Weird/Terrible Books - Post the most obscure, odd, and terrible written works you've even seen

[Shittus Maximus]

Here's an old one:
Chrome by George Nader. An allegory for gay romance that's covered by sci-fi love between man and robot. The cover is hilarious too and it supposedly has some mysogonistic leanings in it too. (According to feminist).

 

[The Crazy Macer]

This was a really weird book. I read it years ago and still randomly think about it sometimes. I don't really even know how to summarize it other than the main themes are poverty and incest and it's generally pretty uncomfortable and strange all the way through. The author has a pretty distinctive style that I can't say I've ever seen anywhere else.

 

[Crystal Golem]

So I've recently become a collector of bad/weird feminist sci-fi/fantasy. From Ursula K. Le Guin's descent from serious attempt at feminist sci-fi

Spoiler

To... Well... Catwings.

Spoiler

But what most has me interested is Tanith Lee. The way her book 'The Gorgon and Other Beastly Tales' is written just makes my brain hurt. It's a collection of short stories and I can't exactly explain it so I'll just put and excerpt below.

Spoiler

Spoiler

The Hunting Of Death: The Unicorn
In the first life, Lasephun was a young man.
He was reasonably tall, of slender active build, and auburn-haired. His skin, which was to be a feature of all this group of lives, was extremely pale, and lent him an air of great intensity. By nature, the being of Lasephun was obsessive. Charged with fleshy shape, the obsessiveness took several forms, each loosely linked. The first life, the young man who was called Lauro, became obsessed with those things which were unobtainable, and hungered for them with a mysterious gnawing hunger.
Firstly then, the motive force, which was creative and sought an outlet, drove him from place to place. In one, he would find a forest, and in the forest a shaft of light like golden rain, and the sight of this would expand in him like anguish. In a city, he would see a high wall, and over the wall the tops of crenellated towers and beyond the towers the sky with thunder-clouds, and somewhere a bell would slowly ring and a woman would go by picking up the whispering debris from the gutter. These images and these sounds would stay with him. He did knot know what to do with them. Sometimes, like some intangible unnamed scent, there would be only a feeling within him that seemed to have no cause, a deep swirling, disturbing and possessing him, which could neither be dismissed nor conjured into anything.
At length, he learned how to make music on the twenty-two strings of a lutelin, and how to fashion songs, and he sang these in markets, inns, and on the steps of cathedrals for cash, or alone on the billowing roads and the sky dashed face of the land for nothing-or for himself. But his songs and his music filled him with a blunt anger. And as he grew, by mere habit, more polished, his anger also grew. For what he could make never matched the essence of what he had felt. the creation was like a mockery of the stirring and the dream within him. He almost hated himself, he almost hated the gift of music.

Not too bad but then...

The magic of virginity-for magic it was- was quite straightforward. It's sorcerous value was that of energy stored, and was accordingly at its most powerful not in the celibate , but in the celibate who had never yet relinquished celibacy, and better still one who had not even known himself. this, as it happened, the girl had not. Her life, like the unicorn's had been lived inwardly, had been lived outwardly. her meditation and her senses turning always outwards, she had not yet found herself, knew herself neither in the spirit nor the body. in this manner she was strangely asexual, as the unicorn was. While her extreme youth lent her also, briefly, an air of the ethereal. Her birth was close enough she had overlooked it, her death far enough away she had not considered it. Life and death and sex were, for this time, beyond the periphery of her sphere- yet only that. However, for this short season, the sounding note of her existence had paralleled the unicorn's own.
Aside from the sounding note, and despite recognition, the unicorn did not see the girl as what she was, but only as another external object, like a stone or flower.
After it had observed her for some time, the unicorn pawed the turf a little. The gesture was reflexive, a mere exercise. It looked nevertheless ferocious and dangerous, and it wakened the girl, who sat up, staring, her hand to her mouth in fear.
It seemed she had heard old stories of what a unicorn was. She did not appear to be in doubt only amazement and fright. Then these emotions visibly faded.
When she spoke aloud, the unicorn, having no longer any knowledge of the human vernacular, did not understand her. Nor did it seek to understand. It sensed exultation in her voice. It sensed itself cause of this word: "You are my sign from God. Now I know the one I love will come also to love me." For in fact the very innocence of her meditation had already, through itself, brought itself to an end. She loved.
The unicorn had forgotten almost altogether the aspirations and the inner processes of men and women. It looked, with its shadowy, gleaming eyes, that were like burned yet burning violets. It watched as the girl obeised herself before the unicorn-which-had-become-her-omen-of-love. As she did so, the unicorn felt itself harden once more inside the shell of its existence. So all things may be fixed by the regards of others
But before she could try to touch it- its had some dim memory, perhapsa race memory of its kind, of such touchings- the unicorn drew away and vanished into the wood.

I'm sorry how hard was the unicorn?

 

[TungstenCarbide]

Ancess, Le Chiavi del Fato (Ancess, the keys of destiny).

It's considered the worst fantasy book ever written in Italian language. Sadly, to appreciate its tardness and its putrid purple prose you should have an advanced knowledge of Italian, since its author tried to use an epic, poetic language, with echoes of Dante's Comedy (a difficult read even for a native speaker).

The author, Sergio Rocca, had the idea to write a fantasy story based on Greek mithology: on a planet called Gea, from where you can see Earth (like in Escaflowne), the Greek gods are fighting a battle against the forces of Darkness (of course). It's not explained why, but Gea seems really unpopulated, I mean, there're literally zero people for thousands of square miles around, so both the factions usually kidnap people from Earth to use them as warriors.

The main character is Soter ('savior' in Greek) he was taken from Earth when he was a child, he doesn't remember anything about his real family, and he has been trained by the god Hades. The deuteragonist is Keraunos (lightning in Greek), who has a similar story, but he has been trained by Zeus. The two are sent on a mission to capture "The Eastern Man" a warrior that the Dark Forces want for their army. Donning magical armors (like in Saint Seiya) the two leave the Olympus to complete their mission. What it follows is one of the most tedious and inane drivels I've ever read, completely devoid of sense of wonder, passion, creativity or care.

Is it boring? I can't express with words how boring this book is. Literally nothing happens. The main characters ride their horses crossing a desolate territory (apparently Gea's environment is pretty hostile, if they won't come back in three days they will die or something, I suppose that explains why there are so few people on that planet), every now and then they fight, then they meet a Zen-san (my god, Zen-san... he called one of his characters "Mr Zen"), who apparently has been Zeus and Hades' teacher, and says mysterious and confusing things. And at this point the reader just wishes to do something more cultural, like watching Dancing With the Stars.

Rocca doesn't know what "Show, don't tell" is, so the descriptions in the book are incredibly... undescriptive, seriously, I can't see the environment the two protagonists act in, the battles and the action scenes are shit because the author says "He blocked and responded with a hit that only a master of martial arts could do" and calls it a day.

Moreover, the book is badly written not only from the narrative point of view, but also from the linguistic point of view. Now, Italian is a very complex language. It's difficult even for native speakers. Rocca decided to use a lyrical, refined style that he isn't able to use. He is so focused on it that he makes grammatical and syntatic mistakes that even a middle schooler would avoid. The ending is unsatisfying, because of course it's the first book of a trilogy, and all the story in it was a very long flashback narrated in a letter written by Soter.

Now, this book would have been completely ignored by all the fantasy nerds, if Rocca hadn't been a massive buffoon.

Spoiler: Lolcow material

Rocca had a VERY high opinion of himself and his story. He had a lot of ambitions for his book: he wanted it to be read in schools, he wanted to use it to talk about philosophy, education and ethics "But not in a boring way" (sic); and readers would find in it "advices for everyday life" (sic). Of course you can't have these results if you haven't the talent, the patience and the humility to hone your writing.

Since the book was shit, every publishing house with a shred of dignity refused to publish it. But Rocca probably thought that they rejected the book because it was too 'cultured' for mainstream publishing (something he heavily implied in several interactions with his detractors online) so he went to one of those scam publishers and he paid it to print the book and give it some kind of distribution. A few online bookshops bought it, the publisher sold it online until it went bankrupt a couple of years later, so the author began to sell all the remaining volumes on ebay. In 2008 Chiara G. a blogger who was extremely famous in the niche of Italian fantasy fans, in one of her posts mentioned in passing that she had read the first chapter of the book and that it was badly written, so she didn't recommend it.

In that period Rocca was monitoring all his and his book's mentions online, because the publisher had its troubles and basically nobody had written a positive review of his work, more than six months after the book had been published. So when he saw that comment, the first thing Rocca did was to tell Chiara that she was an ignorant. Since she didn't like to be insulted, she wrote a scathing review of the first chapter, nitpicking all the purple prose, all the grammar mistakes, all the things that didn't make sense, all the ridiculous lines, all the bad wording, all the misplaced metaphores for her thousands of followers to see.

That gave birth to a huge flame in the comments, because of course Rocca arrived and began to insult all the people who agreed with Chiara. He called them communists, he called them "Stalin's shit", he called them ignorant, he called them illiterate, he called them assholes, he called them "hamsters that keep bumping against an electric fence". Then, since nobody supported him, he made a few sockpuppets to help his cause. Without using a VPN. Chiara showed a screenshot of her blog activity, where all Rocca's supporters had the same IP address, and told him that if he didn't stop with that farce she would ban him, something she didn't want to do because she didn't like censorship.

After losing that battle, Rocca began to promote his book on every message board he saw on the net. He used a few sockpuppets to bring attention on the book, he also wrote fake praises on his own blog. But the news about his behavior had spread more or less everywhere, so he was caught several times, the most clamorous one on Fantasy Magazine, site of the publisher Delos Edizioni. After that he just slipped into anonimity, and I really hope he continued his studies and dedicated himself to teaching without going online anymore, because people were still making fun of him five years after he stirred all that shit. His book is still regarded as trash masterpiece.

 

[MisterTittiesMcTit]

Mmm!

 

[Zaryiu]

My Sweet Audrina by V.C. Andrews is simutaneously the best and worst book I've ever read.

Spoiler

To sum it up, it's about a girl named Audrina who is apparently 9-ish years old, who had an older sister (also named Audrina) who was raped and murdered. The younger Audrina is forced by her father to sit in the older Audrina's rocking chair for a few hours every day because somehow she is able to channel the first Audrina's memories and her dad wants her to become a copy of the first Audrina. There are no clocks in the house, calendars are missing pages, she doesn't know when her birthday is, etc. Also her memory is really fuzzy (spoiler alert because her family is drugging her) At some point she gets a exceptional sister who is constantly shitting herself and her mother dies in childbirth. Her father then falls in love with her mother's sister. Speaking of her mother's sister, Audrina lives with her cousin/step-sister Vera who seduces a 25 year old piano teacher (who later kills himself) and gets impregnated by him. Vera ends up having a miscarriage on a priceless Oriental rug (the miscarriage is essentially depicted as the baby pretty much just falling out of her) which causes her mother to yell at her so Vera throws chunks of the miscarriage at her. Vera's mother somehow falls down the stairs and dies. Eventually Audrina's father falls in love with an amputee ballerina woman who rolls around on a cart and has a son named Arden who was present during the rape of the first Audrina. Audrina and Arden get married and Audrina can't have sex unless it is on top of the grave of her dead sister because of reasons. One day Audrina's exceptional sister decides to roll around on the amputee's cart and manages to knock her down the stairs and kill her. The police apparently do not have any problem with the fact that two women have died in a short amount of time in the exact same way in this house. Vera begins to seduce Arden and finally pushes Audrina down the stairs, putting her in a coma. While she's in the coma, Vera and Arden fuck each other basically on top of Audrina and Vera plans to disconnect the life support. Audrina wakes up and manages to get her exceptional sister to help her escape the hospital. Finally (SPOILER ALERT HOLY SHIT) Audrina realizes that the reason why she is able to experience the memories of her older sister who has the same name as her is BECAUSE SHE HAD NO OLDER SISTER AND SHE WAS THE ONE WHO WAS RAPED OH MY GOD and her family was keeping her prisoner in the house in order to shield her from this memory (but also making her remember her past because reasons) and Arden witnessed the whole thing and ran away (making the rape his fault and his fault entirely) and Vera was actually her half sister because her father and her aunt had an affair. Audrina and Arden make up and move out of the house and that's where the book ends. I rate it five stars

WHAT THE FUCK?!

I'm suprised nobody has mentioned the Gor novels yet. They're so bad they become objects of art. It's an erotic science fiction adventure series that gets more and more insane as the series goes on. Thirfy-five books have been published so far, and the author is still writing. It's most infamous for the weird sexual culture of slavery, rape, and BDSM in every single book. Later books got so far up their own ass with half-baked philosophy and slave rape that his publisher dropped him. Here's a good parody:

Houseplants of Gor

Beyond that, though, the writing is just complete shit. A lot of the books are written from 1st person perspective in very dry, jarring tone. It's very much in the tell and not in the show camp in terms of narrative. Most of the male lead characters are author self-inserts with rampant competency porn. If it was just a single one off book or just a few of them, I wouldn't think too much of it. There's just so fucking many. I both love and hate this series for being such shitty pulp trash.

It gets worse, there is an actual rpg based on Gor (No i just found it by accident on the Trove)
As for worst books i read? The Night Angel Trilogy, that was a trainwreck i couldn't look away that has a bully kid in the first book that rape other kid orphans to keep control of the group of orphans they are part of

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

There was this book I found in a bookstore when I was a kid called Death Merchant: The Pole Star Secret. It was some ridiculous pulp about a superspy who gets paid a million dollars a job, or something like that, and kills people and aliens alike in gory detail. Absolute trash, I liked it.

 

[eternal dog mongler]

Are you a fan of Twilight? Would you like to read Twilight except it's written by a creepy Catholic priest and devolves into weird sci-fi shit halfway through the novel? This is the book for you.

The protagonist is named Kiwi. She grows up being raped. She's not important. In fact I forget what she even does in the novel.

What is important is the future of humanity and a time-traveling Catholic priest. Medicine has advanced to the point where humans are immortal and they have nothing else to do except fuck each other. The immortal human race changes genders on a whim and develop weird sexual fetishes in order to stave off boredom.

Only the time-traveling Catholic priest who met aliens at Roswell can save the human race. Or something. I don't know what this novel is about and I doubt the author does either.

 

[Pope Negro Joe the XIIIth]

The protagonist is named Kiwi. She grows up being raped.

How dare yo u.

 

[TungstenCarbide]

So, user @Fromtheblackdepths asked me this:

That Wunderkind book sounds really interesting, can you tell me more about it?

So, to avoid cluttering the publishers thread I'll answer here because, incidentally, Wunderkind is a terrible book and, like in the case of Ancess (I talked about it a couple of posts above), the author is (was?) a massive lolcow. I fear for the future of Italian literature.

Spoiler: Wunderkind

Wunderkind tells the story of Caius Strauss. He's twelve, lives in Paris, he had severe health issues that took him years to recover from. He spent a lot of time in hospital, and because of this he read a lot of books and never touched a videogame. So the author kindly tells us that, because he doesn't like videogames, "he wasn't stupid or shallow", like the other kids. The book is full of these trite opinions. Anyway. Caius is harassed by a Herr Spiegelmann who, he says, is a distant relative. Spiegelmann wants Caius because, apparently, Caius is the Wunderkind. The author doesn't explain what exactly being the Wunderkind entails, so the readers spend the first book ("A Shiny Silver Coin") wondering why Caius is so special. Caius is protected by a group of people who fight against Herr Spiegelmann: the gunslinger Van Zant, the lycanthrope Buliwyf, the wizard Pilgrind. That's it. Caius is a very... shallow main character, despite what the author said: his personality is dull and he's almost completely helpless. The secondary characters are far better developed than him. While I was reading, couldn't summon even a bit of care for what was happening to him.

Now, Wunderkind doesn't lack original elements, EG the magic. Wizards are called Cambiavalute (Exchangers) and spells are called Permute (Exchanges). Ever time a wizard casts a spell they have to sacrifice a memory, the more powerfu the spell is, the more important the memory that has to be sacrificed is. IMHO that is an interesting system, that gives wizards a real handicap: they have to be cautious when they use magic, evaluate carefully when to use it and what memories they have to sacrifice (and this could bring interesting conflict). Also, we could see what sort of damage is inflicted by the indiscriminate use of magic. Sadly we don't see all of this in Wunderkind, all the characters use magic without many consequences and... well, that's a pity.

Another weakness of the book is the lack of details when it comes to the more dark/eldritch/bizarre elements of the world D'andrea built. The author wanted to create a scary, haunting world, but he half-assed the job because he's not good at descriptions. Lovecraft (whose work supposedly inspired this book) could make you see the eldritch creatures. D'Andrea, 85% of the time, uses a lot of synonyms of the word 'disgusting' and calls it a day. Also, the author keeps a lot of details extremely vague, so the reader doesn't understand what's going on in a scene and why the characters are scared/disgusted. And that's a pity too. The style is... decent, even though D'Andrea loses himself too much into wordy paraghaps that don't add much to the story.

With far more time, care and focus, and with the attentions of a good editor, Wunderkind could have a been a good book. Sadly, the author in that period was an arrogant prick, and the publisher (Mondadori) didn't help him, telling him to correct, or completely rewrite a lot of scenes (probably they didn't want to spend money to make a long work of editing, because a good editing for Wunderkind would have been massive). Moreover, the kind of marketing they went for was "A book for kids" when the level of gore is at "IT by Stephen King" levels. Something that Italian publishers did when they knew a fantasy book was mediocre, was to market it as a teen/young adult book (don't ask me why, but they did it and they still do).

While the critics covered the book with praise, saying that D'Andrea's work was something in between Gaiman and Lovecraft's books, fantasy-oriented blogs covered it with spits and insults: the story was incoherent, there are very few original ideas, D'Andrea couldnt write. Readers seemed to agree with bloggers, sales for the first and the second book were bad, and Mondadori never printed the third volume of the trilogy, releasing it in digital format. Wunderkind is considered one of Mondadory biggest flops and it was never reprinted. You can still find the first book "Una Lucida Moneta D'Argento", because it had a high circulation; it's almost impossible to find the second book, "La Rosa e I Tre Chiodi" (The Rose and the Three Nails). I was able to read it because I found it in a library. The third book, "Il Mondo che Verrà" (The World that Will Come) doesn't exist: it was published digitally in a year (2011 if I'm not mistaken) when almost nobody was interested in ebooks and a book that hadn't a place in bookshops had 85% of chances of never being read. So, very few people bought it and never shered it on emule or torrent.

Anyway, before the Wunderkind debacle GLD had a meltdown while exchanging messages on his blog with an 18yo who criticized his book: he called him fascist, terrorist and threatened to sue him. A few of D'Andrea writer friends entered the drama, hinting that these kind of critiques shouldn't be allowed to be posted on the internet (LOL), while GLD sniffed outraged and told everybody and their mom that he wanted to close his blog. During his tirade he said something that he shouldn't have, and that paved the way toward the "Lara Manni scandal". But this is another story.

 

[Fromtheblackdepths]

So, user @Fromtheblackdepths asked me this:

So, to avoid cluttering the publishers thread I'll answer here because, incidentally, Wunderkind is a terrible book and, like in the case of Ancess (I talked about it a couple of posts above), the author is (was?) a massive lolcow. I fear for the future of Italian literature.

Spoiler: Wunderkind

Wunderkind tells the story of Caius Strauss. He's twelve, lives in Paris, he had severe health issues that took him years to recover from. He spent a lot of time in hospital, and because of this he read a lot of books and never touched a videogame. So the author kindly tells us that, because he doesn't like videogames, "he wasn't stupid or shallow", like the other kids. The book is full of these trite opinions. Anyway. Caius is harassed by a Herr Spiegelmann who, he says, is a distant relative. Spiegelmann wants Caius because, apparently, Caius is the Wunderkind. The author doesn't explain what exactly being the Wunderkind entails, so the readers spend the first book ("A Shiny Silver Coin") wondering why Caius is so special. Caius is protected by a group of people who fight against Herr Spiegelmann: the gunslinger Van Zant, the lycanthrope Buliwyf, the wizard Pilgrind. That's it. Caius is a very... shallow main character, despite what the author said: his personality is dull and he's almost completely helpless. The secondary characters are far better developed than him. While I was reading, couldn't summon even a bit of care for what was happening to him.

Now, Wunderkind doesn't lack original elements, EG the magic. Wizards are called Cambiavalute (Exchangers) and spells are called Permute (Exchanges). Ever time a wizard casts a spell they have to sacrifice a memory, the more powerfu the spell is, the more important the memory that has to be sacrificed is. IMHO that is an interesting system, that gives wizards a real handicap: they have to be cautious when they use magic, evaluate carefully when to use it and what memories they have to sacrifice (and this could bring interesting conflict). Also, we could see what sort of damage is inflicted by the indiscriminate use of magic. Sadly we don't see all of this in Wunderkind, all the characters use magic without many consequences and... well, that's a pity.

Another weakness of the book is the lack of details when it comes to the more dark/eldritch/bizarre elements of the world D'andrea built. The author wanted to create a scary, haunting world, but he half-assed the job because he's not good at descriptions. Lovecraft (whose work supposedly inspired this book) could make you see the eldritch creatures. D'Andrea, 85% of the time, uses a lot of synonyms of the word 'disgusting' and calls it a day. Also, the author keeps a lot of details extremely vague, so the reader doesn't understand what's going on in a scene and why the characters are scared/disgusted. And that's a pity too. The style is... decent, even though D'Andrea loses himself too much into wordy paraghaps that don't add much to the story.

With far more time, care and focus, and with the attentions of a good editor, Wunderkind could have a been a good book. Sadly, the author in that period was an arrogant prick, and the publisher (Mondadori) didn't help him, telling him to correct, or completely rewrite a lot of scenes (probably they didn't want to spend money to make a long work of editing, because a good editing for Wunderkind would have been massive). Moreover, the kind of marketing they went for was "A book for kids" when the level of gore is at "IT by Stephen King" levels. Something that Italian publishers did when they knew a fantasy book was mediocre, was to market it as a teen/young adult book (don't ask me why, but they did it and they still do).

While the critics covered the book with praise, saying that D'Andrea's work was something in between Gaiman and Lovecraft's books, fantasy-oriented blogs covered it with spits and insults: the story was incoherent, there are very few original ideas, D'Andrea couldnt write. Readers seemed to agree with bloggers, sales for the first and the second book were bad, and Mondadori never printed the third volume of the trilogy, releasing it in digital format. Wunderkind is considered one of Mondadory biggest flops and it was never reprinted. You can still find the first book "Una Lucida Moneta D'Argento", because it had a high circulation; it's almost impossible to find the second book, "La Rosa e I Tre Chiodi" (The Rose and the Three Nails). I was able to read it because I found it in a library. The third book, "Il Mondo che Verrà" (The World that Will Come) doesn't exist: it was published digitally in a year (2011 if I'm not mistaken) when almost nobody was interested in ebooks and a book that hadn't a place in bookshops had 85% of chances of never being read. So, very few people bought it and never shered it on emule or torrent.

Anyway, before the Wunderkind debacle GLD had a meltdown while exchanging messages on his blog with an 18yo who criticized his book: he called him fascist, terrorist and threatened to sue him. A few of D'Andrea writer friends entered the drama, hinting that these kind of critiques shouldn't be allowed to be posted on the internet (LOL), while GLD sniffed outraged and told everybody and their mom that he wanted to close his blog. During his tirade he said something that he shouldn't have, and that paved the way toward the "Lara Manni scandal". But this is another story.

Is there an English translation?

 

[neverendingmidi]

So I've recently become a collector of bad/weird feminist sci-fi/fantasy. From Ursula K. Le Guin's descent from serious attempt at feminist sci-fi

Spoiler

To... Well... Catwings.

Spoiler

But what most has me interested is Tanith Lee. The way her book 'The Gorgon and Other Beastly Tales' is written just makes my brain hurt. It's a collection of short stories and I can't exactly explain it so I'll just put and excerpt below.

Spoiler

Spoiler

Not too bad but then...

I'm sorry how hard was the unicorn?

I loved Catwings when I was like 9 or so.

Tanith Lee is all weird. Her Unicorn Trilogy (Black Unicorn, Gold Unicorn, Red Unicorn) are damn near written like fever dreams. I read the first one when I was around 12 and it struck me as strange then. Reading them as an adult was even worse. I was never able to read any of her other books,

 

[LazarusOwenhart]

How about this masterpiece.

View attachment 958070

You can get that shitter at Amazon
Just go there and read the hilarious customer feedbacks.

So when I went to this product page apparently people also buy: https://www.amazon.com/Sarah-does-n...0EE8BWE227B&psc=1&refRID=DY5ZMAB8Y0EE8BWE227B Which makes a lot of fucking sense.

 

[TungstenCarbide]

Is there an English translation?

I don't know. But the first book has been translated in Spanish, German and... Polish, I believe? by foreign publishers affiliated with Mondadori. From what I learned, I'm sure that you can find the first two books in French by Bayard editions, if you comb ebay.

 

[UnsufficentBoobage]

I'm 99 percent sure this is The World Inside by Robert Silverberg.

It does indeed sound like Bob SIlverberg's The World Inside

I somehow managed to read this when I was 12, did not remember much aside from the start and how I felt the book was dumb. Was not even worst shit I read, though I barely remember most others. Oddly, a lot of fucked-up stuff I remembered all turned out to be short stories by Robert Sheckley, all from the same book, too!

Tanith Lee.

Tanith Lee is all weird.

I got a torrent of her stuff few months ago, tried reading whatever short stories were in FB2 I could convert with ease... after a while, only found a single palatable one and peaced out. Am now reading Fu Manchu books to purge that crap outta my brain - I am pretty sure Sax Rohmer, with all his downfalls, never had abortion horses in his work.

As for whatever bad books I have read that were not in this thread yet...horrible dime-a-dozen russian fantasy aside, it was probably a trilogy I suffered through because of my "not discarding a book if it interests me even a tiny bit" rule (slogging through Dragon Weather now because of it), which was a vaguely fantasy-ish thing that started with not-communist revolution, main heroine suffering in it cause blue blood, and setting had those sorta-robots called Feelers (?) that commies fed people to for fun. One robot was named Nanu and spawned tiny spy flies.
What I remember distinctly is how main heroine was being taught magic, and a guy procured a chimeric phantom animal that peed and shit itself, which girl found to funny to destroy.

 

[Y2K Baby]

gay romance that's covered by sci-fi love between man and robot. The cover is hilarious too and it supposedly has some mysogonistic leanings in it too. (According to feminist).

Based?

 

[Ozzigy Osbourne]

Atlanta Nights was written by a group of assmad authors to call out a publisher's bluff about only accepting "high quality" manuscripts. The publisher accepted the manuscript, the authors admitted they were merely pretending to be retarded, and the publisher withdrew the publication offer.

Spoiler: Like spoilers matter for this shit

The distinctive flaws of Atlanta Nights include nonidentical chapters written by two different authors from the same segment of outline (13 and 15), a missing chapter (21), two chapters that are word-for-word identical (4 and 17), two different chapters with the same chapter number (12 and 12), and a chapter "written" by a computer program that generated random text based on patterns found in the previous chapters (34). Characters change gender and race; they die and reappear without explanation. Spelling and grammar are nonstandard and the formatting is inconsistent. The initials of characters who were named in the book spelled out the phrase "PublishAmerica is a vanity press."[7]

Under Macdonald's direction, the denouement, which takes place in the middle of the book, revealed that all the previous events of the plot had been a dream, although the book continues for several more chapters.

If anyone has the sheer 'tism to try reading through the entire thing have fun.

 

[Roast Chicken]

Anything that Shaun Hutson farts out. He's like a shitty James Herbert. I initially enjoyed Slugs and Spawn but as I read more of his work it became apparent that he recycles character archetypes, plotlines and has a weird, inexplicable fascination with the soft spot atop the heads of babies - across three books there are characters being described prodding this area or desiring to and it's disturbing (this guy has a daughter, btw - was he leaning over her crib most nights fighting the urge to plug a finger into her cranium?)

He relies heavily on shock content to provoke an emotional response from the reader. Yeah, horror authors utilize disturbing content all the time in their books to get a reaction but he just puts no finesse into it. Baby/child getting murderd or harmed? Yeah, just chuck it in there with a gratitutous description.

There's a scene in one of his books where he describes a baby being shaken by its despairing mother. It's awful, because you can tell he researched what happens to babies that are shaken but it has such a weak, cliche build-up that doesn't do the scene justice. The rest of the content in that particular book doesn't do that scene justice.

I think the most unforgiveably mediocre piece of rubbish among his pile has got to be "Twisted Souls" - holy shit that one was an imaginatively bankrupt rush job. Even the title tells you how much of a shitshow it is.

 

[Coffee Druid]

This thread reminded me of a comic book I read as a kid.

Looks innocuous. But these creatures are eager to be eaten by humans, and just simply looking at them hungrily will make them kill themselves in order to be eaten. With a smile. They eat nothing, produce asexually and can somehow produce packaged milk, butter and eggs. Oh, and depending on the cooking method they taste like chicken, beef, pork, oysters, etc. And they make perfect pets for young kids!

I don't remember the plot whatsoever but these things haunt me to this day. Shit was weird.

 

[Fromtheblackdepths]

This thread reminded me of a comic book I read as a kid.
View attachment 1589885
Looks innocuous. But these creatures are eager to be eaten by humans, and just simply looking at them hungrily will make them kill themselves in order to be eaten. With a smile. They eat nothing, produce asexually and can somehow produce packaged milk, butter and eggs. Oh, and depending on the cooking method they taste like chicken, beef, pork, oysters, etc. And they make perfect pets for young kids!

I don't remember the plot whatsoever but these things haunt me to this day. Shit was weird.

Aren't those Nerds Candy?