Worst EU Author

[NecronLord]

Well... The way I see it, Anderson's ideas were good (cut down deathstar on a budget? Cool. Hidden admiral loyal to Tarkin, cool) but very poorly excecuted. Traviss's ideas are fundamentally flawed (BUSHFIRE WAR! A TINY NUMBER OF CLONES SCOOT AROUND THE GALAXY FIGHTING A WAR THAT IS OF NO REAL SIGNIFICANCE TO THE AVERAGE BEING...)

[Dark Flame]

KJA gets my vote because I have read more of his stuff that I didn't like than anyone else's. Tales of the Bounty Hunters was the most boring novel I have ever read. It just put me to sleep...

[Lord Poe]

Travissty, and the fucking Moose she rode in on. I can't put it any better than 18-Till-I-Die did.

Except to say, Traviss, you fucking cunt, you actually suck worse than KJA. I never thought anyone could accomplish such a feat.

[Coiler]

Traviss.

I actually like Stackpole, and consider I, Jedi to be one of my favorite EU books. KJAs original Jedi Academy trilogy is tolerable, and he hasn't gone ballistic over errors in his work pointed out like Traviss did.

I know too little about the other authors to comment.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Travissty, and the fucking Moose she rode in on. I can't put it any better than 18-Till-I-Die did.

Except to say, Traviss, you fucking cunt, you actually suck worse than KJA. I never thought anyone could accomplish such a feat.

Jeez, Poe! You must really hate all women equally. What made you such a mysogynist?

Edit: I have to agree with the above on 'I, Jedi'. I just look at it as a SW-EU version of batman, and it all makes sense.

[Xess]

I voted for Traviss. Hard Contact was very good, then she went nuts as has been said much already. KJA may be a worse author from a technical standpoint but his books are just boring and easily forgettable Traviss' work is her trying to quietly stab her detractors through Star Wars.

[Darth Massacrus]

You guys are all way off. The Jedi Prince series authors, Paul and Hollace Davids, are by far the worst the EU has ever seen.

[QuentinGeorge]

The Davids may have written some silly story, but those silly stories have had hardly any negative impact on the EU as a whole.

(Except for creating a few Grand Admirals and giving Jabba a father named Zorba).

I mean, no one remembers that Han once danced the Space Pirate Boogie.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Nobody takes the Jedi Prince books seriously. The only thing from them that carried over was the Human Replica Droids. Everything else was burned.

[Master of Ossus]

18, that is one of the best posts I've ever seen you post. Magnificent, and I agree with all of it.

As bad as KJA is, as bad as I, Jedi, at least those guys are trying to write within the SW Universe. Traviss just doesn't give a shit. As far as she's concerned, SW is her own personal sandbox and she'll do with it as she pleases.

I will, though, have to mention that the worst non-"journo" writer is Alan Dean Foster. He wrote the forgivable Splinter of the Mind's Eye, which is sort of interesting from an historical perspective, but he also wrote the LUDICROUSLY terrible The Approaching Storm, which simply fails at EVERY level. As a SW book? Fails. As literature? Fails. As entertainment? Fails. These aren't "soft" failures, either. These are HARDCORE, "this is one of the worst pieces of fiction I've ever read" failures, replete with absolutely atrocious writing, horrible characterization (including the characters we all know and love, whose behavior and personalities are WILDLY inconsistent with the films) and a butchery of the scope of the Galaxy.

[Guardsman Bass]

KJA struck me more as simply mediocre in the Star Wars stories he wrote - I did think some things that happened in Darkstar were cool- than atrociously, offensively bad.

I'm surprised no one included Courtship of Princess Leia, which was basically an excuse to get Han and Leia married.

[Jim Raynor]

I'd like to join in and say that 18 really summed up Travissty very well. She isn't merely incompetent, she's self-serving and intentionally screwed over the SW universe to cover her own ass. I'm shocked that any of the LFL editors and continuity checkers allowed Odds to be published. It not only shits on the SW universe, but it's a horrible non-story even when taken by itself. Have you EVER read another story where two soldiers admit they're not in any danger, and casually chat things up while in the fucking middle of an enemy installation?

[K. A. Pital]

KJA must die.

He garotted two franchises instead of one. God-Emperor will never forgive him what he did to "Dune".

[Battlehymn Republic]

which was basically an excuse to get Han and Leia married.

But... wasn't that inevitable?

[Tiriol]

My vote goes to Vonda McIntyre and her abomination of literature known as Crystal Star. That book was nothing short of blasphemy, a crime against all of nature and Mankind. I didn't find any redeeming qualities in it, save for the fact that when removed from her incompetent hands, the Empire Reborn movement at least had interesting background as the power behind Desann's Reborn and being sort of quasi-SS movement. If there's one book I'd gladly burn it is that abortion of imagination.

[NecronLord]

I didn't find any redeeming qualities in it,

It has Palpatine giving a worldcraft away as a trinket. It is also one of the few books of the time where the entire New Republic isn't in peril.

[Academia Nut]

I'm forced to vote for Hambly, because I have avoided all of Traviss' stuff and I read KJA's stuff when my age was still in the single digits, and so I didn't really know just how bad it truly was and I thus have nostalgic feelings for his work (although the Crystal Star was indeed terrible). Stackpole might be a hack, but at least he can fell a good tree, if you can follow my obtuse metaphor. And then there is Hambly.

Ugh... boooooring. Same for the Kube guy, although most of his stuff seems to have just been swept under the carpet and ignored.

[CmdrWilkens]

As a pure writer in the SW universe Hambly is by far the biggest offender. Her shit just had no flow or depth to it in any way shape or form. Trying to get through her stuff was like wading through a huge peat bog and not even realizing that the shining prize at the far end was a toy out of a cracker jack box. KJA isn't much better but that comes down to the eternal stupid author trick of "things are as I say they are because I say they are not because it makes sense" and one-dimensional characters. AS a sort of mindless entertainment its safe enough. Stackpole's stuff is an honestly decent storyline with plenty of character depth AFTER one subtracts the world's biggest Gary Stu ever. The rest of his characterizations and the relationship between Wedge, Tycho, the rest of the Rouges, and even (though barely) Isaard are all filled with depth and a bit, not much, of nuance. That and resurrecting Jan Dodonna was rather well done. Obviously all of the above is a complete aside to whatever carnage the authors laid waste to the continuity as a whole. So Traviss as an author (I've only read bits and pieces never a whole book) probably falls somewhere in the same vicinity as Stackpole.

As to damage done to the franchise only Traviss, ONLY Traviss has perpetuated and enforced with tyrannical mania to the extent she can a minimalism that suggests the Colonial Army could take control of the entire Galactic Empire if only they had ships to hop from planet to planet. Everything else pales in comparison.

[consequences]

. Stackpole's stuff is an honestly decent storyline with plenty of character depth AFTER one subtracts the world's biggest Gary Stu ever. The rest of his characterizations and the relationship between Wedge, Tycho, the rest of the Rouges, and even (though barely) Isaard are all filled with depth and a bit, not much, of nuance.

As long as you ignore the fact that he doesn't develop certain pilots at all for four books and then offs them. Seriously, there's exactly one Rogue with more than a couple sentences of story and interaction that he killed who didn't get brought back from the dead(and she gets replaced by her sister who then promptly recieves no screen time), and that holds true through Isaard's Revenge as well.

Wait, I do tell a lie, he did kill the one that turned evil off as well. Set against the 'back from the dead unexpectedly' schtick he pulled with Corran, Bror Jace, Mirax, Gavin, and Asyr Seilar, this doesn't count for much.

My main other issue with him is is efforts to turn Wedge Antilles into a gigantic douchebag.

However, Traviss still does more damage, and KJA is still a crappier writer.

[Mad]

From the books I've read, Barbara Hambly's Children of the Jedi is tied for worst. (Some Boba Fett bounty hunter book where Boba escaped the Sarlaac and went on to do boring things was tied.)

The first chapter apparently had some POV transition that wasn't marked. When the first couple pages make no sense even after reading them several times, you know this is going to be bad.

And the entire book just felt like Luke going "Ow, pain. Force heal. Still, ow, pain. Force heal. *Gets beat up more.* Ow, more pain. Force heal."

[Big Orange]

Although not quite as terrible as the awful sounding shit mentioned here, I was never really impressed with Kathy Tyers' competent, but vanilla and dull Truce at Bakura...

[Shadowtraveler]

As long as you ignore the fact that he doesn't develop certain pilots at all for four books and then offs them. Seriously, there's exactly one Rogue with more than a couple sentences of story and interaction that he killed who didn't get brought back from the dead(and she gets replaced by her sister who then promptly recieves no screen time), and that holds true through Isaard's Revenge as well.

What about the wolfman? He didn't even get a line of dialogue in any of the books.

All in all, Stackpole isn't bad, but he's responsible for the "I'm Wedge Antilles, I can do ANYTHING!!!" trend. And the "we're Imperials, mwahahaha, mustache twirl" trend.

[Academia Nut]

Well, at least with Wedge he did pick the one canonical secondary character who is extraordinarily bad ass. I mean, the bastard has two Death Star kill silhouettes, and has the superpower of being able to fly with Luke "Dead wingmate" Skywalker and not die.

Too bad Stackpole decided to overshadow Wedge with his own Gary Stu. And he should at least get credit for not re-using the Skywalker/Solo clan endlessly like all the rest of the EU authors.

[Darth Servo]

Well, at least with Wedge he did pick the one canonical secondary character who is extraordinarily bad ass. I mean, the bastard has two Death Star kill silhouettes,

I guess you get one just for surviving the battle of Yavin?

[Academia Nut]

Technically I think the way it was done since both battles were so huge and had such massive casualties was that just participating let you paint a circle on your fighter. Maybe not the second battle, but I'm fairly certain that for the first one just participating, especially on the trench run, earned you a Death Star kill marking.