I can give two examples of creepy from some of his popular work. Somewhere in the Xanth series, a kid agrees to help the evil magician kill a large number of people, because the kid's parents had promised he would do so. A fan wrote into Anthony to point out that the kid could simply choose not to help with the mass murder that not helping to kill large number of people would have been much more honorable than keeping a promise, especially since it was not the kid's promise. And Anthony blew his top. He told the fan that a Father's promise was binding on the son, and that for a son to break Father's promise was civil disobedience(!) and that only a son who was of age can rightfully commit civil disobedience. (Talk about supporting Patriarchy - this is literal support for Patriarchy). Plus the whole idea that promise breaking is worse than mass murder ... And to top it off he told the fan that the fan had no concept of what honor meant and that the character who was about to aid and abet mass murder was far more honorable than the fan would ever have any concept of being. And apparently Anthony was so proud of this exchange that he included it at the end of one of he Xanth books - presumably as a moral lesson for his readers.
Also in another book "Battle Circle" the viewpoint character and a definitely too-young girl were trapped with a Minotaur who did not want to do wrong, but had a genetically engineered compulsion to kill and eat virgins. So the viewpoint character had to relieve the underage character of her virginity to save her life.
I think I had bought both those books at once. After finishing them never touched another Piers Anthony book again. So , yeah, deeply creepy.
He has gone at many a fan with paranoid rages that revealed an astonishingly bizarre worldview.
I just have to wonder what his editor thought. And why no one at the publisher thought he was possibly crossing a line.
Which is a really slippery slope, I know. But when you've got a whole theme going ...
He has had many publishers. He's fond of suing them.
Does the poor guy get "censored" a lot? "First amendment rights" encroached on? Poor boo.
People people. Buffistas have been sitting on horrible Piers Anthony knowledge.
Thanks for airing it out now. I will never make the mistake of reading or buying any of his shit again.
I read a couple Piers Anthony short stories when I was in high school, and pretty much hated them. For the sake of my friends in college, I really tried to read a couple Xanth books and Tarot, but everything seemed like something he'd banged out in a frenzied drugged post-fap haze.
However, I believe I was objecting to the misogyny and the general creepiness; I don't think I ever noted the pedophilia like that.
Anyone read Hourglass by Myra McEntire?
I quit reading Anthony in my late teens or early 20s when I noted the pattern of adult/middle aged/sometimes downright old men hooking up with 15-17 yr-old girls. I still feel retroactively sickened from the first couple paragraphs of that link. I think I'm going to comb my bookshelves to make sure I didn't miss any of his books in previous purges.
Eeew.
Also,
**shudder**
I read one Xanth book. Fairly amusing, but I was pretty sure the puns would get old fast -- so I didn't read any more.
Been a long, long time since I read the Intimations of Immortality series. I remember it raising some interesting issues, but not really resolving them.
I notice that the article mentioned (but only in passing) the Bio of a Space Tyrant series. When I read it in the mid-'80s, I saw engaging space opera. When I re-read it, I saw enough issues (not least being the hero-who-is-irresistible-to-all-women, including his sisters) to keep a therapist very, very busy.
