Back in the 80s I read an anthology of his short stories, “In the Barn” & “Up Schist Creek” being two of them I remember. My reading interests were more horror oriented, with occasional forays into fantasy and sci-fi.
I forget who recommended I try Piers Anthony, but my method of ‘get a book of short stories to see if he’s worth getting into’ didn’t work out so well.
Women being milked like cows?!?! Lol, even back then before the internet my reaction was 'wtf?". I never read anything more by the guy because let’s face it- after that there’s not much point. There’s no way he could have freakier material than that.
I may have some horrible taste in books (at least according to some of the other people on the boards, heh) but I draw the line at Piers Anthony and Mercedes Lackey.
In this story, a 6 year old girl is abused by her father and brother and finds comfort in the loving embrace of the pedophile across the street. He doesn’t want to have sex with the 6 year old, oh no, he wants to love her chastely and purely, but her interactions with the other men in her life have sexualized her and he just can’t restrain his dick. She feels a huge sense of accomplishment when she is finally able to put his penis inside her.
Later, he gets caught and is sent to prison. This is the greatest trauma of her life and causes her to develop MPD, and both the character and the author say that the greater crime is forcefully separating the two ‘lovers’. He explicitly states this in the afterword of the book, which is a huge ol’ defense of pedophilia that boils down to “Kids are sexual beings so it’s mean of us to not fuck them.”
Yes, there’s more wrong with the book with questionable consent, a dude orgasming so frequently that he starts shooting blood, the previously mentioned character curing a mentally handicapped man’s impotence by telling him about her molestation while dry humping him, everyone being swallowed by a protoplasmic tentacle rape monster that is going to bring peace to the world because people can only understand each other after being raped and swallowed by it, and on and on.
Questionable consent and pedophilia are very common themes in his work. Does he apologize for violent stranger rape? I can’t think of any examples off the top of my head. But his view of sexuality is gross and dangerous.
Yikes, that’s much worse than anything I ever came across when I was still reading him. Amazing someone can still have a career after something like that.
When I was seven or eight I somehow managed to sneak this book out of the library and read it. It’s hard to overemphasize the mind-bogglingness this book induced in me at the time, and the story is permanently burnt into my mind as a result.
I can look back and groan now, but at the time I thought all adult books were like this and that’s why I wasn’t allowed in the adult section of the library.
I read quite a bit of Anthony when I was younger and just getting into reading fantasy. I enjoyed it at the time, but stopped when I realized that each book seemed basically the same. Not the same as in each writer has a unique style with unique tropes that get repeated. Just. The. Same. But what really soured me on Anthony was when I read a quote of his dissing my idol Roger Zelazny. Haven’t read a word of Anthony’s since.
If you want to read The Same try plodding through Eddings’ garbage. I particularly enjoyed The Redemption of Althalus (sp?) and its troop of Eddings’ stock character templates, amazed at how even its own plot was a regurgitation of itself by about the halfway point as ole’ Dave marvelled readers with his time travel trope.
Trust me. That’s not the worst thing he’s ever written. Do yourself a favor, and never find a copy of Anthonology. Seriously. Don’t. This is a genuine warning.
Violent stranger rape is where I draw the line, so this guy is free to carry on all he likes as far as I’m concerned.
This is obviously the thread for scary Piers Anthony stories, I’m contributing as best I can. I’ll put it this way, I’m comfortable telling you where in town you can find pornography for sale, but I am not comfortable working there selling it to you, or comfortable creating the pornography that gets sold there.
If you want to know more about the zany hijinks that Piers Anthony has gotten up to over the years, you’re on your own.
Gonna come right out and mention right here that the sheer number of you who have not only been interested in my comment, but have felt compelled to follow up on it… yeah. Kind of freaked out now.
What are you talking about? “Sheer number of us”? It’s like three or four people pointing out that it was odd for you to bring it up and then, when pressed, say “no, sorry, I can’t say anything more”. Except you said that in sort of a mangled way.
Anthony’s creepiness doesn’t appear to be in question. Merely asking after this “to do” regarding the publication of one of his novels doesn’t support his behavior, or the things behind the novel publication, or mean we all secretly want to be the Machine.
I’d almost forgotten about Tatham Mound and its terrible sleaziness. That book overflows with underage sex. The female lead is the prepubescent daughter of the main character’s first or second wife. She becomes (if I’m not mistaken) a sex-healer, which is to say that she has sex with older men in order to heal them, in order to be more experienced for her father/lover when he returns to marry her. After they’ve been happily married for a while, either a giant snake or smallpox kills everyone.
If I remember correctly, the “honey” is some kind of prehistoric birth control method. I’m really surprised that I remembered anything about this one; I thought I’d suppressed everything but the unforgettable character, Bear Penis.
