Piers Anthony - blacklisted...

Cafe Society
21

Cap’n Amazing–Thanks! I only knew part of the story and wondered about the rest! :slight_smile:

He also, either in the Incarnations series or the latter Xanth books decided to A) tell us intimate details of his personal health issues–not general stuff (“I had surgery so this book is 3 years late”) but the sort of stuff that crazy strangers on the bus try to share (“I had a rectal polyp, but it was benign, but it got removed anyway, and after it was removed, my writing productivity increased 20%! I also have a retainer that was irritating my gums so I stuck used chewing-gum betwen my retainer and my gumline–I store the chewing gum behind my ear. My ears hurt, by the way…”), b) flame readers who wrote letters (Someone wrote him a very thoughtful letter about a grotesque moral/ethical screw-up in one of his Xanth books, and Anthony not only publishes the letter with the author’s name, he flames the shit out of the guy*) and c) hawk his other books.

My fav. Piers Anthony story, though, is the Stephen Donaldson screw-up.

Seems that there are two Stephen Donaldsons–one is the author of the Thomas Covenent books, the other, Stephen “Donny” Donaldson a victim of and advocate against prison rape. Well…“Donny” died, Anthony heard about it, put up a webpage where he (as far as I can tell) randomly picked stuff from Stephen’s and Donny’s biographies, mixed 'em together and generated a new biography (fer example (made up, but close) "Stephen Donaldson, or “Donny” as he was known to his friends died last week. Many people don’t know how he went to prison and was raped. When he got out, he used that experience both for the founding of his organization “People Against Prision Rape** and incorporated those experiences into his award winning Thomas Covenent novels.”). That was bad enough, but hey, it was an honest mistake and I’m sure Anthony’s heart was in the right place.

But…

But right off the bat, people started writing in, aghast, saying that Stephen Donaldson was still alive and he wasn’t the same person as “Donny” Donaldson. Anthony not only didn’t take the page down immediately, he started flaming the shit out of the people writing in (apparently Piers thinks that private e-mail is a good starter point for public debate.) Anthony was very indignant that people were writing in upset that Anthony was posting information that was completely wrong. Their tone offended him. The correct tone that the e-mailers should have used should be closer to “Dear Mr. Anthony, I’m hesitant to say anything around a writer of your stature, but I believe you have a tiny typo (no doubt the work of saboteurs) on your webpage–though it’s certainly not your fault, you being the bestest writer ever, but (and I could be wrong of course) I just talked with Stephen Donaldson yesterday and he seemed to be alive. I’m sorry to contradict you and I could have been talking to an undead or something, of course. I’m so sorry for doubting you!”. Anthony just (IMO) blew a gasket about the tone.

Donaldson was, by all accounts, not amused.

Eventually he corrected the information although it took him a couple of weeks, IIRC. On the SF newsgroup (rec.arts.sf.written) we were getting “STEPHEN DONALDSON DIED??!!!” questions for like a year afterwards.

I don’t blame Anthony for the initial screw-up (much–before you post that someone’s died, it’s always good to confirm…and if you have two completely different biographies with one name attached, it’s never a good idea to just, y’know, mix-n-match 'em), but his reaction afterwards was pretty repulsive.

Fenris

*In brief, some guy’s parents, now dead, promised an evil wizard before the son was born that the son would serve him. The son said “I’m bound by my parent’s promise, regardless of how evil it was or the evil I’ll have to do as a result”. The letter writer pointed out how grotesque that concept was. “What if your parents promised that you’d be a Nazi Concentration Camp Guard…would you still be obliged to keep their promise?”

Anthony then says that the letter writer has no ethics and is the reason we have all sorts of laws, since the letter writer can’t be trusted to keep his word.

**Not the group’s name. I don’t remember what it’s called.

22

I don’t think the Anthony situation affected Elwood all that much. After Laser, he went to work for Disney promoting their movies, then moved over to Christian literature.

Elwood flooded the market with mediocre anthologies in the late 70s and early 80s and was one factor in the death of the original SF anthology.

23

I’d suspect we were separated at birth if I didn’t already know this was a fairly common story for science-fiction/fantasy fans. I discovered in college that many of us went through a Piers Anthony phase, followed by a slow awakening to the fact that he’s actually a lousy writer and his books are rubbish. And Eternity… was what finally pushed me from “Okay, his books pretty much suck, but I’ll read a library copy if I can’t find anything better” to “His books completely suck, I am not giving this man any more of my time, and I wish I could back the time I’ve already wasted on him.”

I couldn’t even finish And Eternity… Aside from its utter suckitude, I was pretty creeped out by the way so much of it was devoted to justifying adult men having sex with girls in their mid-teens. It wasn’t even a reasonable justification; a large part of his argument rested upon the fact that the girl wasn’t a virgin so the older man was hardly “stealing her innocence”, but the only reason she wasn’t a virgin was because she’d been raped by her stepfather! I was a girl in my mid-teens myself at the time, and it was obvious to me that the female character was a very troubled girl who probably shouldn’t be having sex with anyone for several years, and that the older man was a perv. The whole thing creeped me out too badly to continue.

24

After Neq the Sword became Neq the Glockenspiel in the final part of Battle Circle, I promised myself I would never waste another moment of irreplaceable lifespan on Mr. Anthony’s writing.

25

I’ve had all I can stands, and I can’t stands no more.

Yes, I admit it, I’m a fan… or was, until recently… of the Xanth series. I’m a punoholic. And I think the first dozen or so were actually good. After that, I think it was simple momentum that kept me reading. The thing that finally weaned me from the Xanth novels, though, was the tendency to, in an extremely transparent fashion, set up the next one.

“Oh, here’s a fascinating person we’ve met on our travels. He has such-and-such problem. Wish we could help, but we’re busy on our own quest. Hope that works out for him.”

That said, I recent;y read Piers Anthony’s novel Steppe, which I picked up at a used bookstore. I thought it had an interesting concept, and the execution was good, as well.

26

I never cared much for Anthony. I read Macroscope, but his other works at the time didn’t appeal to me. I didn’t pick him up again until I started reading Split Inifinity in the 80s, since it was supposed to be a mixture of SF and fantasy, a concept I wanted to explore at the time.

It was dull. Perfectly dull. Sort of like the worst of Frank Herbert made all the less interesting. And he didn’t mix the SF and fantasy; he alternated chapters of it. Feh.

27

No discussion of the hack who is Piers Anthony would be complete without this.

FWIW, I was a huge fan of Mr. Anthony’s, but then I turned sixteen, and discovered real authors… like Hubbard. :smiley:

28

And labeled which chapters were which, in case you couldn’t tell!

I got the Apprentice Adept series as a gift. I’m not a fan of fantasy, and I’ve got a limited interest in SF, but I can still tell craptacular writing. And this was craptacular.

Robin

29

RealityChuck, you may want to check out Anthony’s Incarnations of Immortality series, which did a much better job of integrating magic and science. Both spells and technology co-existed in the same world. Like almost any other Anthony series, it starts out strong and sort of peters out toward the end. Just read the first book On a Pale Horse, to see if you can stomach it; it’s the best one anyway.

30

Anthony has suffered from two problems; his ego and his laziness. I’ve read both the original and the revised versions of “But What of Earth” - neither is a great novel. But I can sympathize with Anthony being upset about having a book he wrote edited and published without him being aware of it. At least I could sympathize until I read what he had to say about it. Anthony whines for dozens of pages about how he was wronged - his basic theme is that he is an Author and he wrote a Book. Then lesser creatures came along and ruined his Masterpiece. They should have known better; none of them were Authors, they were mere mortals. (Keep in mind, Anthony says he didn’t know who any of the editors were.)

The laziness is indicated by the fact that Anthony used to whine about how some of his best work was not as popular as his hack-work (he didn’t use that exact phrase, but he did indicate it was the books he put less effort into). At first his theme was that people should buy more copies of the books he considered to be better. But then he stopped discussing this. And the output of his profitable series went up. The conclusion is obvious: Anthony decided that if people were paying to read bad Xanth novels, he’d write as many of them as the market would bear.

31

What, it wasn’t the constant castration theme in those books that did it?

The way I view Anthony (now, at least, that I have a better appreciation for good writing), is that none of his writing is good, but some of it is at least fun. The first half-dozen Xanth books are worth a read, plus Question Quest, as are all five of the Incarnations books (there were only five, of course, since there’s only five Incarnations). I wouldn’t actually consider Being a Green Mother worth reading on its own, but after reading the others, the closure is good. Definitely, though, that series monotonically decreased in quality.

At least he was honest about this. Someone once accused him of writing more books just for the money. His response was yes, of course he’s writing for the money. He’s an author; that’s what he does for a living. Nobody accuses a plumber of fixing pipes just for the money.

32

You know, read his books in Jr. high and I remember liking them. On a Pale Horse was my favorite, but I don’t know that I have read that one in the last decade…

<re: Maus Magill’s link> I’d like to point out that not all the people who continued the Star Wars saga were hacks…Timothy Zahn and Michael Stackpole are great writers!

33

Not so much of a boycott or a blacklist but just a decision on my part to never buy any of his books again because after reading his Tarot series clear to what he crapped out as an ending, and the Lords of the Diamond trilogy that I have tried so desperately to forget (there was something about planets GAAAAH!!! That was Jack Chalker! Somebody ELSE I’ve vowed never to buy again!).

Great. Now the voices are back.

34

Now that was a truly lazy way to fill up the page count. Literally copy the first half of each book throughout the whole series.

35

The final part of Dragon on a Pedestal, with Ivy, Hugo and Stanley battling the wiggle nest, can still fill me with tension. It’s pretty shamelessly manipulative, but it works.

And that is about the only nice thing I can still say about Piers Anthony. There’ve been Anthony dogpiles before here and the themes (icky child sex stuff, shitty attitude toward women, etc.) recur. PA seems to serve a useful function in literary comprehension. When one arrives at the point where one can re-read a once-liked book of his and figure out that it’s a) crap, b) creepy as hell or c) all of the above, one is a discerning reader at last.

36

My beloved husband (he’s now 35 years old) reads Piers Anthony books. He has several boxes that he’s been keeping since his teens…he won’t let me throw them away-er ‘donate them to needy children’.

I’ve really tried to enjoy these books, for my husbands sake…well really because I was sick and looking for SOMETHING to read. The books I tried I’ve found them to be demeaning towards women and trite…and now this thread just gives me more reasons to think poorly of Mr. Anthony due to his personality. Maybe I should take notes and try to enlighten him (him being my husband, it sounds as if Mr. Anthony wouldn’t take kindly to any enlightening attempts from me). :smiley:

Of course…last month my husband bought a Hubbard book against my protests…is this moving up or down for him? :smiley:

37

Anthony is egotistical, I’ll grant, but he’s actually not bad as a writer. But like many writers, he just sucks if he keeps on one idea too long (cough Robert Jordan cough). Most poeple will. I have to give himma lot of credit for originality, though; his worlds are… unique at least.

Zahn really was god, but Stackpole usually felt way too corny.

38

I, too, went through an Anthony phase, reading a good part of Xanth and the first three Incarnation books, before I realized that he was using the same template for each book. “But What of Earth?” is a horror book for writers – although I think nothing about it applies anymore, since nobody bothers to rewrite manuscripts, much less edit them.

Anthony does have a point, however. He was contracted to write a book. He did. Good or bad, they accepted it. That did not give them the right to rewrite it and that did not give them the right to add a co-writer credit.

Granted, the book sucked before and after the rewrite, but it’s a hoot to read the comments from the THREE editors (each used a different pen so he could tell them apart), and Anthony’s fisking of them all. I read it in the same way I watch “Teenagers From Outer Space” on MST3K.

39

Holy cow! This sure filled up fast! Faster than I could get back to it (that’s what happens when I work two shifts in 24 hours and get four hours sleep in between them).

I see we’ve strayed off-topic a bit, so let me hop back to my OP and thank y’all for the answers. For some reason, I was under the impression (perhaps due to the first person who told me of Mr. Anthony’s blacklisting) that the trouble all started when he wrote something so horrifyingly offensive (don’t start!) that publishers feared to print his work. Something about castration via papercut…
Anyhoo, I like Piers Anthony. I guess I just don’t feel that reading a novel needs to be some sort of revelatory experience. I read books as a diversion - I don’t want a steady stream of Dostoyevsky. I decided to read Dickens. Thoroughly enjoyed A Tale of Two Cities, yet I was so completely bored with Oliver Twist that I still haven’t bothered to finish it. Strange as it may seem, I like Anthony for much the same reason I like Asimov (y’all like him, don’tcha?): I just likes it. Don’t ask me why!

I actually “discovered” Anthony around the same time I discovered Asimov, and --(checking my list of every book I’ve read since 1979) – I see I read A Spell For Chameleon (first Xanth book?) way back in 1980, when I was 14. I liked it, but at the time I was really into SF, so I spent the next few years reading every bit of Asimov I could get my hands on. I think I’ve read every SF story Asimov wrote. In my early 30s I finally got back around to reading Anthony, and I still like the books.

40

Sos the Rope, by the way, won a novel contest sponsored by F&SF and some publisher in 1967, and was serialized in F&SF. I don’t know if it was ever published by itself, I have Battle Circle.

I was too old to go through an Anthony phase, thank Og. I do have his porn novel, Porntopia. (I might be wrong about the name, I try to not think about it.) It was slightly less erotic than Galaxy 666. :eek: