I haven’t seen too many writers get worse as they get older. Piers Anthony’s writing has gotten consistently worse over time, in my opinion, but I can’t think of any other specific examples.
I think of this as Senior Author Syndrome. Chief exhibits are Anne McCaffrey, Mercedes Lackey and Orson Scott Card. The first symptom is forgetting how to hurt your characters. Just pick up a late book and an early book and compare how much jeopardy the characters get into.
I recall reading that Douglas Adams was depressed when he wrote Mostly Harmless, and intended to fix the disasters in the next book (which is totally possible in the HGTTG insane joke logic), but he died before he could write the next book.
It seems like most hard SF writers get hit by this. Frederik Pohl’s stuff from the late 80s onward has been pretty dismal, Larry Niven still writes stuff and is still the guy who wrote those good books in the 70s, Isaac Asimov’s and Arthur C. Clarke’s late stuff were weird messes. Robert L. Forward went from Dragon’s Egg to something called Saturn Rukh which sounds like a book length deadpan parody of terrible hard SF. Based on the reactions to his recent books, Greg Egan might also be on the way to becoming a cranky old man who wrote those good books in the 1990s.
This might be tied to how hard SF is about fresh, new perspectives and fluid thinking upending obsolete tradition. The successful young SF writers are ones with lots of fluid intelligence and little care for crystallized tradition. These aren’t necessarily the sort of people who develop extraordinary insight in the domain of crystallized nuance when their fluid intelligence starts to wane.
Writers who never really hit it big might need to keep cranking out the same sort of books they got famous with decades ago, even if they are tired with them and just going through the motions, since they’re stuck in the SF ghetto and have no name recognition outside it. Clarke and Asimov probably could have written anything they wanted and gotten it published, but still wrote tired sequels to their old hits. I understand Heinlein did start writing anything he wanted, and the results weren’t quite high literature.
I have to object here: Asimov did indeed write “anything he wanted” and got it published. He’s got a grand total of 515 books to his name. In addition to the science fiction novels and anthologies he wrote and edited, his books include include such things as two non-SF mystery novels, lots and lots of “popular science” nonfiction, five books of limericks, and the two-volume Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare.
Additionally, according to his autobiography, the driving force behind Asimov returning to his old science fiction themes was his publishers’ insistence. So blame them. ;)
Fair enough. Still, as far as I know, no literary fiction of note. Does he have any fiction as well-received as the Foundation trilogy or The Caves of Steel from the mid-60s onward?
Bob Dylan has talked about the decline in his creative skills as he aged. Some years ago, I saw an interview with him, where he said that he can’t understand how he was ever able to write songs as good as his early work. To him, it was like a different person wrote the music.
I haven’t seen too many writers get worse as they get older. Piers Anthony’s writing has gotten consistently worse over time, in my opinion, but I can’t think of any other specific examples.
I think of this as Senior Author Syndrome. Chief exhibits are Anne McCaffrey, Mercedes Lackey and Orson Scott Card. The first symptom is forgetting how to hurt your characters. Just pick up a late book and an early book and compare how much jeopardy the characters get into.
The bizarre exception to this is Douglas Adams’ Mostly Harmless.
I recall reading that Douglas Adams was depressed when he wrote Mostly Harmless, and intended to fix the disasters in the next book (which is totally possible in the HGTTG insane joke logic), but he died before he could write the next book.
It seems like most hard SF writers get hit by this. Frederik Pohl’s stuff from the late 80s onward has been pretty dismal, Larry Niven still writes stuff and is still the guy who wrote those good books in the 70s, Isaac Asimov’s and Arthur C. Clarke’s late stuff were weird messes. Robert L. Forward went from Dragon’s Egg to something called Saturn Rukh which sounds like a book length deadpan parody of terrible hard SF. Based on the reactions to his recent books, Greg Egan might also be on the way to becoming a cranky old man who wrote those good books in the 1990s.
This might be tied to how hard SF is about fresh, new perspectives and fluid thinking upending obsolete tradition. The successful young SF writers are ones with lots of fluid intelligence and little care for crystallized tradition. These aren’t necessarily the sort of people who develop extraordinary insight in the domain of crystallized nuance when their fluid intelligence starts to wane.
Writers who never really hit it big might need to keep cranking out the same sort of books they got famous with decades ago, even if they are tired with them and just going through the motions, since they’re stuck in the SF ghetto and have no name recognition outside it. Clarke and Asimov probably could have written anything they wanted and gotten it published, but still wrote tired sequels to their old hits. I understand Heinlein did start writing anything he wanted, and the results weren’t quite high literature.
I have to object here: Asimov did indeed write “anything he wanted” and got it published. He’s got a grand total of 515 books to his name. In addition to the science fiction novels and anthologies he wrote and edited, his books include include such things as two non-SF mystery novels, lots and lots of “popular science” nonfiction, five books of limericks, and the two-volume Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare.
Additionally, according to his autobiography, the driving force behind Asimov returning to his old science fiction themes was his publishers’ insistence. So blame them. ;)
As I recall, Asimov said in an essay written near the end of his life that he regretted not writing historical fiction.
Fair enough. Still, as far as I know, no literary fiction of note. Does he have any fiction as well-received as the Foundation trilogy or The Caves of Steel from the mid-60s onward?
Heinlein’s later novels are generally considered to be inferior to his earlier work, but he had brain-related health problems.
CS Lewis suddenly lost the vivid visual images which he used as the starting points for fiction.
I think Orson Scott Card has deteriorated.
Niven, too.
And Tom Clancy
Lois McMaster Bujold. Harry Turtledove.
David Eddings.
Isobelle Carmody (although this case may be limited to the Obernewtyn world in particular—I haven’t read other recent works).
A notable non-exception is Terry Pratchett. His most recent works are still superior to his earliest despite Alzheimer’s.
Bob Dylan has talked about the decline in his creative skills as he aged. Some years ago, I saw an interview with him, where he said that he can’t understand how he was ever able to write songs as good as his early work. To him, it was like a different person wrote the music.