A worse book than the Left Behind series?

[lliira]

I'm reading a Battlefield Earth spork, and wow. Just wow. The racism is worse than in any fiction book I can remember, and I'm a history major and the book was published in the 1980s! It is worse than H.P. Lovecraft. Or maybe I just think that because the writing style is so much worse. The sexism: also worse than in any other book I've ever seen. The hero spares about five thoughts for his love interest through the 1000+ page tome, and the women are all sex objects to be abused and reviled, sex objects to be protected, or objects which cook. Jenkins and LaHaye treat Chloe and Amanda so much better than Hubbard treats Chrissy and Pattie. Jonnie Goodboy Tyler is the biggest Gary Stu I have ever seen in any media format whatsoever. Compared to him, Rayford and Buck are caring, well-fleshed out characters who earn every accolade they're given. And the less said about the writing style, the better. Thinking about it hurts my thinky parts.

My next question is: can published fiction (not published by a vanity press) get worse than L. Ron Hubbard's bloviations? I don't think it can. I didn't think it could get worse than Jerry Jenkins, though, and I have been proven wrong.

Comments

[redsixwing]

The copy of Battlefield Earth I read had conveniently split its spine right between the two title words.

Amusingly enough, it broke right at a chapter break, and it was at the split between the first (mildly interesting, if horrifyingly bad) portion of the book and the following pile of steaming dreck where he sort of ran out of story and kept writing anyway. I liked Battlefield a lot better than Earth, which... isn't saying much.

Whether it beats Ellenjay I am uncertain, having not read any of their stuff for quite some time, but it definitely beats Lovecraft.

... and Moby Dick and Sherlock Holmes and Heinlein's collected bile and Orson Scott Card's entire body of work and...

[chocolatepot]

Jenkins and LaHaye treat Chloe and Amanda so much better than ...

NOT something I thought I'd ever read.

[lliira]

Not something I thought I'd ever write, either.

When she's 16, Pattie marries the corpse of the boy who said he'd marry her when she was 10. Her entire life, such as it is, is shaped completely and utterly around this dead boy. And Chrissie never has one thought that is not obsessing over Jonnie (not that she has many thoughts), and Jonnie treats her and all other women worse than he treats his horse by a long ways. Then he ditches her at the end of the book.

I think I could make a case for Buck treating Verna better than Jonnie treats women.