What's the most blatant Deus Ex Machina you've seen? [Possible Spoilers]

[Grack21]

When Jesus came back from the dead. Total cop out.

[bradd]

Thanks guys - agree with the definition, but I guess it's what you would classify as "foreshadowing"...

At this stage, the reader had no idea about McCoy and the White Council specifically said they did not want to interfere. About the only bit of foreshadowing was Dresden talking about doing a bit of recreational astronomy with McCoy and misidentifying the Russian satellite as an asteroid, and I'm not really sure I'd call that foreshadowing (in that the satellite isn't linked as a weapon).

I'm not saying it's a bad ending - I absolutely love the books, and it makes total sense once you get a bit further on, it just took me completely by surprise (but I'm probably daft that way :P). How about I re-ask the question.... what's your favourite WTF moment? :)

[The Marquis de Leech]

Tolkien is an interesting case: the climax of LOTR, where Gollum takes a step too far, is a technical deus ex machina, but it's an earned and deliberate deus ex machina. Frodo fails, though he has come as far as any mortal could, and his earlier mercy to Gollum enables 'chance' (or Eru) to play its part.

Ditto with The Silmarillion: Earendil gets through to the Valar, and convinces them to launch a war against Morgoth, who is otherwise unbeatable. But the sheer hell and difficulty leading up to this step prevents it being a cop-out. Rather than a mere deus ex machina, it's what Tolkien termed a eucatastrophe.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

RBPL,

It is a eucatastrophe but with tremendous cost. The scale of the "War of Wrath" is such that the vast majority of the lands that the Elves fought and died for those long centuries fall beneath the waves due to the violence of the conflict between Morgoth and the forces of the Valar. I think of DEM as a neat clean resolution without cost to the protagonists. The War of Wrath was certainly not that.

[john]

The mistborn trilogy ends with a pretty big one. It's built up to and allso might not be a DEM under some peoples definitions but it's lame, however you cut it.

[Spring Bass]

Nobody's mentioned The Stand yet? :P

The ending

quite literally was God pulling everyone's ass out of the fire, but I think it made sense in the book's context. Supernatural elements, including Greater Forces pulling everyone's strings, were present throughout that entire book.

[awesome possum]

Re; The Stand

The ending does fit in pretty well with the Bible. "God" needed men to prove their faith, which they did by not renouncing him despite their very apparent, gory, pain-filled doom being on it's way.

if you want to talk about King and Deus Ex Machina, there's no need to look further than The Dark Tower. The guy writes himself into the story and even delivers the gunslingers a note at one point informing them that they're in a trap.

[Caligula_K2]

The one that's freshest in my memory (since I just read it) is Durham's The Sacred Band. Nearly every major plotline is resolved by some form of deus ex machina.

Aliver is back from the dead! Which means he and 7 other random characters can use magic to resolve everything in the series. They can steal souls from the Auldek! They can stop the entire population of the Known World from suffering from withdrawal from the drugs they were addicted to (umm... ok?)! Dariel, meanwhile, is the super special prophesied one and therefore his tattoo is able to link up with a random symbol he finds and blow up an entire fleet. Meanwhile, Corinn summons a super worm that eats all the evil wizards. Yay?

[nubreed000]

The ending to The Nights Dawn Trilogy. The first book of the series, The Reality Dysfunction, was amazing. It introduced such a unique concept to the world of Sci Fi...but how the author, and humanity, dealt with the issue in the finale was terrible. I've never felt so cheated in my life.

[Contrarius]

I no longer remember the specific DEM circumstances, but I do seem to remember that Sanderson's first book, Elantris, depended on several DEMs and/or amazing coincidences to resolve conflicts within the plot.

[AverageGuy]

The Eye of the World.. "It is not time..."

[Werthead]

The Gardens of the Moon resolution is pretty much a DEM:

The Azath House may have been growing all book, but we had no idea what it was, what it could do or what it was even called until the end of the book. We certainly had no clue at all it could swallow a rampaging Jaghut Tyrant that can shrug off a simultaneous attack by three mega-dragons.

However, the Azath House's capabilities being revealed in GotM does foreshadow future uses of the Azath (most notably in Deadhouse Gates, the very next book), preventing its use in those circumstances from being a DEM.

As for Lord of the Rings, Gollum's situation certainly isn't a DEM but arguably Gandalf's return originally was (do we need spoilers for LotR? What the hell):

Since The Hobbit and LotR by themselves hinted that Gandalf was more than human - him not noticeably ageing between the two books is a clue - but nowhere did they suggest he was an immortal, indestructible spirit who could survive going toe-to-toe with a Balrog.

Of course, now The Silmarillion (which was written and is set before LotR, but published a long time after) is out, this move has been arguably de-DEMed, since that book reveals Gandalf's/Olorin true nature much more overtly.

The ending to The Nights Dawn Trilogy. The first book of the series, The Reality Dysfunction, was amazing. It introduced such a unique concept to the world of Sci Fi...but how the author, and humanity, dealt with the issue in the finale was terrible. I've never felt so cheated in my life.

29 posts before someone made this mistake? I thought it would be much sooner.

The ending of the NDR is not a deus ex machina, though is often mistaken for one. We are told overtly in Book 1 that the Tyrathca encountered an intelligence artifact floating in deep space that rendered assistance to species in trouble. In Book 2 it was speculated that the entity's ability to transport the Tyrathca ship thousands of light-years in one go suggested it had technological powers that could help resolve the possession crisis. In Book 3 our heroes set out to find the artifact and ask it to resolve the crisis for them with its god-like powers. At the end of the book, they ask it to resolve the crisis for them with its god-like powers and it says okay, and does so.

There are some problems with this ending, such as it being a bit convenient (which is mentioned by the characters) and it's certainly a blatant plot device (though not a reset button; there are catastrophic consequences from the crisis that humanity has to deal with). There's also the problem that the idea is that Joshua is supposed to evolve over the course of the trilogy from the total self-obssessed arsehole we meet in Book 1 to someone mature enough to handle the decision (via things like Warlow's death and Joshua's own confrontation with possession in the Dorados), but this is lost because PFH added another 50 storylines and 1,000 characters into the mix, so Joshua's storyline is more or less lost in the noise.

But you can't really say that something that was set up almost 3,000 pages earlier was a deus ex machina.

[Sci-2]

if you want to talk about King and Deus Ex Machina, there's no need to look further than The Dark Tower. The guy writes himself into the story and even delivers the gunslingers a note at one point informing them that they're in a trap.

God, so this. What started as probably the GREATEST fantasy series ever written ended up being one of the worst.

[Grack21]

I'm starting to get the feeling you guys didn't like how The Dark Tower turned out. :P

[Spring Bass]

I actually kind of liked how he wrote himself into the story as God's Narrator. It explains why the universe they travel through is so bizarre and illogically messed up - even one of the characters points out that the towns in Wolves of the Calla are pretty much Stock Movie Western Towns to be saved by the wandering samurai heroes.

[wolverine]

I actually kind of liked how he wrote himself into the story as God's Narrator. It explains why the universe they travel through is so bizarre and illogically messed up - even one of the characters points out that the towns in Wolves of the Calla are pretty much Stock Movie Western Towns to be saved by the wandering samurai heroes.

I wanted to start a book burning party when he wrote himself in. It seemed so pathetic, egotisitical, and lost. Like he had no idea what to do.

[Zach H]

I actually kind of liked how he wrote himself into the story as God's Narrator. It explains why the universe they travel through is so bizarre and illogically messed up - even one of the characters points out that the towns in Wolves of the Calla are pretty much Stock Movie Western Towns to be saved by the wandering samurai heroes.

I didn't mind it either. King said that thing about everything else he wrote just being practice to get to the Dark Tower, so it kind of made sense to me that the author himself shows up in what he considers his most personal and important work.

Honestly, though, DEM situations that people point out in works I like rarely bother me. I've always been a reader more concerned with theme, atmosphere, and character than coherent plotting.

[Sci-2]

Otherland by Tad Williams?

[Durckad]

Otherland by Tad Williams?

It's been a while, care to elaborate? :D

[Callan S.]

When Jesus came back from the dead. Total cop out.

A wizard did it.