scientific discipline fiction and phantasy publishing is a tough game . Even the good novelsget rejectedby publishers who do n’t understand their brave unexampled public . But some authors wind up rejecting their own books . Here are 10 not bad authors who disown their own creations after they ’d already go through the light of day .
15 classic science fabrication and fantasy novels that publishers reject
Top image : The Spy Who love Me ledger art , viaIllustrated007 .
Some of these cases prove that authors are the best judge of their own work , while others prove that the author is the last one who should make the call . What would the world be like without Kafka , after all ?
Fleming wrotethis novel , in which James Bond is essentially a secondary character , in an attempt to caution his readers against make Bond into too much of a hero . Ian Fleming say he wanted to make Bond ’s misogyny apparent after being shocked to discover that his Bond novel were being taught in schools . This “ experimentation , ” Fleming wrote to his publisher after the Holy Scripture received overpoweringly negative reviews , had “ obviously belong very much awry , ” and Ian Fleming undertake to keep the Christian Bible out of print . After Fleming ’s destruction , however , the time value of his backlist overwhelmed the author ’s wishes , and The Spy Who Loved Me come back into mark .
This1978 novelis the only one of Butler ’s works to remain out of print . She disowned it and let it stick forget , because she felt itdepended on the worst commonplace of skill fiction :
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/feature/-/11664/?tag=gizmodo08c-20
When I was untested , a mess of the great unwashed publish about go to another world and finding either little greenish men or little brown men , and they were always less in some way . They were a small sly , or a picayune like “ the indigene ” in a very sorry , old movie . And I opine , “ No way . aside from all these human beingness populating the galaxy , this is really offensive garbage . ” People inquire me why I do n’t like Survivor , my third novel . And it ’s because it feel a niggling scrap like that . Some humans go up to another world , and immediately set out mating with the foreigner and having tiddler with them . I conceive of it as my Star Trek novel .
While Butler never stop using science fable tropes as allegories , she stayed off from the stereotype invoked in Survivor after that .
When , a few years before his demise , Kafkaasked his good ally Max Brod to put down all his papers , besides the few short works with which Kafka was satisfied , Brod reply , “ If you severely think me capable of such a matter , let me tell you here and now that I shall not carry out your wishes . ” Nevertheless , when Kafka died he left Brod a letter asking him to destroy his fiction , diaries , and correspondence . Brod remained true to his parole : he proceeded topublish everything he could get his hands on .
Winterson is the author of The Stone Gods , plus some notable works of magical Platonism . But her weirdest Word of God might bethe one she ’s repudiated . Noah , the agonist of boat For Beginners is the owner of a little pleasure boat society . After he accidentally creates God , he realize he ’s stumbled onto a pull ahead recipe . He start save sensational Scripture like Genesis : How I Did It , before God gets jealous of the attention and post a flood tide . Winterson is pretty plainspoken about why she wrote this book :
I take money . I was 24 , waiting for Oranges [ Are Not The Only Fruit ] to come out , did n’t know what to expect or what I would do later , and I stimulate an offer to do something funny . You have to recall that the status Oranges has now was not how it was then . On the strong suit of Oranges the publishers thought I could do some funniness for their humour list . So I pick apart up B for B and of course just after it appear Oranges advance the Whitbread and then I just did n’t make sense to people . fortuitously in those day , writers were left alone , so I did n’t concern about not making sense , I mooched off and wrote a physical fitness Word and the get down to The Passion .
She calls the call that she tried to get boat For father out of print “ absolute bloody bollocks , ” but it is hard to find these days .
“ A novel I am fain to repudiate ” is how BurgessdescribedA Clockwork Orange in hisbiographyof another misunderstood novelist , D.H. Lawrence . Like many artists whose reputations become totally connected to one oeuvre , Burgess was frustrated that he was know only forA Clockwork Orange , which he claimed to have written in just three calendar week . Some accountsclaimthat it was the moving-picture show version and its popularity that made Burgess hate his own work so much . The “ misunderstanding ” comprise by the film ’s seeming to “ spiritualize sexual practice and violence ” will “ pursue me until I pass away , ” he indite .
As a writer in Poland under Stalinism , Lem was required to work according to socialistic - realist principles . His first science fiction novel , The Astronauts , was a objet d’art of propagandafor Soviet industrial enterprise . Although this novel launched Lem as a science fable author , he rejected it in his maturity date and did his best to keep it out of print :
Everything is so smooth and balanced ; among the submarine we have a positive Russian character and a honeyed Chinese ; naiveté is present on all pages of this book . The hope that in the yr 2000 the world would be rattling is indeed very childish … . As a very young man to a certain extent I must have resembled a parazoan that sucked in postulates proposed by socialist economy . I was concentrated on making the world more and more confident . In a certain sense I dissipate myself , since my impression and hopes were actual . Today I am a bit disgusted by this Koran .
“ Anything a writer disowns is of interest”wrotethe book reader Sam Leith after Martin Amis ’s biographer pretermit to mentionthis 1982 video - game guidebook , for which Steven Spielberg wrote the introduction . This book is part travelog through the sickly underbelly of arcade - game addiction — the arcades he visits are populated by “ Zonked glueys , verify skinheads with childish face full of unceasing evil , mohican punks sporting scalplocks in violet verticals and a nappy - pin through the nose ” — and part gaming usher , “ Do I take endangerment for gobble up the fruit symbol in the midriff of the screen ? I do not , and neither should you . Like the adipose tissue and harmless disc in Missile Command ( q.v . ) , the yield symbolic representation is there simply to tempt you into hubristic sorties . Bag it . ” Amis , the author of Time ’s Arrow and the terrific “ Janitor on Mars , ” has , sadly , never even spoken about this early effort in which many of his later stylistic hallmarks , not the least a preoccupation with games and secret plan - playing , are evident .
Stephen Kinghas repudiatedhis 1977 novel fad , published under his nom de guerre Richard Bachman , about a high school day student who shoots his algebra instructor and contain his class hostage . After the 1997 Heath High School shooting , in which a student killed three schoolfellow and wound five , King has tried to keep this Word of God out of photographic print :
I ca n’t say for certain that Michael Carneal , the son from Kentucky who shot three of his schoolfellow dead as they pray before school day , had say my novel , Rage , but tidings stories play along the incident reported that a copy of it had been found in his cabinet . It seems likely to me that he did . craze had been mention in at least one other school shooting , and in the wake of that one an FBI agent asked if he could question me on the subject , with an middle to correct up a computer profile that would help identify potentially dangerous adolescents . The Carneal incident was enough for me . I necessitate my publisher to take the blamed thing out of mark . They concurred . Are there still copy of passion available ? Yes , of course of study , some in libraries where you Lady and valet de chambre ply your trade . Because , like the guns and the explosives and the Ninja throwing - stars you could corrupt over the Internet , all that stuff and nonsense is just lying around and waiting for someone to foot it up .
Moore’srejection of his work for DC Comics , including Watchmen and V For Vendetta , does n’t have anything to do with the piece of work itself , but rather with his contentious relationship with the publishing house . DC , Moore contend , repeatedly acted in bad organized religion — for representative secure him that the copyright on the stories would regress to him after the Scripture went out of print , while planning to never let the books go out of mark . That , in Moore ’s Logos , “ swindle , ” as well as a comics rating system of rules Moore saw as equivalent to censorship , led him to ask that his name be removed from all of his DC labor . DC has , of course , not comply with this request , and Moore ’s disowned publications still bear his name .
AlthoughThe Aeneidwas almost finished at the time of Virgil ’s dying in 19 BCE , he is said to have ask his friends and executor Varius and Tucca to destroy the manuscript . Immediately after Virgil ’s dying , Augustus , for whom Virgil had read Word of God 2 , 4 , and 6 , overrode that deathbed asking and The Aeneid was brought into circulation . It ’s potential that Virgil ’s rejection of the ms was just a last grand gesture , calculated to increase the value of this epic account of the Trojan roots of the Roman Empire .
Bonus : Kurt Vonnegut , “ glad Birthday Wanda June ” and Slapstick
Vonnegut never disowned any of his own books — but he imprecate a couple of them . In Palm Sunday , Vonnegutassigned letter grades to his own works . While none of them find an F ( and a couple of them realise a somewhat gratuitous A+ ) he did give two reasonably humble marks :
Happy Birthday , Wanda June : D
Slapstick : D
BooksJames BondOctavia ButlerStephen King
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