William Gibson, although I liked Neuromancer's ending, and every novel since that has followed the same template (mystery bigwig hires someone to find McGuffin, but is really manipulating/being manipulated about something else, the end).
Maybe I was being harsh. I'll see if I can think of more examples.
At the other end of the scale, Iain M. Banks never wrote a badly paced book that didn't have a perfect ending, as far as I'm concerned. The guy was a master.
I finally realized his enjoyment is in Type B writing. It's the detail next to the main plot, rather than the motion itself.
Which parallels what I like about film noir -- it's not about finding the murderer: it's about watching the characters find the murderer.
Which is why I maintain the Lost ending was hilarious. JJ Abrams essentially said "Look, you didn't really care about the answers: you cared about watching these characters look for answers. And in the end, it's the characters who mattered." Which is probably not something you should ever point out to a TV geek if you want to keep your head intact. ;)
All that said, just imagine how fantastic his novels could be with better plotting! He's not terrible at characters, it's the plot that ultimately disappoint. I think his imagination peaked with Neuromancer, unfortunately; his later novels didn't bring much new to the table beyond what he's laid out in that book, and I find his later obsession with art (like the locational VR art in the Blue Ant trilogy) and video games tiresome. His newest one didn't click for me at all.
Lost, ugh. Such a promising start completely wasted by lack of planning.
Peter F. Hamilton.
He has some awesome universes but his endings are usually a lot fo Deus Ex Machina. But the thoughts of MorningLightMountain analyzing a human is a good example of how he can get some alien concepts done.
The only persistent offender here I can think of is Stephenson. Who else are you thinking of?
BTW, many years ago I used to hate Stephenson's dry style. But for some reason I kept reading his books because I like his ideas. Eventually I figured what he's really like - just a different attitude - and at that point I started to enjoy his writing quite a lot. Anathem is one of my favorite books in all literature, ever.
> The only thing I didn't particularly enjoy was the flashbacks to the protagonist's past on Earth, which seemed a bit trite and repetitive.
Yeah, that was boring.