Breaking the Author/Reader Contract.

[nikolai]

This is inspired by a post made by takyris elsewhere. When you start reading a book, the author and the reader have a sort of contract. The author has to work within certain limits, which are set by the readers expectations. So the main character can't wake up to find everything's a dream, and so on. This is particularly the case in genre literature: detective fiction, fantasy, etc.

So, what moves by authors have totally ruined your enjoyment of a book or series you otherwise liked?

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

The author has to work within certain limits, which are set by the readers expectations.

I have to disagree with you on this. If an author has to work within the constraints set up by readers, there would never be any innovative books written. I actually LIKE when an author makes me push the boundaries of my expectations. Sure, reading books that are comfortable and predictable can be enjoyable as well, but I'd much rather read something that makes me think outside the box. The author is the one leading the reader, not the other way around. When an author ends up writing only what their readers expect, the quality of the writing usually drops. You can often see this when an author continually comes back to older series that sold well, because he knows that new books in the series will sell as well. But the stories are often unoriginal, frequently written only to bring back a familiar character or place because the author & publisher know that it will sell.

I'm not just making things up here. I used to work as an assistant editor at HarperCollins Publishers in the science fiction division. We had several authors whose books were purchased only with the guarantee in their contracts that they would write another book set in XYZ series that they had already finished, because we knew that while the new book might not sell, a return to a familiar series would be a guaranteed money maker.

I am not by any means saying that there are not authors who can't return again and again to a series and continually surprise and delight me. the one that springs to mind right away is Terry Pratchett and the Discworld series. Each book, while set in the same world with the same revolving set of characters, is a new and unique story. He rarely treads the same ground, and thats why his fans are rabid about the books. Familiar, but at the same time unique in some major way.

So, what moves by authors have totally ruined your enjoyment of a book or series you otherwise liked?

Orson Scott Card-Heartfire
OSC took a series that had been exciting and original in the first 3 books, ok in the 4th book, and made it downright boring in the 5th book. I haven't bothered to pick up the 6th, and doubt that I ever will.

 

[takyris]

This is inspired by a post made by takyris elsewhere.

Hey, I inspired something other than mild exasperation and a healthy fear of Pepsi!

[quote[ When you start reading a book, the author and the reader have a sort of contract. The author has to work within certain limits, which are set by the readers expectations.[/quote]

I'd add to that the idea that the author is free to break any of those that he can get away with. The ultimate decision rests with the individual reader. If it all turns out to be a dream, and most of the readers say, "Wow, he did that so skillfully, and it completely works in the context of this story," then that's fine.

So, what moves by authors have totally ruined your enjoyment of a book or series you otherwise liked?

- The ones I mentioned in the other thread, to start with -- Dan Brown's breaking of POV rules in order to hide information that we should have had based on whose viewpoint we were in, and Feist's "Oh, wait, I made all that stuff from the earlier book up," monologue when he brought Macros the Black back from the dead.

- Midichlorians. Get your pseudo-hard-SF garbage out of my space fantasy.

 

[Welverin]

- Midichlorians. Get your pseudo-hard-SF garbage out of my space fantasy.

I believe he did, note they weren't mentioned in Ep2 and I suspect we'll never hear of them again.

 

[Mouseferatu]

and Feist's "Oh, wait, I made all that stuff from the earlier book up," monologue when he brought Macros the Black back from the dead.

Oh God, don't remind me.

I'm still not 100% convinced that the world doesn't have two Raymond Feists. Or maybe he was replaced by a cloned twin doppleganger from the mirror universe. It's inconceivable to me that the same man who wrote the Riftwar Saga--perhaps a bit cliched and traditional, but still one of the better fantasy series from my youth--is the same man who produced the nigh-unreadable Serpentwar Saga.

I've actually enjoyed some of his other later stuff (like the Legacy of Krondor series, although I'm furious at him for moving on to something else before finishing it), so I know it's not that his talent deserted him. I don't know what the deal was with that.

Another book is Villains by Necessity. Can't think of the author off-hand. The premise is that all the evil in the world has been defeated except for a small group of vilains, who are responsible for bringing things back into balance. Leaving aside the fact that I've always hated that twee and artificial definition of "balance," the book doesn't deliver on its promise. The villains don't come across as evil, just arrogant, spoiled, and annoying. The author finds every possible excuse to keep them from doing evil things, probably so that the reader will continue to sympathize. (Which I didn't.) And the forces of "good" are pretty much jerks themselves, which throws the entire setup into question. So the author fails to deliver on the very premise of the book.

Bleah.

 

[takyris]

I believe he did, note they weren't mentioned in Ep2 and I suspect we'll never hear of them again.

But that's not what I want. "Not mentioned" doesn't satisfy me, because I know that it's still the default. In "Empire Strikes Back", Master Yoda should help Luke gain confidence by saying, "There, there. Readings I have taken. Enough midichlorians you have the X-Wing to lift."

What I want is for Episode 3 to have Senator Palpatine say, "Ignorant fools! You had no idea how powerful I was, because you measured the power of the Force in midichlorians. They are only microorganisms attracted to the Force, not a measure of the Force itself. By simple medical treatments I cleansed them from my system, so that none of you would ever know the extent of my dark power!" Explain it and then give us a legitimate reason to put it in the closet and never look at it again.

And while we're on the subject of ruining the Star Wars universe...

Kevin J. Anderson.

This is probably a matter of taste. I was so jazzed after the Zahn books came out -- the Force was handled well as a beautiful and mysterious thing. And then Anderson comes in and gives us a headset that can measure the Force in people, as well as Luke throwing out inappropriate Yoda quotes and letting his Jedi students become Sith masters under his nose, all the while throwing out more and more powerful Force stuff that turned Star Wars into Dragonball Z.

One of my favorite comebacks is the Zahn two-book series that essentially serves as a response to Anderson. Luke gets ready to mind-control some Imperials or rip their Tie-Fighter control systems apart from miles away, and he sees the ghost of the Emperor laughing at him. And when he talks to Mara Jade about it, she says, "Duh! Look at all the screwups you've had while using the Force in more and more physical ways. You let your students turn into Sith masters!" Zahn also retcons the entire section where Anderson ignores what Zahn had previously set up between Mara and Luke in order to have Lando and Mara hook up by having Mara inform Luke that it was just a big trick they were using to travel incognito.

That is how you redeem a universe.

(At least until the prequels came out.)

 

[Berandor]

"Die rache des Samurai" (Revenge of the Samurai) from Jürgen Dallüge is such a book. It details the last contract of a killer. Not only is it written excrutiatingly bad, but the killer has NOTHING to do with Samurai, their code, not even ties to Japan, he does not take Revenge... nothing.

And to top it off, amazon didn't publish my bad review for it (0 stars), so that this book still has a 4-star rating with one review.

 

[Umbran]

When you start reading a book, the author and the reader have a sort of contract. The author has to work within certain limits, which are set by the readers expectations.

Yes and no.

There is a sort fo contract, but it is only partially binding. There are some expectatiosn and conventiosn the author is expected to fulfill - except when he has a really good reason to break them. Some of the greatest prose, poetry, music, theatre, TV, etc. was created by the selected breaking of the rules.

The question isn't whether the author broke the rules and defied expectations. The question is if they did it well.

 

[Harp]

So, what moves by authors have totally ruined your enjoyment of a book or series you otherwise liked?

Well, I'd only modify the question slightly with "otherwise would have liked". But the language you used in setting up your question is nearly the exact language I've used to describe why I couldn't make it through the first book of Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant books, despite the series' accolades. I realize that the author was challenging the reader with the...well, let's just call it "unpleasantness" of the protagonist, but I just wasn't up to the challenge. I respect the effort, but Donaldson just took it out of my comfort zone.

 

[Wombat]

I expunge many such books (and, more often, movies) from my mind.

OTOH, I feel the need to tell of a book that succesfully drops the wall between author and reader -- If On A Winter's Night A Traveler... by Italo Calvino. The book is a series of "first chapters" from a variety of styles of books, with the author occasionally breaking in with commentary about how you might or might not be enjoying the books -- perhaps this part confuses you, do you have the right mood music on?, what happened to that interesting character back a couple of chapters ago?, I have assumed up until know that you are a male reader, but if you are male, you might have a different appreciation, etc.

Then again, I like Calvino mainly for his playfulness -- his writings by themselves might still convince me to learn Italian!