The Greatest Sci-Fi Writer Ever?! (Piers Anthony in general)

Member Name: Mitnik

Product:	Piers Anthony in general
Date:	28/08/02 (91 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great Author (read the op)

Disadvantages: None

Well, this will be my final op here at DooYoo (I know, I know, but don`t be sad, read the op, learn a little about a great author, go out and get hold of the Mode Series, and enjoy yourself...), so I`ve decided to do something a little different (ooh, err...) So just to amaze you all this isn`t a Terry Pratchett or Tom Holt Book Review, No. it's an op all about my Favourite Author: Piers Anthony.

So, Just Who is Piers Anthony? Well he's an Author (as previously stated, geez. pay attention, there will be questions asked at the end.) mostly of science-fiction novels, although he`s turned his hand to writting (amongst others..) martial arts action novels, fantasy, space opera, post-apocalyptic adventure, horror, and he's also dabbled in the (almost)black art of erotica (infact it's almost easier to enumerate the few categories that Piers Anthony hasn't written in!) His total number of books is well into the hundreds now, making him one of the most prolific authors in the science-fiction/fantasy field (indeed, any field) as well as one of the most successful.

So, Piers Anthony, that`s an usual name isn`t it? Well infact his full name is Piers Anthony Dillingham Jacob and he was born August 6th, 1934 in Oxford, England. It was not necessary in England in 1934 to name a baby instantly; there was a grace period of a number of days. As the deadline loomed, his mother simply gave him all the names she could think of. (Good thing she didn`t know too many names, eh.)

His parents both graduated from the University of Oxford, but Piers was a slow learner from the outset (Taking 5 schools to just get him thru the first grade). He spent time with relatives and a nanny while his parents went to do relief work in Spain during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939. They were helping to feed the children rendered hungry by the devastation of the war. When that ended, Piers and his sister joined them in Spain. So Piers left his native country
at the age of four (and has never returned.) The new government of General Franco in Spain, evidently error-prone and suspicious of foreigners doing good works, mistakenly arrested Piers' father in 1940. They refused to admit that they had done so, making him in effect "vanish", but he was able to smuggle out a note. Rather than admit error, they let him out on condition that he leave the country. World War II was then in progress, so instead of returning to England, Piers and family moved to America (Piers' father was originally from America) They left on what Piers believes to be the last ship allowed out. Though he was too young to understand what was going on, in time he learned, and retained an abiding hostility to dictatorships.

His parents' marriage grew strained and finally floundered. Suffering the consequences of separation from his first country and his second country as well as the stress of a family going wrong, he showed an assortment of complications such as nervous tics of head and hands, bed-wetting, and inability to learn. It required three years and five schools to get Piers through first grade. He later gained intellectual ground, but lost physical ground. When Piers entered his ninth school in ninth grade he was at the proper level but not the proper size, being the smallest person, male or female, in his class. However, boarding school, and later college, became a better home for him than what he had had, and he managed to grow almost another foot by the time he got his BA in Writing at Goddard College, Vermont, in 1956. This was just as well, because that same year Piers married a tall girl, Carol Ann Marble (Cam), that he met in college. Piers stated that "I had to grow, literally, to meet the challenge." Their daughter Penny was born eleven years later, and their final daughter Cheryl in 1970.

Piers became an American citizen while serving in the U. S. Army in 1958. After his stint in the Ar
my he settled in Florida (where he infact still lives today)

Piers had the hodgepodge of jobs typical of most writers. Of about fifteen types of work he tried, ranging from aide at a mental hospital to technical writer at an electronics company, only one truly appealed, the least successful, being a writer. But the dream remained. His first effort at writing was a story called Evening that was rejected by Galaxy Magazine.

Finally in 1962, at the age of 28, Piers' wife Cam agreed to go to work for a year, so that he could stay home and try to write fiction full time. Cam's vocation was computer programming. The agreement was that if he did not manage to sell anything, he would give up the dream and focus on supporting his family. As it happened, he sold two stories, earning $160. But such success seemed inadequate to earn a living. So Piers became an English teacher, didn't like that either, and in 1966 retired again to writing. This time he wrote novels instead of stories, and with them he was able to earn a modest living. He submitted his first novel, Chthon, which was also his thesis for his BA degree from college, in 1956, and it finally sold as a novel in 1966 and was published in 1967. As with the rest of his life, progress was slow, but a decade later he got into light fantasy with the first of his ongoing Xanth series of novels, A Spell For Chameleon, and that proved to be the golden ring.

Piers was a contributor to a variety of fanzines during the 1960's and 1970's, before the publishers' demands for his fiction became so great that he had little time left for fanzine work. Very early in his career, he showed a tendency towards series novels that could also be enjoyed as stand-alone works. This approach proved most successful for him with his wildly successful Xanth series, and later with the Apprentice Adept and the Incarnations of Immortality series, all of which have been best-sellers. These series have r
egularly earned Piers a place on various national best-seller lists and have made him one of the top echelon of science fiction/fantasy writers in terms of both reader popularity and sales success.

His first Xanth novel, A Spell for Chameleon, won the British August Derleth Fantasy award for 1977. His novel Ogre, Ogre is believed to have been the first original fantasy paperback ever to make the New York Times bestseller list, and all his fantasies since then have been bestsellers. In one year alone three of his novels placed on The New York Times bestseller list, and in 1982 The Spokane Public Library gave him the Golden Pen Award for being their favorite fantasy author.

Along with the popular Xanth Series, Piers has also penned a number of others including
Apprentice Adept, Aton, Battlecircle, Bio of a Space Tyrant, Cluster, ChroMagic,
Dragon's Gold, Geodyssey, Incarnations of Immortality, Jason Striker, Mode,
Of Man and Manta and Planet of Tarot. He's also written a lot of Stand-alone and coloboration novels, but the best of the bunch for me is the Mode Series of books (Virtual Mode, Fractal Mode, Chaos Mode & DoOOoN Mode) with their imaginative plotline, and endless action, they are a joy to read, over and over again.

But a writer does not live by frivolous fantasy alone, And Piers is now turning back to serious writing with direct comment on sexual abuse in Firefly, and on history in novels like Tatham Mound, which relates to the fate of American Indians, and the Geodyssey series, covering man's past three and a half million years to the present, and Volk, which shows love and death in Civil War Spain and World War II Germany. So Piers is closing the circle, returning in his writing to the realm he left as a child. His literary personality is splitting, with the fantasy paying his way in Caesar's coin, and the historical research addressing the god of this agnostic. There has always been a serious side to
Piers' writing, even in his fantasy, and his readers respond to it. Piers answers 100 to 200 letters a month, so he remains in close touch with them. They tell him that he has taught many of them to read, by showing them that reading could be fun, and that he has saved the lives of some, by addressing concerns such as suicide. Piers dates his letters with his fantasy months, such as "AwGhost," "OctOgre," and "FeBlueberry," but he takes his readers as seriously as he takes his writing. A number of them of his fans become collaborators in a series of joint novels. Piers is a workaholic, and loves his profession. He has, over the years, had an ongoing battle with critics (whom he calls "cri-tics"), who choose to see only the frivolous level. It is doubtful whether his work will ever in his lifetime receive much critical applause, but Piers believes in its validity for the longer haul. So do his readers!

he's now also joined the flow and he has hooked his computer to the Internet taking his first ride on the Super Information Highway. He is promoting Electronic Publishing for known and hopeful writers alike through Xlibris and Pulpless.com and has published two online novels "Volk" and "Realty Check", proving again that he is one of the most vanguard writers of our century also he now has his own site where he keeps his fans upto date with the latest news which can be found at: http://www.hipiers.com

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