The effect of this thread for me is that I probably won’t introduce my older (9) son to the world of Xanth. Like others, I had fond memories of it. In retrospect, it is not because of the misogynistic aspects but more because I guess it was kind of crappy, sappy shit.
Actually, when he found out she was a robot, he stopped being attracted to her, iirc, because that was weird to him. His alt-self, who had no associations with sentient robots not being freely-willed individuals, fell in love with her just fine, and all ended well.
That series got creepy/bad eventually, but the first book was pretty solid.
They competed naked, btw, because the underclass (of which the protagonist was one) was forbidden clothes.
In general, I agree with you on principle, since one of the primary purposes of SciFi is to analyze what it means to be human by juxtaposing it with the alien, or something otherwise unfamiliar. I think that really weird torture-planet negotiations fall under that category, as do, even, human milking machine factories. At best, the author’s twisted mind is highlighting the human condition. Playing with extremes of sexuality for the purpose of being thought provoking is perfectly fine.
But that’s only a defense if you keep your weirdness in the stories. When you start explicitly advocating pedophilia in author’s notes, you’re not being a weird and thought provoking author, you’re being weird and creepy dude who I wouldn’t want my children to hang out with. Armed with that knowledge, is it fair to condemn the marginally creepy stories that he writes? Yes. It wouldn’t be fair to censor them, but it’s totally okay for me to say they’re creepy and not want to read them again.
I think with Anthony we see a gradual slide from “mildly kinky but basically okay” to “oh hell no!” I don’t know if he started out that creepy and kept it under wraps a lot better early in his career; or he just went batshit insane along the way.
Re-read Robert E Howard or get unedited versions of H.P. Lovecraft stories and you’ll be able to find all kinds of rapey and racist unpleasantness.*
Yeah, well, there are reasons why I don’t seek out Howard or Lovecraft of my own free will - congrats on mentioning a few.
So he’s big in Japan?
I believe the idea is she was unique among robots, who didn’t look human and weren’t very smart. I don’t remember who made her nor why. Although I dimly recall a scene where the girl-bot disguises herself as a normal robot by detaching her own breasts and carrying them around like bowls.
13-year-old me thought that was really funny.
They competed naked, btw, because the underclass (of which the protagonist was one) was forbidden clothes.
Also, everybody competes in videogames to advance their lot in life. Really, what’s hard to understand abut the appeal of that to a young male geek?
wouldn’t they get cold that way?
You should! Eileen sounds like a very intelligent person, to have noticed the smarmy content of the book at that age.
Why you pernicious jackanape…
Thank YOU Angie…
Point taken. He holds some creepy views, that he explicitly explores, in this book that I never heard of before this thread.
I remain fairly Meh about the harm done by reading Xanth. It will make you a pedophile rapist about as much as playing Shadow Complex will make you a raging homophobe.
Climate controlled habitat-bubbles built on a lifeless planetoid. Say what you want about Piers Anthony, there wasn’t anything outrageous about all the serfs being naked.
I suppose you can go on and say that it’s outrageous for a man to always be writing about people of various ages in various states of undress, because one thing is for sure, someone in an Anthony novel is always gonna get naked and/or fucked.
But still. In an orchard this fertile, do we really need to go around batting at all the low-hanging fruit?
I’m glad someone is forcing you to read them at gun point, because their shit is awesome. Its also the product of the times they were written in and the limited experiences of the virtual shut-ins that wrote them.
I find Lovecraft rather difficult to read now. Howard is cool and his influence is difficult to overstate, although as an adult I tend to admire him from afar rather than actually read him.
As for Piers Anthony, I enjoyed A Spell for Chameleon back in the day. At least it stood out from the standard Tolkien-knockoff stuff I was devouring as a kid (I’m looking at you, Eddings).
It’s amazing what you can find on the internet:
Author’s Note
This is, as you may have gathered, a special novel, the first of several unrelated projects I have had in
mind for some time that are of more consequence than my fantasy. From inception to completion was
about seven years, because I did not pursue it until I was satisfied about its nature. It is technically a
monster story, concluding with a suggestion of the horror to come when alien fireflies who understand
man are loosed on the world. If one ignorant monster could cause such mischief, what of the
knowledgeable ones? I have no sequel in mind; the reader may imagine that aspect for himself. The
essence of this novel is in the characters, especially OEnone. I am of course in love with her, as I am with
all my leading ladies, and I hope you are too, if you are male, and that you understand her if you are
female. She represents the triumph of imagination over dull reality or quiet desperation, and I think there
are many women like her to some degree. This can be an ugly world.
This novel addresses more than peripherally the problem of abuse. It occurs in many forms, physical and
emotional, and is exacerbated by the insensitivity, ignorance, or downright malice of others. It does
happen in “nice” families, and much of it is not of the screaming rape type. It may be subtle and
persistent, yet it can be hellish. The games five-year-old Nymph played with Mad were a joy to her at
the time, but it was nevertheless abuse by our society’s definition (not necessarily by that of other
societies), and her life was significantly colored by the experience thirty years later. What happened to
May is unfortunately also not that rare. I don’t know what to do about such problems, but surely there
will be no genuine solutions until there is a proper recognition of the situation.
The setting for this novel is my home; OEnone used our guest bedroom. The house, cabin, landscape,
roads, trees, and wildlife are as described, except for location; my avocation is tree farming. I believe
that the salvation of the world well may lie in trees, and not just the commercial varieties. The
community of wild creatures resides in the noncommercial wilderness.
One of the included stories was written by Santiago Hernandez, in prison for pedophilia. This is one of
the few nonsexual, nonromantic entries: the one about two professors pondering exchanging their
spouses, concluding with a reference to me: the ogre in the Flower State near the cartoon-comic city.
This is the story OEnone did not tell; Geode dreamed she was telling it, so it was a product of his own
imagination, and came out completely different from any she would have told. The point is that later,
when the monster starts telling him stories, he knows it really is OEnone, because he can not invent
anything similar himself. I know this one is not the kind I would devise, because I did not; to me it is
mostly incomprehensible, as a wild dream might be.
But this is another bit of evidence of the problem in our society: as far as I know, Santiago Hernandez
did not hurt anyone. He just happens to be sexually attracted to small boys. We assume that the only
normal state is adult heterosexuality, and certainly this is my own preference, but I am in doubt whether
other types of interest are not also natural to our species. Homosexual men, for example, are not likely to
produce many offspring, yet around the world the percentage of homosexuals remains fairly constant at
about ten percent. I suspect there is a similarly constant percentage of bisexuals, and of other supposedly
deviant preferences. There seems to be a broad spectrum of human desire, and what we call normal is
only the central component. May’s sadistic husband was sexually normal by the standard definition. It
may be that the problem is not with what is deviant, but with our definitions. I suggest in the novel that
little Nymph was abused not by the man with whom she had sex, but by members of her family who
warped her taste, and by the society that preferred to condemn her lover rather than address the source of
the problem in her family.
Those who feel that OEnone’s stories represent abnormal taste should read My Secret Garden by Nancy
Friday, which details some of the sexual fantasies of women. Neither is Nymph an invention; similar
cases are all too frequent. These aspects were from my research rather than my imagination. I don’t
know what is right and what is wrong; I merely hope to raise some social questions along with the
entertainment provided in the novel. I suspect our priorities are confused. We have problems enough
with world hunger and injustice, without making more by punishing people for deviant but perhaps
harmless behavior.
I’ve only read Alexander’s Prydain series, so I’ll have to check out the Westmark trilogy some time. I re-read the Prydain series a few months back and IMO it holds up really well. The first time I read the books (I’m thinking early teen years) Taran Wanderer was my least favorite. I know I re-read them a few years later, but we’re talking over 15 years ago since then.
Taran Wanderer was my favorite this time.
Piers Anthony sounds like a mangaka. You know, one of those who move “up” from rapey dating sims to Love Hina.
I remember disliking that one because of the lack of Eilonwy but when I reread them, yeah, that one moved up.
The High King still makes me cry.
Louis C.K.: Genius.
Except if anything, he did it in reverse: started out with mildly kinky sex farces before graduating to full-blown fetishism and pedo impulses.
I think that’s why a lot of people appreciated his stuff as kids. On the face of it, it’s pretty light-hearted and funny fantasy instead of serious end of the world stuff. But these days, even creepy sex stuff aside, I think there are just better options out there. There’s a whole bumper crop of youth-appropriate fantasy in the last few years. Off the top of my head, all of Terry Pratchett’s stuff is similar in tone, less creepy, and better written.
I know this is sort of unnecessary to point out, but the problem I had with Xanth, even as a kid (although I couldn’t identify it at the time), is that there’s no consistency to the magic system, so there’s no good way to plot a story arc, because whatever is convenient suddenly exists as long as there’s a pun for it.
Terry Pratchet. Good call for a kid’s series. Start with Colour of Magic or maybe one of his standalone books…?
Or one of his actual kids books, such as The Amazing Maurice or Wee Free Men.