I’m reminded of an awful Piers Anthony book I read as a kid many years ago, Race Against Time.
A kid is raised in what is basically a human zoo, a “pure” white kid bred from preserved sperm/eggs and raised among people who were also disguised as being “pure” in race when they were actually of mixed race and were just in disguise. The rest of humanity is this blended single race. He is destined to procreate with a white girl, the only other “pure” caucasian human. There was also an African pair and a Chinese pair. Even back then it was difficult to read. It was incredibly stupid.
You are not wrong Miller. There’s a reason that I haven’t read any of those books since I was a kid. I think I figured out in Junior High that they were just bad and I have avoided them since.
I think I read so many because my dad was a fan. We had a ton of them in the garage. I have read dozens of them (the Xanth books, Incarnations of Immortality, the Tarot books, the Apprentice Adept, and so on). I feel ill thinking about them.
Nothing like a good, increasingly irrelevant Piers Anthony pile-on, I’ve always said, and would just like to add that it certainly speaks to the [gag] writer’s [gag] aspirations when he claims that one of his greatest pinnacles has been to publish a book beginning with every letter of the alphabet.
That determined style - it’s usually the best type of style, people have said.
I’ll admit I continued just into High School - last new books of his I bought I think were all published circa 1982-83 (I graduated in 1985). The exception was his annotated What of Earth which I thought might be an enlightening exploration of the editing process. Silly me - instead it was possibly the most painful narcissistic screed I’ve ever forced myself to wade through. I never even got into his most panned/grossest novels later in his career. Though I did read his contribution to Again, Dangerous Visions. Seriously ick.
Piers Anthony has gotta be the crown king of popular-in-your-early-teens-abandoned-as-an-adult fantasy/sf authors.
It truly is a feel-good sorta pile-on for everyone to enjoy .
None of Anthony’s books are good, but a few of them are at least entertaining. Race Against Time was not one of those. It might not be the worst thing he ever wrote, but that’s just a testament to how bad some of his other books were.
And yeah, I was sort of wondering if @jtur88 was secretly Piers Anthony, too.
Absolutely; and the target of this pitting is one of the few posters that I feel bring absolutely no value to this board. Every post just stinks up the thread it’s in.
Since this is the Pit, I guess this is where I’d be allowed to say this: I always found some of jtur88’s claims to be too far-fetched to be believed. The fact that he said he was in his 80s wasn’t all that tough to believe, but his being nearly blind and traveling all over the world (even during a pandemic) and all the life experiences he’d claimed he’d had was just a mite too much. (Assuming I haven’t misremembered)
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