You’ll have to excuse me, but I feel inclined to do a little ranting today.  Usually, that’s Alex’s job, but he has been oddly indifferent as of recent.

Just yesterday I finished reading the newest book by Michael Crichton, called “Next.” Being a long-time sci-fi nerd, I had gone into this book hoping for something tantamount to Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, Timeline, and other such books I enjoyed during my squandered childhood and adolescence.  This novel was supposed to be about the perils of technology pushed to a dangerous extreme, with the scary monsters and the chaos theory and the theoretical science enhanced to a point that it becomes interesting… so, basically, like just about every other Michael Crichton novel ever written.  What it actually focused on was the soulless scientists of academia, money-grubbing lawyers, and a bunch of asshole Californians, with the occasional talking monkey or bird thrown in for cuteness.

To make things worse, it would seem that MC inserted numerous large, cumbersome chunks of preach into his book as part of his apparent shift from sci-fi author/network drama writer to self-righteous pundit-bastard.  To put icing on the cake, not one of the characters was even remotely likable (except maybe the Dave the amazing talking chimp-boy), and the writing was bad enough to rate an 8.5 on the Harry Turtledove scale of shittitude (my own writing is about 9, and Harry Turtledove's is 11).

What disturbs me most is that this book has brought me to realize that practically every author I ever liked has turned to shit.  They always start out great, but then seem to spiral downward into a realm of laziness and/or self-importance, abandoning all forms of editing and using their novels as platforms for venting their shitty political viewpoints and pent up sexual frustration.  Believe it or not, Steven King and David Morrell used to write good books, and a decent portion of the earlier works of Robert Heinlein and Frank Herbert weren’t full of nauseatingly graphic orgies and genital description.  In fact, as we speak, one of my favorite authors, Neil Stephenson, has just officially made the leap from writing frantically paced cyber-punk awesome-fests to morbidly obese 3000 page behemoths with literally 100’s of pages of unending description (ca. 1687 Dutch place settings, enlightenment era commerce, etc.). 

God help me, I’m even willing to admit that the majority of the first 2-3 Wheel of Time books were well worth reading, and seemed to indicate some sort of resolution was, indeed, possible.  However, this turned out to be an elaborate farce to make Robert Jordan richer by tricking me into buying the following twelve dictionary-sized books in the series… and it worked for a while.  I plowed through the next three books as a result of shear momentum, and then forced myself to read just a few more, convincing myself to “stay the course”, lest the sacrifices made by the 10’s of 1000’s of brain cells killed in previous incursions be for naught.  I made it through book #9 before I started hurling them through plate glass windows and repeatedly punching myself in the face as a form of self-punishment.  I’ve actually started slapping WoT books out of people’s hands and screaming in their faces “DON’T DO IT!  ITS NOT WORTH IT!”

So, my question is this:  Are all these authors just getting shittier and shittier, or have they always been shitty, and I’ve just recently reached my tolerance for bad writing in general?  If I go back and re-read “Ender’s Game” or “Eaters of the Dead” or “Snowcrash,” will I come across blatantly political rhetoric, disjointed and aimless plots, or 80 page long descriptions of pants? 

Maybe I’ll just stop reading altogether and devote more time to playing each of the 15 or so football games released this year, or watching more shows about things exploding (thank you, Discovery channel, for broadening my horizons).  Yeah, that’s what I’ll do.  Reading is for chuuuuumps! GIG ‘EM TEXAS AGGIES!!!