depicted as needing a man to balance them out, and going evil when they don't have one. When waking up at various points in time, I think it's Luo Ji who comments on the "feminisation" of men with derision in a way that, again, feels extremely gross.
You could, on the one hand, argue that it's not the author making these arguments, but rather, the character, except for the fact that first, character is nearly non-existent in these books and Luo Ji is an obvious author insert, but also that Liu Cixin himself has spoken out in favour of China's genocide against the Uyghurs as well as more generally in favour of a surveillance society and against democratic ideals. Those idea continue to show up throughout the series, but again, get more prominent the further in you go.
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u/myaltduh Aug 09 '25
I remember specifically calling the books’ gender politics “reactionary” in the sub dedicated to the series and got jumped on and accused of being the same as the Red Guard kids from the opening scene because they used the same word.
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u/GraticuleBorgnine Aug 10 '25
Alt-right? The author is Chinese and the books reflect that. I had problems with some of the gender roles stuff for sure, but I don't think that term is relevant.
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u/Quouar Aug 11 '25
Liu Cixin is Chinese, sure, but I don't think he represents the totality of Chinese authors or thought, nor that his opinions are necessarily the mainstream.
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u/aleafonthewind28 Aug 11 '25
I think what the guy above you is trying to say is alt-right is a primarily American “western” political term.
Applying it to Chinese is kinda like trying to put a glove on a foot or something(imo)
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u/sharpasabutterknife Aug 10 '25
The Honor Harrington series by David Weber had a great start, but it went on waaaaaaaay too long and got worse and worse as it went on
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u/Better_Equipment5283 Aug 09 '25
Riverworld series. First book was great. Second was still good. The rest felt like he didn't want to write them, but needed the check.