I would like to recommend a mind-blowing sci fi books that I have just read

The link is here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09KSB7TNC/?tag=pfamazon01-20 The Creator : AI and doomsday virus
One of the best sci-fi I have read recently.

Since I found it suspect that a one-time poster would sign on to this forum just to flog a book, I thought I'd check it out.

The book is free on Amazon and is seriously overpriced. It has 4 reviews, all of which are 5 stars. I can only imagine that the writer either paid 4 people to do that or got 4 friends to do it.

I have read well over 1,000 sci fic books, mostly many decades ago, and that naturally included some turkeys. Hell, I even slogged all the way through the Gray Lensman series and that was some of the most execrable writing in the genre (but the "science" and the adventure were both great fun for a 14 year old).

The book referenced in this thread makes the Lensman books look like great literature. After reading about 3 pages, I did another 2 just because it was so awful as to be like looking at a train wreck, but enough is enough and I could not force myself to read beyond that.

Truly awful writing. Not recommended.

@phinds, tell us how you really feel.

Mark44 said:

@phinds, tell us how you really feel.

I would but it would involve language that would get me banned

phinds said:

...It has 4 reviews, all of which are 5 stars. I can only imagine that the writer either paid 4 people to do that or got 4 friends to do it. ...
...Truly awful writing. Not recommended.

You should post this review on Amazon.

phinds said:

Truly awful writing. Not recommended.

It starts out ...
It was a dark and stormy night. It is a scorching summer day in 2049 in a robot lab in Beijing, China.

Anachronist said:

You should post this review on Amazon.

Thank you for the suggestion. Done.

Mark44 said:

It starts out ...
It was a dark and stormy night. It is a scorching summer day in 2049 in a robot lab in Beijing, China.

And it goes downhill from there.

Anachronist said:

You should post this review on Amazon.

And GoodReads.

@phinds, et al, as a sci fi writer and reviewer, I'm finding Amazon reviews increasingly useless, and esp. now that you can 'rate' a book without even having to add any text. Originally, Amazon allowed a comments feature, so you could engage with reviewers, but that quietly disappeared years ago (the comments are still there, though. There's one author who attacked readers who posted low-star reviews with the most aggressive vitriol, it was astounding, I guess that's part of why comments were retired).

But thank goodness for the 'Look Inside' feature. I read a few paragraphs further than that execrable opening sentence, and the prose seems clumsy, first time author / no professional editor style and the premise seems salacious:


"He" is the robot, and it doesn't appear to improve, but I wonder how much of the jarring tone is due to translation? I did not find Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem the 5-star triumph many others did, and I know part of that was translation, both literal English and cultural references.

Still, for three of the four 'reviewers' of this novel, it is their first one, and the other has a review for a physical product and his review of this novel doesn't even appear on his Amazon profile. I'd imagine the author (or whoever @Cathythegreat is, perhaps a bot?) has lobbed in similar "Look at this" posts on sci-fi forums the world over, but no number of gee-whiz suggestions is going to make this clunky story shine.

That's some... difficult writing to read...

I like its plots not the language.

Cathythegreat said:

I like its plots not the language.

Unfortunately we have to get through the language to get to the plot. Something I'm unwilling to do based on what I've read so far.

Cathythegreat said:

I like its plots not the language.

But the writing is such awful junk that the plot is irrelevant.

Cathythegreat said:

I like its plots not the language.

Thanks for responding, @Cathythegreat, what is it about the plot that you like? Because a 5-star novel typically requires both a stellar plot and excellently written prose. Given the few 5-star reviews for the book are written by people with brand new Amazon profiles, it is reasonable to wonder whether they are fake. I'd think perhaps family members, but I suspect not.

As an author with novels on Amazon - and someone who has written hundreds of science fiction novel reviews on Amazon - the 'Look Inside' of the novel with the plot you like does not appear to warrant 5-stars from any reader. It is also strange to create a profile on PF to suggest any particular novel, we're hardly a hotbed of likely readers here. I think you're in violation of PF's rules on "Advertising & Spam" because I can't see why you, as an excited reader, would do that, but a determination regarding that is for Moderators to decide, not me.

That aside, what other sci-fi novels do you like?

Melbourne Guy said:

That aside, what other sci-fi novels do you like?

The Doomsday Virus II: The Sequel: now with Extra God

phinds said:

Thank you for the suggestion. Done.Thank you for the suggestion. Done.

Well, since there are just four reviews visible there, yours apparently got deleted?
Not much of a surprise, honestly. Honesty is not always welcomed.

Looking for the title returned with some few day old threads on different forums, but half of them was terminated already. This one here is one of the longest lived and also seems to be the only one with actual response.

Maybe we too should call it a day and just stop beating the dead horse.

Rive said:

Maybe we too should call it a day and just stop beating the dead horse.

Indeed. Thread closed.