Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2.fluke 9/24/84; site fluke.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxb!houxm!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!microsoft!fluke!morgan From: morgan@fluke.UUCP (Bruce Eckel) Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers Subject: Re: Re: Piers Anthony Message-ID: <386@vax2.fluke.UUCP> Date: Wed, 20-Feb-85 17:26:49 EST Article-I.D.: vax2.386 Posted: Wed Feb 20 17:26:49 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 26-Feb-85 04:19:22 EST References: <533@topaz.ARPA> <60@unc.UUCP> <141@gitpyr.UUCP> <917@hound.UUCP> Reply-To: morgan@fluke.UUCP (Bruce Eckel) Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, WA Lines: 74 In article <917@hound.UUCP> rfg@hound.UUCP (R.GRANTGES) writes: >[] >Here' an opinion/speculation that's bound to draw flames, flames,flames: > >I think Piers Anthony's writing has gone to pot. I believe his first >published material was the "Battle Circle" trilogy (Sos, the Rope, ...etc.) >which I thought was superb, fantastic, even swell. then came the O-O-O >trilogy, good, great, super, but ..not quite as swell. From there its been >all down hill with fantasy and mumbo-jumbo vaguenesses. He seems to be >following the well worn track laid down by his forebears such as Newton >and Herbert. I speculate it's easier to write that mystical trash because >nothing has to synch, nothing has to be worked out in detail, logic is >verboten, anything goes. I tried to keep reading anything Pier's wrote >because of the level of his first six, but I couldn't keep up. He could >grind out the progressively more mindless garbage faster than I could >digest it. This transition wasn't overnight. Sure, the first Xanth book >was clever and funny. Not like what had gone before, but passable. Still, >the third? the seventeenth? ... > >"It's the thought, if any, that counts!" Dick Grantges hound!rfg Thank God! Finally someone who is as dissapointed with Piers Anthony as I! I made it through the first Xanth book with enjoyment, and halfway through the second before I saw his creativity was used on the first and he was just turning the crank. But I see so many people reading all of his later books. As I someday hope to publish an SF novel myself, I wonder if I have lost touch with the bulk of the readers. I remember when I began reading SF (in Junior High), anything was great. This lasted quite a while, but in my later years I have become selective. Then very selective. Then positively discriminating. Then prejudiced. Hienlien (sp?), for example, I suspect he went through some sort of spiritual experience and then published "Stranger in a.." and all the books which followed it, with identical structure, all the action happening in the first third of the book and the remainder used as a vehicle for his new, enlightened view of the world which I found Booooring. Some authors go through this change and get a lot better. I am thinking of one in particular but can't remember his name. Sorry. Clifford Simak is consistently entertaining, but I always feel like I know what to expect; as if he is following some very structured writing formula he learned in college. All the others. I have read the "classics" (Asimov, et. al.) but they begin to run low. As I get older and wiser, I suppose, I demmand more from my authors. Perhaps this sort of thing will distance me from my (future?) readers, but perhaps it will also make me a better writer. The only writers I really admire today (i.e. would like to emulate in some way) are Gene Wolfe (such strange imagery; what complex human feelings from a science-fiction character), John Crowley (Little, Big was really fantasy, I suppose, but the imagery and the vision of (subtle, not prestitigitatious) magic was so strong for me), and whoever wrote "Parsival, a knight's tale" and "the grail war." These people have style, subtlety and humor which touch my life so much more than "...he gripped the rope in his teeth, grasped the nubile, buxom maiden to his side while swinging across the yawning gorge and fingering the stud on his blaster ..." Perhaps in the process of changing my world view from the one where the way to deal with a problem is through aggressiveness to one which is so different I can't describe it but that's because I'm not there yet and if I knew what it was it would spoil it anyway, I am changing what information I can utilize in my world. Seems simple now that I've said it. I promise shorter sentences in my books. ( :*) ) Bruce Eckel John Fluke Manufacturing Co. Everett, WA