“The Eye of Argon” is cheerfully acknowledged as the worst speculative (fantasy, horror, sci-fi, &c) fiction story ever to be printed in cold blood. We’re not counting self-published works here but even so, it could give the worst of them a run for their money. Hell, it’s worse than most slash.
Jim Theis wrote the Eye in 1970, aged 16, and astonishingly, it was printed in the journal of the Ozark SF Society in the same year. Theis’ work stands proudly up there with the truly appalling poetry of William McGonagall, and the mind-droppingly terrible romance novels produced by Amanda McKittrick Ros.
Simple description can’t easily capture the Eye of Argon’s utter awfulness. It’s not just the fact that the plot leaps around like a flea circus, or no being would ever utter that sort of dialogue, or even the horrible, horrible descriptive passages. Theis obviously didn’t know what most of the words he was using actually meant, but he had just enough of a grasp to shift his prose from incomprehensible to flatly unpleasant.
In this short but famous excerpt, the hero enters a bar:
“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 … Glancing upward, the alluring complexion noted the stalwart giant as he rapidly approached. A faint glimmer sparked from the pair of deep blue ovals of the amorous female as she motioned toward Grignr, enticing him to join her.”
It has become something of a ritual for fantasy conventions to hold competitions that involve reading from the Eye of Argon aloud. The winner is generally the one who can keep going the longest without laughing, stalling or fumbling the text.
The original printed version, now lost to posterity, is said to have had layout and illustrations that matched the text in their inept genius; perhaps it is a blessing that they are no longer available to us. The story that survives today is incomplete, but the remainder is more than enough. A ‘missing last page’ claims to have been found, but has met with some scepticism — it’s just not terrible enough, somehow.
Everyone should read the Eye of Argon once. In the vicious seas of bad fantasy, it truly is the most impressive shipwreck you’ll ever find.
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