Piers Anthony
Anthony is an…interesting…writer of Science Fiction and Fantasy. He is known particularly for the pun-heavy Xanth series and a wide array of other works which are more clever than good, and not all that clever when you get right down to it. However, Anthony is not talentless; some of his works are genuinely well-written, and his little-known Hard Sell, which presents the adventures of a sluggish functionary and a highly affectionate small girl in an entertaining and insignificant dystopia, can go toe to toe with the best of them.
However, as you might have guessed from that turn of phrase there, Anthony’s works are liberally seasoned with what can only be described as pedophilia (and certain perversions and sexual…issues). This ranges from relatively mild jailbait issues (as in the Mode books where we have a thirty-something-fourteen age differential, though there the problem is compounded by some odd treatments of rape, and in a number of the Xanth books, or Shade of the Tree, were the girl is, in fact, of the age of consent (barely), but is getting seduced in a rather surreal way by her employer), to the interesting sexualization of young and/or child-like and/or child-size characters throughout the Xanth books, to the very explicit pedophilia in Firefly.
This is one of those things that dawns on you slowly, like the racism in Tolkien. Certainly I didn’t realize how pervasive it was until I’d encountered some of his more marginal works and then gone back to the popular ones.
Pedophilia aside, Anthony was one of my favorite authors as a kid, because he’s prolific, widely available in used bookstores, and amusing…sort of. And because, while he’s a hack, he’s not all that bad a hack.
h2. Works
h3. Xanth
  • 1st Generation
    • Spell for Chameleon, Source of Magic
  • 2nd Generation
    • Castle Roogna, Centaur Aisle, Ogre, Ogre, Night Mare
  • 3rd Generation
    • Dragon on a Pedestal, Crewel Lye, Golem in the Gears, Vale of the Vole, Heaven Cent, Man from Mundania, Isle of View
  • 4th Generation
    • Question Quest, The Color of Her Panties, Demons Don’t Dream Harpy Thyme, Geis of the Gargoyle, Roc and a Hard Place
  • 5th Generation &ff
    • Whatever…
      h3. Mode
  • Virtual Mode
  • Fractal Mode
    h3. Other
  • ?/Hard Sell??
  • Firefly
  • Killobyte
  • Mercycle
    h2. See also
    Cussler
    category:writer