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The Eye of Argon
This is not a hoax. Jim Theis was a real person, who wrote The Eye of Argon in all seriousness as a teenager, and published it in a fanzine, Osfan in 1970. But the story did not pass into the oblivion that awaits most amateur fiction. Instead, a miracle happened, and transcribed and photocopied texts began to circulate in science fiction circles, gaining a wide and incredulous audience among both professionals and fans. It became the ultimate samizdat, an underground classic, and for more than thirty years it has been the subject of midnight readings at conventions, as thousands have come to appreciate the negative genius of this amazing Ed Wood of prose.
76 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1970
45 people are currently reading
826 people want to read
About the author
Jim Theis
2 books8 followersJames F. Theis (pronounced "Tice") was born August 9, 1953 and died March 26, 2002. He published The Eye of Argon in a fanzine in 1970 at age 16. He did not write any more fiction, but did gain a degree in journalism. His hobbies included collecting books, comics, and German swords; he also collected, traded, and sold tapes of radio programs of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s under the business-name "The Phantom of Radio Past", advertising in such publications as the Fandom Directory.
In an interview with Theis on 8 March 1984 on Hour 25, a talk show on KPFK, the presenters of which would periodically stage a reading of The Eye of Argon, Theis stated that he was hurt that his story was being mocked and said he would never write anything again. In a later interview he complains about being mocked for something he had written thirty years ago, at age sixteen. He is said to have participated in readings of the story in St Louis, e.g. at Archon. A copy of the 1995 reprinting was sent to him, with no response.
In an interview with Theis on 8 March 1984 on Hour 25, a talk show on KPFK, the presenters of which would periodically stage a reading of The Eye of Argon, Theis stated that he was hurt that his story was being mocked and said he would never write anything again. In a later interview he complains about being mocked for something he had written thirty years ago, at age sixteen. He is said to have participated in readings of the story in St Louis, e.g. at Archon. A copy of the 1995 reprinting was sent to him, with no response.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 303 reviews
March 13, 2021
That story went over like... like... like a story that doesn't go over very well. And it's contagiously hilarious! It bit me, for crissake! Someone, put me out of my misery, quick! NB! I started reading it knowing just what it is and it didn't disappoint. If anything, it overdelivered and overdelivered and went on ovedelivering on so many levels, I can't even count them all... It's so bad it can and should be used for laugh therapy sessions for geeks (just like yours truly).
Ultra, ULTRA, U L T R A freaking awesomely weird! Basically, this is a legend of a horrible novel. A masterpiece of botched literature. A veritable Hurrigane of Euphemisms, if one ever existed, I shit you not!
Jim Theis is "a malaprop genius, a McGonagall of prose with an eerie gift for choosing the wrong word and then misapplying it. (c) David Langford
Why 5 stars? I don't think this wasn't written on purpose. And if it wasn't - the author is a genius nevertheless. THAT takes some balls and brains and paper and a really wild thesaurus. LONG LEAVE THEIS!
So, rating composition:
+ 100 stars for the satire and cheek!
- 100 stars for everything that went wrong with this book (which is pretty much everything unimaginable and unnameable! I'm not even starting the list, it has no chance to fit in here!)
+5 stars for making me laugh and being the absolute winner in any and every category of the Books of the Nightmare!
Sources:
Original Text: The Eye of Argon
A wild thesaurus has definitely rampaged through the text. (c)
Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness.
Enjoy the excerpts (there is lots more where these came from!):
Q:
His trust found him with a dagger thrust his ribs," the wench stated whimsicoracally. (c)
Q:
Above his head rose the hideous idol, its empty socket holding the shaman's ifurbished infuriated gaze.
His eyes turned to a stoney glaze with the realization of the pillage and blasphemy. Due to his high succeptibility following the siezure, the priest was transformed into a raving maniac bent soley upon reaking vengeance. With lips curled and quivering, a crust of foam dripping from them, the acolyte drew a long, wicked looking jewel hilted scimitar from his silver girdle and fled through the aperature in the ceiling uttering a faintly perceptible ceremonial jibberish. (c)
Q:
They slew the guard placed over me and abducted me to the chamber in which you chanced to come upon the scozsctic sacrifice. Their hell-spawned cult demands a sacrifice once every three moons upon its full journey through the heavens. (c)
Q:
The prince would surely have submitted them to the most ghastly of tortures if he had ever discovered their unfaithfulness to Sargon, his bastard diety. (c)
Q:
"Mrifk! I thought I had killed the last of those dogs;" muttered Grignr in a half apathetic state.
Q:
"Nay Grignr. You doubtless grew careless while giving vent to your lusts. But let us not tarry any long lest we over tax the fates. The paths leading to freedom will soon be barred.
The wretch's crys must certainly have attracted unwanted attention," the wench mused.
"By what direction shall we pursue our flight?"
"Up that stair and down the corridor a short distance is the concealed enterance to a tunnel seldom used by others than the prince, and known to few others save the palace's royalty. It is used mainly by the prince when he wishes to take leave of the palace in secret. It is not always in the Prince's best interests to leave his chateau in public view. Even while under heavy guard he is often assaulted by hurtling stones and rotting fruits. The commoners have little love for him." lectured the nerelady!
"It is amazing that they would ever have left a pig like him become their ruler. I should imagine that his people would rise up and crucify him like the dog he is."
"Alas, Grignr, it is not as simple as all that. His soldiers are well paid by him. (c)
Q:
After spilling a spout of blood from the leader of the mercenaries as he dismembered one of the officer's arms, he retreated to his mount to make his way towards Gorzom, rumoured to contain hoards of plunder, and many young wenches for any man who has the backbone to wrest them away. (c)
Q:
"Thou hast need to occupy your time, barbarian",questioned the female? ...
The engrossed titan ignored the queries of the inquisitive female, pulling her towards him and crushing her sagging nipples to his yearning chest. Without struggle she gave in, winding her soft arms around the harshly bronzedhide of Grignr corded shoulder blades, as his calloused hands caressed her firm protruding busts.
"You make love well wench," Admitted Grignr as he reached for the vessel of potent wine his charge had been quaffing. (c)
Q:
A flying foot caught the mug Grignr had taken hold of, sending its blood red contents sloshing over a flickering crescent; leashing tongues of bright orange flame to the foot trodden floor.
"Remove yourself Sirrah, the wench belongs to me;" Blabbered a drunken soldier, too far consumed by the influences of his virile brew to take note of the superior size of his adversary.
Grignr lithly bounded from the startled female, his face lit up to an ashen red ferocity, and eyes locked in a searing feral blaze toward the swaying soldier.
"To hell with you, braggard!" Bellowed the angered Ecordian, as he hefted his finely honed broad sword. (c)
Q:
The eyeballs glare turned to a sudden plea of mercy, a plea for the whole of humanity. Then the blob began to quiver with violent convulsions; the eyeball shattered into a thousand tiny fragments and evaporated in a curling wisp of scarlet mist. The very ground below the thing began to vibrate and swallow it up with a belch.
The thing was gone forever. All that remained was a dark red blotch upon the face of the earth, blotching things up. Shaking his head, his shaggy mane to clear the jumbled fragments of his mind, Grignr tossed the limp female over his shoulder. Mounting one of the disgruntled mares, and leading the other; the weary, scarred barbarian trooted slowly off into the horizon to become a tiny pinpoint in a filtered filed of swirling blue mists, leaving the Nobles, soldiers and peasants to replace the missing monarch. Long leave the king!!! (c)
PS. It's supposedly fanfiction on some or other fantasy (Conan-barbarian style) allegedly written by a 16-year old boy, There's another version of it: that this was a winner of a college contest on which of the students would write the most horrible novelette with most of the don'ts done.
Basically it's a novelette, interspersed with the horriblest of the impossible word and world choices, lots of typos, crazy syntax and weirdest pretty much everything about it. It's so horrible it's almost endearing. :) And one absolutely can't read it without cracking up! :)
Ultra, ULTRA, U L T R A freaking awesomely weird! Basically, this is a legend of a horrible novel. A masterpiece of botched literature. A veritable Hurrigane of Euphemisms, if one ever existed, I shit you not!
Jim Theis is "a malaprop genius, a McGonagall of prose with an eerie gift for choosing the wrong word and then misapplying it. (c) David Langford
Why 5 stars? I don't think this wasn't written on purpose. And if it wasn't - the author is a genius nevertheless. THAT takes some balls and brains and paper and a really wild thesaurus. LONG LEAVE THEIS!
So, rating composition:
+ 100 stars for the satire and cheek!
- 100 stars for everything that went wrong with this book (which is pretty much everything unimaginable and unnameable! I'm not even starting the list, it has no chance to fit in here!)
+5 stars for making me laugh and being the absolute winner in any and every category of the Books of the Nightmare!
Sources:
Original Text: The Eye of Argon
A wild thesaurus has definitely rampaged through the text. (c)
Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness.
Enjoy the excerpts (there is lots more where these came from!):
Q:
His trust found him with a dagger thrust his ribs," the wench stated whimsicoracally. (c)
Q:
Above his head rose the hideous idol, its empty socket holding the shaman's ifurbished infuriated gaze.
His eyes turned to a stoney glaze with the realization of the pillage and blasphemy. Due to his high succeptibility following the siezure, the priest was transformed into a raving maniac bent soley upon reaking vengeance. With lips curled and quivering, a crust of foam dripping from them, the acolyte drew a long, wicked looking jewel hilted scimitar from his silver girdle and fled through the aperature in the ceiling uttering a faintly perceptible ceremonial jibberish. (c)
Q:
They slew the guard placed over me and abducted me to the chamber in which you chanced to come upon the scozsctic sacrifice. Their hell-spawned cult demands a sacrifice once every three moons upon its full journey through the heavens. (c)
Q:
The prince would surely have submitted them to the most ghastly of tortures if he had ever discovered their unfaithfulness to Sargon, his bastard diety. (c)
Q:
"Mrifk! I thought I had killed the last of those dogs;" muttered Grignr in a half apathetic state.
Q:
"Nay Grignr. You doubtless grew careless while giving vent to your lusts. But let us not tarry any long lest we over tax the fates. The paths leading to freedom will soon be barred.
The wretch's crys must certainly have attracted unwanted attention," the wench mused.
"By what direction shall we pursue our flight?"
"Up that stair and down the corridor a short distance is the concealed enterance to a tunnel seldom used by others than the prince, and known to few others save the palace's royalty. It is used mainly by the prince when he wishes to take leave of the palace in secret. It is not always in the Prince's best interests to leave his chateau in public view. Even while under heavy guard he is often assaulted by hurtling stones and rotting fruits. The commoners have little love for him." lectured the nerelady!
"It is amazing that they would ever have left a pig like him become their ruler. I should imagine that his people would rise up and crucify him like the dog he is."
"Alas, Grignr, it is not as simple as all that. His soldiers are well paid by him. (c)
Q:
After spilling a spout of blood from the leader of the mercenaries as he dismembered one of the officer's arms, he retreated to his mount to make his way towards Gorzom, rumoured to contain hoards of plunder, and many young wenches for any man who has the backbone to wrest them away. (c)
Q:
"Thou hast need to occupy your time, barbarian",questioned the female? ...
The engrossed titan ignored the queries of the inquisitive female, pulling her towards him and crushing her sagging nipples to his yearning chest. Without struggle she gave in, winding her soft arms around the harshly bronzedhide of Grignr corded shoulder blades, as his calloused hands caressed her firm protruding busts.
"You make love well wench," Admitted Grignr as he reached for the vessel of potent wine his charge had been quaffing. (c)
Q:
A flying foot caught the mug Grignr had taken hold of, sending its blood red contents sloshing over a flickering crescent; leashing tongues of bright orange flame to the foot trodden floor.
"Remove yourself Sirrah, the wench belongs to me;" Blabbered a drunken soldier, too far consumed by the influences of his virile brew to take note of the superior size of his adversary.
Grignr lithly bounded from the startled female, his face lit up to an ashen red ferocity, and eyes locked in a searing feral blaze toward the swaying soldier.
"To hell with you, braggard!" Bellowed the angered Ecordian, as he hefted his finely honed broad sword. (c)
Q:
The eyeballs glare turned to a sudden plea of mercy, a plea for the whole of humanity. Then the blob began to quiver with violent convulsions; the eyeball shattered into a thousand tiny fragments and evaporated in a curling wisp of scarlet mist. The very ground below the thing began to vibrate and swallow it up with a belch.
The thing was gone forever. All that remained was a dark red blotch upon the face of the earth, blotching things up. Shaking his head, his shaggy mane to clear the jumbled fragments of his mind, Grignr tossed the limp female over his shoulder. Mounting one of the disgruntled mares, and leading the other; the weary, scarred barbarian trooted slowly off into the horizon to become a tiny pinpoint in a filtered filed of swirling blue mists, leaving the Nobles, soldiers and peasants to replace the missing monarch. Long leave the king!!! (c)
PS. It's supposedly fanfiction on some or other fantasy (Conan-barbarian style) allegedly written by a 16-year old boy, There's another version of it: that this was a winner of a college contest on which of the students would write the most horrible novelette with most of the don'ts done.
Basically it's a novelette, interspersed with the horriblest of the impossible word and world choices, lots of typos, crazy syntax and weirdest pretty much everything about it. It's so horrible it's almost endearing. :) And one absolutely can't read it without cracking up! :)
December 31, 2017
For my last finished book of 2017, and my 300th book read this year, I wanted to finish with a bang. A masterpiece of literary goodness.
This book is named "The Worst Fantasy Book of All Time" and rightly so. It is amazingly bad. So bad that as I read it aloud to my daughter this evening, I had to keep stopping to catch my breath and wipe the tears from my face from laughing so hard.
Read it free online here.
February 13, 2021
Lee El Ojo de Argón en directo, me dijeron. Será divertido, me dijeron.
*se hace una bola y llora en el suelo*
*se hace una bola y llora en el suelo*
April 30, 2011
"The Eye of Argon" is a legendary piece of fiction. It may look like just another lame "Conan the Barbarian" ripoff...
... but it isn't. This is the Holy Grail of wretched fantasy, the Excalibur of excrescent writing, the purest form of terrible writing that makes Edward Bulwer-Lytton look like Shakespeare. Jim Theis' legendary novella butchers the English language and wallows in the blood -- and I defy anyone to read this story in one sitting without experiencing fatal brain meltage.
It is the story of Grignr (how do you say that anyway?), a barbarian who hacks'n'slashes his way to the city of Gorzam, "hoping to discover wine, women, and adventure to boil the wild blood coarsing through his savage veins." Yeah, whatever. So he starts a fight over some random "wench" in Gorzam, and ends up sitting in prison while a bunch of priests try to rape and sacrifice a girl. Of course, he starts causing trouble like all hot-blooded barbarians do.
Well, that's sort of the story -- if you can call it a story, which is difficult to do because frankly Theis seems to have made it up as he went along. Admittedly he was only sixteen when he wrote "Eye of Argon," but let's face it -- there isn't a single solitary SENTENCE in this book that doesn't make me want to stab myself in the brain with a fork.
Not that that's always a BAD thing. In fact, "Eye of Argon" is gutsplittingly funny and is used as a sort of genre joke.
Most of this comes from the way that Jim Theis... well, he did to the English language what Carthena does to the evil priest. Just look at the very first scene of the book. We've got a "misting brain," "grinding lungs" and "writhing mouths," not to mention "Grignr's emerald green orbs glared lustfully at the wallowing soldier." So, he's sexually attracted to the guy he just killed?
And it's like that ALL THROUGH THE BOOK. Random adjectives are slapped around (a girl has a "lithe, opaque nose"), verbs are slaughtered (Carthena "husked" a remark), adverbs are beaten senseless (how do you ask something "bustily?") and the dialogue may cause your eyeballs to bleed. Who could write a line like, "You make love well, wench"?
But let's be honest here -- this book would be a disaster even if Theis weren't that bad a writer -- the "plot" is incoherent and apparently made-up as it goes along, with absurd plot twists (killing people with a RAT PELVIS?) and long infodumps of boring blabber. What's more: it doesn't even have an end.
Even if they tried their hardest, most people couldn't write a story as hilariously, mind-blowingly horrible as "The Eye of Argon." Warning: if you read it, you might end up worming agonizingly as you utter a gasping gurgle.
... but it isn't. This is the Holy Grail of wretched fantasy, the Excalibur of excrescent writing, the purest form of terrible writing that makes Edward Bulwer-Lytton look like Shakespeare. Jim Theis' legendary novella butchers the English language and wallows in the blood -- and I defy anyone to read this story in one sitting without experiencing fatal brain meltage.
It is the story of Grignr (how do you say that anyway?), a barbarian who hacks'n'slashes his way to the city of Gorzam, "hoping to discover wine, women, and adventure to boil the wild blood coarsing through his savage veins." Yeah, whatever. So he starts a fight over some random "wench" in Gorzam, and ends up sitting in prison while a bunch of priests try to rape and sacrifice a girl. Of course, he starts causing trouble like all hot-blooded barbarians do.
Well, that's sort of the story -- if you can call it a story, which is difficult to do because frankly Theis seems to have made it up as he went along. Admittedly he was only sixteen when he wrote "Eye of Argon," but let's face it -- there isn't a single solitary SENTENCE in this book that doesn't make me want to stab myself in the brain with a fork.
Not that that's always a BAD thing. In fact, "Eye of Argon" is gutsplittingly funny and is used as a sort of genre joke.
Most of this comes from the way that Jim Theis... well, he did to the English language what Carthena does to the evil priest. Just look at the very first scene of the book. We've got a "misting brain," "grinding lungs" and "writhing mouths," not to mention "Grignr's emerald green orbs glared lustfully at the wallowing soldier." So, he's sexually attracted to the guy he just killed?
And it's like that ALL THROUGH THE BOOK. Random adjectives are slapped around (a girl has a "lithe, opaque nose"), verbs are slaughtered (Carthena "husked" a remark), adverbs are beaten senseless (how do you ask something "bustily?") and the dialogue may cause your eyeballs to bleed. Who could write a line like, "You make love well, wench"?
But let's be honest here -- this book would be a disaster even if Theis weren't that bad a writer -- the "plot" is incoherent and apparently made-up as it goes along, with absurd plot twists (killing people with a RAT PELVIS?) and long infodumps of boring blabber. What's more: it doesn't even have an end.
Even if they tried their hardest, most people couldn't write a story as hilariously, mind-blowingly horrible as "The Eye of Argon." Warning: if you read it, you might end up worming agonizingly as you utter a gasping gurgle.
June 15, 2025
Ale jajca. Cudowne.
March 14, 2013
Prefer an "engrossed titan" who ignores "the queries of an inquisitive female, pulling her towards him and crushing her sagging nipples to his yearning chest"?
Want your narrator's consciousness to return "in stygmatic pools as his mind gradually cleared of the cobwebs cluttering its inner recesses, yet the stygian cloud of charcoal ebony remained"?
Obsessed with "expertly chisled forms of grotesque gargoyles that graced the oblique rim protruberating the length of the grim orifice of death, staring forever ahead into nothingness in complete ignorance of the bloody rites enacted in their prescence"?
Desire to see the villain "clutching his urinary gland as his knees wobbled rapidly about for a few seconds then buckled, causing the ruptured shaman to collapse in an egg huddled mass to the granite pavement, rolling helplessly about in his agony"?
Then you must join this quest for "the many fauceted scarlet emerald," posthaste.
Just awesome. Would be five stars had Delaney told it true that it's intentional satire. As Theis was a real guy, poor thing, it's on the other end of Poe's Law.
Want your narrator's consciousness to return "in stygmatic pools as his mind gradually cleared of the cobwebs cluttering its inner recesses, yet the stygian cloud of charcoal ebony remained"?
Obsessed with "expertly chisled forms of grotesque gargoyles that graced the oblique rim protruberating the length of the grim orifice of death, staring forever ahead into nothingness in complete ignorance of the bloody rites enacted in their prescence"?
Desire to see the villain "clutching his urinary gland as his knees wobbled rapidly about for a few seconds then buckled, causing the ruptured shaman to collapse in an egg huddled mass to the granite pavement, rolling helplessly about in his agony"?
Then you must join this quest for "the many fauceted scarlet emerald," posthaste.
Just awesome. Would be five stars had Delaney told it true that it's intentional satire. As Theis was a real guy, poor thing, it's on the other end of Poe's Law.
December 6, 2010
For as long as I can remember, it has always been an ambition of mine to find an artifact whose existence is denied by many: the Worst Book Ever Written. I have spent countless hours going through libraries and charity bookshops in search of it and today, I'm glad to say that I finally found it. I give you ''The Eye of Argon'': a work of transcendent, dizzying, sublime badness. I'll pick two sentences at random to give you an idea of the quality:
(This is after the main character Grignr the Barbarian has fatally injured a soldier). ''Grignr's emerald green orbs glared lustfully at the wallowing soldier struggling before his chestnut swirled mount''.
''The vile stench of the Shaman's hot fetid breath over came the nauseated female with a deep soul searing sickness, causing her to wrench her head backwards and regurgitate a slimy, orangewhite stream of swelling gore over the richly woven purple robe of the enthused acolyte''.
I haven't laughed so much whilst reading a book in a very long time. Absolutely hilarious. And I love that in the Introduction, Mr Theis apparently took the story to his English teacher after he had written it so it could be improved. Bro, your English teacher can't fix this story: the only thing that can fix this is a flamethrower.
(This is after the main character Grignr the Barbarian has fatally injured a soldier). ''Grignr's emerald green orbs glared lustfully at the wallowing soldier struggling before his chestnut swirled mount''.
''The vile stench of the Shaman's hot fetid breath over came the nauseated female with a deep soul searing sickness, causing her to wrench her head backwards and regurgitate a slimy, orangewhite stream of swelling gore over the richly woven purple robe of the enthused acolyte''.
I haven't laughed so much whilst reading a book in a very long time. Absolutely hilarious. And I love that in the Introduction, Mr Theis apparently took the story to his English teacher after he had written it so it could be improved. Bro, your English teacher can't fix this story: the only thing that can fix this is a flamethrower.
May 20, 2019
5 stars for the same reason My Immortal got five stars; that is, creating something so incredibly horrific is a talent in itself.
short-fiction
March 9, 2024"The Eye of Argon" is a story so legendary, it almost feels pointless to review it. Written by a 16-year-old kid and published in a mimeographed fanzine in 1970, it gained a notoreity for badness that went unchallenged until "My Immortal" over thirty years later.
Nearly 20 years after MI was posted on fanfiction.net, people still don't really know who wrote it. Theis didn't have the luxury of anonymity, but seems to have taken the riffs and read-alouds in good part as he got older. He passed away in 2002 at the relatively young age of 48, with this story as his only known legacy in the world of fiction.
It's pretty obvious that Theis read a Conan story or two, and in a burst of inspiration wrote a not-dissimilar tale featuring a jade idol, a cult, a corrupt piggish king, a curvaceous damsel, and--of course--a musclebound barbarian swordsman who leaves seas of blood and entrails in his wake. A reader shouldn't come to this story for anything but the wonderfully baffling prose.
So, without further ado, here are a few of my favorite lines. Let your brain add its own [sic]s as it will:
Bonus: expand your vocabulary! If any of these are actual words, I don't want to know.
expugnisively
cuppex
apiesed/appiesed
yawkishly
whimsicoracally
scozsctic [??]
nerelady
slooze
*
This story is available for free on a couple of web sites, including one that looks like it was designed in the Geocities era. I encourage anyone who has a few thousand words' reading time available to give it a look. Considering that it was written well before the digital age, its ongoing fame is a remarkable achievement. RIP Jim Theis, whose fifteen minutes has lasted over 50 years.
I read "The Eye of Argon" accompanied by the "372 Pages We'll Never Get Back" podcast episodes about it.
Nearly 20 years after MI was posted on fanfiction.net, people still don't really know who wrote it. Theis didn't have the luxury of anonymity, but seems to have taken the riffs and read-alouds in good part as he got older. He passed away in 2002 at the relatively young age of 48, with this story as his only known legacy in the world of fiction.
It's pretty obvious that Theis read a Conan story or two, and in a burst of inspiration wrote a not-dissimilar tale featuring a jade idol, a cult, a corrupt piggish king, a curvaceous damsel, and--of course--a musclebound barbarian swordsman who leaves seas of blood and entrails in his wake. A reader shouldn't come to this story for anything but the wonderfully baffling prose.
So, without further ado, here are a few of my favorite lines. Let your brain add its own [sic]s as it will:
The flickering torches cast weird shafts of luminescence dancing over the half naked harlot of his choice, her stringy orchid twines of hair swaying gracefully over the lithe opaque nose[...]I have to say that Theis does a much better job distinguishing "its" from "it's" than 90% of people on the internet.
*
Grignr grappled with the lashing flexor muscles of the repugnant body of a garganuan brownhided rat, striving to hold its razor teeth from his juicy jugular, as its beady grey organs of sight glazed into the flaring emeralds of its prey.
*
Grignr merely voiced an sighed grunt, returning the damsels embrace while he smothered her trim, delicate lips between the coarsing protrusions of his reeking maw.
*
All that remained was a dark red blotch upon the face of the earth, blotching things up.
Bonus: expand your vocabulary! If any of these are actual words, I don't want to know.
expugnisively
cuppex
apiesed/appiesed
yawkishly
whimsicoracally
scozsctic [??]
nerelady
slooze
*
This story is available for free on a couple of web sites, including one that looks like it was designed in the Geocities era. I encourage anyone who has a few thousand words' reading time available to give it a look. Considering that it was written well before the digital age, its ongoing fame is a remarkable achievement. RIP Jim Theis, whose fifteen minutes has lasted over 50 years.
I read "The Eye of Argon" accompanied by the "372 Pages We'll Never Get Back" podcast episodes about it.
January 28, 2009
Reading this is like watching a parade of clowns being run down by penguins piloting unicyles. Epic fail that all others are judged against.
March 10, 2017
Holy shit dude.
November 12, 2023
"Aye! The ways of our civilization are in many ways warped and distorted, but what is your calling," she queried , bustily?
A, if not the definitive classic terrible fantasy tale, with a storied history unveiled over decades and still not fully uncovered.
It's obviously a Conan pastiche; it fits the story pattern perfectly. Unfortunately it also dials the purple prose up to eleven, with the judgment over word choice of a besotten teenager.
Grignr grappled with the lashing flexor muscles of the repugnant body of a garganuan brownhided rat, striving to hold its razor teeth from his juicy jugular.
This "Scholars' edition" includes three essays searching for understanding of this masterpiece, presented chronologically. All I can say now is, I miss living in a pre-internet world, when this literary mystery could remain unsolved for over thirty years. I can only imagine the joy of long-term followers of this piece, to see the final page finally discovered around 2006.
Disappointingly, the finely-researched material risks making the story seem less bad with its theorizing that many of the much loved butchered typography might not have been the fault of the author, and rather a by product of the typing and printing processes.
I am sad that I cannot add this to my "self-published manatee abortion" bookshelf, because it (the original story) was not self-published, if that is to be believed.
October 27, 2018
So, so awful that it goes full circle and becomes amazing. I hope you like adjectives!
February 19, 2014
Normally, I fall for literature with well-developed characters, a cracking plot, an imaginative or imaginatively depicted setting, and a writing style that is seamless and natural, yet unique.
In The Eye of Argon, the only thing developed about the characters are their breasts and muscles. The plot is not so much cracking as cracked. The setting is imaginatively named, if not imaginative. And the writing style... well, it ain't natural, but it sure is unique.
In short, it's the worst piece of writing I've ever encountered. And for that, I love it. Seriously, it's one of the most unintentionally hilarious things in existence. And you can download it as a PDF for free.
The Eye of Argon is the (short) tale of Grignr the Ecordian, a barbarian warrior of enormous height, build and loincloth capacity. After sating his bloodlust by murdering a couple of soldiers, he goes to sate his regular lust in a brothel. Or maybe it's a tavern - I don't think Theis knew the difference. He snuggles up with a harlot who has 'stringy twines of orchid hair flowing gracefully over [her] lithe, opaque nose', only to be challenged by a drunk soldier. The man calls Grignr a slut, so he beheads him. Grignr is then escorted to see the ruler of Noregolia, a fat man who can blush and go pale at the same time and whose 'flabs of jellied blubber pulsate to and fro in ripples of flowing terror', whatever that means. After killing the king's advisor, Grignr is thrown into a dungeon. In order to escape, he must manually decapitate bloodthirsty giant rats, rescue swooning women from epileptic priests, spout completely nonsensical dialogue, steal a 'scarlet emerald', fight off eldritch leeches, and keep bone daggers in his G-string without slicing off his testicles. And he must do it in purple prose, surrounded by drawings as ugly and bizarre as the story itself.
If you enjoy B-movies, Tara Gillesbie's 'My Immortal', or laughing until your stomach hurts, you will love The Eye of Argon.
In The Eye of Argon, the only thing developed about the characters are their breasts and muscles. The plot is not so much cracking as cracked. The setting is imaginatively named, if not imaginative. And the writing style... well, it ain't natural, but it sure is unique.
In short, it's the worst piece of writing I've ever encountered. And for that, I love it. Seriously, it's one of the most unintentionally hilarious things in existence. And you can download it as a PDF for free.
The Eye of Argon is the (short) tale of Grignr the Ecordian, a barbarian warrior of enormous height, build and loincloth capacity. After sating his bloodlust by murdering a couple of soldiers, he goes to sate his regular lust in a brothel. Or maybe it's a tavern - I don't think Theis knew the difference. He snuggles up with a harlot who has 'stringy twines of orchid hair flowing gracefully over [her] lithe, opaque nose', only to be challenged by a drunk soldier. The man calls Grignr a slut, so he beheads him. Grignr is then escorted to see the ruler of Noregolia, a fat man who can blush and go pale at the same time and whose 'flabs of jellied blubber pulsate to and fro in ripples of flowing terror', whatever that means. After killing the king's advisor, Grignr is thrown into a dungeon. In order to escape, he must manually decapitate bloodthirsty giant rats, rescue swooning women from epileptic priests, spout completely nonsensical dialogue, steal a 'scarlet emerald', fight off eldritch leeches, and keep bone daggers in his G-string without slicing off his testicles. And he must do it in purple prose, surrounded by drawings as ugly and bizarre as the story itself.
If you enjoy B-movies, Tara Gillesbie's 'My Immortal', or laughing until your stomach hurts, you will love The Eye of Argon.
April 1, 2020
This is the most entertaining story I've ever had the pleasure of reading. My face hurts from laughing so hard, and for so long, that tears rolled down my cheeks and I discovered muscles that I didn't even know I had 😂😂😂😂 Pure gold.
It made me sad to learn that the author was emotionally devastated by the knowledge that people were mocking his story. I wish he could have seen it the way that I see it.
You see, I wrote some godawful cheesy stuff when I was a teenager, too (and when I was an adult 😜). That's common, right? But whenever I discover something cringe-worthy that I wrote 25 years ago, I get immense enjoyment from guffawing at my old self, then showing it to other people so that they can chuckle and hoot along with me 😁
I wish that Jim Theis could have appreciated this for the legendary relic that it now is. He deserved to feel honored by it. Sadly, his feelings were crushed and he declared that he would never write another story, then died in his late 40s. That breaks my heart 😢😢😢😢 If I'd had the opportunity to meet him, I would have explained why he should keep writing stories. I'm willing to bet he would have become a brilliant fantasy writer if he hadn't given up on his dream.
So, I laughed-'til-I-cried all the way through The Eye of Argon but it certainly wasn't mean-spirited. I was aware that it had been written by a 16-year-old and I appreciated it through that lens. If he were my child, I would have been proud of him (and perhaps a bit disturbed by his obsession with naked tavern wenches 😝) because Jim Theis was a creative teenager whose imagination could have taken him anywhere, with a little guidance and encouragement.
Read it here: https://ansible.uk/misc/eyeargon.html
It made me sad to learn that the author was emotionally devastated by the knowledge that people were mocking his story. I wish he could have seen it the way that I see it.
You see, I wrote some godawful cheesy stuff when I was a teenager, too (and when I was an adult 😜). That's common, right? But whenever I discover something cringe-worthy that I wrote 25 years ago, I get immense enjoyment from guffawing at my old self, then showing it to other people so that they can chuckle and hoot along with me 😁
I wish that Jim Theis could have appreciated this for the legendary relic that it now is. He deserved to feel honored by it. Sadly, his feelings were crushed and he declared that he would never write another story, then died in his late 40s. That breaks my heart 😢😢😢😢 If I'd had the opportunity to meet him, I would have explained why he should keep writing stories. I'm willing to bet he would have become a brilliant fantasy writer if he hadn't given up on his dream.
So, I laughed-'til-I-cried all the way through The Eye of Argon but it certainly wasn't mean-spirited. I was aware that it had been written by a 16-year-old and I appreciated it through that lens. If he were my child, I would have been proud of him (and perhaps a bit disturbed by his obsession with naked tavern wenches 😝) because Jim Theis was a creative teenager whose imagination could have taken him anywhere, with a little guidance and encouragement.
Read it here: https://ansible.uk/misc/eyeargon.html
August 7, 2017
"At the foot of the heathen diety a slender, pale faced female, naked but for a golden, jeweled harness enshrouding her huge outcropping breasts, supporting long silver laces which extended to her thigh, stood before the pearl white field with noticable shivers traveling up and down the length of her exquisitely molded body."
.
.
.
"The man upon the throne had a naked wench seated at each of his arms, and a trusted advisor seated in back of him. At each cornwr of the chamber a guard stood at attention, with upraised pikes supported in their hands, golden chainmail adorning their torso's and barred helmets emitting scarlet plumes enshrouding their heads. The man rose from his throne to the dias surrounding it. His plush turquois robe dangled loosely from his chuncky frame.
.
.
.
"Take this uncouth heathen to the vault of misery, and be sure that his agonies are long and drawn out before death can release him."
Not a book to actually *read*, but it sure is fun to find bits like this! All text quoted verbatim, from a copy that used to be online.
From the [formerly] online copy, accessed 2006:
' "The Eye of Argon" was published in 1970 in OSFAN, the journal of the Ozark SF Society, issue number 10. Photocopies circulated for decades, and it became a regular sf convention challenge to read Jim Theis's mangled prose with a straight face. ... Jim Theis himself, who was 16 when "The Eye of Argon" first appeared, reportedly died circa 2001 at age 48. He will be long remembered in sf fandom.'
And here is far more than you'll want to know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eye...
.
.
.
"The man upon the throne had a naked wench seated at each of his arms, and a trusted advisor seated in back of him. At each cornwr of the chamber a guard stood at attention, with upraised pikes supported in their hands, golden chainmail adorning their torso's and barred helmets emitting scarlet plumes enshrouding their heads. The man rose from his throne to the dias surrounding it. His plush turquois robe dangled loosely from his chuncky frame.
.
.
.
"Take this uncouth heathen to the vault of misery, and be sure that his agonies are long and drawn out before death can release him."
Not a book to actually *read*, but it sure is fun to find bits like this! All text quoted verbatim, from a copy that used to be online.
From the [formerly] online copy, accessed 2006:
' "The Eye of Argon" was published in 1970 in OSFAN, the journal of the Ozark SF Society, issue number 10. Photocopies circulated for decades, and it became a regular sf convention challenge to read Jim Theis's mangled prose with a straight face. ... Jim Theis himself, who was 16 when "The Eye of Argon" first appeared, reportedly died circa 2001 at age 48. He will be long remembered in sf fandom.'
And here is far more than you'll want to know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eye...
February 10, 2017
I first came across reference to this novella in a Dave Langford article in SFX magazine when I was standing in Tesco a few years ago. From that day on I was intrigued. Being a massive fan of sword-&-sorcery I just knew had to track this book down. Eventually I came across it online and, in all excitement, prepared myself. I was not disappointed. Gloriously bad prosed fun, full of relentless action and carnage that, regardless of intention or not, does the genre a mighty service by giving it a right royal kick up the rear. I loved it. If you have ever read Lin Carter or Gardner F. Fox you could easily be fooled into thinking this was an early draft of one of their novels. They wrote some stinkers and, as this proves, most of them could have been written by a sixteen year old school boy with a healthy fixation for big breasted women. I've read many tales of hot blooded, lusty barbarians with mighty thews in my time and far from ridiculing this novella - I salute THE EYE OF ARGON for the masterpiece it truly is. So here's to you and your roaring red maned barbarian, Grignr of Ecordia, Jim! Tonight I shall hoist a slatternly wench with sagging breasts on my knee and glug a sweaty tankard in your honour!
November 13, 2014
I mean, how do you rate The Eye of Argon? Do you give it five stars for being SO BAD that it made you laugh so hard your kidneys hurt, or do you give it only the none stars it deserves for its "quality" level? I compromised. Which, unfortunately, makes the thing look readable. It really isn't.
Do not read this unless you have a strong stomach for bad writing and don't mind misogyny, flat characterization, an utter lack of plot, and just mammoth narrative leaps in general. Yes, it *does* read like it was written by an angry, semi-literate 13-year-old boy. And yes, it is something close to hysterical that even the author of this... work could consider it good enough to publish. If these facts are intriguing enough and you have the stomach for it in the name of a hard laugh, well. Enter at your own risk.
Do not read this unless you have a strong stomach for bad writing and don't mind misogyny, flat characterization, an utter lack of plot, and just mammoth narrative leaps in general. Yes, it *does* read like it was written by an angry, semi-literate 13-year-old boy. And yes, it is something close to hysterical that even the author of this... work could consider it good enough to publish. If these facts are intriguing enough and you have the stomach for it in the name of a hard laugh, well. Enter at your own risk.
January 27, 2015
I DNF, but did finish. The novel is terrible, the essays funny. It's more a joke piece for me now but I can't focus on it properly. So to dafuk shelf with you for later reading. 1 star is joke rating. The book can't be judged by mortal constraints.
Eyeing a slender female crouched alone at a nearby bench, Grignr advanced wishing to wholesomely occupy his time. The flickering torches cast weird shafts of luminescence dancing over the half naked harlot of his choice, her stringy orchid twines of hair swaying gracefully over the lithe opaque nose, as she raised a half drained mug to her pale red lips.
JUDAS PRIEST That death rattle you hear is a Thesaurus dying to supply this monstrosity the words it needs to carry on.
Eyeing a slender female crouched alone at a nearby bench, Grignr advanced wishing to wholesomely occupy his time. The flickering torches cast weird shafts of luminescence dancing over the half naked harlot of his choice, her stringy orchid twines of hair swaying gracefully over the lithe opaque nose, as she raised a half drained mug to her pale red lips.
JUDAS PRIEST That death rattle you hear is a Thesaurus dying to supply this monstrosity the words it needs to carry on.
January 4, 2022
I give it five stars not to be ironic or edgy or to claim it's so bad it's good (it's not, it's really not, I cannot stress how much it isn't good and is bad). I give it five stars because this is a book everyone should read. And by everyone I mean Gary Oldman in Luc Bessson's "Leon the Professional" EVERYONE!
I don't even know what to write about this book because any example I could list of how and why it's bad is incomparable to the experience of reading it.
The writing is so bad that my own vocabulary feels drained and I have great difficulty writing this review so shortly after having read this book.
Words are hard.
Go read this book.
I don't even know what to write about this book because any example I could list of how and why it's bad is incomparable to the experience of reading it.
The writing is so bad that my own vocabulary feels drained and I have great difficulty writing this review so shortly after having read this book.
Words are hard.
Go read this book.
March 3, 2013
We've all seen movies that are "so bad it's good." I never thought a book could accomplish that same level of horrible wonderfulness, until I read this work. I fell into the dilemma everyone else had in what rating to give it. On one hand, it is just worst book ever in the world. The worst writing ever. The worst typos ever. The worst use of a thesaurus ever. I am convinced that people who are learning to write should read this work at some point in order to learn what NOT to do. But on the other hand, it is just so entertaining, so ambitious, so wonderful. After all, any book that has a chapter 3 1/2 and 7 1/2 deserves all the praise in the world. I would never recommend this book to anyone ever. But seriously, I recommend it.
Read
March 20, 2016no, I'm not really finished. for obvious reasons. I read some and couldn't stop coughing since I tried to swallow an entire coke down my windpipe I was laughing so hard...
and that was on page 2. I gave up.
and that was on page 2. I gave up.
August 21, 2024
If laughter truly is the best medicine, then this should be distributed at every hospital in the world.
This was as terrible as it was wonderful. One star for content, five for how much I enjoyed it. I considered splitting the difference to go with three, but I'm told that's not allowed with this; you have to go one or five, so one it is. It is so badly written that it's hilarious, just like Irene Iddesleigh by Amanda McKittrick Ros. Ros failed so hard that she was able to make a lot of money because people kept buying her stuff just to see how bad it was. (For someone who failed all the way to the bank musically, check out Florence Foster Jenkins.) The same can't be said for Theis. He was only 16 years old when he wrote it, so we should probably be forgiving. It's sad that he was so discouraged by how ridiculed this was that he never wrote another story after he found out about it. However, he became a journalist, so at least he still had a career writing fiction. He's dead now, so I don't feel too bad ragging on this, but I still think it's a shame he didn't try again. I hate seeing dreams dashed, and surely he could've improved, though that wouldn't be anywhere near as much fun for the reader.
Contests are held at sci-fi conventions all over the country to see who can read this the longest without cracking up or messing up a word. Most people make it only a couple of paragraphs before losing their turn. I would've lost mine pretty quickly, about a quarter of the way into the first page. There were times I had tears in my eyes and had to stop reading for about two minutes before I could continue, and I was just reading it silently to myself. It's only 22 or so pages, but it took me a few days to read because this is something that ought to be savored. Actually, you can read it for yourself here[1]. The link takes you to an exact facsimile of how it appeared when it was published in some sci-fi magazine in 1970. Check it out to see what I'm talking about. Theis is a master of using the wrong word, or misspelling it, or running words together, and maybe even making some up. I'm guessing he used a thesaurus, but he used it poorly. The end result is a muddled mess and sometimes conjures up amusing images. I'll provide examples, but first...
Plot:... Actually, you know what? Who cares? Moving on to the quotes. Proceed with caution as I will not be providing spoiler tags. Also, just pretend I put "sic" by any errors within quotation marks.
Grignr (the main character who is supposed to be like Conan the Barbarian) is canoodling with a wench when suddenly "a flying foot caught the mug Grignr had..." blah blah blah, the rest doesn't matter. He meant to say someone kicked Grignr, but we get a "flying foot" which makes me envision someone throwing a body part at the man.
Grignr has just decapitated someone in a fight. "With a nauseating thud the severed oval toppled to the floor, as the segregated torso of Grignr's bovine antagonist swayed, then collapsed in a pool of swirled crimson." (There is a lot of "swirled crimson" in the story, by the way.) Nothing before this line indicated that Grignr was fighting a cow, but "bovine" set me straight.
The dialogue sucks too. Soldiers have surrounded Grignr, and one tells him "Dismiss your hand from the hilt, barbarian, or you shall find a foot of steel sheathed in your gizzard." It's here that we discover that Grignr must be some kind of chicken. Did all of this take place on a farm?
A shaman is giving a girl a hard time when she kicks out "lodging her sandled foot squarely between the shaman's testicles..." How big is this man's ballsack that someone can get her foot between his nuts?
The girl is scared, "her orchid tusseled face smothered betwixt her bulging bosom as she shut her..." blah blah blah. First off, what is an orchid tusseled face? Secondly, I've never seen a scared woman shove her face down into her boobs to hide. Do they do that? Or maybe she's an ostrich? It would make sense since we've already met a cow and a chicken. I guess the bosom would have to be pretty big to manage the feat. Dudes suffer shrinkage when they're scared. Do woman breasts rise up for them? Being gay, I've never really paid attention to that kind of thing, so maybe I should study it. Or perhaps Theis is just an idiot. Or a horny 16-year-old boy infatuated with bosoms. Or both.
George Carlin tells us rape can be funny. I've never signed on to that even when he suggested that we imagine Porky Pig raping Elmer Fudd. However, I couldn't help but laugh at this: "Shuddering from the clamy touch of the shaman as they grappled with her supple form,hands wrenching at her slender arms and legs in all directions, her bare body being molested in the midst of the labyrnth of orange smudges, purpled satin, and mangled skulls, shadowed in an eerie crimson glow; her confused head reeled then clouded in a mist of enshrouding ebony as she lapsed beneath the protective sheet of unconsiousness to a land peach and resign." The situation isn't funny, but it's just so badly written that I couldn't help myself. "Land peach" is the part that finished me.
"Grignr slipped his right hand to his thigh, concealing a small opaque object beneath the folds of the g-string wrapped about his waist." G-strings are designed to conceal just one thing, and if that one thing is at home, then there is no vacancy at that inn. Theis teases us about this over the next several paragraphs, saying Grignr is concealing a weapon which will help him. One can only assume he's a eunuch, but sometimes the g-string is a loincloth which can offer a little more concealment. Eventually we get to a scene where he whips this thing out, though we still don't know what it is until all the fighting is done. "Snorting a gusty billow of mirth, he once more concealed th e tiny object beneath his loin cloth; the tediously honed pelvis bone of the broken rodent." (You see, Grignr had killed a rat while he was in his cell and made a weapon of its crotch.)
Theis also provided artwork for his story. It's not terrible, though it also ain't great. He does a lot better than I ever could, but I admit the bar is set pretty low there. However, some of the drawings make just as little sense as the story. At the bottom of the page with the quote above, we come across this gem.
I have not one single clue what or who it is, or what it's a reference for. It did, however, take the words right out of my mouth, for I believe I made that sound a few times while reading.
"If not for his keen auditory organs and lighting steeled reflexes, Grignr would have been groping through the shadowed hell-pits of the Grim Reaper. He had unknowingly stumbled upon an ancient, long forgotten booby trap; a mistake which would have stunted the perusal of longevity of one less agile." How could this not have won the Nobel prize for literature?
Some girl is on an altar surrounded by some shamans (or shamen according to Theis) who are about to do her a meanness, and Grignr lands among them. "A gaunt skull faced priest standing at the far side of the altar clutched desperately at his throat, coughing furiously in an attempt to catch his breath. Lurching helplessly to and fro, the acolyte pitched headlong against the gleaming base of a massive jade idol. Writhing agonizedly against the hideous image, foam flecking his chalk white lips, the priest struggled helplessly---the victim of an epileptic siezure."
After a bit of violence, some people just stumble around holding their guts and other body parts. "The acolyte performing the sacrifice took a vicious blow to the stomach; hands clutching vitals and severed spinal cord as he sprawled over the altar. The disor anized priests lurched and staggered with split skulls, dismembered limbs, and spewing entrails before the enraged Ecordian's relentless onslaught." You know, I'm starting to find this just a little hard to believe.
Afterward we find that romance is not lost on Theis, and we get the most passionate kiss in the history of literature. "As Grignr lifted the girl from the altar, her arms wound dexterously about his neck; soft and smooth against his harsh exterior. 'Art thou pleased that we have chanced to meet once again?' Grignr merely voiced an sighed grunt, returning the damsels embrace while he smothered her trim, delicate lips between the coarsing protrusions of his reeking maw." I'm not exactly sure what that means, but, um... gross!
After that, they escape while the wench tells a story, and she states part of it "whimsicorically." This looks like an awesome word, and I've got to find a way to slip it into casual conversation. I intend to do so as soon as I find out what it means.
Even though they've exchanged a kiss, and probably done some other nasty things, and have shared some adventures, and have had quite a bit of conversation, it turns out Grignr still doesn't know her name. "'What are you called by female?' 'Carthena, daughter of Minkardos, Duke of Barwego, whose lands border along the northwestern fringes of Gorzom.'" I actually just wanted to include this because the word Minkardos made me think of The Elephant Show.
"Skinamarinky dinky dink,
Skinamarinky doo.
I love you."
Meanwhile back at the olde altar, epileptic seizure dude has woken up (he wasn't killed because Grignr assumed he was already dead), and finding all his cronies butchered, he "drew a long, wicked looking jewel hilted scimitar from his silver girdle and fled through the aperture in the ceiling uttering a faintly perceptible ceremonial jibberish." I don't know why I starred this line. Probably because it mentioned "jibberish" which is a made up word, but I suspect it's a kissing cousin to "gibberish," a noun which could be applied to this work.
Then we come to the ending which involves a jewel which turns into a blob that sucks the blood (or bllod) out of Grignr who can't do anything to it with his axe, but grabs a torch and burns the thing while Carthena of Minkardos Barwego by Gorzom faints, then the blob unblobs back to a jewel which explodes and fades into the ground in a red mist, and Grignr suddenly understands everything (which is more than I can say for myself) including the meaning of life, and flings Carthena over his shoulder and rides off into the sunrise (or a "ball of feral red"), and the reader is left in stunned awe and wonder.
Seriously, check it out for yourself; it's good for what ails you.
[1]: Here's a more readable version of the story, though I had to copy/paste it to a Word document. But by clicking links at the top just now, I eventually got to this printable PDF... Oh well. Enjoy.
This was as terrible as it was wonderful. One star for content, five for how much I enjoyed it. I considered splitting the difference to go with three, but I'm told that's not allowed with this; you have to go one or five, so one it is. It is so badly written that it's hilarious, just like Irene Iddesleigh by Amanda McKittrick Ros. Ros failed so hard that she was able to make a lot of money because people kept buying her stuff just to see how bad it was. (For someone who failed all the way to the bank musically, check out Florence Foster Jenkins.) The same can't be said for Theis. He was only 16 years old when he wrote it, so we should probably be forgiving. It's sad that he was so discouraged by how ridiculed this was that he never wrote another story after he found out about it. However, he became a journalist, so at least he still had a career writing fiction. He's dead now, so I don't feel too bad ragging on this, but I still think it's a shame he didn't try again. I hate seeing dreams dashed, and surely he could've improved, though that wouldn't be anywhere near as much fun for the reader.
Contests are held at sci-fi conventions all over the country to see who can read this the longest without cracking up or messing up a word. Most people make it only a couple of paragraphs before losing their turn. I would've lost mine pretty quickly, about a quarter of the way into the first page. There were times I had tears in my eyes and had to stop reading for about two minutes before I could continue, and I was just reading it silently to myself. It's only 22 or so pages, but it took me a few days to read because this is something that ought to be savored. Actually, you can read it for yourself here[1]. The link takes you to an exact facsimile of how it appeared when it was published in some sci-fi magazine in 1970. Check it out to see what I'm talking about. Theis is a master of using the wrong word, or misspelling it, or running words together, and maybe even making some up. I'm guessing he used a thesaurus, but he used it poorly. The end result is a muddled mess and sometimes conjures up amusing images. I'll provide examples, but first...
Plot:... Actually, you know what? Who cares? Moving on to the quotes. Proceed with caution as I will not be providing spoiler tags. Also, just pretend I put "sic" by any errors within quotation marks.
Grignr (the main character who is supposed to be like Conan the Barbarian) is canoodling with a wench when suddenly "a flying foot caught the mug Grignr had..." blah blah blah, the rest doesn't matter. He meant to say someone kicked Grignr, but we get a "flying foot" which makes me envision someone throwing a body part at the man.
Grignr has just decapitated someone in a fight. "With a nauseating thud the severed oval toppled to the floor, as the segregated torso of Grignr's bovine antagonist swayed, then collapsed in a pool of swirled crimson." (There is a lot of "swirled crimson" in the story, by the way.) Nothing before this line indicated that Grignr was fighting a cow, but "bovine" set me straight.
The dialogue sucks too. Soldiers have surrounded Grignr, and one tells him "Dismiss your hand from the hilt, barbarian, or you shall find a foot of steel sheathed in your gizzard." It's here that we discover that Grignr must be some kind of chicken. Did all of this take place on a farm?
A shaman is giving a girl a hard time when she kicks out "lodging her sandled foot squarely between the shaman's testicles..." How big is this man's ballsack that someone can get her foot between his nuts?
The girl is scared, "her orchid tusseled face smothered betwixt her bulging bosom as she shut her..." blah blah blah. First off, what is an orchid tusseled face? Secondly, I've never seen a scared woman shove her face down into her boobs to hide. Do they do that? Or maybe she's an ostrich? It would make sense since we've already met a cow and a chicken. I guess the bosom would have to be pretty big to manage the feat. Dudes suffer shrinkage when they're scared. Do woman breasts rise up for them? Being gay, I've never really paid attention to that kind of thing, so maybe I should study it. Or perhaps Theis is just an idiot. Or a horny 16-year-old boy infatuated with bosoms. Or both.
George Carlin tells us rape can be funny. I've never signed on to that even when he suggested that we imagine Porky Pig raping Elmer Fudd. However, I couldn't help but laugh at this: "Shuddering from the clamy touch of the shaman as they grappled with her supple form,hands wrenching at her slender arms and legs in all directions, her bare body being molested in the midst of the labyrnth of orange smudges, purpled satin, and mangled skulls, shadowed in an eerie crimson glow; her confused head reeled then clouded in a mist of enshrouding ebony as she lapsed beneath the protective sheet of unconsiousness to a land peach and resign." The situation isn't funny, but it's just so badly written that I couldn't help myself. "Land peach" is the part that finished me.
"Grignr slipped his right hand to his thigh, concealing a small opaque object beneath the folds of the g-string wrapped about his waist." G-strings are designed to conceal just one thing, and if that one thing is at home, then there is no vacancy at that inn. Theis teases us about this over the next several paragraphs, saying Grignr is concealing a weapon which will help him. One can only assume he's a eunuch, but sometimes the g-string is a loincloth which can offer a little more concealment. Eventually we get to a scene where he whips this thing out, though we still don't know what it is until all the fighting is done. "Snorting a gusty billow of mirth, he once more concealed th e tiny object beneath his loin cloth; the tediously honed pelvis bone of the broken rodent." (You see, Grignr had killed a rat while he was in his cell and made a weapon of its crotch.)
Theis also provided artwork for his story. It's not terrible, though it also ain't great. He does a lot better than I ever could, but I admit the bar is set pretty low there. However, some of the drawings make just as little sense as the story. At the bottom of the page with the quote above, we come across this gem.
I have not one single clue what or who it is, or what it's a reference for. It did, however, take the words right out of my mouth, for I believe I made that sound a few times while reading.
"If not for his keen auditory organs and lighting steeled reflexes, Grignr would have been groping through the shadowed hell-pits of the Grim Reaper. He had unknowingly stumbled upon an ancient, long forgotten booby trap; a mistake which would have stunted the perusal of longevity of one less agile." How could this not have won the Nobel prize for literature?
Some girl is on an altar surrounded by some shamans (or shamen according to Theis) who are about to do her a meanness, and Grignr lands among them. "A gaunt skull faced priest standing at the far side of the altar clutched desperately at his throat, coughing furiously in an attempt to catch his breath. Lurching helplessly to and fro, the acolyte pitched headlong against the gleaming base of a massive jade idol. Writhing agonizedly against the hideous image, foam flecking his chalk white lips, the priest struggled helplessly---the victim of an epileptic siezure."
After a bit of violence, some people just stumble around holding their guts and other body parts. "The acolyte performing the sacrifice took a vicious blow to the stomach; hands clutching vitals and severed spinal cord as he sprawled over the altar. The disor anized priests lurched and staggered with split skulls, dismembered limbs, and spewing entrails before the enraged Ecordian's relentless onslaught." You know, I'm starting to find this just a little hard to believe.
Afterward we find that romance is not lost on Theis, and we get the most passionate kiss in the history of literature. "As Grignr lifted the girl from the altar, her arms wound dexterously about his neck; soft and smooth against his harsh exterior. 'Art thou pleased that we have chanced to meet once again?' Grignr merely voiced an sighed grunt, returning the damsels embrace while he smothered her trim, delicate lips between the coarsing protrusions of his reeking maw." I'm not exactly sure what that means, but, um... gross!
After that, they escape while the wench tells a story, and she states part of it "whimsicorically." This looks like an awesome word, and I've got to find a way to slip it into casual conversation. I intend to do so as soon as I find out what it means.
Even though they've exchanged a kiss, and probably done some other nasty things, and have shared some adventures, and have had quite a bit of conversation, it turns out Grignr still doesn't know her name. "'What are you called by female?' 'Carthena, daughter of Minkardos, Duke of Barwego, whose lands border along the northwestern fringes of Gorzom.'" I actually just wanted to include this because the word Minkardos made me think of The Elephant Show.
"Skinamarinky dinky dink,
Skinamarinky doo.
I love you."
Meanwhile back at the olde altar, epileptic seizure dude has woken up (he wasn't killed because Grignr assumed he was already dead), and finding all his cronies butchered, he "drew a long, wicked looking jewel hilted scimitar from his silver girdle and fled through the aperture in the ceiling uttering a faintly perceptible ceremonial jibberish." I don't know why I starred this line. Probably because it mentioned "jibberish" which is a made up word, but I suspect it's a kissing cousin to "gibberish," a noun which could be applied to this work.
Then we come to the ending which involves a jewel which turns into a blob that sucks the blood (or bllod) out of Grignr who can't do anything to it with his axe, but grabs a torch and burns the thing while Carthena of Minkardos Barwego by Gorzom faints, then the blob unblobs back to a jewel which explodes and fades into the ground in a red mist, and Grignr suddenly understands everything (which is more than I can say for myself) including the meaning of life, and flings Carthena over his shoulder and rides off into the sunrise (or a "ball of feral red"), and the reader is left in stunned awe and wonder.
Seriously, check it out for yourself; it's good for what ails you.
[1]: Here's a more readable version of the story, though I had to copy/paste it to a Word document. But by clicking links at the top just now, I eventually got to this printable PDF... Oh well. Enjoy.
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December 16, 2025A cult classic for horrible writing, this book really, really made me smile in the sheer ridiculous exuberance of its love for all things Conan the Barbarian.
I need more brain cells than I currently have tonight to type my thoughts. So, more later.
I need more brain cells than I currently have tonight to type my thoughts. So, more later.
October 6, 2017
This is the greatest story I have ever read. Not because it’s good – it most certainly is not – but because it pushes through bad to terrible to execrable to emerge on the other side gloriously, hilariously awful. It is the Andy Dufrane of books. It crawled through a mile of shit to make something amazing. It is the literary equivalent of The Room. The words are in English but you aren’t sure whether the author understood them or was some kind of alien attempting to write human literature. The Eye of Argon is what you would get if you stuffed Conan and a thesaurus into a blender with purple food coloring then hit frappe. You could write as sensible a story by every time you needed a descriptive word or a name just shaking out a can full of Scrabble letters and putting in whatever comes out.
There is no way to prepare someone for what they will experience with The Eye of Argon. It is an indescribable thing. The maddening reach for the most archaic of terms and inevitably choosing the wrong one. The spelling errors that were so bad that I actually had to cross reference to make sure I didn’t have a bad copy. I did not. The contradicting, melodramatic descriptions. Every interaction sounds like a robot trying to understand human mating rituals. This is the chaos inside a schizophrenics mind. Nothing makes any sense and the words tumble out in the most laughable word salad mankind has ever produced.
There is no way to prepare someone for what they will experience with The Eye of Argon. It is an indescribable thing. The maddening reach for the most archaic of terms and inevitably choosing the wrong one. The spelling errors that were so bad that I actually had to cross reference to make sure I didn’t have a bad copy. I did not. The contradicting, melodramatic descriptions. Every interaction sounds like a robot trying to understand human mating rituals. This is the chaos inside a schizophrenics mind. Nothing makes any sense and the words tumble out in the most laughable word salad mankind has ever produced.
November 25, 2020
This short story, which sounds like a very bad imitation of Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs or Fritz Leiber, is an object lesson in how NOT to write fantasy. This is so ridiculously horrible that it seems to have its own cult following. Blood gushes forth in torrents, beefy barbarians perform impossible feats, dastardly despots snarl nastily, horrid idols glimmer luridly, swords and scimitars sweep dangerously, curvaceous wenches query bustily, and so forth.
Read at your own risk
Read at your own risk
October 14, 2021
One of the best bad books I've ever read.
I'm just going to let some of my favorite quotes do all the talking:
For all the adjectives, large words, and run-on sentences, I can't lie to you and say I wasn't able to see exactly what was going on inside my head. This kind of moving imagery is insane. It's like watching a movie with audio description turned on read by a crazy narrorator who gets caught up in every minute detail. And for that and all the fun it gave me, I added half a star (but none more than that. It is infuriating to me that books like this give self-publishing a bad reputation).
I'm just going to let some of my favorite quotes do all the talking:
"he retreated to his mount to make his way towards Gorzom, rumoured to contain hoards of plunder, and many young wenches for any man who has the backbone to wrest them away."1.5/5
*
"The barbarian seated himself upon a stool at the wenches side, exposing his body, naked save for a loin cloth brandishing a long steel broad sword, an iron spiraled battle helmet, and a thick leather sandals, to her unobstructed view."
*
"Grignr smothered her lips with the blazing touch of his flaming mouth."
*
"With a nauseating thud the severed oval toppled to the floor, as the segregated torso of Grignr's bovine antagonist swayed, then collapsed in a pool of swirled crimson."
*
"The fat prince stood undulating in insurmountable fear before the edge of the fiery maned comet, his flabs of jellied blubber pulsating to and fro in ripples of flowing terror."
*
"fetid breath scortching the sqirming barbarians dilating nostrils. Grignr grappled with the lashing flexor muscles of the repugnant body of a garganuan brownhided rat, striving to hold its razor teeth from his juicy jugular,"
*
"His hands reached out clutching his urinary gland as his knees wobbled rapidly about for a few seconds then buckled, causing the ruptured shaman to collapse in an egg huddled mass to the granite pavement, rolling helplessly about in his agony."
*
"Grignr slipped his right hand to his thigh, concealing a small opaque object beneath the folds of the g-string wrapped about his waist."
*
"Grignr percieved a scene which caused his blood to smolder not unlike bubbling, molten lava."
*
"Writhing agonizedly against the hideous image, foam flecking his chalk white lips, the priest struggled helplessly - - - the victim of an epileptic siezure."
*
"Raising it toward the sun he said, "We shall do well with bauble, eh!"
*
" All that remained was a dark red blotch upon the face of the earth, blotching things up."
For all the adjectives, large words, and run-on sentences, I can't lie to you and say I wasn't able to see exactly what was going on inside my head. This kind of moving imagery is insane. It's like watching a movie with audio description turned on read by a crazy narrorator who gets caught up in every minute detail. And for that and all the fun it gave me, I added half a star (but none more than that. It is infuriating to me that books like this give self-publishing a bad reputation).
November 26, 2018
Donald and I read this... long short story? extremely brief novella?... together after seeing that it had been chosen for the "book club podcast"
372 Pages We'll Never Get Back
. I'd never heard of it before this and can almost guarantee that, were it not for the podcast, would never have read it.
It's such a short work that you can't really write much about it without giving away what passes for the plot. Suffice it to say that it's amazingly bad-- yet perversely entertaining. This has undoubtedly been the most fun I've had reading something so poorly written.
It must be experienced to be fully appreciated. I might have shared a quote to tempt you, at this point, but there are too many dizzyingly awful ones to choose among; I couldn't do it! However, it's available for free online (be sure to find a version with the illustrations), and it doesn't take long to read. If you're a connoisseur of bad literature, it's not to be missed.
Like other reviewers before me, I don't know how to rate The Eye of Argon! Is it one star because the writing is so unfathomably atrocious-- or five stars because it had us howling with laughter? A three-star rating seems impossible, because there's nothing mediocre about this... this... whatever it is.
It's such a short work that you can't really write much about it without giving away what passes for the plot. Suffice it to say that it's amazingly bad-- yet perversely entertaining. This has undoubtedly been the most fun I've had reading something so poorly written.
It must be experienced to be fully appreciated. I might have shared a quote to tempt you, at this point, but there are too many dizzyingly awful ones to choose among; I couldn't do it! However, it's available for free online (be sure to find a version with the illustrations), and it doesn't take long to read. If you're a connoisseur of bad literature, it's not to be missed.
Like other reviewers before me, I don't know how to rate The Eye of Argon! Is it one star because the writing is so unfathomably atrocious-- or five stars because it had us howling with laughter? A three-star rating seems impossible, because there's nothing mediocre about this... this... whatever it is.
April 15, 2014
What abject horror is contained within these pages! The atrocities of prose, punctuation, hyphenation...words fail me to describe what is proclaimed as a major candidate for "the Worst Story Ever Written." If I were rating this book based on "intentionally horrendous committing of literary atrocities," this story would have gotten five stars. When the spellings and repetitions, misuses and hyphenations have you questioning even the "correct" words you come across and mispronouncing actual words, you know you've stumbled upon a "gem royal." I've read few truly horrible stories (such as this story: http://www.youngwriterssociety.com/wo...) which were written that way intentionally, but I'm glad to have found possibly the lowest drivel of writing to have withstood, and in fact been embraced by, modern readers. This work is now a definite part of the standard by which I judge truly horrible literature.
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November 24, 2014I am unable or unwilling to give a star rating to this book. I know that it is no work of intentional triumph, but I have never enjoyed any sentences as much as these two calamities from The Eye Of Argon:
* Consciousness returned to Grignr in stygmatic pools as his mind gradually cleared of the cobwebs cluttering its inner recesses, yet the stygian cloud of charcoal ebony remained. An incompatible shield of blackness, enhanced by the bleak abscense of sound.
* "Aye! The ways of our civilization are in many ways warped and distorted, but what is your calling," she queried, bustily?
Many of my friends love writing in amateur pastiche, for a laugh. None of them in a million years could have come up with malaprops so perfect as a gemstone with "masterfully-cut faucets." This book is both a 1 star and a 5 star, and everyone should read it.
* Consciousness returned to Grignr in stygmatic pools as his mind gradually cleared of the cobwebs cluttering its inner recesses, yet the stygian cloud of charcoal ebony remained. An incompatible shield of blackness, enhanced by the bleak abscense of sound.
* "Aye! The ways of our civilization are in many ways warped and distorted, but what is your calling," she queried, bustily?
Many of my friends love writing in amateur pastiche, for a laugh. None of them in a million years could have come up with malaprops so perfect as a gemstone with "masterfully-cut faucets." This book is both a 1 star and a 5 star, and everyone should read it.
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