I heard a recommendation of Hamilton's early works from a friend at about the same time I ran into the Anita Blake thread on godawful.net. Then I got my first bookstore job, at about the time Incubus Dreams came out.
I opened Incubus Dreams and found porn. I opened it again at random and found porn. Lather, rinse, repeat, about a dozen times. Porn, porn, porn. And from what I saw of the porn...that's when I first knew it was shit.