How About The WORST Naval/Submarine You've Ever Read?

[AntEater]

It isnt Naval or Submarine, but it is the worst
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/SF-Archives/Misc/eyeargon.html

The Eye Of Argon by Jim Theis (1970), considered to be the worst SciFi/Fantasy story ever.

[Grayback]

Originally Posted by Radtgaeb

I abhor Crush Depth or any other Joe Buff Novel.....

I'm still cringing from the stupidity of the conflict in the book and the awful cheesy...ugh, you just have to read it to understand the awfulness!

Buff's books are a guilty pleasure of mine - I've only read two: "Crush Depth" and (last spring) "Seas of Crisis". I don't take them seriously, and each has its lagging points. Still I hold them a cut above most.

[Grayback]

[quote=TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by Subnuts

Just so no one has to read any of Robisons books after HMS Unseen let me boil them down for you: Arnold Morgan is your one and true GOD, Democrats hate America, everyone but Americans (and occasonly the English) are all inferior, and the US Navy doesn't know a Russian attack sub from its own @$$ holes unless Arnold Morgan tells them what to do.

Are these books a joke, a strange parody of reality or is this guy serious?

I could never go for the parody theory because Robinson's books lack two essential elements needed for effective satire: 1st they're boring. What's the point of a story with a message that you sleep through? Robinson's stories are belabored with mindless minutiae that are often so irrelevant, they're almost unreadable. In Barracuda you get set up for this great hunt for the rogue missile sub - instead you get this prolonged and pointless diatribe against democrats. Earlier in the book, the main character has a sit-down with these Ayatollahs to get them to bankroll his venture to attack the USA - but before we get there, Robinson has the character observe an Iranian missile boat, noting that it carries missiles powered by engines built on Toulouse.

2nd - satire or parody work well when you get the idea that the subjects of the parody are the story's punchline. Instead, the Robinson's own writing is his biggest joke - plot ideas that go nowhere, a singleminded obsession with what people are eating (ironically, the principals can afford fine cuisine - you'd think the economy would have been beaten senseless by the many geopolitical reversals occurring in Robinson's books) and despite his being hailed for his realism, a habit for getting it horribly wrong (ensign junior grade? British Commandos on patrol with Israeli troops in the West Bank? cruise missiles used against aerial targets?)

Those are my reasons for concluding PR's horrible writing to be something other than parody, but I've got two others for why he's so bad. Beside his overheated (frequently pompous) prose, it's the plot-holes that dog each of his books:

In Nimitz Class we've got a CV nuked by a single SSK, just the sort of target that the carrier's screen and ASW planes should have picked up;

In Kilo Class, we've got the US in a huff because the Chinese are getting Kilo SSK's (even the Russians call them "Kilo"?) which could effectively shut the entire USN out of any invasion of Taiwan - by the end KC, a single US sub has singlehandedly sunk about 6 of the subs, including 2 submerged and part of a convoy that includes both surface ships and russian nuclear boat. The Russians, who are transporting the subs, obligingly try screening the Kilo's behind purposefully roiled water - the noisemaking proves better at shielding the US Sub from the convoy than it does the Kilo from the US Sub.

In Barracuda, Hamas (!?) buys a nuclear sub that they plan on only using once - they could have just used a tramp freighter loaded with missiles.

And lastly (because I haven't gotten to Ghost Force yet) Hunter Killer takes the cake. A Saudi Prince has had it with his country's current regime because of its financial destabilization and the West's subversion of it, colludes with France to subvert and financially destabilize his country. The French, knowing this will be a covert operation, make sure that the commando Jacque Gamoodi is enlisted by two top officials who tell him (and his wife) everything (right down to the Saudi Prince who got everything rolling). The planned operation has Saudi Arabia collapsing under the very sort of attacks you'd think they'd have anticipated (cruise missile attacks against petro-industrial targets; guerrila attacks against airbases, etc) and despite the fact that a number of French took part in the attack, the only person the French treat as a liability is Gamoodi. Plotholes big enough to sail the Red October through.

[Chock]

Cussler's novels are fun, they aren't too taxing on the brain and generally whack along at a fair old pace, a bit 'Boy's Own' it is true, but I kind of like that as they seem to have no pretensions of being anything other than that, especially when he puts himself in them as an incidental character, which is indicative of not taking yourself too seriously. They remind me of the Biggles books by Capt. W.E. Johns in that sense, which incidentally, have a lot of great WW1 historical detail in them for all their 'thrash the Hun' mentality.

Cussler's books are a decent 'holiday read', and again they transfer well to celuloid, with Sahara being a great, fun film. I suspect Black Wind (another one with the same character in it) would make a good, fun movie too.

Chock

[Linton]

I saw Sahara in a flea pit cinema in Florida.My ticket cost me 50 cents.I think that was 40 cents more than it was worth.

[Iron Budokan]

Oh, I have quite a list of stinkers. Here are a few off the top of my head:

Patriot Games. It was the last Clancy novel I've read. Really lousy. Badly written, plot based on dangerously simplistic ideas that wouldn't be operative in Whoville, laughable characterization that wouldn't work in a 1925 Erich von Stroheim silent film, poorly conceived resolution with a typical Hollywood ending. An all around bad book on every conceivable level. Never read him since; have no intention to try him again.

I also read Crush Depth. Truly laughable. I'm a professional science fiction writer and this wouldn't pass the smell test in any SF publishing house I know since it purports to take place in an alternate future history. Filled with howlers, but the best one: This novel takes place in the near future, but Americans are listening to music from the 1940s because they're at war and they feel nostalgic. That wouldn't even fly in Whoville, fellas. Also, the ill-conceived alliance between South Africa and France. Anyone who took an introductory class in poli-sci would spot the holes in that one. Having said that, the fights between the subs was cool, along with the environmental factors considered, though the people manning the hardware were never more than cardboard cutouts.

Islands in the Stream by Hemingway. Hemingway, for God's sake! But, boy, does this one suck canal water even though the hero is hunting a u-boat. Save yourself the grief and give it a pass.

The Harry Potter books. Total garbage. Lousy writing. Embarrassing on a whole new scale of embarrassing hack writers who have no talent and sell a lot of books. Rowling has no pull whatsoever in the fantasy genre, either, despite her phenomenal sales. Despite her sales nothing she has written has had any impact on the genre as a whole, which is astonishing. I don't know of one professional fantasy writer who thinks she has talent. No, seriously. And it's not sour grapes; she really is just a hack who struck lightening.

Critique of Pure Reason by Kant. Kill yourself first.

But the number one worst book on my Worst Book List:

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

[Chock]

Well I'm glad there is another professional writer out there who agrees with me on JK Rowling.

Agree with you on Clancy too (as it seems a lot of others on this forum do, which kind of surprised me a little bit, given the subject matter, guess I should credit my fellow forum members with more taste), see another post somewhere else from me on why I don't rate Clancy.

Never liked Hemingway either, he was a bullsh*tter of the first magnitude in real life, and it shows in his books.

Kant. Erm no thanks.

Don't know the others you listed, sounds like I should be grateful for that too.

Chock

[AntEater]

Well, Kant is hard to digest even in German.
It is 18th century german, after all.

Regard Rowling, never read Harry Potter, the movies were quite ok on TV, even if I fell asleep during one.

Btw, regarding Clancy (sub or not), it just occured to me that Jack Ryan is Tom Clancy.
Actually a more kickass version of Clancy without the weirdo glasses.
But basically at least the Ryan novels are simply some kind of teenage fantasies blown up to a few hundred pages.

[porphy]

Critique of Pure Reason by Kant. Kill yourself first.

I'm reading that right now in fact. Part of my job, I might add. Not the most entertaining book, no. But Kant probably didn't set out to write a sub novel and produced Critique of Pure Reason as a mishap. Someone might want to try the popular version, Prolegomena...

[DAB]

Originally Posted by Grayback

In Nimitz Class we've got a CV nuked by a single SSK, just the sort of target that the carrier's screen and ASW planes should have picked up;

Without deminishing your point about Patrick Robinsons books in general, I should point out that a lot of people in the Royal Navy Submarine community do actually consider the senario at the beginning of Nimitz class to be realistic.

[Konovalov]

Originally Posted by XabbaRus

Anyone else noticed how Tom Clancy's books get longer with each one published but take even longer to actually ge to the story and the action?

That probably explains why I only got as far as The Sum of All Fears. I should have given up at the Kardinal of the Kremlin.

[Big Paul]

I don't mind Clancy, although I do agree with an earlier post that he appears to be living his life vicariously through Jack Ryan! The technical stuff did get a bit long winded in the end, and Ryan's rise to president was pretty laughable, where next? The Pope? God? I gave up after The Bear and the Dragon. As for SSN, it had me in convulsions of laughter after the first few chapters. One thing that REALLY gets on my goat is how he has every English character saying "Quite" at every opportunity. As for Patriot Games, I think he sees us Paddys as saying "Begorrah" and "Saints Alive" at every turn. His greatest crime is referring to Guinness as beer and writing that it has "a thin layer of foam"

He needs shot for that!

Patrick Robinson's books are pretty much brain out books, I somehow can't imagine an SAS man doing a miraculous conversion to Islam and becoming a one man military machine. As for Admiral Morgan, I quite like him, he's quite a guy! Good books for a boring night with nothing on telly.

Worst factual (and I use that term VERY loosely) book is Red Star Rogue, pure supposition from cover to cover, read it once and put it in the bookcase where it has stayed to this day, I'd donate it to our local charity shop, but I wouldn't want some poor soul reading it and taking it seriously.

Worst film was Crimson Tide.

Das Boot for Beavis and Butthead viewers. If I was Gene Hackman, the XO would have been rendered unconcious and handcuffed in the ships storeroom. It made Red October seem like a documentary.

[XabbaRus]

I am going to get Red Star Rogue from the library purely to see how dumb it is.

Also I want to read that recent one on the Scorpion sinking.

Scary thing is people seem to believe it.

[Subnuts]

Originally Posted by XabbaRus

Also I want to read that recent one on the Scorpion sinking.

Let's just say that had my original, uncensored review of Scorpion Down been published on this site, Neal and I would have been the targets of a libel suit from the author by now.