Breaking the Author/Reader Contract.

[Khynal]

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

Kevin J. Anderson.

*cheers* The man mangles anything he touches. I read a book he wrote under a pseudonym, couldn't believe how bad it was. When I read the author's blurb and saw the name was a pseudonym for him and someone else, it all made nightmarish sense.

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

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.

Omigosh--ditto. I read the first 250 pages and could not finish the book. If I read 50 pages or more, I finish the book. This was the one exception.

And it had no to do with the "unpleasantness" of the main character (at least, not consciously). I mean, I don't even remember the rape. I just remember being bored to tears.

 

[Dark Psion]

Well, as I am re-reading the Dark Sun "Tribe of One" books, I would point out the "Fourth" book in this trilogy , the Broken Blade, as an excellent example of how to truly piss off a reader.

Let's kill off the characters we learned to love in the three previous books, completly change the hero into someone else and ignore all that came before.

I can't belive it was written by the same author as the prevous three, Simon Hawke.

 

[takyris]

There is a contract, whether you like it or not. The way a book begins sets up expectations in the reader's mind -- THAT'S the contract. A beginning is a promise. It says, "Here's what kind of story I'm going to tell you."

Exactly. That's a great way of putting it. I don't really enjoy romance novels as a general rule -- my wife does, and I don't intellectually think that a good romance novel is in any way worse than a good fantasy or mystery novel -- but it's not what I choose to read. So when a story starts off as a fantasy novel, talking about a magical kingdom and spells and such, and then turns into a magnanimously cheesy romance novel with a few fantasy trappings, that breaks the contract. (And this is coming from someone who tries to write stuff that crosses genres -- I try to make something work in both genres, not start in one and then change into another halfway through teh book. I don't always succeed, either.)

On the Feist-irk, Macros' speech (and subsequent revision thereof) broke the Mentor's Story trope -- if an ancient and mysterious figure who has taken on a mentorshop role for the heroes finally tells his life story, and it's longer than a page or two, you should be able to trust that.

Anderson, I think, breaks the contract by changing the rules and tropes the other authors (Lucas included) established. He tosses in a few flavor-bits that show he's watched the movies, but nothing that shows any of the sense of wonder of Lucas or even Zahn (who often made the Force a bit more rational and reasonable, but who nevertheless kept it deliberately mysterious in a few areas).

In the Spelljammer series -- the one with, erm, Teldin Moore? -- I felt that the contract got broken in enough small ways over the course of the books that I ended up giving up. I think I got through book three or four -- the one where some elves turned into monsters because of gems in their heads or something. All I really remember is looking at the author's section and realizing that the books had been written by different people, and they apparently didn't want to play nice together. The hero's friends at the end of one book would have simply decided to leave at the beginning of the next book, and I think I recall powers that worked in the last book would mysteriously fail in the next book. It felt disjointed -- possibly not a major break in any way, but enough tiny breaks that it never established a consistent feel or any consistent characters except for the protagonist...

 

[kerakus]

Dragonlance and breaking the contract...

I think a series of books holds to the same contract principle as a single book. The first few books, you learn to expect certain things. Again, breaking the contract in a good way that takes the series in an interesting new direction can work, but sometimes it just all goes wrong.

Dragonlance, for example. Chronicles and Legends got me into the fantasy genre and D&D. They form the cornerstone of my fantasy mindset the way Tolkien does for most people. But I never got a chance to read Dragons of Summer Flame until a couple years ago....and it is one of those books I wish I had never read. It seems, to me, that Weis Hickman wrote the book with the specific intent of killing the setting. And the book itself breaks the expectation contract by setting up a potentially interesting epic battle with Chaos in the beginning...and then ruins it completely with cheesy deaths for heroes from the original series, letting evil overrun the world and allowing the main bad guy to get taken down by dumb luck and a kender. It is my belief that the book was written because Weis and Hickman wanted to ruin their world for TSR. I have never read anything Dragonlance published after Dragons of Summer of Flame, nor do I intend to.

Q

 

[Cthulhudrew]

The last was the re-release of the Elric Saga by WW where a major charecter (Moonglum) was written out. that was just wrong

Just out of curiosity, this is the second time I've heard of this happening recently, but I don't know anything more. How did they write out Moonglum, and was this a decision by Moorcock?

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

Just out of curiosity, this is the second time I've heard of this happening recently, but I don't know anything more. How did they write out Moonglum, and was this a decision by Moorcock?

Moorcock made the decision. He has a habit of tweaking his books when they are rereleased, and for this release, he wrote new sections connecting the novels, changed the order of a few things, and rewrote a few things. Sort of like George Lucas.

If you look at the different editions of almost any of Moorcocks books, especially between the US & UK editions, there are small changes all over the place. This time, he made a few bigger changes, probably for the worse.

 

[jasper]

... 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.
....

Jasper grabs his long handle pewter spoon and whacks Cthulhu's Librarian. over the head.
Bad bad bad boy.
So you are part of reason for so many car payment books. As in author had to make a car payment so he dash out a story for a series which sucks.

 

[Umbran]

But I never got a chance to read Dragons of Summer Flame until a couple years ago....and it is one of those books I wish I had never read. It seems, to me, that Weis Hickman wrote the book with the specific intent of killing the setting.
...
It is my belief that the book was written because Weis and Hickman wanted to ruin their world for TSR.

Um, quite the opposite, I expect.

Dragons of Summer Flame was published in 1996. That's the same year that TSR converted Dragonlance over to the SAGA rules system. Seems to me the novel was designed to facilitate the rules change, rather than to kill the setting.

Mind you, as far as I've heard, changing Dragonlance over to SAGA was a bad idea, but that's a separate issue. It looks like Weis and Hickman were doing pretty much what TSR wanted them to do.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

Jasper grabs his long handle pewter spoon and whacks Cthulhu's Librarian. over the head.
Bad bad bad boy.
So you are part of reason for so many car payment books. As in author had to make a car payment so he dash out a story for a series which sucks.

Hey! Stop it! That hurts!

I was just trying to make a living, I didn't negotiate the damn contracts! I was an Assistant Editor, not one of the big guys.
(But I often got requests from authors to rush their signing payments through so they could make their mortgage payments...)