Buh-bye Xanth

[gategrrl]

I am *finally* getting rid of a set of three books by Piers Anthony that I bought back when I was in high school (that would be 1980-1983). Back then, Anthony's racy sex-text was all the rage among the crew of nerdy SF dorks I hung out with, and I even read his other series--the one that starred Death and other mythical people. It was a cool idea that I like even today, but---

Xanth. Oh my. I dragged the first three books of that series out for another look (I'm being ruthless about winnowing my shelf space down). I've had them sitting in boxes or on my shelves for decades now. And was I...disgusted. Yes, that's one way to put it. I can see why I liked the books *then*. They were full of juvenile sex-jokes, stereotypes of women that were "funny" but I see now, weren't. In the last book I checked over, Anthony even put a twelve year old boy (in the body of a well-thewed barbarian) in sexual situations. It's all very burlesque. And after that third book in the series, I heard it went downhill even from there, and even my SF nerdy dork buddies and I wouldn't go near them. Or at least I didn't--another friend of mine read them, shook her head, and said they weren't worth the money.

I heard a well-known SF writer at a convention during the 80s was once asked, "What do you think of Piers Anthony?"  The writer replied, "He's a good typist."

(it may have been Harlan Ellison, but I'm not sure)

Anyhow, after hearing that possibly apocryphal story, my mind has stuck on that reply for years and years.

Comments

[captain-tiv.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the Xanth novels in about 20 years or so myself. I had issues with them even when I read them, but I did like them then. Bink was my favorite character, but after introducing him in the first book, Piers sidelined him for the most part after that.

I gave mine to the Used Book Store in town and got a credit for them. :)

[gategrrl.livejournal.com]

According to his Wiki page, Anthony is up to book number 27 in the series--sadly, he says it's because it seems to be all that the publishers want out of him.

[captain-tiv.livejournal.com]

I didn't get up that far.

I think the book after Ogre Ogre or was it Nightmare was the last one I read.

[gategrrl.livejournal.com]

You know, thinking on it, I DID buy about three or four books of the series after that, but I'm not sure if I got up to Night Mare. By then it was starting to creep me out and the writing was so full of bad puns I gave traded those later books off. I kept the first three because they were "better" than the others and I had fonder memories of them. Until today.

I remember being in a bookstore (when was I not?) and reading through a collection of his short stories. In the foreword, Anthony noted that these were stories that had been rejected long before by his previous publishers.

After skimming through a couple of them, I put it back on the shelf. yeah. One of the stories involved a guy who is transported to a world where women are kept as milkers, and have huge boobs, and he tries to have sex with these mindless, huge-boobed women. He does, but realizes the males they're bred with are really hugely hung, so the woman is too roomy.

I shit you not. I didn't see the afterword entil2000 mentioned, but holy crap, I didn't need to. After reading that crap, I never read his books again. And that was, oh, in the late eighties? I sometimes felt a creepy vibe about the way he wrote about his daughters in his afterwords, too.

[gategrrl.livejournal.com]

Actually, thinking on it, I can understand why: he can't write sexually explicit crap in the Xanth series. He can get as dirty minded as he likes, but that's about it.

[entil2001.livejournal.com]

I stopped reading him when he used the afterword of one of his books to defend a pedophile. At length.

[captain-tiv.livejournal.com]

He did what? :: gobsmacked ::

[gategrrl.livejournal.com]

Tiv, if you have the time, try reading this http://forum.rpg.net/archive/index.php/t-221568.html thread. It talks about his books, and brings up one book of his in particular that really turned off a lot of his fans, called Firefly. You have to read the comments to believe it.

[gategrrl.livejournal.com]

What-what? Can you go into this a bit more, please? It wasn't mentioned in his Wiki profile (and of course it wouldn't be, because for sure his fans would edit it out).

[entil2001.livejournal.com]

Back in the 80s, he wrote a book called "Firefly". It was about an creature that killed by luring people through sexual pheromones. So the people trying to fight and survive the creature were constantly battling their own sexual arousal for each other. Oh, and written so poorly that even the racy scenes were cringe-inducing.

Anyway, one of the characters had this thing for telling "sexy" stories. Anthony apparently solicited some people to contribute stories for the character to tell. He specifically mentions that one of the authors was a friend who was unable to get work because he's a pedophile. This leads Anthony into a bit of a screed about how unfair it is to judge a man for loving young boys and so forth.

Keep in mind, it's been 20 years since I read it, but it stuck...

Here's a helpful link:

http://www.paperbackswap.com/book/details/9780380759507-Firefly

[revena.livejournal.com]

Oh man, Piers Anthony! I went through a Xanth purge around the time I started college, but I held onto the Incarnations of Immortality series (that's the one with Death and all) for longer, until I finally got around to re-reading it and noticed that, yes, it too had a creepy love story in it involving an underaged girl (a prostitute, even) and a middle-aged man. Yuck, yuck, yuck. That there's more than one totally icky repeated theme throughout Anthony's different series is pretty disturbing, eh?

Harlan Ellison

[jennywren102.livejournal.com]

Okay, I freely admit that I know next to nothing about Piers Anthony. I read murder mysteries in the vein of Agatha Christie. BUT...I do know, from experience with Star Trek, that Harlan Ellison is a man who is completely full of himself. He is the big IT, as far as he is concerned, and nobody else is worth the dog shit you find on the curb. So take his comments with a grain of salt.

Re: Harlan Ellison

[gategrrl.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know all about him. And how he mispronounces "Moebius".

Re: Harlan Ellison

[gategrrl.livejournal.com]

It may have been Larry Niven who said that: it was some SF writer big-wig at the time. Ellison is drawn to drama.