You’ve probably heard of "so bad it's good" movies. The Room. Birdemic. Plan 9 from Outer Space. But literature has its own undisputed king of beautiful disasters, and it’s a 1970 sword-and-sorcery novella called The Eye of Argon.
Written by a teenager named Jim Theis, this story has survived for over fifty years not because it’s a masterpiece, but because it is—honestly—the most impressively broken piece of English prose ever committed to paper. It’s a legend. It’s a rite of passage. If you hang around science fiction conventions long enough, you’ll eventually see a group of grown adults huddled in a circle, red-faced and gasping for air, trying to read it aloud without laughing.
They usually fail. Quickly.
What is The Eye of Argon?
In 1970, a 16-year-old kid in St. Louis named Jim Theis sat down to write a tribute to Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian. He was young, he was passionate, and he apparently had a thesaurus that he wasn’t afraid to use—even if he didn't quite know what the words meant.
The story follows Grignr the Barbarian.
Grignr is your standard muscle-bound hero, but described with a vocabulary that defies physics. The novella was first published in OSFAN #10, the fanzine of the Ozark Science Fiction Association. It might have vanished into the recycling bins of history if it wasn't so... unique.
Theis wasn't trying to be funny. That’s the "kinda" heartbreaking part. He was dead serious. He wanted to write a gritty, epic fantasy. Instead, he created a linguistic car wreck that fascinated the professional writers of the time.
The prose that launched a thousand groans
Why is it so famous? Basically, because every sentence is a puzzle. Theis had a "gift" for choosing the exactly wrong word for every situation.
Take one of the most famous lines in the book:
"The opaque red color of the jewel gave off a transparent glow."
Think about that for a second. Opaque... yet transparent. It’s a paradox wrapped in a fantasy trope. Or consider his descriptions of human anatomy. He describes a woman’s "lithe, opaque anatomy" and characters whose "flabs of jelly blubber" pulsate.
It’s not just the vocabulary. The typos in the original fanzine version—some likely from the original typing and others from the fanzine editors—add a layer of chaotic texture. Characters "swivel" their heads in ways that would break a normal human neck.
The Legendary "Eye of Argon" Reading Challenge
If you go to a major sci-fi con like Worldcon or Dragon Con, you might find an Eye of Argon reading. The rules are simple:
- You sit in a circle.
- You start reading from a photocopy of the text.
- You must read with a straight face and serious dramatic tone.
- The moment you laugh, crack a smile, or stumble over a particularly insane description, you’re out.
- The next person takes over.
It is harder than it sounds.
The story is a minefield of unintentional comedy. You'll be doing fine, reading about Grignr's "brawny" limbs, and then you hit a phrase like "the shaman’s nose was a hideous beak of a proboscis" or a description of someone’s eyes "scintillating like two emeralds caught in a thicket of seaweed."
You will break. Everyone breaks.
The Man Behind the Legend: Jim Theis
There’s a bit of a sad side to the story of The Eye of Argon. For a long time, fans thought the story was a hoax. They assumed some professional writer like Samuel R. Delany or Harlan Ellison had written it as a joke.
But Jim Theis was very real.
Born in 1953, he was just a kid when he wrote it. When the story became a cult hit in the 70s and 80s, it wasn't because people were cheering for him—they were laughing at him. Theis actually attended a few conventions and saw people mocking his work.
In a 1984 interview on the radio show Hour 25, he admitted he was pretty hurt by the notoriety. He’d actually gone on to get a degree in journalism, but the shadow of Grignr followed him. He didn't write any more fiction after the backlash. He spent his later years collecting German swords and old radio tapes, operating a small business called "The Phantom of Radio Past."
Theis passed away in 2002 at the age of 48. He died before the internet truly turned his work into a global meme, and before the "missing" final pages of the story were even discovered in a library at Eastern New Mexico University.
Why We Still Talk About It (And Why You Should Read It)
You might think it's mean-spirited to celebrate a "worst" book. But there’s a weirdly infectious energy in The Eye of Argon. It’s sincere.
Most bad writing is just boring. It’s dry and repetitive. But Theis’s writing is exploding with effort. He was trying so hard to be evocative that he transcended the boundaries of the English language.
There is a lesson here for writers.
- Passion vs. Craft: You can have all the passion in the world, but without an editor or a basic grasp of "opaque" vs "transparent," things get weird.
- The Power of the Thesaurus: Just because a word is "big" doesn't mean it fits.
- Longevity: Most "good" fanzine stories from 1970 are forgotten. Jim Theis is immortal.
Honestly, the best way to experience it is to find a PDF online (it's widely available) and try to read it to a friend.
Practical Next Steps for the Curious
If you want to dive into the madness of Grignr and the "red emerald" (yes, a red emerald) of Argon, here is what you should do:
Find the "Variorum" Edition
Look for the versions edited by David Langford or the Wildside Press edition. These often include the history of the text and the "lost" ending that wasn't found until 2005. It gives you the full context of how this weird little fanzine story became a piece of folklore.
Watch a Dramatic Reading
If you can't find a live session, look up "Eye of Argon reading" on YouTube. Hearing the struggle of readers trying to navigate the phrase "Grignr's brawny chest heaved" while the author describes a character's "milk-white" skin in the same paragraph as a "sallow" complexion is a masterclass in unintentional comedy.
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Check Out "372 Pages We'll Never Get Back"
The podcast hosted by Mike Nelson (of Mystery Science Theater 3000 fame) and Conor Lastowka did a multi-episode deep dive into the book. It’s probably the most thorough breakdown of the text's weirdness ever recorded.
The Eye of Argon isn't just a bad story. It's a monument to the teenage dream of being a writer, captured in all its clumsy, over-the-top, and hilariously misguided glory.