Fifty Shade of Bad Writing. George Turner's Books to be Reissued.


Fifty Shades of Bad Writing.

Seems everywhere I look someone has written an article about the mega-selling, publishing-game-changing, super- duper, must-read-before-you die (or at least dis) Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James.

As a result, I am sure publishers are looking forward to reading thousands of manuscripts full of badly written bondage scenes. Publisher’s assistants will all be rushing home to watch porn on the web to get sex back into some sort of normal perspective. But then again, the flood of bad erotica might make up for those manuscripts full of teenagers in love with vampires who refuse to give out.   

Many of the articles I have read about Fifty Shades of Grey have been about how badly written it is.  An article I read in the Age today about its awfully written sex scenes made me laugh, especially its imagined ocker sex scene.

There was even an article about the book in today’s Chronicle, the local newspaper. Fifty Shades has been selling very well locally. With one farmer reportedly buying it because he wanted to see what all the hype was about (very sad). An elderly woman who returned it to the library said it was just porn and rubbish – WTF did she expect?

I have also read a few reviews on Goodreads and other sites of Fifty Shades that have said it is badly written. But this badly written book is allegedly making the author 1.36 million a week. There seems to be one supposedly well hung ram leading a huge flock of erotically hopeful ewes.

George Turner’s Books to be Reissued.

In my last post I mentioned having just read A Pursuit of Miracles, by George Turner. Bruce Richard Gillespie commented on that post on facebook saying he had control over the books of George Turner. He said that there are plans for Gollancz to bring out a new version of Turner’s The Sea and Summer, so you will all have the chance to go out and buy the best Australian science fiction novel ever written.

Bruce also said he was trying to get Turner’s other novels out as ebooks, which I would very much welcome as I am still to obtain copies of Beloved Son, Transit of Cassidy, Vaneglory, Yesterday's Men, and Down There in Darkness.
If you want to read some of the many articles Turner wrote on writing and science fiction, issue 76 of SF Commentary, edited by Bruce Gillespie, has 100,000 words devoted to the writing of George Turner. 

Turned started off writing non-genre mainstream novels in the late 1950’s. He won a Miles Franklin award in 1962 for The Cupboard Under the Stairs. The Lame Dog Man won the Commonwealth Literary Fund Award in 1967. Turner quit writing after five mainstream novels because there wasn’t any money in it. 

I have read that he was asked to review science fiction for a magazine. Which he did. He thought that he could write better science fiction than what he was reviewing. Which he went on and did. The above mentioned The Sea and Summer was nominated for the Nebula Award and won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in1988.

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