Should We Intentionally Read Bad SF?

Recently, on the YouTube channel Pulpmortem, I viewed Jake’s video “9 So Bad, they’re Good Science Fiction Books you’ve probably never heard of.” Jake, evidently, is a connoisseur of bad science fiction, and the nine novels he reviewed indeed sound dreadful. Since Jake claims that bad books still can be fun to read, I gave The Red Planet by Russ Winterbotham a try. It was a quick, fun read that wasn’t badly written, but was essentially a minor, forgotten work. I picked The Red Planet because it was free to Kindle Unlimited subscribers. It’s only $1.99 if you’re not a subscriber. This novel is also available for free on Project Gutenberg. There are hundreds of better science fiction novels for $1.99 on Amazon, so why should anyone read it? Shouldn’t we always seek out the best possible novel to read? Why read a crappy book when you could be reading something great? Well, readers don’t think that way. Even though we’re warned never to judge a book by its cover, how often have you bought…