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The original was posted on /r/printsf by /u/UncleBullhorn on 2023-08-15 21:58:03.

I was recently rereading Bruce Sterling’s Heavy Weather (1994). An amazing dystopian climate-change novel with engaging characters. Then I got to the last chapter, which was a complete change in tone and really should have been dropped to keep the story’s mood alive. Not going to spoil things because it is well worth reading, but I call it the “but nothing that happened in the previous 200 pages matters” ending.

So what books have you read that could have done with an editor with a baseball bat threatening the knees of the author over their denouement? Conversely, what novels do you think have the perfect closing lines? For me, that has to be Larry Niven’s Ringworld, where the final sentence wraps the plot nicely.

This is a Why Editors Get Hugos post, so let loose!