I can't remember if it was A Spell for Chameleon, the first book in the Xanth series, or Sos the Rope, the first book in the Battle Circle series, that I first picked up from the Wasatch Junior High school library in 1986. I was looking for works like Tolkien's, and the work of Piers Anthony Dillingham Jacob (P. A. D. Jacob, or Piers Anthony) stood out to me.
I have followed other authors besides Tolkien and Anthony since, Isaac Asimov being one of the first favorites, yet many of the books I once owned (especially of Asimov's) were sold after the .com crash to pay rent. The Anthony collection I had at the time is one of the few, like my Tolkien collection, that I kept. Here are short notes about each of P. A. D. Jacob's books that I've read.
These notes began when I first started rereading my Piers Anthony collection in 2014, going back to old favorites (e.g. Battle Circle), then ultimately reading chronologically in writing order as noted above. The first reviews I wrote was published on Amazon, then Google+, where I'd take a screenshot of the book and give a review. This carried over into Twitter and selectively longer reviews on Facebook on my first (now deleted) account. I'm now also on Reddit, Bluesky, and Threads. Thus begins this page. I want to keep my writing on my own website, instead of it ending up elsewhere. These notes do not duplicate the old reviews (now mostly deleted), will likely be elaborated on as I go, and are intended to replace previous reviews. I try to keep spoiling content out of my notes for potential future readers, but no guarantees.
Book order is roughly chronological by the edition that I own, noting the date of completion before publication of the first edition. This is a tricky thing. Some novels are finished long before they are published. Once published, sometimes there are editorial changes made along the way, an author's note updated, or even rewrites to portions of the novel, like happened with Mercyle. The dates are gleaned from author's notes, autobiographies, and newsletters. Sometimes this is a bit of a guessing game, so one criteria is the author note contents and a kind of chronological reading order of the books in general. The order I give here may be readjusted as I learn more, but intends to follow the final draft and the edition. (The author's note is typically written at the end of the first draft.)
Until But What of Earth?, Anthony wrote three drafts. The first
drafts were often written in tandem with other books. The second and third drafts would sometimes
be grouped together as well. Revisions might occur later, such as for an unsold novel, or for a
new printing from another press. These revisions might have changes, such as has been noted about
allowing the used of said
in the text, instead of straining at finding alternatives.
Sometimes rewrites occur, such as with Ghost or
Mercyle and still the text doesn't sell, meaning later revisions.
Which is to be marked as the completion date? A second draft could be considered a rewrite in some
cases, adding text and perhaps switching things around. After computerization, when only two
drafts was done, it could still have significant changes. So what I what to see is when Anthony
considers it ready for submission as the completion date, plus editions which may have revisions,
or like But What of Earth? significant author's notes, (plus the
original of But What of Earth? had never been published to this
point, only the unauthorized collaboration).
The first autobiography, Bio of an Ogre (BiOgre) orders his books by first (presumably American) publication date. Later, Anthony began identifying dates for first draft completion, submission drafts, galley reviews, author's note dates, as well as first publication date (especially in Britain), without consistency. Republication has tended to go by his existing final draft copy, (if he still has/had it. I understand some of the Xlibris prints were scans from his author's copies, some British editions). I thus note the edition of the book I own and have read, with a photo I took of it using my iPhone, and edited on a Macbook Pro where the iPhone's default image format is easily edited.
Anthony's first book was Unstilled World, written as a Bachelor's thesis in 1956, and was never published. Anthony's next book was Chthon (pronounced thone), followed by the historical novel Pretender (later rewritten as science fiction), and then Hasan. The Ring was apparently written along with Hasan, likely finished after.
Sold in 1967 and published December 1968, I read the Ballantine hardcover, a book club edition. It is the oldest Anthony edition in my collection. There is no author's note, though there is an author's bio-blurb on the back cover with a photo of a very young Piers. The front cover is eerie, but heavily influenced my imaging of the characters and landscape. It looks like an overexposed photo, but well done for the time. Though started before Sos the Rope, it was finished after.
Omnivore is surreal with its intelligent, fast moving fungi-based creatures, and engrossing with its character development and interaction. Though dated in the mid-21st century, it is excellent science fiction for the time it was written. The idea of intelligent fungi is perhaps not very realistic, but it captures the imagination reading the book. The real strength and focus of the book is the scientist Aquilon (the omnivore), and her relationship with Veg (the vegetarian), the brawn of the group, Cal (the carnivore), the brains of the group, and the mantas, the intelligent fungi they encounter. The sequel is Orn.
Finished under its working title Paleo on 27 June 1969. I read the 1970 Nelson Doubleday hardcover, a book club edition, with cover illustration by Frank Franzetta. It was finished after writing E. S. P. Worm (according to BiOgre). It is also the novel that started the fight with Ballantine that led to Anthony's being blacklisted, until Lester del Rey asked for what became Xanth for the new Del Rey imprint.
This is the sequel to Omnivore. It has the same threesome of human characters, and the fungi aerial creatures called mantas they befriended. They are sent (or forced) on a mission to Earth 70 million years in the past, or perhaps an alternate reality Earth. A postscript by Calvin Potter explores the science in the book. Modern reprints have an afterward by Anthony looking at the viability of the idea from today's science. Dinosaurs become extinct 66 million years ago according to the fossil record. Though Anthony's idea isn't completely unfeasible, it's clear that a catastrophic world event is responsible, likely a meteor perhaps coupled with volcanic activity or aftermath. However, with the alternate Earth reality they go to, a different interpretation of events can easily be assumed and makes the idea remain interesting. The sequel and conclusion of the series is 0X.
I read the Victor Gollancz Limited hardcover, published in 1971. This book was finished in October 1970. A couple of the stories are published in the Athonology short story collection. The stories were collected after 3.97 Erect (Pornucopia) was finished. (Also see BiOgre for dates and explanation.)
This is a collection of eight short stories about becoming the first Earth intergallactic dentist. These stories were primarily published by Galaxy in If magazine, but the first was published in Analog. The second and third story were not published until this volume. Apparently, there's also a Prostho Minus series that has three stories, not available in an anthology, alas. Prostho Plus reminds me of the humor from Asimov's Azazel, and is Anthony at his best. I love these stories.
First published in 1974. I read the 1975 Millington Ltd hardcover, with afterward by Donald L. Cyr. According to Steppe this was sold from a summary in 1972. It appears to have been written after the first novel expansion of Ghost.
This is one of Anthony's more obscure works, it seems, but the idea of a flood with a scientific, non-Biblical explanation, set in the modern day US (for the time it was written), was a gripping, fun read with interesting characters. The story takes place in an RV motor home, which picks up Zena when the rain starts. The interest is in the characters that Zena and Gus meet and save, at least initially, as the flood becomes more apparent.
Having read this many years after its publication, I was mildy reminded of the Xanth novel Yon Ill Wind. It also contains a character with diabetes which becomes a bigger concern in a world where insulin is not readily available, and lends to some of the realism of the story.
I read the Sphere Books Ltd first paperback edition from 1975, originally published in 1974,
but finished in 1972 as A Piece of Cake (an elaboration on a short story, The Alien Rulers
, from Analog, in 1968). This was written after Hard Sell was collected.
This is a space invaders plot with a twist, as suggested by the title. Earth conquers the Kazos, but works out an uneasy peace in a kind of mutual domination of each other. In their manipulative intrigue they have worked out a resolution against annihilation and for a wicked, interspecies cooperation, reducing the human population. Then the plot twist identifies another party that is involved, seemingly throwing off the delicate, disliked balance.
I read the 1976 Nelson Doubleday, Inc. book club edition hardcover. It's unclear if this was written after Rings of Ice, Triple Detente, or perhaps even Ninja's Revenge.
This is the conclusion to the Manta trilogy, and the sequel to Orn,
where two men and a woman have adventures in parallel universes, befriended by the aerial Manta
fungi-based creatures. After the debacle of Paleo, and the encounter with the Orn, the trio is
captured by the Earth invaders of their parallel universe. When being brought back to their Earth,
a portal is opened not to their universe, but yet another parallel Earth reality. Not only must
they escape and get back to their own reality, and preserve the mantas, but they encounter another
form of life that is unexpected. 0X (i.e. Zero-Ex) is about artificial intelligence based on
Gardner's The Game of Life
. There is a brief author's note about it, the first of Anthony's books that has one, with a reference to Macroscope.
I read the elegant Borgo Press trade paperback edition, printed in October 1977, with an Afterword by Richard Matthews, and cover design by Judy Cloyd. The illustrations, by George Barr, are well adapted to the story, aiding in visualization. Hasan is Anthony's fourth written novel, and the second stand alone (non-collaborative) work after Chthon. (BiOgre claimed it as the fourth written novel, but I read somewhere, perhaps another author's note, or one of the HiPiers newsletters, that it was actually the fifth. Was the recount going by sale or final draft? Was Unstilled World being included?) I understood this was originally released in hardcover.
Hasan masquerades as historical fiction, bringing to life the Arabian Nights tale of Hasan and the bird maiden. I did not expect to enjoy this tale as much as I did.
I read the Avon, January 1978 paperback, with an unattributted cover art that in my mind is the best of all the editions of these books. Sos the Rope and Var the Stick were first printed in the UK, I believe in hardcover. This US edition prints the entire trilogy.
Sos the Rope won the Pyramid Fantasy and Science Fiction Award in 1967. It was first
published in October 1968, I believe in the UK. Of all Anthony's books, it is one of my favorites,
based on the chapter Battle
of Anthony's Bachelor's thesis, Unstilled World, and one
of the earliest that I've read of his works. Sos the Rope was written during the writing of
Omnivore. Apparently, the writing of Omnivore was going slow, being more intellectual, and
Sos the Rope was used to keep the writing momentum going. Anthony later claimed that this
approach became part of his avoiding writer's block.
Sos the Rope is a classic dystopian, post-nuclear apocalyptic story of the future, focused around the idea of the battle circle as the arbiter of justice and dispute resolution in a world where there is no government. This story follows Sos as he gets wrapped up in the vision of a mentor, who defeats him, to unify the remnant tribes of humanity. It reminds me of the movie Bloodsport but as if it were in the world of Stephen King's The Gunslinger. It's a loose analogy.
Copyright 1972, and marked in BiOgre as first published in 1973, this story is about Var after Sos left, his background and experience in the dystopian world of the battle circle. He is a lonely brute character that the author makes you love. Var has no knowledge of the discoveries of Sos, only following what Sol and Sos had directed as he takes over for him.
The conclusion to the series. Only initially independently published in Britain, copyright in the book Battle Circle as 1975.
Neq is the youngster who brings the world back to civilization, following the visions and works of Sol, Sos, and Var. His background is different, removed from their world, but becoming allied with it. Neq is faced with the same dilemma as Sos at the end.
I read the Borgo Press trade paperback edition, printed in 1979 by Griffin Printing & Lithograph Co., with cover and illustrations by Larry Ortiz (cover package design by Judy Cloyd). The publication is elegant, the illustrations well adapted, aiding the story in visualization. I understand this was originally published in hardcover.
This book was Anthony's first book length collaboration, with Frances Hall, and the second book originally completed (before it was rewritten as science fiction), not including Unstilled World. It was sold in 1967. Pretender is historical fiction reframed as science fiction by Anthony to make it more saleable. This adds an engrossing story line, and a beginning to the story, about an alien that crash lands on Earth and must take a human host for survival. The host is an ancient Babylonian, and the book's portrayal of life in Babylon is what makes this story so interesting.
I read the Nelson Doubleday hardcover book club edition with jacket painting by Tony Fiyalko. Originally, I read the 1977 Del Rey paperback of A Spell for Chameleon in the 1980s.
A Spell for Chameleon won the August Derleth Fantasy Award in 1977 for best novel. It was written from June-November 1976, likely after revising Ghost. After some of the conflicts with Ballentine, discussed in BiOgre and How Precious Was that While, Anthony was burned out working with Ballentine until Lester del Rey reengaged the relationship. Anthony's science fiction was being run with other publishers by that point, and Anthony didn't feel able to give Del Rey any science fiction, so Lester suggested Anthony try fantasy. The result was Anthony saying yes, but not taking fantasy seriously, so he created a funny fantasy framework that turned out to be successful: a fantasy realm mirroring where puns for Anthony was to make fun of magic in sometimes obvious and sometimes subtle ways (e.g. easter eggs for readers to find and enjoy). In later books, the puns would become more pronounced as readers sent in suggestions.
Bink is the underdog of his community. He has no observal magic talent in a world where everyone does. His girl friend is hesitant with this disability too. How he is to resolve this? His resulting expulsion from his community, and ultimately Xanth, leads Bink to the Good Magician Humphrey, the magician of information. This is a great introduction to Xanth, and one of the pillars of the series. Is it the best? Not necessarily, but it is the ultimate book of the series for me: perhaps that's because I read it first. More likely is that this is an underdog story and there's a certain poignancy in Anthony's approach to telling it.
I'm aware of a revised A Spell for Chameleon that comes from a reader suggesting a less advanced language. The language level is higher with the original that Anthony sent to Del Rey. Lester del Rey had a preference for a more adult series, and asked for a revision. However, Anthony has kept the series readabile by youth while still following an old fashioned approach to adult allusions and inenudo in the series following. The revision back to a simplified language is not from Anthony's original manuscript. I for one prefer Anthony's original final product, and am not keen on the dumbed-down language of the simplified version, though approved and updated by Anthony in December 1992 and January 1993 (approximately), but I don't think the overall story is impacted, and the following Xanth novels are not as high language as the original A Spell for Chameleon.
The Source of Magic was published in (early?) 1979.
What is the source of Xanth's magic? Why does Florida have a magic proximity that is separate and independent from Florida? Bink wants to know. I liked the goblins in this story, but the answer I found kind of tedious, and the reoccuring theme in later Xanths ranges from funny to here-we-go-again, (though Xanth novels always end with satisfaction). Millie and her background and tragedy was a highlight of the book.
Castle Roogna was published in (late?) 1979.
King Dor is a funny character, or more to the point, his magic talent is hilarious and Anthony plays it for all it's worth. He is Bink's son, slated to be king, but doesn't behave like it. Perhaps par for the course (though there are exceptions in history). Castle Roogna explores the history of the castle, introduces zombies and the Zombie Master, and the battle behind that history, and explores Millie's future after the tragedy explored in the previous book. It also introduces Grundy, an endearing side kick of the earlier series. This is an early favorite of this series for me. The next Xanth novel is Centaur Aisle.
I read the Del Rey (Ballantine) April 1980, first edition hardcover, with an iconic cover illustration by Rowena Morrill, and map by Chris Barbieri.
After Anthony's switch to fantasy with Xanth, Lester del Rey asked for a second series. This was a mix of science fiction and fantasy, using a story similar to what Terry Brooks did later with Magic Kingdom, but with a world overlay similar to Xanth, and with a science fiction theme on another planet. This is quintessiantial Anthony with a layered love story of a woman, a horse, a planet in peril, and the game (a plot device Anthony would come to use in other books and series, e.g. Kilobyte, Eroma).
The game is not computer virtual reality, but part of the building infrastructure of the planet, which also includes computers. It caught me by surprise at the time I first read it, with the serf class humanity always being naked. Why must they be naked? Perhaps there is a similarity in Greek and Roman games and gladiator arenas that would make sense at least in context of the game. However, they are naked in day-to-day life outside the game. Wearing clothes in a culture that wears none would seem shocking, or at least alluring, and the lack of clothing has its own problems though perhaps in an advanced, Trantor-like world it may be unnecessary within the domes. Yet Anthony is an entertainer, and nudity is entertaining to all but the religiously restrained, and as a plot device sells. Perhaps that's all that about the idea that is needed to be understood, but at least some attempt to explain the origin of this interesting cultural norm would have been useful to avoid getting hung up on it. Instead it's left out there, which is a bit confusing to the start of the story.
The other thing curiously unexplained is the use of the Quaker plain speech instead of Danelaw English. Though its use is well blended in the story as an affectation, outside religious circles tied to the King James Bible (and its competitors and those that preceded it) its use as modern speech mostly disappeared by the 1970s (though I remember its hodge-podge eclectic use from some when I lived in Lancashire).
Ultimately, the nudity and Quaker plain speech are stylistic elements in the story for entertainment. Letting them be such, potentially explainable as speculation in the history of Proton and Phaze, will allow the story to be read without getting hung up on it. You either like the style or not. Ultimately, it seemed fun for me.
See Double Exposure, which is easier to find at a reasonable price, for the rest of the trilogy, and the sequel to Split Infinity.
I read the Dell Rey 1981 book club edition hardcover, with jacket painting by Tony Fiyalko. This is Xanth #4. The sequel is Ogre, Ogre.
Dor and Irene reach the height of flirtatiousness in this hilarious fantasy that plays up Dor's magic talent in funny ways. King Trent and Queen Iris have put Dor in charge of the kingdom while they leave on a diplomatic mission to Mundania. However, when they do not return to Xanth, it becomes clear that something is amiss. With the help of his centaur tutors, and friends he's made along the way, Dor must find the king and queen or he may be stuck with the job. This is the first time since A Spell for Chameleon that an adventure takes the questing companions to the dreaded and dreary Mundania. This story really made me laugh, but it is Xanth after all.
I read the Dell Rey 1982 book club edition hardcover with jacket painting by Tony Fiyalko. This is Xanth #5. The sequel is Night Mare.
Tandy is a half-nymph, tormented by a demon at night to the point of terror. So she plans to escape to ask for help from the Good Magician Humphrey. This is a Xanth novel in search of a quest, provided by Humphrey as an answer to Tandy's question: travel with an ogre who never asked a question. The quest is the answer. There's something about Anthony's Xanth, and certain leaps forward with certain novels that advance the series. This is one of them, and is one of my all time favorites. The book is so named because a fan mistakenly accused Anthony of being an ogre at conventions he never attended. As the rumor persisted, Anthony decided to own it and play it up, and should be expected from Xanth.
I read the Nelson Doubleday, Inc. book club edition hardcover, with cover art by Victoria
Poyser, and map by Chris Barbieri. The map, I suspect, is the same as that in Juxtaposition. This
is a trilogy collection of Apprentice Adept: Split Infinity,
Blue Adept, and Juxtaposition.
The About the Author
page in the back has the same text that is in my edition of
Split Infinity.
For the Split Infinity description, see above.
Copyright 1981. Stile faces deportation in the science fiction realm of Proton. His only hope is to take risks in the hope of becoming a citizen, also risking his life and status as the Blue Adept in the fantasy realm of Phaze. Some things I didn't like about reading the Double Exposure edition of this book was the lack of the sexy cover of the Del Rey edition that had first got me interested in this series and the map that really is for the final book perhaps giving away too much.
Copyright 1982. This is the conclusion to the Stile focused Apprentice Adept trilogy, exploring the relationship of Phaze and Proton, which Stile must save, risking the powers and status of both citizens and adepts as he faces off against the oracle and reveals the relationship between Proton and Phaze, the Oracle and the Computer. This wraps up the trilogy nicely. The sequel is Out of Phaze.
I read the Dell Rey 1982 book club edition hardcover with jacket painting by Tony Fiyalko. The novel was completed 28 October 1981. This is Xanth #6, the conclusion to the second trilogy. The sequel is Dragon on a Pedestal.
The night mare is Anthony's daughter's horse, (which is also Stile's horse in the Apprentice Adept series). Like its sequel, the author shows his versatility by making the main character the horse escaped (or perhaps freed) from the gourd dream world. Her first problem is she's acquired a soul, affecting her capability as a night mare carrying bad dreams to sleeping Xanthians. The other problem is that an invasion of Mundanians is about to occur, a repeating event that brings fresh non-magic blood to Xanth. She must warn the king of what is to come.
I read the Dell Rey 1983 book club edition hardcover with jacket painting by Bob Stuhmer. This is the first Xanth novel with an author's note, at least from their original publication, though it only gives credit for puns and asks to have them not send more. It was finished in October 1982, and written after Refugee. It is Xanth #7. The sequel is Crewel Lye.
Princess Ivy is King Dor's and Queen Irene's young daughter. Like it's predecessor novel, the author shows his versatility by making the main character unusual: a three year old little girl. The gap dragon has escaped the gap and a related wave of amnesia is affecting everyone sporadically. To make things worse, Ivy gets lost in Xanth, and Dor must find her before she is hurt or killed, but little do they know that Ivy is about to make Xanth history, solve the problems of the dragon and the gap amnesia run amock, and save it from an old menace no one is aware of.
I read the November 2013 Science Fiction Book Club (SFBC) Omnibus Edition, with jacket art by John Jude Palencar. This is by arrangement of Random House and Del Rey, and the two first books of the trilogy, On a Pale Horse and Bearing an Hour Glass, appear to be unedited (other than perhaps the needful copy editing for typography) from the originals.
Finished 17 May 1982 (according to the author's note, and the Xlibris
Refugee author's note). Author's notes started about 1981 for
Anthony, as observed in this novel. I suspect that the writing of the author notes in On a Pale
Horse, and the author's recognition of him reaching age 50 about the same time as reaching the
authoring of fifty books (as noted in his About the Author
blurb, see
Night Mare), inspired the writing of BiOgre (as Anthony's second
autobiography called it), and the author's notes followed thereafter with most of his novels.
Author's notes really never existed, as far as I can tell, before
Viscous Circle, though there are some simple ones, like the
explanation of the game of life in 0X or the first Xanth acknowledgement
of reader puns, (stop sending them, he asks. Gee, that worked well) in
Dragon on a Pedestal.
This novel is a favorite. Maybe that's because, like the Battle Circle trilogy, this was an early novel of Anthony's that I had read, and like the author has observed with Xanth, the first read seems to become the favorite. (Oddly, I didn't like Xanth as much until I reread A Spell for Chameleon as an adult.) It's dealing with the macabre, the far off fear of the pain of death, and the odd unsurity of what happens after, if anything, is dealt with so well in this story. Many allusions to the Christianity of our culture are found here, some serious, some facetious, but also dealing with other legends and mythologies that our species uses to grapple with our finite existence. (Other than the Latter-day Saint movement, there don't seem to be many that grapple with what came before our existence.) Clearly, we don't want to stop being ourselves, and watching others stop, in gruesome and peaceful (if there is such a thing) ways, is appalling. This isn't funny fantasy, but it is not entirely serious either. Perhaps that's the way death should be considered.
The manuscript was finished 24 May 1983, a week before its deadline. (See the Xlibris editions of Mercenary and Bearing an Hourglass author's notes.) The sequel is With a Tangled Skein.
Bearing an Hourglass shows Anthony's versatility as an author in telling a story in unique ways without distracting the reader from being immersed in the story, the reservation of their scepticism of the fiction of the tale. This story tells about a being that lives backward, living from end to beginning, and the beginning is passing on the hourglass to their successor while existing with its use until the beginning point, which is really the end as this incarnation. A fascinating story and a fascinating spin on the previous tale around the theme of death, but through the lense of time. A fitting sequel to On a Pale Horse.
I read the Del Rey 1984 hardcover, with jacket illustration by Ron Walotsky. The manuscript was finished 23 October 1983. (See the Politician (Xlibris edition) author's note.) This is the first Xanth to have a more extensive author's note, similar to what had started with Viscous Circle and the Incarnations of Immortaility series. Crewel Lye is Xanth #8. It's sequel is Golem in the Gears.
This is the book where things start to fall apart between Anthony and Lester del Rey. Already disgruntled by the author's notes from the first two Incarnations novels, according to the author's note, the first chapter was deleted because of too many puns. Clearly the note is written after, or at least updated. The missing first chapter is found in the collaboration Visual Guide to Xanth, as well as a couple other pieces that was cut. I'm happy to have first read this novel with the missing pieces first. I noticed that the second chapter had been slightly edited to not be too jarring starting there, but it's not noticed until reading the missing first chapter.
This is another Ivy story, and is about what you'd expect. It seems like a sequel to Castle Roogna too. This is where Jordan the ghost relates his story to Ivy, while she watches parts of it on the tapestry, when he was alive 400 years in Xanth's past.
I read the March 1985 Tor hardcover, with cover art by Joe Bergeron.
Along with BiOgre, Anthonology documents the beginning of the author's career,
which began with the short story Evening
in 1954, (not published in this volume). These are
Anthony's stories as published between 1963-1972, compiled for this collection in 1984. The story
The Toaster
is one of Anthony's first stories, offered as one that was early rejected, thus
never sold, but which Anthony suspects is at least no worse than Possible to Rue
(his
19th story and the first sold). The Toaster
was written after the sale of
Possible to Rue
, so it was the 20th story? (Technically, Demisee
was the
first sale, found in BiOgre, but it never saw print and was never paid for.)
Other stories of note in this volume are the orignal novelette version of Ghost
,
The Value of a Man
(chapter two of Prostho Plus),
University
(chapter five of Prostho Plus), Hard Sell
,
(the first chapter in the book of the same name), and Hurdle
(chapter three in the book
Hard Sell). These stories give a clear sense of the tone the author
will use throughout his career.
I read the Tor paperback, printed September 1985, though first published in 1973. The first chapter of Hasan is found in the back. It appears to have been written after Prostho Plus.
John Smith. What a character name. This is not a reference to the Doctor. (Doctor Who?) He's a teen boy in the 1960s. At least so he thought, but things don't add up, and his cloistered, disciplined life doesn't seem right. This is a fun science fiction story, billed for teens, but as with other Anthony children's stories, the writing is adult even if the content is more PG than is his norm. Looking back, it reminds me of a science fiction form of M. Night Shayamalan's The Village.
Steppe was finished in 1972, at least as a science fiction novel, perhaps after Kiai!. (It appears to have originally been written as a historical novel.) It was first published in 1976, revised as a science fiction novel. I read the September 1985 Tor hardcover, with the sexy dust jacket painting by Boris Vallejo.
This approach, which started with his first collaboration novel Pretender, doesn't always pay off. Anthony has done it to get the books into print, since he's recognized as a science fiction and fantasy genre writer, not a historical writer. What I've noticed is that the science fiction facade often is nothing more than that: an encasement that doesn't always follow through on the science fiction ideas presented. Steppe had times where the science fiction element got in the way, and other times it felt unfulfilled (especially with such an engrossing beginning), but the story comes to terms with itself and the threads aren't abandoned. The story itself was fun and enjoyable, and kind of gladiator arena, and naturally a side love story, and the realistic historical Uigur imagery.
I read the Del Rey 1985 hardcover, with cover painting by Michael Whelan. The manuscript was finished 11 April 1984. This is Anthony's fiftieth written novel, but the fifty-first actually published. This was written together with Politician, the first drafts completed in late 1983, early 1984, and then the second and third drafts in the late winter, early spring, of 1984. (The second draft of With a Tangled Skein was started in March 1984.) It appears to have been finished (final draft) a few weeks before Politician. BiOgre mentions proofreading galleys in June 1985. With a Tangled Skein is the conclusion to the Incarnations of Immortality trilogy. It's sequel is Weilding a Red Sword.
This begins as a love story of a young couple, Niobe and Cedric, as well as Niobe's love of nature, and becomes one of unrequited love, turning into the motivation for Niobe taking over as one of the fates that weaves the fabric of history for human individuals. As the obvious antagonist of the story, Niobe's intrigue with the incarnation of Satan, becomes its own political hassle (what else do you expect with the Incarnation of Evil pursuing her?), as she discovers the line of her own fate and what happened to her lost love.
The author's note presents its own skein, a kind of mini version of what later became Bio of an Ogre.
I read the Avon Books, February 1986 paperback. This is a collaboration with three other genre authors: Barry Malzberg, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh. The afterward is dated 24 January 1985. It's not clear what Anthony worked on in the Spring and Summer of 1985. Uncollected Stars was finished after the final drafts of Politician and With a Tangled Skin, so it is likely that's what he was working on, but what else? Collaborations like this can be a back-and-forth process.
Uncollected Stars is a collection of previously unanthologized classic science fiction tales. Each editor gives a small introduction to each story. If you love science fiction stories, this will expose you to stories likely otherwise unread, unless caught from its original publication in the respective magazine, but worthy of further publication. A typical theme for Anthony: the worthy otherwise passed over or ignored. A later author's note indicated that he hadn't been able to be involved in the initial selection process, but was given a selection to consider. He questioned this being one of the books he numbered among his own. However, I think it is. Most of the stories I enjoyed.
I read the May 1986 hardcover published by Tom Doherty Associates, cover art by Linda Garland. Is this the one Anthony said he wrote as a trade off with Stephen King for their daughters, the one that resulted in The Eyes of the Dragon? Does anyone have the reference where Anthony claimed this? There's also a hint in BiOgre of attempting to market horror along with a World War II novel, (which we later learn was called Volk, with only two chapters written in hospital while being diagnosed with cat scratch disease. He later finished the novel and published it electronically then through Xlibris). Was this only a summary or was this one of the unsold novels?
This is Anthony's foray into thrillers, though he calls them horror. Shade of the Tree succeeds in its characterization, plot, and environmental focus that are typical of Anthony's work. A man and his family, sans wife, move to a Florida home that is haunted, or is it? This is up there in my Anthony favorites.
I read the TOR September 1986 hardcover, with cover art by Ron Walotsky. Written originally as a novelette (see Anthonology), it was expanded into a novel in 1972, after Steppe, then expanded further in February 1976 by editorial request. The editorial request appears to have been written after 0X. The novelette in Anthonology comes from the perspective of the steady state theory, which was antiquated by the big bang theory. Ghost builds on the novelette, is consistent with big bang cosmology, and was written in such a way as to not compensate for the spoilers in the novellete's title (or if the novellete was read first). Anthony is a craftsman.
Anthony notes in BiOgre that he switched to a Dec Rainbow computer, originally with select86, then the PTP word processor (this of course changed with time). Before this, once he moved to Citrus county Florida (but before his move to the tree farm), he wrote his novels by hand on a clip board during the winter, then would type on an Olympia type writer in a building out in a horse pasture without heating or cooling. Presumably, in entering it into a computer for the Tor edition, according to the author's note, he probably made minor revisions as any submission draft might have.
Captain Shetland takes the time ship Meg II to the edge of space and time, looking for a new energy source for an energy exhausted Earth. Earth had recently recovered from its poluted history not wanting to repeat the mistake. Along the way they encounter ghosts.
I read the Dell Rey 1986 book club edition hardcover, with jacket painting by Ron Walotsky.
The Lexicon of Xanth
is offered as an appendix, compiled by M. J. Langley and
Ass-osciates Michael and Keith
. (A supplement to the lexicon is offered in
Man from Mundania, and of course a different lexicon is offered
in the Visual Guide to Xanth.) The sequel to Golem in the Gears
is Vale of the Vole. It is the conclusion to the Xanth trilogies of
trilogies, Xanth #9.
The submission manuscript was finished after the But What of Earth? restoration. Golem in the Gears is the first book written on the computer mentioned at the end of BiOgre, with the PTP text processor, started in July and finished before 15 September. It is the last of the Dell Rey Xanth novels, written shorter so as to avoid Lester's editorial knife.
Golem in the Gears is about Grundy, who was introduced in the first Xanth trilogy,
his romance with Rapunzel (yes that's pun
), and the sea hag that steals identity. She has
Rapunzel locked up in a tower as a prisoner and she may be the only one that can truly love him.
Grundy is an irascible character, but that's why we love him in the stories, (OK, so at least the
readers love him). Riding his monster from under the bed, Grundy has a rather obvious quest,
except he's helping Ivy find her dragon with her grandfather Bink. Naturally, the Good Magician
Humphrey charges him for advice, which kills two birds with one
stone, so to speak.
I read the Del Rey 1986 hardcover with cover painting by Michael Whelan. It was started on 2 January 1985, after finishing Golem in the Gears. It was finished some time after March, but that's not clear from the notes. See the Xlibris edition author's note in Executive.
The Incarnations series seems to work in pairs, except for Being a Green Mother and Under a Velvet Cloak, which are more conclusion novels than books that run in seeming parallel themes. This is the fourth Incarnations of Immortaility novel. It's sequel is Being a Green Mother.
There's a kind of Siddhartha-as-Buddha story in Wielding a Red Sword, but instead of enlightenment, a prince wants to ameliorate violence in the world by becoming the incarnation of war, but it becomes a fight against the incarnation of Satan. He meets a woman who makes him feel comfortable with his stutter, and this is a kind of bridge story line between With a Tangled Skein and Being a Green Mother. The series has settled down here, and the past figures are coming back to revisit for the readers of the trilogy.
I read the Ace/Putnam hardcover, cover art by Darrell Sweet. The maps are signed by Storrings. The submission draft was completed end of August 1985.
Out of Phaze begins a new, the second, and last, Apprentice Adept trilogy that can stand alone from the first, from a new publisher, though starting here would certainly present spoilers to the first trilogy if you went back and read it after. Out of Phaze follows Stile's child, Mach, who doesn't know about Phaze, at least at first. Naturally, he has his own magic and counterpart in Proton, throwing things into an alernate perspective from the first trilogy: it is the magic side discovering the science side. It's sequel is Robot Adept.
Finished June 1975, I read the TOR July 1989 paperback edition with cover art by Don Maitz. According to the 1999 Executive author's note, the restoration began in June 1984 and was certainly finished in July with its 25,000 words of notes. The galleys appear to have been reviewed in September of 1984, and the conclusion notes suggest that edits could be into 1985, before Golem in the Gears was begun in July. The author's note from Wielding a Red Sword and Executive indicate that it was the first work done on the new DEC Rainbow, with their Select86 text processor. But What of Earth? is the only work done with Select86, where he switched after to PTP.
So 1989 seems really late for publication. Anthony notes in BiOgre about putting white hair on Tom Doherty's head regarding the notes on editorial mismanagement. It had been contracted, but not published. Anthony refused to give them more books until they fulfilled the contract, if I read the description in How Precious Was That While correctly.
For Anthony, this rates as his least favorite novel, probably from the circumstance of its writing and publication. There are two naratives here.
The first is the short novel that would become the prequel of the Cluster series. From
notes in But What of Earth?, Tarot, and the Open Road
Integrated Media, Inc. edition of Cluster, it's not entirely clear
if ideas for Cluster came before But What of Earth?. The Introduction
to
Tarot is the only place that it might imply the ideas for
Cluster came first, and But What of Earth? became a prequel
to it. Certainly, I can see after the fact why it would be thought of that way, but it appears
that the ideas didn't develop that way. But What of Earth? can be ignored by Cluster series
fans without taking away from it, but I find the ideas in But What of Earth? develop
nicely going into Cluster. So my best sense of the chronology of
writing is that But What of Earth? was first, then Tarot was
started second, but instead Cluster got the contract.
Cluster is at first loosely tied to But What of Earth, but
is not strictly a sequel. By Chaining the Lady,
Tarot had clearly become part of the Cluster framework, and
thus so was But What of Earth?. When reading as a series, I prefer to start here, and
then move on to Tarot, followed by
Cluster.
The second is the story of the butchering of the novel. In this, and other places, Anthony brings the case that editors should not change the work of an author without agreement. Editors have been known to change and improve an author's work (Hemingway is an example) as well have authors sign their copyright in various degrees over to the publisher. Strictly, from a copyright point of view, Anthony is absolutely correct: the copyright is to start with. From Anthony's writings it is clear that publishers tend to do what they want regardless of contract. Anthony's problem really is he expects publishers, that is corporations, to honor their agreements. It's made him a bit of a pariah. I can't help but agree with him. A contract is only as good as the word of those who sign it.
I have fond memories of reading But What of Earth?. The character of Brother Paul in this book shines, and I enjoyed the exploration of the idea that population increase and decrease, especially in aggressive change, affect the level of civilization. I also love that unlike much science fiction, space travel constraints are recognized, and a different, and interesting way forward is explored in matter transmission. Other than a bit of an abrupt, raw start to the novel, I found it enjoyable and worth a reread.
I read the Ace November 1987 trade paperback with excellent cover art by Kinuko Craft. The
draft was finished in September 1977, after the writing of
A Spell for Chameleon, (see the Tarot Introduction
).
Tarot was originally published in three volumes: God of Tarot, Vision of
Tarot, and Faith of Tarot, by two different publishers. The Ace edition is noted as a
revision to the original text, finished (the revision that is) in March 1987. The changes are
mostly in titles, and introductory texts to the chapters (instead of copyright burdened
quotations) and book. I sent a correction, which Anthony accepted, to the reference of a pope that
may have been female. In BiOgre, Anthony considered it the major novel of his career, but
this was later replaced by Tatham Mound, as noted in
How Precious Was that While and in the Introduction
of the Ace
edition of Tarot.
The development of Paul in this story has no where near the same feel as But What of Earth? where he is introduced. The book is long, seems to drag on in parts while Paul has his visions, and parts of it are offensive and crude if you don't keep your eye on the purpose of the story. It's a good story. Tarot should be read while reading the first two books of the Cluster series (and after But What of Earth?, which should, but doesn't have to, be read first before all of them). Perhaps part of the problem is I wanted more of the Brother Paul of But What of Earth?. I got that Paul, but in a circumstance perhaps that was not as much to my fancy.
Tarot has a long history of writing, punctuated between the first two Cluster novels, so it is a sequel to But What of Earth?, or maybe it's more accurate to say that But What of Earth? is a prequel to both Tarot and Cluster that was written in tandem. Cluster can stand on its own.
Tarot is a hard hitting reflection on religious behavior and motivations, among other things. Brother Paul is sent to one of the colonies of matter transmission to investigate religious imagery that seem to be ghosts and more, realistic phantasms that are causing havoc in the colony. Are these real religious manifestations, or something else?
I read the Avon 1987 book club edition hardcover, with jacket art by Ron Walotsky. The Avon/Marrow Xanth novels, at least the hardcovers that I have, are without a map. It's best to use the Visual Guide to Xanth for this (other than that the elemental regions are portrayed in the incorrect order in the map).
Anthony writes the perspective of a vole, diggles, wiggles, and the swarm at the end. You can hear the echos from Dragon on a Pedestal, as a swarm has occured before. This is Xanth #10, continuing beyond the Xanth trilogy of trilogies under a new publisher. It brings all the normal characters we are used to from Xanth, reintroducing them for new readers, but the Good Magician, who carries the Xanth stories along like a kind of Deus ex Machina, is gone, vanished without a trace, like a metaphor for the breach of relationship with Lester del Rey. The sequel is Heaven Cent.
I read the Del Rey December 1987 first edition hard cover, with cover painting by Michael Whelan. The cover, and inside of the dust jacket, states it is the series conclusion, and perhaps for Del Rey, that was true (makes me wonder if it was purposeful), but the sequel, For Love of Evil had already been sold to Avon/Morrow. This is Incarnations of Immortality #5. It was started in December of 1985, after finishing Statesman and finished in either February or March 1986 after Judy-Lynn del Rey died. The author's note isn't quite clear with the months, but is with the RAM upgrade to the second Dec Rainbow that Anthony used for writing at the time (the first apparently moved into the new house) and the use of the Edward editor, from which this book was written. However, the reference to the Elfquest story, written immediately after, is published in the story collection Alien Plot, and it indicates early 1986.
Being a Green Mother is about music, follows up on Mym, explores an interesting relationship with the Incarnation of Evil (i.e. Satan) that leads to an unexpected climax of the series. This ending also sets up the two sequels by another publisher, which retell some of the story. The Llano runs throughout: a musical book of nature, longing, finding our place, love, and peace in unexpected places. The stakes are bigger in this story than the previous.
I agree with Anthony's comments on Jesus at the end of his author's note.
I read the Ace May 1988 first edition hardcover, with jacket painting by Darrell Sweet. This book was finished fairly early, in the mid to perhaps latter half of 1985, but sold late, though clearly there are up-to-the-minute edits. Bio of an Ogre (or BiOgre as Anthony refers to it) covers formerly up to the publication of his 50th book at age fifty, and includes one of his first short stories in an appendix (not included, but mentioned, in Anthonology).
BiOgre is a must have for Anthony fans. I've read it more than once, and have enjoyed the honest relation of his life and writing. It is not as detailed as Asimov's biographies, but gives a feel for Anthony's first half of his life and work.
I read the 1988 Ace/Putnam hardcover, cover art by Darrell Sweet. This is Apprentice Adept #5. The maps are the same as from Out of Phaze. The sequel, and conclusion to the second trilogy, is Unicorn Point.
This provides more adventures from Mach. In a way, this is a forbidden love story, maybe a spin on Romeo and Juliet, but with two worlds, errr their world, to save on top of it. Something similar is happening in the Proton frame, and the youngsters are finding a special bond between them while the adepts begin to fight over both Phaze and Proton in alliance with the citizens. All seem like pawns in the intrigue. A fitting sequel to, and a continuation from, Out of Phaze.
I read the Avon 1988 hardcover, a book club edition, with jacket art by Ron Walotsky. This is Xanth #11. It's sequel is Man from Mundania.
We met Morrow Bones, a lovable creature of the gourd realm, who has been asked to take Bink's grandson on a Xanth adventure. He has so many questions, from mushy adults to a grandmother's waning talent, to where in Xanth has the Good Magician gone to? Some things in Xanth don't follow Mundanian mores. This is a story from a little boy's perspective, very similar to how Dragon on a Pedestal is a story from a little girl's perspective.
I read the William Morrow and Company, Inc. November 1988 first edition hardcover, with jacket design and painting by Rowena. The manuscript was finished January 1987. (The author's note was finished 27 December 1986.) This is Incarnations of Immortality #6. I wouldn't call it the conclusion to a trilogy, however, as that is not how these books are grouped. The sequel is And Eternity.
The Incarnation of Evil actually played out much better than I had expected. Go figure that the primary plot is a good man falling in love with a good woman, something bad happens, then the slippery slope to taking over as the Incarnation of Evil occurs. This criss crosses a bit over old territory, but from Satan's (i.e. the Incarnation of Evil's) eyes. In other words, this retells the story that is told in Being a Green Mother but from Satan's perspective, the build up to the end of Being a Green Mother happening in unexpected ways. If anything, Piers Anthony knows how to finish a story: we know the end of this story, but do we?
I read the Ace/Putnam 1988/1989 first edition hardcover, with jacket painting by Darrell Sweet.
A game for power over Proton and Phaze leads Mach and the other children into an adult battle for their future. Their uncanny ability to interact with not only their counterpart selves in the other frame, but their siblings too, gives them an edge in the fight between serfs and citizens, magical beings and adepts. The book follows each character in sets of 3 chapters, each chapter dedicated to following a particular character, and trading between Phaze and Proton. This is the conclusion of the second trilogy following Mach. One book, the seventh, remains to wrap up the series: PhazeDoubt.
I read the New English Library hardcover edition. The cover art is beautiful, showing a man in a cave looking out on a snowy mountain scene with a young woman running down a path from a large, somewhat crystaline looking tower in the background. For some reason, the cover art is unattributed, and doesn't appear to have a signature. According to the author's note in And Eternity, this was finished in February or March 1988. This is Xanth #12. The sequel is the rather unique, Isle of View.
It is time for Ivy to leave Xanth for Mundania. She meets a college student and falls in love, but the student is Grey Murphey who likes to read Xanth but doesn't believe Xanth is real.
A supplement to the lexicon from Golem in the Gears is provided as an appendix.
I read the 1989 first edition hardcover from Underwood-Miller, illustrations and cover art by R. Daniel Horne. Started in March of 1998, finished in May, and finalized in late July 1988 with the galleys (see How Precious Was that While and Letters to Jenny), a month after the submission draft of And Eternity, and while writing Tatham Mound.
This is a basic, fun fantasy: an enjoyable way to escape for a few hours. A group of youngsters are chosen, a fulfillment of a prophecy. Seth is one of them, pulled from his harsh reality in Michigan. They go on a trek to defeat an evil emperor, bent on world domination, in favor of a good emperor and for the betterment of a multi-plane existence.
I read the Avon 1989 hardcover edition, with cover illustration by Darrell K. Sweet. The book illustrations are by Todd Cameron Hamilton and James Clouse. Anthony writes a forward and afterword. The book text is in collaboration with Jody Lynn Nye.
This is a necessary addition to the Xanth series at this point. For one, after Golem in the Gears, Avon, and Morrow (the British editions?), no longer have a map. The text is not entirely a duplicate of the Golem in the Gears lexicon, or the additions to Man from Mundania, but is its own source of information. The illustrations are beautiful.
I am confused by the illustrated maps though. The maps on pages 101 and 103, and the descriptions on pages 98 and 100, are inconsistent with the maps shown in the books Ogre, Ogre through Crewel Lye: Earth is out of place, coming after the Void. Centaur Isle and Golem in the Gears (and possibly the individual texts of the trilogy, though my copy of The Magic of Xanth doesn't have a map) mark the Forbidden Region as Incognito. The Tor maps that begin with Demons Don't Dream are the same. Water should be immediately south of the Void, and Earth should be immediately north of Air. A mistake must have been made, as the descriptions of the order appear to be correct.
I read the Morrow 1990 first edition hard cover with jacket illustration by Rowena. The author's note is dated 17 June 1988. This is Incarnations of Immortality #7.
In a way, Being a Green Mother, For the Love of Evil, and And Eternity are a kind of trilogy, perhaps with Wielding a Red Sword as a kind of prequel. The pairings are curious. In another way, For the Love of Evil and And Eternity stand alone. To say much about And Eternity presents a lot of spoilers for how For the Love of Evil covers previous ground and And Eternity continues the story. It's a fitting conclusion to the series. Except it isn't. Many years later, Anthony decided to write about one of the lesser incarnations after all in Under a Velvet Cloak which is a roaring, saucy conclusion that is not lesser at all.
I read the William Morrow and Company, Inc. first edition hardcover, published September 1989, with jacket illustration by John Berkey. It was finished after December, in early 1989, (see Letters to Jenny).
The hardcover initial release was based on the original script. There are some minor
differences, e.g. Quail instead of Quaid (following Dick's original name), and a sexy scene with
Quail walking through the 3D light projection of a beautiful woman. The paperback follow up was
changed to more closely match the movie as produced. I think Anthony's first edition novel was
more fun, though Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone were great to watch. I think that
Anthony's rendition of the script, as originally printed, does justice to Dick's story We Can
Remember It For You Wholesale
, updating this 1960s pulp (F&SF) science fiction classic
for the current culture (though even that has aged since). Of course, the movie story is far more
elaborate than Dick's: there's no Martian terraforming, political consipiracy, underground, or
mutants. Quail's job is not a clerk, but more suited to Schwarzenegger's muscle. In some ways, I
like Anthony's rendition the best.
I read the Underwood-Miller 1990 first edition hardcover, with illustrations and jacket art by Patrick Woodroffs. This is an elegant, beautiful edition, with multiple illustrations, thick glossy paper, and stitched binding. The writing (not sure about the illustrations) was finished in early 1987, though the original story was written in 1966, long before Jurassic Park was written, and then expanded into a novel, at least most of a first draft, beginning in 1967. It took longer to publish, with the illustrations and such, so it's not quite clear when the author's note and last minute changes was finished.
This is a children's story about a large, prehistoric zoo animal that becomes attached to a child. When the animal escapes, causing havoc in the country side, alarm spreads and the boy goes after him. A simple, fun story about the bonds we form with animals (other than humans) and some of the environmental implications that come from our power over animals. This has got to be one of Anthony's most elegant youth novels.
I read the Ace/Putnam 1990 hardcover, with jacket painting by Lisa Amoroso.
Is it a surprise that the grandchildren are going to save the world in this concluding adventure to the Apprentice Adept series? Now, the threat is external, an invasion fleet that wants the resources of Proton, and its magical capabilities that are found in Phaze. The grand children befriend one of the invader informants, political choices must be made that affect the future of Proton, and the future existence of the magic that comes from Phaze. I hear echos a decade or two later in Anthony's erotic fantasy series ChroMagic.
I read the 1993 Wings book hardcover edition, called Three Complete Novels, an omnibus of the Adventures of Kelvin of Rud trilogy, with cover art by Mel Grant.
Once Anthony got the bug from a mixed science-fiction/fantasy realm with his Apprentice Adept series, it seems to have forever colored his approach to science fiction. Put a different way, I think Anthony started as a science fiction writer, not a fantasy writer, though the fantastic elements of most of his books begs the difference. Early on he has worked on historical fiction, some that has been made into science fiction to sell it, some that has fantasy elements, but ultimately where fantasy doesn't mix with his science fiction it is clear he has branched out into other genres.
Dragon's Gold begins with a brother and sister sneaking away from home to steal gold scales from a dragon. Little do they know that this will fulfill a prophesy that will change their sense of who they are and where they came from. Kelvin is the chosen one and is destined to overthrow the evil witch who governs Rud.
Alternate realities are introduced and Kelvin learns how to jump between them in his bid to save his captured father, deal with the evil witch who is a kind of doppelganger of his mother, and to save Rud and fulfill the prophecy. This book forwards the series concepts further.
More reality jumps. More intrigue and war. More Kelvin saving the day. It didn't feel like much development of the series was done here, though it lays the ground work for the sequel, Orc's Opal. The Chimaera is a three headed beast that talks to itself that Kelvin encounters along the way. We get so me more of the Chimaera as the series continues.
I read the 1990 Morrow first edition hardcover with jacket design by Linda Kosarin and photo by Lisa Stein.
Letters to Jenny indicates that 6 novels were written in 1988. This was also complained about in the author's note for And Eternity, where Firefly is mentioned for what appears to be the first time. Letters to Jenny also mentioned that 4 novels were written in 1989, and 5 were written (or to be written?) in 1990.
This is a horror novel, heavy on character. This story has an environmental theme, and one of sexuality. It treats some subjects of sexual sensitively, but it is graphic. A monstor begins romping the Florida country side, eating people from the inside out, but there is no sign of struggle. It's almost like people are allowing themselves to be eaten. Anthony excels at horror and thrillers, equaling his hard science fiction, but he doesn't write it much.
Written in 1970-1972, I read the Tafford 1990 first edition hardcover with jacket illustration by Jeff Myers. This was written after Race Against Time and the first (unnsold) version of Mercycle. (See Steppe author's note.)
This is the first collaboration between Anthony and Fuentes. It originally described Fuentes' experience in Cuba working for Castro's rebellion and government until he was able to escape to Florida, but as a fictional account. Anthony turned it into a science fiction novel, but the science fiction is mainly at the beginning. Though its premise seemed solid, the events of Cuba's revolution overwhelm the story. It's good reading, and comes to a resolution for both the science fiction element, and the main character within the Cuban missle crisis.
I read the Tafford 1990 first edition hardcover with jacket art by David Welling. The book was originally collected in 1972, but remained unsold until Tafford picked it up.
The first three chapters were sold to If magazine, the same as with the Prostho Plus
stories, as Hard Sell
, Black Baby
, and Hurdle
respectively. The last three
stories Galaxy bounced, but the fifth was later published in Twilight Zone magazine as
Life
. Hard Sell
and Black Baby
were also published in
Anthonology, the latter under its original title of
Hurdle
. The fourth story was titled Death
. The sixth and final story was titled
Libel
.
This is the complete collection of science fiction stories about Fisk Centers, first conned by a salesman but then becoming one, when he'd rather retire. Like the Prostho Plus stories with a theme around dental work, this is a funny romp through experience with sales propaganda, but in an interstellar framework of aliens and humans getting the best of each other.
I read the Morrow 1990 first edition hard cover, with jacket illustration by Darrell Sweet. The initial author's note was finished 19 May 1989, the day following finishing the initial manuscript draft. A follow up in the author's note of November (December?) 1989 gives an update regarding Jenny. This is noted in Letters to Jenny, which has much to say about this novel, it's a kind of non-Xanth sequel and background story. This is Xanth #13. It's sequel is Question Quest.
Isle of View is a story of young love and a decision between two suitors, but from a male with two women. The two women decide they've had enough waiting on Dolph (the male) to choose between them, so go on their own quest. No, the Good Magician Humphrey is still missing, but they did get help in a similar way. The story dynamic is perhaps complicated by the introduction of Jenny and her personal story that Anthony got involved with, yet maybe it was perfect inspiration. The chapters trade off between Dolph, the two women, Che, and Jenny.
I read the Morrow first edition hardcover, with jacket illustration by Jerry Lofaro. It was written during and immediately after Isle of View, and finished in October 1989. According to How Precious Was that While, this was the next major novel of his career, replacing Tarot. I agree.
Tatham Mound is one of my favorite works of Anthony's, not a fantasy (maybe a little) but history. It is based on research the author funded of a tribe that lived in Florida and was effectively destroyed by the Spaniards (de Soto). It is a large book, but kept my interest page for page. It follows Hotfoot through his life beginning as a new warrior traveling up and down the American coast, following the guidance of his ancestors, and becoming his tribe's story teller.
I read the TOR, October 1990, first edition hardcover with jacket art by Darrell K. Sweet. Orc's Opal was finished in December 1989, after Tatham Mound. It's is the fourth novel in the Kelvin of Rud series written with his collaborator Rem. The sequel and concluding novel is Mouvar's Magic.
Piers Anthony portrays child characters well and seems to have fun with them. This story is a rather weird, but perhaps a typical, switch-a-roo, wicked witch story. The witch's witch Zady, who is Zoanna's (the antagonist of the trilogy) aunt who taught and raised her, comes for revenge against Kelvin and his family, putting their children into bad situations and framing them and others for her bad deeds. It also introduces the opal and its orc guardians, which the children are tricked into finding and stealing.
I read the Ace/Putnam hardcover with jacket illustration by Daniel R. Horne. The first draft of Virtual Mode was finished in February, and the final draft was finished 8 March 1990. The jacket illustration is beautiful, and forever fixed my impression of the protagonist of the story. The sequel is Fractal Mode.
This begins one of Anthony's classic fantasy series and is perhaps my favorite of his. Colene (pronounced like Colleen: Call-een) is a depressed, suicidal teen, backed into a corner by peers, abused, and ignored by parents with their own problems. Then she finds a man, beaten on the side of the road, and can't help but help him. Little does she know, the man is royalty from a magic kingdom, and he is searching for her.
I read the Morrow 1991 first edition hardcover with jacket illustration by Darrell Sweet. At
the back is an appendix History of Xanth (simplified)
by E. Timber Bram, and of course
the standard author's note which indicates the novel was finished in May 1990. This is Xanth #14.
It's sequel is The Color of Her Panties.
The Good Magician Humphrey is an iconic part of Xanth, but after the estrangement in Mundania of the author and his editor, Lester del Rey whom Humphrey was kind of based on, Humphrey suddenly disappeared from the series, and his fate was left unknown. Question Quest is about a woman who goes on a quest to ask her question of Humphrey, but then must find out what happened to him before she can ask her question.
I read the 1991 Tafford first edition hardcover, with jacket art by Ron and Val Lindahn.
Originally written in late 1971, this is a rewrite of the original finished around May 1990. Anthony described it as collaborating with himself, updating a novel written by a writer with enough talent to have potential, but making mistakes in delivery that he needed to work out. This is the last of his unsold novels to this point that he got in to print, if you don't count the first (Unstilled World).
The writing reminds me of the novel Ghost, though the plots are dissimilar. Most of this story takes place under the ocean off Key West, Mexico, and Cuba on a mystery mission that is not explained to the main character, Melanie, but which she takes out of individual desperation.
I read the Ace/Putnam 1992 hardcover, with jacket illustration by Daniel R. Horne. The final draft was finished 22 November 1990, after the expansion and revision of Mercycle, and the novelette Alien Plot. (See the author's note in the book Alien Plot.) The author's note in Phaze Doubt indicates that the beach scene with different instruments and sizes of people, at the time apparently nothing more than an ideas file entry, was inspired by the cover of Heartdance by the band Song of the Wood. This is book #2 in the Mode series. The sequel is Chaos Mode.
Traversing the modes, the new friends land in a mode realm where the mandelbrot set is a literal fractal reality, with different cultures and sizes of people existing within each iterative level of the set. The level they land in is in a magical transition period. They meet Nona the most powerful magician of the land, and future ruler, in a despotic environment ruled by men for which she wishes to escape.
I read the TOR, August 1992, first edition hardcover with jacket art by Darrell K. Sweet. This is book #5 of the Kelvin of Rud series.
This concludes the series and gives the final revelations about Kelvin's father's origins. Books three and four (Chimera's Copper and Orc's Opal) are a kind of pair, similar to books one and two, but focused more on character development of the series. Orc's Opal also moves away from Kelvin as a primary character. This book returns to the series concept and wraps up the loose ends.
I read the September 1992 Morrow hard cover with jacket illustration by Darrell K. Sweet. This is the last Ace/Morrow Xanth. This is the first formal hardcover of the Xanth series, all previous being US book club, or equivalent UK, editions. Originally, Anthony had been asked to have The Color of Her Panties written the same year, so that Question Quest could be going to paperback while The Color of Her Panties went to hardcover proper. Well, it went to hardcover, though Anthony decided to do so the next year instead of writing two Xanths in a year (though he did so years later) then the Tatham Mound debacle happened and Xanth went to Tor, as did everything else from then on, (though I believe Killobyte was the last Ace/Morrow book). This is Xanth #15. The sequel is Demons Don't Dream.
Gwenny wants to be the Goblin king, but what color are the merwoman's panties, and how does one get the egg between the Roc and the hard place? This Xanth novel skirts close to the boundaries of the adult conspiracy, joins a roc in a cloud city/home with characters from Isle of View, and has an author's note that occurs as part of the novel with Jenny Elf at Humphrey's castle. Par for the course. This novel was funny.
I read the Ace October 1992 first edition hardcover, with jacket painting by Romas. In
Letters to Jenny is mentioned the first conversations in early July
1988 about restarting this collaboration. The first chapter was written by Anthony in 1987, based
on the story Tappuah
, written after Quinquepedalian
during his first writing year
(February/March 1963), which never sold, though some rewrites were attempted later. The second
chapter was written by his collaborator P. J. Farmer in 1987. They initially rotated chapters beginning in 1988, but don't seem to have really got going until 1989 and 1990. It's unclear if it was finished in 1990, but took some time due to sending correspondence through the mail, and
some issues from Farmer with manuscript access.
This is the adaption of a short story by Anthony, turned into a first chapter, then rotating
between the two authors, at least initially. An alien seduces Jack, who needs him for protection
until she can morph into a powerful creature capable of moderating the tyranny of a galactic
empire. This is a romp around the galaxy in a science fiction story typical of both authors.
Each chapter in some ways is a separate story, and in some ways eggs on the collaborator to find
a way to continue with get-out-of-this-one cliff hangers. For instance, chapter 9 ends with
...yet there seemed to be no alternative.
Chapter 10 starts with, Then he saw
something.
It reminds me of some of the early Weiss/Hickman D&D plot advancements.
I read the TOR October 1992 first edition hardcover, with dust cover by Carol Russo.
This is a second collection of short stories after Anthonology. Apparently, Anthonology was originally a collection of unsold stories in 1969. Instead, what sold as Anthonology was a collection of published stories, with a couple of unsold additions. Alien Plot adds more of the unsold stories, plus more recent stories, some of which were sold. Each story has a small author's introduction. This is about on par with the first volume, if you liked it.
The final entry is not a story, but an article that I originally read in the periodical The
Writer, called Think of the Reader
, which I remember enjoying at the time. This
version is the unedited one, naturally. According to Letters to Jenny,
an article was finished for a writer's magazine
on 18 March 1989. I suspect Think of
the Reader
was that article, as it was the August 1989 edition it was published in. A later
chapter confirms that it was The Writer.
I read the Ace 1993 hardcover, with jacket illustration by Den Beauvais. The book was finished in September 1991 (or at least its author's note was), and was written in the summer of 1991, including some reader feedback at DragonCon that year. The publication date appears to be 5 January 1993.
This action thriller is a kind of fantasy within a virtual reality game, with two misfits who become lovers, and a power hungry player who ups the stakes to deadly interactions. Anthony seems to like this virtual reality approach, but unlike other series and short stories, this stand-alone novel is on the cusp of the internet era. What a gem.
In the author's note is the question of the song Girl in the Wood
. See the entry on
Chthon for the answer on this, contributed by a reader in response
to one of the newsletters. It is also documented in the author's note to
Geis of the Gargoyle.
Throughout the earlier author's notes, Anthony has dealt with certain lethargic tendancies, originally diagnosed as mental instability, then type II diabetes. This author's note recognizes that it's not that either. I seem to remember the final diagnosis was a thyroid problem, which also explained Anthony's mild melancholy. Unfortunately, I can't verify, as the newsletters are missing. An author's note in Knot Gneiss, he confirms that he finally has coverage for the underactive thyroid, but doesn't make the connection with the varying diagnoses, (or whether the type II diabetes diagnosis was also incorrect, and related to the thyroid).
I read the Ace/Putnam 1993 hardcover with jacket illustration by a new artist this time, Romas Kukalis. The new character Burgess is shown on the cover.
Chaos Mode is the third novel in a series beginning with Virtual Mode, and is the sequel to Fractal Mode. The series start in a way stands alone, though clearly not reaching the expected fulfillment. This installment seems to revisit the issues of the first and second book, wrapping up loose ends, creating a new one with Burgess, and bringing to a head the conflict with Ddwng and the attempt to finally get to Darius' home mode. (My best pronunciation of Ddwng, following Anthony's explanation, is Dee-Doong, not quite D-dung, which was my temptation.)
The ending is a cliff hanger, and must have felt insufferable to readers to have to wait 8 years for the conclusion from a different publisher. Anthony's newsletters provide some of the context for the writing of the final book, DoOon Mode.
I read the Tor February 1993 hardcover with jacket art by Darrell Sweet. This is the first of a long string of Tor Xanth hardcovers, the third major publisher of the series in the United States. It includes a beautiful in-cover color map of Xanth, probably the best yet, with a smaller black and white version on a page. This color print is dropped in later Tor editions, then disappears entirely. Demons Don't Dream is Xanth #16. It's sequel is Harpy Thyme.
After the success of Killobyte, and the idea of a 3D alternate reality through a computer interface (which Anthony plays on for years after), it's time to have a Xanth game. He did mention in earlier author's notes the desire to make a computer game for Xanth, and apparently this was actually realized. Perhaps this is a way for Anthony to advertise his game while showing how those in Xanth really play. Demons Don't Dream brings another Mundanian into Xanth with the promise of Xanthian magic in return for a quest. Of course. Everything in Xanth seems to be a quest. The covers shows Jenny from ElfQuest with her cat, and the Good Magician Humphrey, who is back now, but he really doesn't play a strong part in the book.
I read the Baen July 1993 hard cover edition, with jacket illustration by Darrell K. Sweet.
Anthony had some criticism of this collaboration. It was initiated by the Baen editor. Anthony provided an idea for a novel he had been mulling over. However, when he received a completed manuscript from his collaborator, he thought the novel he received, written by Lackey, was subpar, and decided to rewrite it. From there it seemed a trilogy was planned, but was scrapped when Anthony's payment for his work was almost neglible. I understand there was a lawsuit over it.
The novel itself, in its finished form, was epic. I found myself immediately engrosed by the character. The Roman-like historical setting was believable, and described in a way that kept interest in the surroundings and the characters. The politics was a believable matriarchy. When the main character is left homeless, and becomes involved in a classic type of fantasy quest, the outside world from the matriarchal city-state is drastically different, and the contrast is again engrossing. This was a fun novel. It's a shame it got buried in the politics of the publishing Parnassus, (as Anthony calls it).
The author's note talks about Julie who sent Anthony a cross. It was unclear whether she survived, or committed suicide, from the author's note. Anthony cliff hangers? The answer is discussed in a collaboration they did together later, Dream a Little Dream, and in his memoir, How Precious Was That While.
I read the TOR August 1993 hardcover, with jacket art by Jael.
On 9 December 1988, a drunk driver hit a teenage girl, put her in a coma, and left her paralyzed. Knowing she was an Anthony fan, her mother wrote asking for help: write Jenny and see if that will wake her up. It did. This book is the first year of letters that he has written to her since.
I first encountered mention of Jenny in the Xanth novel Isle of View. The autobiographical material it provides is interesting for a year span of the author's life. His humor and encouragement of Jenny, through imagined interaction (she never really responded much, though her mother would report some things), is both funny and endearing, and provides its own narrative dialog, as well as background to Isle of View and to a degree Question Quest, and The Color of Her Panties. Author's notes in these and other novels written after Isle of View give updates to Jenny's status. She did get to a point she could stand again, though last I heard that was standing from her wheel chair.
I read the Tor September 1993 first edition hardcover, with cover art by Eric Petersen. The text was finished either in August (or maybe September) 1992. The author's note indicates editing began on the finished first draft 6 August. The sequel is Hope of Man.
Geodyssey is a series of books that is a collection of short stories and novellas, beginning in evolutionary pre-history and finishing in the relatively near future. It ties the stories together through characters, general personality types, that seem to have souls (residual memories) that transcend their physical manifestations, adapting to the local culture and situation, but being sufficiently recognizable to make interesting stories, with even plot strands shared between the individual stories and later books.
Isle of Woman is the first of five books in the series. It has some information that later books refine or even find not to be entirely accurate, though the author's note lists the sources used for some of the scientific foundations of the ideas presented. The stories and ideas themselves are worth reading, regardless, and tend to lend to a kind of suspense of what-really-happened? as the series progresses. This first volume introduces some early ideas around human breasts evolving into being a mating attractant, instead of mammary glands that swell only when fertile, suggesting that going into heat is something human evolution abandoned, as well as exploring the mating of Neandertal and modern human.
Some of the language is a bit dated by modern standards, having seen a shift in the period this was published, as I imagine many of his prior novels will start to seem similar. Perhaps the author is starting to show his age (and perhaps temperment). All in all, I really enjoyed this series, on the same level or better than Tatham Mound. Exploring different cultures of history and time periods was fascinating, and Anthony does well making them come to life (as even his earliest books do, e.g. Pretender) as well as being entertaining. Each ends with more of a science fiction futuristic projection, and this one's final story, an apocalyptic ending to the book, shows us what may happen if we don't get control of the pollution of the biosphere, but paints a potential way forward too.
According to the November 2010 newsletter, it is believed that Neanderthal became extinct earlier than this book portrays (by about 5,000 years), and that it was a volcano that took them out, not the superior capabilities of what would become homo sapiens.
I read the Tor 1994 first edition hard cover with jacket art by Darrell Sweet. In the author's note for Demons Don't Dream was mentioned the story of the paralized Janet Hines. The author's note for Harpy Thyme follows up on her status. She's now in Xanth, having died in Mundania. Harpy Thyme was written from August to October 1992. It is Xanth #17. The sequel is Geis of the Gargoyle.
Harpy Thyme is another coming of age story. It is about a mix between a harpy and a goblin (how did that happen!?), and of course of a love story, because really that's what Xanth is half the time. Harpy Thyme looks at our uniqueness, finding our inner beauty, as well as acceptance of our differences from others. We also get to meet some old characters and places that the book references in context of fading away. Time moves on, old makes way for new, but that doesn't mean that in Xanth we can't revisit old, comfortable friends, places, and things.
I read the Tor October 1994 first edition hardcover, with cover art by Brad Schmehl. Shame of Man was written the winter of the first part of 1993, and finished in April or May. It is the second Geodyssey. The sequel is Hope of Earth.
Some of Anthony's explorations here include:
The final stories address gun toating attitudes in the United States, pacifism, communal and environmental living. Anthony's father created a Quaker farm community, and some of Anthony's early years in the US, after immigrating from the UK, I'm sure gave insight here. BiOgre has some references and an article on creating the community. His fictionalized biography of his father, Alfred has some references. More recently, a full account, as collaboration with his sister, is given in Hilltop Farm (which I've not yet read).
I read the first edition, December 1994, Tor hardcover, with jacket design by Bonnie B. Butler. Tales From The Great Turtle was written sometime after the collaboration Spider Legs.
If you liked Tatham Mound, you'll enjoy these stories. One of them is from Anthony, and reminds me a lot of Tatham Mound, and some of the stories from his Geodyssey series. There's authors I remember from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, and Asimov's Science Fiction, e.g. Mike Resnick, Kristine Katherine Rusch. There's a lot of good fiction here, some angry stories, and a few wild ones, but all in theme and entertaining, some educational, some gritty, but ultimately a satisfying collection.
I read the Tor February 1995 first edition hard cover with jacket art by Darrell K. Sweet. The manuscript was finished in August 1993. It is Xanth #18. The sequel is Roc and a Hard Place.
This felt like more classic Xanth, whatever that means, with a gargoyle protecting his land from environmental pollution encroaching from Mundania. Standard formula: Humphrey, quest, innuendo, adult conspiracy. A new cast of characters that have developed during the Avon/Morrow publication Xanth books that provide amusement and interest. Perhaps the first Tor trilogy reminisces about past Xanth, for Del Rey and Avon/Morrow readers, but it's time to move on and explore Xanth from the perspective of new characters.
I read the Tor October 1995 first edition hard cover with jacket art by Darrell K. Sweet. It is Xanth #19. The sequel is Yon Ill Wind.
Metria has become a common figure at this point in Xanth, and her past with Mentia, her sister, and the Roc she is supposed to visit, reveal much of the mythos hidden in Xanth. Perhaps part of this is Anthony reread A Spell for Chameleon as part of the simplified version revision, and discovered some loose ends to wrap up. The other part is Parnassus, the icon of the insurrmountable fortress that represents the publishing industry by analogy, is itself in violation of Xanth law (there's laws?), presenting an unusual trial.
I read the Tor October 1996 first edition hard cover with jacket art by Darrell K. Sweet. It was finished in December of 1994. It is Xanth #20. The sequel is Faun and Games.
This demon thing with Xanth was not my favorite. The demons aren't entirely a back drop, begin betting with Xanth's future, are far too much a deus-ex-machina contrivance for the series, yet I suspect that is not only too harsh but not quite accurate. Other than perhaps A Spell for Chameleon, and that is arguable, I suspect all Xanths are created equal, but some resonate for us more than others. Yon Ill Wind is of that variety for me. Not only does the demon X(an)th become a relatable character, but the whole of Xanth is brought into a narrative that fits so much of the earliest part of the series, if not validates the things that didn't resonate with me originally. Plus, an incursion from Mundania brings even more of a human factor into this novel that isn't always in the others. This was a lovely vacation into Xanth on nested levels.
I read the Tor December 1996 first edition hardcover, with jacket art by Tristan Elwell. It was finished in June 1993.
This is a saucy, fun tale of fantasy from Hindu folklore and theology. Hari is a naive, young man seeking spiritual enlightenment. Instead of marrying he sets out on a quest, only to have the gods and a demon bet on his sexual corruption. Seven life threatening seductions face Hari who is unaware of the wager, and who only wants enlightement not sexual romance.
I read the May 1997 Tor first edition hardcover, with jacket art by Tristan Elwell. This is book #3 in the Geodyssey series. The sequel is Muse of Art.
Hope of Earth fits into my category of Anthony favorites. It is my favorite of the series, and apparently is also Anthony's favorite of the series. One might think that writing the same novel over and over, starting in ancient pre-human pre-history and ending in the near future, exploring the environmental impacts of human exponential growth, would soon get dull and boring, but the different places in archeological and evolutionary past, and historical places of the known human past, with different character streams and interactions, hits its pinnacle with this novel. Each book in Geodyssey improves the flow and academic foundations from the previous, sometimes refining previous ideas, but not repeating them. Anthony also hired a researcher for this series (originally for Tatham Mound?), so a lot has gone into it, not only Anthony's whim of how he sees the world.
According to the November 2010 newsletter, it is likely that Otzi didn't freeze to death, nor was he killed where he was at least, after all, but was buried there after dying elsewhere. The February 2012 newsletter notes he'd eaten goat and bread just before his death, so Anthony was hopeful his version of events still might hold. The March 2015 newsletter notes confirmation he was shot in the back, likely while eating. The August 2018 newsletter has more from New Scientist on Otzi. He was apparently being pursued and led the pursuers away from him, sharpening weapons that constantly dulled and not getting back to more in time.
I read the Tor October 1997 first edition hard cover with jacket art by Darrell K. Sweet. It was finished in approximately March of 1996. This is Xanth #21, the last of the Tor Xanth books that print the beautiful color map of Xanth, which is far more readable than the black and white expanded print-on-a-page. The sequel is Zombie Lover
A whole new collections of worlds orbits Princess Ida's head. A faun befriends a tree, and goes to the Good Magician Humphrey to find a way to save it. He must go to these worlds. He remembers beyond his day's tryst, enabled by the tree's nymph. The opening exploring the existence of a faun, the very near skirting of the adult conspiracy with daily trysts described as celebrating, was both hilarious and fun, and then gets serious as the friendship between faun and nymph develops. A fun story with more Xanth to explore.
I read the January 1998 TOR first edition hardcover, with eery jacket art by Latif Kazbekov. This is a story about a super lobster that is hungry and begins eating humans. The author's note claims this is the hundredth book he's written (not published). It was finished in late March, early April 1993, after If I Pay Thee Not in Gold.
Anthony writes very good horror and thriller novels, and this is one of my favorites of his collaborations. The Candian coast is itself an eery, beautiful landscape to imagine and explore, especially for the environmental theme Anthony adds to the story. Plus, the romance and characterization Anthony contributes to the story is spot on for a tale of this type, certainly more low key than Anthony's more adult sexuality in his other stories. Spider Legs is an adult story, and the gore is certainly shocking in places, but such is the horror genre. Anthony wraps this tale up nicely, as he always does. As he says often enough in his newsletters, this is my kind of junk.
I read the July 1998 Tor first edition hardcover, with jacket art by Tristan Elwell. I have gone through a couple copies of this hardcover, and each one, no matter how gently I treat it, cracks along the inner front and back lines where the paste down block is attached. Something with this particular binding was flawed. An old glue? Inexpensive outer pages to the block? The book was finished after Yon Ill Wind in 1995.
This is a typical, but utterly engrossing, epic fantasy. Richey and his collaborators really did a thorough job with it. The characters are alive and interesting. The fantasy elements, however seemingly typical, are in the mix the right thing to hold reader interest. Though the book is big, and the writing pace slow, that pace keeps marching forward with interest. Expect the novel to feel slow at first, but that pace is relentless, the descriptions interesting and detailed, and the story line and characters everything they should be.
I read the Tor October 1998 first edition hard cover with jacket art by Darrell K. Sweet. It was finished approximately March 1997. This is Xanth #22. It's sequel is Xone of Contention.
The cover fits the story, but I agree with Anthony's criticism of it: why is Breanna of the Black Wave not black? (She kind of is if you look closely, but not at first glance.)
No-nonsense Breanna doesn't think she's prejudiced against zombies until she catches herself in a statement that she wouldn't want to marry one. Then she encounters the decomposing King Xeth and falls prey to a love potion.
I read the TOR January 1999 first edition hardcover, with jacket illustration by Tristan Elwell, though I understand this is based on, or actually is, Julie Brady's painting in the foreground.
A depressed woman with lucid dreaming begins to create her own fantasy reality that she can disappear to, until her bad dreams risk overtaking her fantasy and reality. Not one of my favorite Anthony collaborations, but I strongly approve of Anthony's work with new authors to get them published. Some go on to write their own novels. Sadly, some stop with the one collaboration. This appears to be one of the latter.
I read the Tor May 1999 first edition hardcover, with jacket art by Tristan Elwell. This is book four in the Geodyssey series, and the first after the originally planned trilogy, a sequel (though not dependent on) Hope of Earth. It's sequel is Climate of Change.
For me this had ups and downs. I like a saucy story from time to time, like I imagine most people do, but Anthony can get destracted with sex in his stories, and sometimes it's fun, and sometimes it just becomes too much, overwhelming the story. This one was border line, but ultimately worked out in the end. There was also a fascinating North Italian Celts story, one of the highlights for me, seeing early Rome before its dominance. An excellent story in Stalingrad, showing another aspect of the war between Germany and Stalingrad Russia, reminded me (in a way) of the movie Enemy at the Gates.
These novels are a remnant of the previous century (millenia). The final, futuristic stories are starting to become dated (with the exception of the fifth novel). In this case, it is literally dated with a plausable enough future scenario in 2024. Thankfully, concerns in the first four books have not reached fruition, though they all remain possibilities to me.
Volk was originally started in August 1980, written in hospital while being diagnosed with cat scratch disease, but Anthony was unable to get a sale based on the initial chapter(s) (there were two) and summary, apparently because it wasn't his typical fantasy.
In 1990, with the additional successes of his other novels, he decided to finish the book, and did so in 1991. However, it remained unpublished until his investments with Pulpless and Xlibris. I believe it was the first book he published with both of them in 1996. I read the 1999 corrected Xlibris hardcover. I tried reading the Open Road Media mobi format from Amazon, but it had unindented paragraphs (a problem I also had with Eroma) to the point it was too frustrating to read. The Xlibris hardcover is far nicer. Make sure to get a review copy before licensing the ebook in case they haven't fixed it, otherwise it's not worth the purchase. The Xlibris hardcover was nicely done and is recommended.
Volk is based on Anthony's parent's experience in Spain as Quakers volunteering for peace service during World War II. The story is about a Quaker woman who does the same, then falls in love with a German officer. She is later captured by the Germans and the officer tries to save her. I enjoyed some of the lesser known history, and the slightly odd Quaker English (plain speech, also found in Anthony's Apprentice Adept series) that isn't quite the same as that which we read in Shakespeare and the King James Bible.
I read the Xlibris hard cover, originally published by Pulpless. They renamed the title from Candle. This was finished in March 1997, but not published until 1999. More about the early thinking of Candle, as it was originally known, can be found in Anthony's web-based newsletters. Some of the newsletters from this period made it into the post-Florida (i.e. after the move to L.A.) website, so may still have the ruminations on Candle's development, writing, and publication available to read.
Perhaps one of the more fun fantasy stories that Anthony wrote in this period, this is about a grandchild who goes to stay with her grandparents at a rented house, which turns out to have doors that open to other places, seeming other worlds. The house seems haunted, except that doesn't seem to fit the situation. This was a fast, engrossing escape from mundane reality.
I read the Tor October 1999 first edition hard cover with jacket art by Darrell K. Sweet. This was finished approximately January 1998. This is Xanth #23. The sequel is The Dastard.
A couple years, previous Anthony got ahead of himself with writing Xanth novels, due to juggling other projects, and Tor decided to publish once a year in October, and then stated they wanted no other novels from Anthony but Xanth. This led to a law suit to get five collaborations published. With each new contract, Xanth has been used to get some of Anthony's other books published, such as series that had been cut short (such as Geodessy with Muse of Art (the fourth volume) and much later Climate of Change). It may have been the beginning of the end for Anthony with Tor as about this time is when his Xlibris books were coming into print (for some, e.g. Volk and Reality Check, these were corrected editions) after the demise of Pulpless. Xone of Contention is the book where Anthony claimed that he had a novel published with a title starting with every letter of the English alphabet.
The green house effect is about to destroy Xanth, the result of an epic battle between the demons X(an)th and E(a/r)th. Our heroes must travel to ancient Xanth to identify the source of the magic... errr effect... errr something that makes the trees want to die. It makes sense when you read it. :) This is one of those Xanth novels with the demons that I liked again. Perhaps they're growing on me after my initial negative impression in the Source of Magic.
I read the Xlibris hardcover. The book was originally finished 26 June 1982, almost two months after On a Pale Horse depending on how you time the first drafts versus the final typed drafts. The author's note is dated June 1999.
This is pure science fiction, which Anthony tends to excel at. The story and characters are gripping, but the situation is rough and graphic, modeled after some of the traumatic stories of Hatian immigrants to the United States. Though analogies abound, it provides an interesting glimpse into what a solar system full of human colonists might look like. This is a switch from his Cluster series, which explores what an interstellar society would look like with more realistic space travel. Now we have a vision of a solar society and what it might look like, though similar to Xanth, it is also a commentary on existing society. I find interstellar society to be more realistic than an intergalactic society. This shows what is typical of Anthony's style and hopefulness for greater sexual openness (at least in entertainment print).
This series seems to be, or at least towards, the beginning of his break from standard publishing, and moving towards greater authorial freedom. The republication in 1999 shows the post-Pulpless period as he moved toward greating publishing freedom in the realm of self-publishing. Xlibris follows Tathom and Mundania Press in publishing investments from Anthony, and begins looking at the period after Tor.
I read the 1999 Xlibris hardcover. The author's note is dated June 1999 as was its predecessor's, Refugee. Mercenary's first draft was finished 21 January 1983, written in pencil after the final(?) draft completion of Dragon on a Pedestal. The final draft was finished on 22 July 1983. This is volume 2 in the Bio of a Space Tyrant series, the sequel to Refugee. The final draft was finished after Bearing an Hour Glass.
Spoilers to follow.
This book has some beautiful and imaginative scenes on and around Jupiter, and some epic spaces battles and politics. Hope and his family begin to integrate with Jupiter culture, having successfully immigrated. He joins the navy, as does his sister, and rising through the ranks they begin to plot revenge against the pirates, empowered to do so by the Jupiter fleet.
I read the Xlibris hard cover edition, with author's note dated June 1999 (like the preceeding) and the print date from Xlibris. Anthony counts Politician as his fiftieth published book. This is volume 3 in the Bio of a Space Tyrant series, the sequel to Mercenary. The final submission draft was typed after Wielding a Red Sword, as indicated in the Wielding a Red Sword author's note. It was written in pencil from 3 November 1983 to 20 January 1984, the last he did so before moving away from his Olympia manual typewriter to a Dec Rainbow workstation running CP/M. The following drafts were started 14 April 1984, finished at the end of May.
Spoilers to follow.
Having immigrated to Jupiter, Hope becomes popular and begins as local governor, catching the political eye of a rival who is running for president and wants Hope out of the way. As Hope rises in power, he also becomes the target of assassinations, political intrigue with Saturn, and a certain rival in the press who becomes a friend.
I read the 1999(?) Xlibris hardcover. The was text finished 27 December 1984, written after Golem in the Gears. The author's note is dated July 1999, a month after the previous three novels in the series as printed by Xlibris. This is volume 4 in the Bio of a Space Tyrant series, the sequel to Politician.
Spoilers to follow.
In some ways, Executive is the pinnacle of the ideas behind the space tyrant. In the previous three novels was explored piracy, militancy, and political ambition. Between revenge against the pirates that brutalized his family in Refugee, and his taking control of not only Jupiter, but the rest of the solar system, Executive brings forward some of the political and environmental ideas that motivated Anthony to write the series in the first place. If you had absolute power to fix societal problems, what would you change and how? What would that look like from the analogy of the U.S. constitutional convention? Can absolute emperial power be resisted, corruption avoided, and ultimately be restored to its original constitutional frame? (Probably not.)
I read the 1999/2000 Xlibris hardcover. The book was started 2 September 1985, after finishing Out of Phaze, and finished 24 November 1985. This is the fifth volume in the Bio of a Space Tyrant series, the sequel to Executive.
Spoilers to follow.
Statesman follows the rest of Hope's life, exiled and deposed in the best way that could be done. Finally, we get to look at what is to come from solar exploration, beginning to look out to the stars. Is there hints of the other, unspoken parts of the Cluster framework here? (I may speculate too far.) Here is Hope's madness and concluding fancies pushed into reality.
This is the conclusion to the series, or so it was at the time it was written in the 1980s, setting a ground work to see what the experience might have looked like from the eyes of Hope's sister, but especially what the next steps after Hope would be. However, that is another story. The final book is The Iron Maiden.
I read the Tor March 2000 first edition hardcover, with jacket art by Tristan Elwell. It is astonishing how long this novel took to get published. It must have been one of the ones in Anthony's law suit with Tor. The author's note is from before the 1997 shut down of HIPIERS.
The cover art nails it. It's a scene from the book, captures the two main characters well, and also gives a sense of what the whole book is like. This story is witty, insightful, funny, saucy, and a science fantasy, romantic adventure.
Herb, the main character, is a walking, humanoid plant, young and looking for a good time with women. Though he's is in love with Lilly, something isn't working for him, so he leaves his planet for an extended bachelor party to figure it out.
Spring is the daughter of a scientist, who has imbedded his scientific secrets in his daughter. The only way to get them out is a romantic, sexual encounter.
Zygote is the evil wizard antagonist of the story. Professor Gabriel, Spring's father, is trying to protect his secrets from him.
Sometimes it's the simple stories that are so good.
I read the Tor May 2000 first edition hardcover, with jacket art by Tristan Elwell.
It's not quite clear when this novel was completed. For certain, inbetween 1989 and October of 1999 (when his author's note is dated). As Anthony's memoir indicates, the collaborative novels last sold to Tor were done so in groupings, and this one was essentially after Dream a Little Dream, though the publishing order is not the same as the writing and sell order.
Gutbucket refers to a guitar, and this novel is a 1960s style love story. It is about the love of the blues. It is about finding love in unexpected places, especially when that place is an alternate fantasy reality.
It starts in answering what might be a question: what happened if the civil war was won by the South?
It goes farther from there, but likely not the way one might think. The GutBucket is magic, and is the core talisman of the story. Progress is a dynamic character that reminds me of a similar character in Stephen King's The Stand. I couldn't help but imagine Morgan Freeman as Progress. If this ever gets made into a movie, Freeman has to be the actor. I really enjoyed this book.
Chthon was finished in June 1965, sold 27 June 1966, and nominated for a Hugo and Nebula in 1967. I read the Xlibris hardcover, published in 2000. This is the fifth edition, has an author's note explaining some of the difficult parts of the novel, and its difficult publishing history. It also appears that my copy is an early print edition of the novel with a ton of errors, later corrected (according to the author in private correspondence with me). I got the Amazon ebook edition from Open Road Media to identify the corrections (and perhaps later changes) for reference.
Chthon is a prison story about a man condemned for falling in love with a woman that finds
pleasure in torture. There's more to the story of course as her existence threatens the galaxy.
It is inspired by the song Remember Me
(Frankie Laine), though Anthony remembers it as
The Girl in the Wood
(which it seems to have been commonly called). In the author's note to
Geis of the Gargoyle he comments about this discovery.
I read the 2000 Xlibris hardcover, which I believe is the last hardcover Anthony paid for. He seemed to switch to paperback after that. If the hints from his newsletters are indication, the Xlibris editions didn't sell well, and the hardcover cost wasn't worth it, even to be available. I don't know about Chthon or Phthor, but I believe the original printing of the Bio of a Space Tyrant series was in paperback, so this gave a chance to have it in hardcover. This is the sequel to Chthon, written to promote a new Chthon edition.
Aton's son is tempted and seduced by the Minionette with the existence of the universe hanging in the balance because of it. This looks back at more history of the species of the Minionette, and explores life in the catacombs that was Aton's prison.
An editor of Anthony's, Charles Platt, wrote two authorized sequels to Phthor: Plasm and Soma.
I read the Tor October 2000 first edition hard cover with jacket art by Darrell K. Sweet. The author's note was finished 29 November 1998. It's not clear when the final submission draft was completed. This is Xanth #24. Its sequel is Swell Foop.
This reminds me of a more severe version of Golem in the Gears, where the Dastard is like what an evil Grundy might be. I wonder if this totally messes up the Xanth timeline, such as that recorded in Question Quest. I also wonder how that affects the one published on Anthony's website, presumably an extension and continual update of the one Question Quest is based on (which is labeled as an abridged version).
With the history of Xanth at stake, two individuals with completely separate lives and timelines struggle with understanding their place as individuals in a larger magic macrocosm.
I read the Tor April 2001 first edition, with jacket art by Daniel Horne. Yes, the original trilogy was published by Ace/Putnam. I'm not aware if Tor ever published the older novels. The manuscript was finished in May 1999. The notes aren't clear when it says it started the novel in Dismember what that meant. It actually means December 1998. The February 1999 HiPiers newsletter is the winner here, though curious that the December 1998 newsletter says no to writing it. It also lets on that How Precious Was That While was already written, so perhaps DoOon Mode was written after it. It's hard to tell: once the big novel writing sprint of every 2-3 months settled down, he seemed to be more interested in magazines, books, and movies as respite between writing books, as well as a return to story writing that has untold number of stories in obscure magazines and collections that never will be collected as they were in the printed Anthonology and Alien Plot.
This brings the Mode series to its conclusion, and a fitting, expected conclusion it is,
with both a twist, and a recognition of some of the issues presented from the beginning. Perhaps
expected
is not the right word to use, considering the twist(s), but by the time you get
to the end, it is expected and it is fitting, though perhaps controversial to some.
DoOon Mode returns to the animal androids, introduces a dragon version, and begins slowly to tie up the lose ends of the trilogy. The ultimate question of course is whether Colene will get her man, and be able to truly be happy.
I read the Tor July 2001 first edition hardcover with jacket art by Darrell K. Sweet. The illustrator is the same for Bio of an Ogre (referenced in the book as BiOgre) and the relationship between the art shows. How Precious Was That While was written sometime after Quest For The Fallen Star was completed, (the last of the five collaborations that was published by Tor, using Xanth to push them through to publication. It wasn't until J. R. Rain that he did new collaborations).
This is a memoir. It is stand alone, does have some clarifications to BiOgre, and does not run chronologically as BiOgre more or less did. It is both a sequel and a stand alone book that references BiOgre for more detail. BiOgre goes to the author's age of fifty. How Precious Was That While has a reprise chapter of the first book, and then reflects on different periods to age sixty, plus a bit, presumably added after the extended time it took to get published.
Alas, publishers don't seem to be keen on his autobiographies, and it is with difficulty that he is able to publish them. Who knows if there will be further follow ups. As he indicated in the first author's note of any substance in On a Pale Horse, they are a kind of sequel to BiOgre, and now How Precious Was that While. His newsletters should probably be included in that.
He is much more open with this memoir than the first, nor does he hold back in mentioning by name the swine (as he nicknamed them in BiOgre) he encounters. Some names are still kept out for safety or privacy. The advice and experience to new authors that is found in BiOgre is updated and elaborated on in detail in How Precious Was That While. It also marks the point where he goes from more meaningful fiction in his 40s and 50s to writing for himself beyond his 60s.
The move to GNU/Linux as an operating system (OS) is mentioned, though some personal correspondance indicates that he's had similar issues as with other OSes. Unfortunately, GNU and Unix were written with programmers in mind, even though some of the first commercial uses of Unix was for printing and typography. I remember attending ConDuit in Salt Lake City, long before the ComiCon craze came (and with what became FanX washed out ConDuit in the overlapping year or two), and I attended the writer's seminars with my early Toshiba laptops running Red Hat Linux and Slackware and they thought I was crazy. It was fun watching Anthony do the same, though I suppose that came later than this memoir.
My own journey with word processing also began on the Atari 8-bit with Atari Writer, switching from my Royal manual typewriters (I still have one), though I've always preferred the Qwerty keyboard layout, not being convinced that Dvorak is actually faster or easier. I switched to an IBM Portable 5155 with WordPerfect 4.2 and DOS 3.3 after that, and used WordPerfect until its Linux native version with version 8. I switched to AbiWord and StarOffice 3 after that, but have always found Troff and TeX to be equally useful.
I read the Tor October 2001 first edition hardcover with jacket art by Darrell K. Sweet. The manuscript was finished in November 1999. This is Xanth #25. It's sequel is Up in a Heaval.
Here we go again with the demons. The demon E(a/r)th is missing. Some thing with another Demon (with a capital D!) is up. Without the demon E(a/r)th, gravity will dissipate. Yet this Demon is unknown, and so part of that is the mystery of the story. The Swell Foop, naturally a pun on Shakespeare's fell swoop, instrument must be found. A whole bunch of characters are involved. That's really why we love Xanth: the characters. We also like the silliness, the puns, the nonsense, the inuendo, and anything else that makes fun of mundane (Mundania!) existence and all its inanity.
Some spoilers, perhaps, may follow.
Swell Foop mentions two things of interest: the nemesis star and Pluto's demotion as a planet. I read Asimov's Nemesis at the time, and loved it. It spoke of a brown dwarf star, if star is the right word for it, that was beyond or hidden by the kuiper belt, and which had sufficient gravity that in its swinging orbit might rip apart the planets from their orbits, or so goes my fuzzy memory of the book. The Nemesis star was supposed to explain missing mass calculated in the solar system. It then became known as Planet X, though this became Planet Nine after Pluto's demotion, with a smaller amount of mass calculated. This obsession with calculating the solar mass has led to finding Neptune, Uranus, and Pluto, though the latter is now categorized more accurately as a kuiper belt object (or set of objects, considering its moons), essentially a big comet (though comet has other implications). I agree with Tyson that because of its being out of the eliptical plane, and its make up and location (among other things), that it didn't develop with the rest of the planets. Pluto and its moons are not planets. Once Nemesis was disproven, and now Planet Nine is beginning to look suspicious, I suspect that there is no more planets, gas giants, proto-stars, brown dwarfs, or other big or large set of small objects that are still out there in the solar system as missing mass. As to dark matter, who knows. It's funny that Nemesis and Pluto are made fun of here, regardless of the science or one's opinions about it.
I read the Xlibris three volume compendium, the third of which includes story extras, the unfinished draft of book 6, as well as other work related to the series. To this point, all Xlibris editions, starting with Volk(?) after its initial publisher, Pulpless, went under was published in hardcover. With Kiai! the less expensive option of trade paperback was used. I personally prefer the hardcovers, but I get the impression he wasn't making much money off the Xlibris editions, though perhaps he chose those editions that had not seen hardcover editions in the US to start with. I suspect the former is the more likely case, and vaguely remember he said something to this effect, perhaps in one of the newsleters.
Written in 1972, Kiai! was the second novel written with Fuentes after Dead Morn, and was finished after Triple Detente. Apparently, it didn't take off with the publishers until the TV series Kung Fu aired with David Carradine, at which point it was suddenly popular. Kiai! is about Jason Striker sensei, a Judoka who joins an underground tournament, and meets an Aikido sensei that he befriends. This reminded me of the movie Blood Sport.
Not quite sure when this was written, perhaps 1972 crossing into 1973? It appears to be after Triple Detente. Like Kiai!, it wasn't published until 1974.
This is where the plot starts to get interesting and a bit more bloody. The mistress is the new antagonist who uses drugs to capitivate her victims. It's basically a drug ring and Striker wants to bring it down. Meanwhile, his dojo and students become imperiled.
Likely written in 1973, probably right after Mistress of Death.
Bamboo Bloodbath introduces a strange antagonist, the Hyena, and Striker gets involved to take down this weird, nefarious character after Judoka in his dojo are injured. This relies to a degree on Fuentes' experience in Cuba.
Written in 1974-75, probably right after Bamboo Bloodbath.
Ninja's revenge revisits the old Aikido master of the first novel, and a mysterious Ninja legend of a ghost from the past, and the polution of a local village.
This is the final installment, written in 1975, probably finished after the original But What of Earth? and Ninja's Revenge.
A curse, a black castle, and a Judoka to save the day.
This is the unfinished sixth installment. It can only be found in the Xlibris edition, and gives the wrap up to the series, even if only in the author's summaries for what they had planned to write.
Mute was originally written in 1979. It was restored in early 2001, with basic revisions. I read the Xlibris trade paperback. I couldn't find it on Xlibris and had to contact the author to get a copy from them, which he noted in one of his newsletters. Yeah, that was me. Thank you, Piers!
This is one of Anthony's epic novels, a mixed science fiction and fantasy, like many of his after Split Infinity. A mute mutant discovers his memory is wiped and gets caught up in an interstellar conflict. I never read the abridged version published by Avon, but I'm not sure how it could have been better.
In a newsletter, Anthony had queried about whether there was interest in a sequel Moot, which I responded in the affirmative, but he apparently lost his notes on it, and ultimately decided against the sequel. Bummer.
I read the Xlibris trade paperback. The author's note was finished March 2000.
The Iron Maiden retells the story of Bio of a Space Tyrant from the perspective of Hope's sister. It both stands alone as a novel and reexplores the original series. It felt like I was rereading the original series, enjoying revisiting this science fiction world of Anthony's analogies. Some things were noticeable additions, and was nice to see what happened from Spirit's perspective, and in a way a good recap and rememberance. It also brings the story just a bit further beyond the original series, giving hints I suspect of Anthony's original plans for continuing the series. (See the Statesman author's note.) I wonder where this series might have gone, and how it might overlap with But What of Earth? and Cluster.
A comparison of scenes between the original series and this book suggest very subtle distinctions in how the scenes are described and expressed where they are overlayed between the two character's perspectives. Ultimately, I suspect that reading the original series will give the full impact, and The Iron Maiden is a great way to fill in the gaps as well as revisit, whether immediately after, interspersed, or years later as it was for me. It also could just be a smaller, less involved way of enjoying the story.
Sold October 1967. Finished January 1968(?). I read the Xlibris 2002 softcover, which has a 2002 copyright, so may have had some small revisions to the text.
Geoffrey Font Jr. is convincted of a crime, and sentenced to a decade with the ring, a good behavior enforcer that is implanted. However, when Jeff must defend himself and others, his ultra-conscience keeps him from doing the right thing because it is a bad thing. This is a fun, suspenseful science fiction mystery. It's the first of the books I read (and that was written) with Margroff, and remains my favorite of them.
Sold 1969, published 1970. I read the Xlibris 2002 softcover, which has a 2002 copyright, so may have had some small revisions to the text. Originally titled The Rumpleskin Brat, The E. S. P. Worm was written after Macroscope.
A difficult, alien child, Qumax runs away from his home planet. Harold Prodkins has been selected to represent Earth and find the worm-like creature and return him to his parents and planet before his father decides to destory Earth. This is a difficult task considering Qumax is able to percieve Harold's thoughts, always keeping him one step ahead. This is both a funny adventure story as well as some serious and thoughtful characterization and plot.
I read the Tor October 2002 first edition hard cover with jacket illustration by Darrell K. Sweet. The manuscript was finished November 2000. This is Xanth #26. The sequel is Cube Route.
The galleys were handled in the summer of 2001. He tried to write the manuscript on a new GNU/Linux system, but it didn't make it until most of the first draft was written. He tried starting out with the Linux version of WordPerfect (from memory, there was only one native version, version 8), but it didn't work out for this novel. It turns out, the use of the Linux version of WordPerfect was done with early beginnings and notes of Sopaths, and it was clear by the time of Up in a Heaval that WordPerfect wasn't going to work for him.
As a sarcastic summary, a snail-mail package from Mundania gets forwarded to the demon Jupiter, who takes offense. It's like a Usenet flame war breaks out, started by Jupiter who tries to destroy the environment of another demon, i.e. X(a/n)th. So Xanth inhabitants are martialed to solve the problem and save Xanth. It's like a plot in need of characters for the sake of amusement, and this one was amusing.
I read the Tor October 2003 first edition hard cover with jacket illustration by Darrell K. Sweet. The manuscript was finished November 2001. This is the first complete Xanth written on GNU/Linux, but it seems somewhere along the line he switched from WordPerfect to StarOffice. I remember those days. I think this was the Sun version of StarOffice, version 5, not the earlier Motif based version 3. Tortoise Reform was the first novel written on the GNU/Linux system, not this one.
This is the 27th Xanth novel, or the trilogy cubed, completing the trilogy of trilogies. Puns abound as expected for Xanth. The sequel is Currant Events.
This is a story of finding love and acceptance as well as finding our inner beauty so that it is visible. We've had this theme before, but there's certainly differences of characters, as well as a counter Xanth where everything is opposite.
Macroscope was originally finished August 1968. I read the Mundania Press, November 2003 edition with cover art by Ariana Overton. Macroscope was written after Omnivore. BiOgre lists this as the 8th written novel, while the author's note to With a Tangled Skein lists it as the 9th. Though With a Tangled Skein is noted as novel 51, thus outside the purview of BiOgre, I suspect the latter's count is considered the more current and thus a correction to the count in Skein, so it is his eighth written novel, and fifth published. At one point, Anthony noted that his published book count order might be off-by-one. The author's note is 22 October 2003, and the print list is for November 2003.
Another printing era begins with Mundania Press, which in a way takes over from Tafford, but also from Xlibris, which Anthony stopped using, other than for Alfred, which came later and was the last placed with them.
This is the kind of writing I like: speculative science fiction (Anthony calls it Science Fantasy), with good hard science behind it, an awareness of human foibles, ideas, prejudices, and intellectual investment. It's also fascinating seeing Anthony's vision of Neptune before some of the data we have now on it was available, with imagery similar to that of Jupiter's with the Bio of a Space Tyrant series.
Sadly, Anthony doesn't write much science fiction these days, fantasy being easier and more saleable for him, which is understandable. Asimov too would complain when asked for more books of science fiction when he found other fiction and especially non-fiction easier and quicker to write.
I read the Mundania Press July 2004 second edition hardcover, with jacket art by Stacey L. King. Written April-August 1998. This is the beginning of the ChroMagic series. The sequel is Key to Chroma.
This is a really big book, bigger than even the Geoddesy novels. It took a long time to finish. Each book in the trilogy is 10 chapters long, and each chapter is a novella in its own right, often following a distinct story line, but fitting the larger narrative. Key to Havoc caught my interest for one basic reason: the tension between love and the political situation of Charm is coupled with the little guy having access to fulfilling his dreams. That's really what this story is about. It's full of sex, violence (there was a dungeon torture scene that was rougher than my taste), and intrigue. As Anthony calls it, hard hitting fantasy.
I read the Mundania Press November 2003 hardcover, with jacket art by Stacey L. King. Written August-December 2000, during and after Up In a Heaval. Key to Chroma is the last novel and work of the millenium, though Anthony is not in agreement that 2001 begins the next. Either way, this means I've read every published book of Anthony's from the 20th century. Now if he'd publish the rest of his published short works that have not been collected into an Anthony book (as opposed to magazine or collection), then I could say I've ready everything of his that's been published in the 20th century, but alas this is not so. Plus, his unpublished (e.g. the original Athonology, Prostho Minus) short works, and his novel Unstilled World, have never seen the light of day.
Havoc's destiny is now a question. Who is he? Where did he come from? A series of quests for him and his companions occupy his time as he begins to investigate his new reality. What they discover leads to a dramatic discovery, setting the stage for the final book of the trilogy. I had a hard time getting into this one, but it turned out to be very interesting as I got into the second half of the novel.
As Key to Chroma clearly starts off, the ChroMagic series is full of sex. As Anthony states elsewhere, sex is to ChroMagic as puns are to Xanth. I can't say this is my favorite Anthony. The sequel is Key to Destiny.
I read the Mundania Press June 2004 first hardcover edition. The August 2002 newsletter indicates that the first draft was almost finished (in July 2002). My guess is that the submission draft was finished that Fall, maybe September or October. The author's note is dated 17 March 2004, which was for the gallies, a final read through before it went to press.
Key to Destiny follows the glamors, their search for the icons, and the use of the loom to discover its purpose, and to finally use and explore that purpose.
The tension in the previous books of whether Havoc will get to be with the love of his life as her husband is resolved, and their future begins to express itself in the sudden adoption of three problem children. They are unique in being able to perform magic in the non-magic zone of the imperial city. Meanwhile, more glamour icons are identified, and need to be found, as the icon tapestry is being woven, and new things are revealed along the way as the sister planet, Counter Charm, is exposed in its involvement with the changelings.
This series is a kind of pornography, wrapped in plot and characters. I found that reading this series off and on, one chapter at a time, was the easiest way to digest the constant sex. Read a chapter, put it down, read something else, then come back to it for a chapter when the mood struck, or when I started to worry I might lose track of the story line. This made the series not only more palatable, but more enjoyable. Anthony always delivers in the end, and the characters develop their own personalities and motivations, but if you don't like the sex you'll hate the series. I found it to be a bit much at times with this trilogy, and the magic concept was not as enticing to me as some of his other work. I perceive parallels with the Apprentice Adept series, which I think I prefer to ChroMagic. However, the science fiction part of the background of the series caught my interest. In the end, the novels were just too big, a bit too gratuitous without strong justification in the plot (it's more of the atmosphere and culture of the books, which Anthony suggests he wants his readers to get lost in), and not quite enough satisfaction with the reveal at the end.
I read the Tor October 2004 first edition hard cover with jacket art by Darrell K. Sweet. The submission draft was finished in November 2002. In the author's note, he mentions using a MoNsTeR computer with GNU/Linux, and migrating to Oracle's (Apache's?) OpenOffice. I suspect this might refer to his getting involved with system76, and his introduction to Ubuntu and Fedora.
There's a dragon world in Ida's moons, and the dragons are running rampant across Xanth. It seems that the Currant, a rare berry, is believed by Clio to hold an answer. There's always folks along the way that make a Xanth story so interesting. Otherwise, how could we stand the puns, (and this one has a lot). This is Xanth #28. The sequel is Pet Peeve.
I read the Tor October 2005 first edition hard cover with jacket art by Darrell K. Sweet. The submission draft was finished in October 2003, after finishing The Magic Fart. Alfred was finished after, though started before. This is Xanth #29. The sequel is Stork Naked.
Xanth needs a Grundy-like character every so often, and the Peeve fills this need. The bird is hilarious. I've owned parrots, including a cockatoo, and this made me smile thinking of what a magic bird might be like in attitude. It gets even better when the goblin assigned by the Good Magician to find the bird a home is the exact opposite: a polite goblin with a very rude problem.
This book was set up to be hilarious in ways that out does some of the previous books. Not all Xanth is comedy. Some of it is serious, and even the puns are carefully tempered artifacts of the landscape, not the story itself. This is not one of those, but at the same time every Xanth has characters and theme that underly the stories. It's the ones with which we identify that make our Xanth favorites. This is one of mine.
I read the Tor October 2006 first edition hard cover with jacket art by Darrell K. Sweet. The submission draft was finished in October (maybe November?) 2004. This is Xanth #30. The sequel is Air Apparent.
Xanth misfits are so misfit that they are no longer misfits but the norm. However, two centaur misfits, those rejected by the centaur community, have their baby from the Stork Works for the first time in Xanth history, only to have their baby kidknapped. The Good Magician doesn't seem to be helping though, and all the misfits of Xanth seem to band together to find out what happened, and to get their baby back. Meanwhile, an alternate frame of Xanths is exposed. No, not Ida's moons, or the reverse Xanth. There are parallel universes of Xanths. Lovely: there's going to be even more puns.
Written from December 2004 to June or July 2005. I have the Mundania Press hardcover first edition, April 2007, cover art by SkyeWolf. The ChroMagic sequel and final novel is Key to Survival.
Earth has come back to claim Charm. They're bent on domination. I had assumed it was the Chroma promiscuous society, enabled by technologically efficient birth control, and engaged by changelings that led to the constant sex. Like with Xanth and puns, part of the magic of Charm was a sexually active environment where influenced by magic or the changelings. However, from the first page introducing the humans from Earth in chapter 2, they're engaging in the same kind of sex. Yes, they're around Charm, but the implication is this is normal behavior. It reminds me of the tail in the Bio of a Space Tyrant series, but with the blatant sexuality of ChroMagic. Of course, there is a justification in the plot for this as I read, but I won't say more. It threw me at first.
In the first decade of the new millenium, Anthony's blatant sexuality in his writing continues to increase. This novel begins to reach to the level of Pornucopia, (I didn't think anything could get that saturated). It's one thing to make a point in a short story or novella, such as with In The Barn, look at sexual situations and recognize their problematic nature and their reality as in Firefly, but this is porn for its own sake. I suppose that's fine, but as the fourth of five 400 page novels, it's a hard slog. This novel took forever to read because of it, even though the story itself was as good as any of Anthony's. Constant sex just doesn't carry page over page of such a large novel or series. The one good thing about this novel was the reduction of the novella size chapters to novellete and shory story sized chapters with more of them. It's an improvement to the series.
I read the Mundania Press, September 2007 first edition paperback, with cover art by SkyeWolf Images. This appears to have been finished August or September 2001, but the author's note is October 2004. Not sure of the disparity in time frame there, but likely publishing issues.
Billed as a children's story, I found this slower paced, with more nuanced thinking and language than I would expect of a child. This is a teen's story, I think, more than a ten year old's. It is about befriending and saving animals, dealing with depression, and finding an alternate reality to escape to, at least at first. I found the story well considered, clearly written by a parent with daughters, and insightful and sensitive as I've come to expect of Anthony's more serious work.
I read the Phaze 2007 paperback with cover art by Debi Lewis. Phaze was an imprint of Mundania Press. The short story collection was written as a cohesive whole, intended for the volume, which may be unique for Anthony, as all his previous short story collections have stories that were targeted for science fiction publishers (mainly). This volume was first published with Venus press. The April 2006 newsletter indicated this was a trial, by Venus' invitation, with Anthony doing the promotion. Venus went out of business and Anthony had to go to the Mundania imprint Phaze. Phaze published this as Relationships I because by that point, Anthony had already written Relationships II, also published by Venus. After Phaze, when Mundania Press went out of business, was Dreaming Big Publications, where others of this series are published. Relationships was finished in early 2004 before starting Under a Velvet Cloak and towards the conclusion or after Alfred.
This is a collection of stories with the theme being relationships. In theory, these are not
all erotica, but if you know Anthony, you know where his brain goes, so really, these are erotica.
He's very imaginative, so these actually weren't as bad as I thought, and I've very much enjoyed
the series. Hot Game
was completely unrealistic (for it to happen), but was fascinating for
this Utah country boy.
I have the Xlibris 2007 softcover edition, the final book of Anthony's that I'm aware of that was placed with Xlibris. This is the fictionalized story of Piers' father, Alfred Jacob, from the perspective of the four women in his life, the third of which was his wife, Piers' father. It is in the form of five novellas and an author's note. The data for these stories is from Alfred's journal and accompanying records as later confirmed in the author's note (as well as newsletters from the time).
The first story is about Alfred's first, or at least significant, crush and one of the last. The story telling is somewhat slow, but interesting at times. The second is about what is Alfred's idealized love of his life whom forever flavored his future relationships. The third is about meeting his spouse, getting married, losing their virginity, their rocky relationship, and the birth of Piers and his other siblings. It is told from Norma's not Alfred's perspective. Alfred volunteered as a Quaker in Spain during the second world war, then later started the Quaker Hilltop Farm community. The fourth story is of Genevieve whom Alfred has an affair with as his marriage with Norma disolves. Finally, is a return to his first crush. As his life comes to a close there starts to be a final woman, but his health devolves and that relationship never transpires.
I read the Tor October 2007 first edition hard cover with jacket art by Darrell K. Sweet. The submission draft was finished in October 2005. This is Xanth #31. The sequel is Two to the Fifth.
A soul napping? A murder mystery? A new husband is taken just as a marriage starts. The Good Magician Humphrey can't help: his book of knowledge is completely scrambled. Did I mention that the husband is Hugo, the Good Magician's son? Our heroine is blind, and some unlikely characters are along for the ride. Whose ride? Hugo's blind wife, who has to find Hugo. This is a typical Xanth, and it always ends well. Enter our antagonist: the Random Factor.
I read the Phaze March 2008 paperback with cover art by Debi Lewis. The cover is slightly modified from the first, essentially a blow up of the first with a Rook key lock at the bottom. This is a much larger volume than the first, and likely the biggest of the series.
I began buying this series for a friend, but when the Phaze editions went out of print, as its parent press, Mundania folded, I found that the editions being sold at enormous prices. Price gouging is a phenomena of free markets that make me wonder about the ethical failings of such a social system. No, I'm not selling my copies, even if I could actually extort that amount. Hopefully, Anthony can get these into Dreaming Big Publications, so they're available to the public again.
Relationship volumes are a collection of short stories and novelettes of erotica with the theme
being relationships. The stories for II, like I, were written for the volume and not published
elsewhere. There's a kind of sequel to the Hot Game
story found in the first volume here.
The first draft was started in December 2006 or January 2007, and finished May 2007. The final draft was finished in June 2007. I am currently reading this.
So far, this is the standard erotic material that we've come to expect from ChroMagic.
Now it extends beyond Earth to the galaxy as the final battle with the machines will begin. In an
earlier comment, as I started the book, I asked the question, tongue in cheek, Are the machines
going to start having sex too, or is that a biological thing only?
I'm having flash backs to
TNG's fully functional
Data. Not only do they, but it gets into interspecies sex on an
inter-galactic level. Anthony's erotic bounds have no limits it seems, but as usual, somehow
there's character, plot, and thematic development along the way. ChroMagic is a hard slog
though. Worse than Xanth's puns, the sex overwhelms the story for me so requires breaks inbetween.
It will probably be a few months more before I finish Key to Survival, the final book of
the ChroMagic series.
I read the Tor October 2008 first edition hard cover with jacket art by Darrell K. Sweet. The submission draft was finished in September 2006. Two to the Fifth was finished after Under a Velvet Cloak, and before Relationships II. This is Xanth #32. The sequel is Jumper Cable.
A robot who wants to be a playwright? He goes to ask the Good Magician Humphrey how this can be done, only to be told he has to save Xanth. Why do we always have to save Xanth? Can a merry band of actors, a wannabe playwright, and three powerful child twins save Xanth from destruction? Will a rediculous bard fall in love? This is typical Xanth. Keep an eye on those twins. There's later fun novels with them.
I read the Phaze January 2009 paperback with cover art by Debi Lewis. The cover is slightly modified from the first, essentially a blow up (and more than the second) with a light bulb at the bottom. I was shocked when I went to buy this for a friend and learned that, with Mundane Press and Phaze being out of business, and thus the series out of print, that it was going on Amazon for nearly $900. I understand that Dreaming Big Publications will be taking on the older series, but as of yet it is not available.
This is a collection of short stories and novelettes of erotica with the theme being relationships. They were written for the volume and not published elsewhere. Par for the course from the other volumes, and a bit of naughty entertainment along the way.
The Alternity realm is not a new approach for Anthony, but is unique to this volume. We saw this approach in Killobyte, among other places. It makes me wonder if it inspired the approach taken in Eroma.
I read the Tor October 2009 first edition hard cover with jacket art by Darrell K. Sweet. The submission draft was finished in November 2007. This is Xanth #33. Its sequel is Knot Gneiss.
Castle Roogna was a favorite Xanth. It may be because it was the end of the original trilogy, and certainly better than the second novel which I didn't exactly like. (Perhaps I should reread it and see if it has the same affect on me the second time.) It's also because I love the theme: a youngster must come of age quickly, but for (mostly, i.e. assuming he can survive it) harmless reasons. This begins to stretch the boundaries of the adult conspiracy, gives an introduction to Castle Roogna and its zombies, has an epic battle, and gives the most interesting anthropomorphization of a spider. This seems to be one of Anthony's specialities (giving perspective from non-adults and non-humans).
I've probably done a better job describing that novel here than I did in the Castle Roogna entry, but this is its proper sequel, and Jumper is a spider of that lineage. It's also, really, a kind of sequel to the Source of Magic, which I think Anthony has vindicated in my mind through later Xanth novels.
This time Pluto is an involved demon who has been demoted. Sorry Anthony, an oort cloud object is not a planet. Pluto is not in the planetary orbital plane. Perhaps it is, in a way, a tiny planet, and that term might have a more colloquial definition in the public mind. If Pluto fell more closely to the sun (what would that mean with its moons?), it would begin to desintegrate like any other comet. In actuality, it does. Some suggest it is a unique kind of object, not a planet or comet. Regardless, Anthony expresses well the general perception in typical Xanth fascetious humor. Meanwhile, among this back ground, Jumper must recable the outernet to the internet, and the twins are back as sexy 19 year olds to torment him when he must temporarily become a male human.
Yeah, Xanth is silly, but there's something to be said for punnish humor that makes fun of day to day things in the real world.
I read the Tor May 2010 hardcover. The jacket cover seemed like a basic clip art, no real illustration, but nice enough. This is the fifth and final book in the Geodyssey series, published a decade after most of the book was written. It was finished between May and July 2008, after Jumper Cable. I have notes that this is before Air Apparent, after the book Orn was updated for its Mundania Press paperback edition. This was followed by the original Relationships submission to Venus Press, and the writing of Pandora Park. I no longer have the notes, or newsletter references, to when the original two-thirds was written. The book binding seems to be an improvement over past volumes (and Quest for the Fallen Star). Maybe there was an issue with those couple of years at Tor, but the binding glue would crack and the block sever with even careful reading, and consistently, in previous Geodyssey volumes. There are no maps in this volume. Climate of Change was finished without the help of his researcher.
There's a lot of history here that's fascinating to have visualized and explored, similar to previous volumes, but this seems more history thick. It is a worthy conclusion to the series, which I'm sad to see had to stop, like other series of Anthony's. All good things must come to and end; well, except Xanth.
I read the Tor October 2010 first edition hard cover with jacket art by Darrell K. Sweet. The submission draft was finished in October 2008. This is Xanth #34. The sequel is Well Tempered Clavicle.
Love stories and heart's desires is the theme of this book, though perhaps not original. The quest is to retrieve a knot of petrified reverse wood and nuetralize its effects. The need to save Xanth every novel gets old though. Sometimes the little-guy-finding-himself type story, like the original Spell for Chameleon, has its charms.
This series has some relation to the book But What of Earth?. The novel Tarot is a follow up to But What of Earth?, and ties it into the Cluster framework. But What of Earth? was written first, and sets up the idea of matter transmission, what Star Trek called beaming. (Star Trek subspace beaming was, with one TNG exception, not used and not really possible. There's also transwarp beaming suggested in the Star Trek reboot, i.e. Kelvin timeline, movie series.) Matter transmission was Anthony's way of maintaining integrity with known constraints of speed-of-light travel, which I like. The idea of But What of Earth? was that as people matter transmitted to other worlds, the deminishment of population led to a kind of mathematical deminishment of civilization. In a way, the Cluster series seems to extend this idea in terms of how far away a civilization is from Earth in how it devolves in civilization. It wasn't until Tarot was started that the connection between But What of Earth? and Cluster was made. The series was revised while it was digitized in 2008-2009 for its publication at E-reads (now part of Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.) in 2010. I have both the trade paperback prints and the ebooks.
I first read the Gollancz British hard cover edition of Cluster. I gave this as a gift to a friend, and now have the Open Road Integrated Media 2014 trade paperback and electronic editions. This was revised in December 2008 as he began digitizing the series.
Cluster moves the idea of matter transmission forward, and looks at the clustering of civilization out from the center, based on the distance from that center. The idea is that civilization degrades the farther away it gets from its center. Speed of light travel would limit this to a degree, but matter transmission makes it far easier, but the energy cost for transmission is significant, until something new is discovered. This seems to build on the idea in But What of Earth? where civilization density affects its progress, shown more drastically where matter transmission suddenly deminishes civilization density. With Cluster, matter transmission extends civilization density outward, thus having a similar effect.
Cluster starts with a barbarian on the periphery of the clusters who is recognized as having a mind transfer talent that changes the perspective of how civilizations communicate with each other, only to realize that a bigger problem exists with civilizations in the Andromeda galaxy who also have discovered this capability.
I read the Open Road Integrated Media 2014 paperback edition. This is a new revised edition, edited in January-February 2009. Finally, an explanation in the author's note about why Anthony prefers science fiction (or science fantasy) to Sci-Fi: he explains it as a hopeless sub-genre that has bug eyed monsters (BEMs) getting blasted by heros to save scantily clad, helpless women. I wonder where he gets that distinction of terminology from.
Spoilers to follow.
The discoveries of the Kirlian aura now are realized at a galatic level. This follows Flint's daughter. The idea of the aura allows a different kind of interspace travel, but the implications are less about civlization's progress.
But What of Earth? and its sequel Tarot have influence here, with echoes of Brother Paul and later interpretations of the Animation Tarot. The two books, Tarot and Chaining the Lady, can be started together, but switching to Chaining the Lady part way through Tarot (it is a bit long), is fitting, and Tarot could carry through to reading Kirlian Quest, the sequel to Chaining the Lady, and the conclusion of the trilogy (though not the series).
I read the Open Road Integrated Media 2014 paperback edition. This is a new, revised edition, edited in February 2009.
Kirlian Quest is the conclusion to the trilogy (not the series), introducing a threat to the two galaxies, the Milky Way and the Andromeda, and wraps up the mystery of the Ancients introduced in Cluster.
The Kirlian aura is brought to its pinnacle of use as the galactic clusters battle it out, only to identify yet another, new threat.
I read the Open Road Integrated Media 2014 paperback edition. This is a new, revised edition, edited in March 2009.
Thousandstar takes place in the Cluster universe. How a sequel is defined might be a bit different for me than for Anthony. To me a sequel is chronological, something that is intended to be read (or watched) after something else. So Thousandstar is a sequel to the Cluster trilogy, intended to be read after, but the plot doesn't have the grand scope of the trilogy.
A new, functioning site of the Ancients is discovered, and a race between the spheres will determine control of the site. This story is a bit less serious, and more fun (not a negative reflection on the preceding novels) than the trilogy. It explores the discoveries found in Cluster and looks at the origin of the Ancients more closely. This book wraps up some loose ends in the trilogy.
Finally, Anthony asks, at the end of the author's note, if his writing skill were to diminish as he aged whether he would know. Could he write science fiction as well as in the past? I would pose the question, does it matter? As long as he enjoys the process, and he can entertain readers, then the task is accomplished.
I read the Open Road Integrated Media 2014 paperback edition. This is a new, revised edition, edited in March (and possibly April?) 2009. It was sold in 1979, and begun 8 May 1980. A note indicates it was finished after 20 September 1980. As far as I can tell, it is the first novel of Anthony's that has an extended, i.e. biographical, author's note.
Viscous Circle is a deeply moving, and original, novel. It takes place in the Cluster universe. Anthony's strength at imaginging completely alien existence comes to the forefront in this novel, telling the tale of an entirely unique biosphere and the environmental impact that the Spheres, including Earth's sphere, has on it in their need to explore the sites of the Ancients.
I read the Phaze January 2011 first edition paperback with cover art by Niki Browning. The cover is more elaborate than the first trilogy's, with tastefully hidden but tantalizing nude couples. I understand that Dreaming Big Publications will be taking on the older series, but as of yet it is not available.
This is a collection of short stories and novelettes of erotica with the theme being relationships between average, normal, not movie-like, glamerous people. They were written for the volume and not published elsewhere. It was finished in July 2009.
One story stood out: Birthday Suit
. I read a story once of the same name, that I
remember as being by Anthony, and very much reminded me of this series' style. It was about a
woman who wore a birthday suit, an invisible, see through clothing that was not possible to tell
by touch or sight that she was wearing it, yet after sex, it was clear that the suit's membrane
acted like a condom. My memory is that I read it in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science
Fiction, but I was not able to find a record of it. I thought that this was a republication of
it, but apparently not.
The author finished this in August 2009. I have the Open Road Media 2011 edition paperback, but printed in 2017. I tried reading the Open Road Media ebook, but it is a botch in terms of typography. The paragraphs are not spaced, nor indented, so it is difficult to read. You'd think after carrying it for several years that they'd have fixed this. Eroma was written before Well-Tempered Clavicle.
Eroma is six stories that seemed slated for the Relationship series, but which had
unique story lines that (mostly) fit well together. The stories progress in order, though
independent, and can be read one at a time, but should be in order. There's parallels with the
Apprentice Adept trilogy and its game format, as well as stories that are similar to those
in Killobyte, and in fact Eroma is like a more lascivious
and erotic version of Killobyte, which was more action oriented,
though I suspect it is actually picked up from the Alternity stories of
Relationships III. Even Xanth has computer alternate reality frameworks.
Anthony seems to enjoy this approach. Eroma is about equal with the ChroMagic series
with sex, but doesn't match the brain damage of Pornucopia. The castle scene in
Killobyte seemed similar to Maiden Heaven
.
Eroma is the last work Anthony finished before his daughter Penny's death.
I read the Tor October 2011 first edition hard cover with jacket art by Darrell K. Sweet. The submission draft was finished in November 2009. It was finished after Eroma. This is Xanth #35. Its sequel is Luck of the Draw.
Picka Bones plays music with his bones, enough that a princess falls in love with him, but she has meat on her bones that disgusts him. There are others with issues. Naturally, they go to the magician of information to figure out what to do. Oh, it gets better: do they need to open Pundora's Box (yes, Pun-dora), or one might think of it as the Good Magician Humphrey opening Pundora's Box, to get the answer to their problems.
I read the Premier Digital Publishing (PDP) 2011 paperback edition. Oddly, neither the PDP, nor the Open Road Media Kindle, edition have an attribution for the cover artist, whom I thought did an excellent illustration for the book. This book was written in November 2005, after the Xanth novel Air Apparent. According to the December 2007 newsletter, a publisher was never found for the book. PDP is where this was published finally in 2011. PDP was bought by Open Road Media, so is now found there, but without the publish-on-demand option that PDP offered.
Of all of Anthony's children's books, this is my favorite, though Balook is a rough tie with it, especially because of the elegant illustrations of that book. The park in question has a magical forest that a boy from the States, and a girl from China, are able to meet in and interact, getting to know one another. Having had such experiences in real life (not literal magic, but certainly magical), this story brought back some fond memories.
I have the Fantastic Planet Press 2011 paperback edition, an imprint of Eraserhead Press. The cover art is a young nude woman with a dark, cloudy or ominous background, by Dan Henk. The author's note is dated June 10, 2010. It was finished after Well-Tempered Clavicle and before Luck of the Draw was finished.
As I finished Alfred, and began looking into the beginnings of Under a Velvet Cloak in Anthony's newsletters, which I've entirely read (the online newsletters that is), but look back to identify context in reading, I found that Piers' website is being redone in WordPress. As I was in the middle of one newsletter, and moving on to the next, pieces were disappearing. Some reappear on WordPress, some don't. So I went to the index of the old newsletters, and it too disappeared as I was using it. Someone should teach their webmaster or webmistress about HTTP redirect configurations so that old files still present are not lost, and files deliberately removed are marked as gone using HTTP return codes. It seems I am left to the author's notes at this point, my memory, and the internet archive to identify writing order.
The March 2010 newsletter indicates the restarting of the novel. The first chapter was written in 2001 on WordPerfect (8?) on Linux. The next four in February 2010, then disrupted by book reading and proof gallies. (Sometimes he does review blurbs, sometimes it's an aspirational author wanting an opinion, which sometimes leads to a collaboration.) The May newsletter indicates another chapter written, but he had to care for his wife who took a fall fracturing knee and elbow. He finished the first draft in May, according to the June newsletter, so the author's note date is from the completion of the novel, not a change in the gallies from a publisher, at least for the edition I have.
The story turned out to be better than expected. It is uncomfortable in places as it tackles brutality and sexual explotation by children of others (including children). Anthony imagines what it is like for children to be born with no conscience. Thankfully, he moves some of this off-screen, out of the direct line of the story. The real story is how survivors make a family and try to discover what has happened to them, which makes the story more bearable.
I read the Phaze August 2012 first edition paperback with cover art by Niki Browning. The cover follows on the vol 4. cover, but not as tantalizing. I understand that Dreaming Big Publications will be taking on the older series, but as of yet it is not available. This is the last volume I have from a Mundania Press imprint, now out of business.
This is a collection of short stories and novelettes of erotica with the theme being relationships. They were written for the volume, mostly before Esrever Doom, but completed afterwards in December 2011. Two stories caught my imagination. The first was a somewhat realistic imagining of what it was like for a human and a Neanderthal to mate. The second was a typical young person's fantasy of working late in a warehouse in the heat and uhm, well a mutual agreement to remove their clothes, which of course that leads where it is expected that will lead.
I read the Tor October 2012 first edition hard cover with jacket art by Judie Dillon. Darrell K. Sweet has been doing covers for Anthony across publishers for years, so this is an Anthony staple that has changed. The submission draft was finished in October 2010. This is Xanth #36. Its sequel is Esrever Doom.
I guess when you clean out your garage in the real world, it spawns a whole new set of ideas, especially if you're a writer. For Anthony, we have an 80 year old man cleaning out his garage. Next thing you know, the man is in Xanth. There's a foundation of youth, a love spring, a magic talent, and a girl. Oh, and a dog is brought along, because who would leave Mundania without a dog? (Cat people: hush.). Oh and the demons are back with their games. Go figure.
I am reading the 2013 Fantastic Planet Press trade paperback edition, an imprint of Eraserhead Press. The cover art is by Alan M. Clark. The collection, with Evan Filipek, was assembled in 2011, approximately after Luck of the Draw. I also have the Amazon Kindle edition of Open Road Media's edition which I read on my tablet and phone while waiting for my coffee to brew in the morning.
One and Wonder puts together ten stories of classic science fiction. These are the stories that Anthony has mentioned in his other author's notes and biographies as influential in getting Anthony started as a writer, though according to How Precious Was That While he originally tried to paint or draw before he engaged writing, and finished his bachelor's degree in creative writing.
I read the Tor October 2013 first edition hard cover with jacket art by Judie Dillon. Darrell K. Sweet has been doing covers for Anthony across publishers for years, so this is an Anthony staple that has changed. The submission draft was finished in November 2011, which is written after Aladdin Sins Bad. This is Xanth #37, and the last Tor book from Anthony. Did something about the Macmillan buy-out of Tor not go over well? The sequel is Board Stiff.
Kody finds himself in hospital, then wakes up in Xanth. Wah?! He begins a quest to find his way back to Mundania, but earns his keep along the way in Xanth. Reversal seems to be a theme as of late.
I read the 2015 Open Road Media hardcover. This is a reprint of the Premier Digital Publishing (PDP) January 2014 edition. Open Road Integrated Media bought PDP. When I got to the end of this edition, the last two paragraphs was missing. I have an email from the author with the missing text, and I believe he posted it in one of his newsletters, (yeah, I was the fan he mentioned there). My guess is current editions have been corrected. This is Xanth #38. The sequel is Five Portraits.
Board Stiff was begun after Awares in August-September 2012, and interrupted for part of the Writer's Retweet series. It was finished December 2012.
The Good Magician Humphrey doesn't seem to be immediately involved. The beginning is fascinating and immediately brought me into the story. How does Anthony create a character that is a literal board and make it work? He does, and this novel is as good as any Xanth.
I read the Open Road Integrated Media Amazon 2014 Kindle edition. As far as I'm aware, there is no print edition. It was developed in May 2012 and written in June 2012 after finishing Aladdin and the Flying Dutchman.
A virtual reality college entrance exam becomes more as this multiplayer game becomes recognized as a real existence on another world, fighting others and alien monsters, and along the way falling in love and dealing with romance. I really enjoyed this story, my favorite so far of the ebook-only novellas (this being the third one, after Shepherd, but not part of the Metal Maiden series).
I read the Open Road Integrated Media Amazon 2014 Kindle edition. It was finished by the author in February 2013, and written after what became the The Metal Maiden Collection and the Xanth novel Board Stiff, but specifically it was the next novel after the collaboration Dragon Assasin. It was also the sixth work of Anthony's without a print edition.
This is the first book I've licensed for electronic use for a cost. That's not to say I don't have many electronic books, mainly public domain or free of charge (it was actually my second Amazon Kindle book, which I got on a zero-cost deal). See, I have some issue with the exhorbitant prices of an ebook versus a printed book. A printed book has the cost of the paper, the binding, distribution, advertising. There's something about the feel of a printed book in your hands in a nice looking arrangement and cover. An electronic book you have to read on your own device, and it costs the distributor and publisher almost next to nothing for one copy versus thousands. (Not to say it doesn't cost for typography, editing, copy editing, and advertising, when it's done.)
Certainly, services cost a little more, such as Amazon, because of keeping the book on its services. Amazon downloads on to the Kindle, or Kindle app on 3 allowed devices (so you can read on your phone on the run, and on your tablet at home). It's when the cost of the ebook becomes similar to the printed version that I raise an eyebrow and have refused to purchase a license for such texts. College text price gouging I find especially problematic. My guess, from newsletter comments, is that the author doesn't agree.
Aliena came about when I was on a holiday with my family and realized I had forgot the novel I was reading at the time (another Anthony novel). I was aware that Anthony had works that had never made print, and were only available in electronic format. I got on my tablet, saw Aliena for $2.99 and figured that was a winner. I enjoyed the book while enjoying my vacation. Other Anthony ebooks I've got when specials are run that let me get the book for the right price.
Aliena is about an Alien symbiant in a beautiful woman host. They fall in love with a man she lives near by. Then things go wrong and the human host rejects the alien. The alien must join with another human. Will her lover accept her with a new body?
I read the 21 October 2014 Kindle ebook from Open Road Media. It was prepped in May, and written in June 2013, following Five Portraits. I'm not sure why Open Road Media doesn't credit the cover art to the Anthony novels.
This is a Noir fantasy about a shape changing for hire detective who specializes in supernaturals. It was written at the suggestion of Anthony's collaborator, J. R. Rain. A witch hires the detective to find the murder of a warlock. This leads to the murder trail of other supernaturals and sexual intrigue that is a constant in the story.
I read the Open Road Media 2014 Amazon Kindle ebook edition. This is a collection of short stories that are considered cautionary, i.e. out of the main stream. Each story or essay is prefaced to indicate what to watch out for, in case the reader wishes to skip reading that story (or essay). This appears to have been finished in July 2013, and a note in the August 2013 newsletter gives details. This was assembled after WereWoman was completed.
In general, this was not as bad as I thought, though a couple stories were a bit intense. Basically, this comes down to Anthony has stories that no longer fit the main stream market, and he appears to be writing for himself these days instead of what he knows he can sell. This is basically his retirement, and this is the first short story collection since Alien Plot that collects stories together, (not including Relationships which is a unique series of short stories written as a collection).
In some ways I like this about face. He hit the pinnacle of size with his ChroMagic books: huge quarter million word tomes. Anthony has returned to short story and novella writing, and it is enjoyable, but his hard science fiction days are over and that is something I miss, and unfortunately there's a lot of stories building up again that haven't been published. I'd rather read small novels that are actually published, than know there are stories out there I can't read at all. There's also a bunch of one-off stories that get into a magazine or anthology which won't be available for some time, if at all, because of it.
This is a collection of four novellas published by Open Road Media, put together in August 2013. As far as I'm aware, there is no print media version available.
This collection is a bit after-the-fact. The novellas To Be a Woman and Shepherd were originally separate ideas. Enough influence from To Be a Woman led to Shepherd having some references and fitting into the same framework. That led to two sequels both fitting in to the framework to became a novella series.
This was begun after Esrever Doom in December 2011, but finished
after Relationships 5 in January 2012. It is the first targeted for
electronic publication because of its size. Though it was later collected together as part of
Metal Maiden, it does not appear to have ever seen print
publication. As Anthony remarked in the March 2012 newsletter, These days I don't worry much
about traditional publishing; it is dying.
.
This is Anthony's version of The Bicentennial Man, (my description, not Anthony's).
Unlike Asimov, however, Anthony picks a female android instead of a male robot, and makes her,
as Data in Star Trek might say, fully functional
. She wants to be recognized legally as a
person, (the Asimov connection I'm seeing). This remains a viable question to ask, especially
without the laws of robotics and other Asimovian optimistic trappings. In this case, she wants to
marry a human male, so the female perspective adds to it, and Anthony is actually not bad with
this, it seems to me.
Written in February 2012 after To Be a Woman. The idea was separate for this story, but when written it was done so as a sequel to To Be a Woman.
Oh the tangle of this one. A student joins an exchange program that has him exchange bodies, e.g. like Anthony's Cluster series, mind transfer with body exchange allowing one's thoughts and awareness to control a body elsewhere. First he finds out the animals of this world are not only telepathic, but able to defend themselves against a human, but then he finds himself falling in love, and has a dilemma when it's time for the exchange program to be over.
The two previous novellas lay the ground work for this story. To Be a Woman was written as a separate story. This story is in a way a sequel to both, and what makes this a series. It was noted FLytrap was reviewed in July, so presumably that's the galley read through by Anthony. It was reported as finished in the August 2012 newsletter.
Mona mind exchanges to a planet with a human colony. Her host is a pregnant woman. It's the same planet as the telepathic sheep, and Mona knows the android who got married. This novella wraps up some loose ends introduced by Shepherd. It ends on a cliff hanger and the story is concluded in Awares.
An aware is a human chameleon, one who is so aware of their surroundings that they blend in, physically and socially.
The emancipated android of To Be a Woman and Flytrap discovers the plot for an alien invasion from a planet of telepathics and must find a way to rescue Earth.
This is the conclusion to the series. Awares was reported as complete in the September 2012 newsletter.
I read the Open Road Media 2015 hardcover edition. As with Board Stiff, I have no idea who did the cover illustration (on the actual hard back: there's no dust jacket. The electronic edition came out in 2014). It was written out-of-band, not long after Board Stiff, and right on the heels of Aliena, finished in May 2013, I believe right after the collaboration Dragon Assassin. It is Xanth #39.
A basilisk becomes human, gets a soul, and rescues five children from Xanth's future, a future where apparently Xanth will cease to exist. Meanwhile, the pun virus of the previous book that nearly whipes out Xanth still has some residual after effects.
I read the August 2015 Mundania Press LLC hardcover edition, with cover art by Joel Mallory and Niki Browning. Apparently, not as fancy a hardcover as the individual editions from Mundania Press, from photos I've seen online. The cover art has gone through variations in its editions.
Originally called 3.97 Erect. Written beginning in 1969 and finished in 1970. This went unpublished for over a decade. Originally, it was written for Essex House, which went out of business, perhaps as a too-hot publication concept: taboo breaking, pornographic fantasy and science fiction. The author of the two sequels to Chthon and Phthor tried to create a publication to publish it, Black Sheep, and failed, but found another to publish the book: Tafford. I have three of Tafford's books, and they are as well done as those by Mundania Press. When Tafford folded, Electric Bookworm took it and folded before it was published. I think at this point, now that Mundania has folded, it is at Open Road Media as an electronic book. 3.97 Erect was written after Orn.
The story line is simple. A man has a small penis. He meets a demon who promises to solve his sex problems. Then things go wrong when the talent of his venerial disease curing cum is discovered and a doctor removes his genitals for scientific research. He has a prothesis and goes on a quest to conquer the demons to recover his bodily integrity. Meanwhile, he has to have lots of sex in every way possible.
This book is brain damage. You will lose your mental virginity. Somehow, it not only maintains plot integrity, but has characterization and actual humanistic themes. I don't know how Anthony pulled it off. Having read in his newsletters that the sequel has been more than enough to satisfy the urge to write such things, since he has sufficient money to no longer care about finding new markets, I am relieved. I'm one of Anthony's completists, but Pornucopia was something that questioned my wanting to continue being so. This is likely not one I intend to reread.
The text was finished January or February 2003, immediately before Pet Peeve. Prior, unfulfilled from the prior attempt to find love and happiness, and doing nothing but gaining revenge and what he had lost from the prior venture, is now pressed further into the demon realm, a trap being set for him in revenge for his revenge, with the promise of his perfect mate. Like the first, this is the grossest, most explicit sexual content in a book I've ever read. Yet Anthony somehow pulls it off with a plot, characterization, and a funny theme.
The Magic Fart is only for the sexual misfit, with a couple screws loose, or Anthony completists, of which (I surely hope) I am the latter, or at least not the former.
I have the Mundania Press 2015 hardcover, with cover art by Niki Browning. It was completed in July 2004 (see the August 2004 and December 2007 newsletters), and the galleys for the Mundania Press edition in November 2007.
This book is like a post-lude to the Incarnation of Immortality series. That series has five books, then two. This book plays on events in those last two, books six and seven. The original idea comes from one of Anthony's readers who identified clear plot trajectories that stem from revelations in those books, digging into the origins of the incarnations and establishing a more concrete concept of the magic timelines.
Anthony's highly sexualized series are all at play during this period, and though this book begins to see the beginnings of a warming of this, it is clear it is still active on his mind, from the ChroMagic series, to his Relationships story series, The Magic Fart, and Eroma. As his mainstream series are brought to an end, other than Xanth, an adult, sexually explicit, but not over-the-top (except for The Magic Fart) period of writing is at play. I don't think Under a Velvet Cloak is as bad as Anthony seemed to identify in his newsletters. If anything, it's more an indication that Anthony's writing has changed since the Incarnations of Immortality series was originally written, so its tenor is perhaps different if the series are read all at once. Certainly, once the ChroMagic series is brought to a close after this book, there will be some simple series, including a collaboration, as well as the Relationships story series, but his big science fiction and fantasy epics (other than Xanth) are winding down. This seems to be Anthony returning to his origins in shorter fiction, but alas not science fiction, which he was quite good at.
I read the Open Road Integrated Media Amazon 2014 Kindle edition. I have no idea who did the cover illustration, design, (or clip art?). It was finished in November 2013, after the collaboration with J. R. Rain, Dolfin Tayle.
Aliena is a sapient star fish, an alien from outer space that interacts with humans as a symbiant. Aliena helps a woman in this story to rescue her dying husband, except the tide turns with Aliena Too from the previous novel. It is not the mind of the lover that is preserved, but the body. Can she learn to love a new mind in her husband's body? Can she teach the host to know how to love her back?
I read the Open Road Media 2016 hardcover edition with cover design by Sarah Kaplan. The illustrations continue to be unattributed. Are these been clip art that's been arranged and inserted? Isis Orb was finished in June of 2014. This was right after Jack & the Giants (see the January 2015 newsletter). It is Xanth #40. The sequel is Ghost Writer in the Sky.
It seems this took nearly as long as Tor did with their 1.5-2 year publishing cycle. A newsletter points out this was due to an argument over licensing: they wanted full copyright to be signed over. Anthony was ready to take Xanth elsewhere and move on from Open Road Integrated Media, but they must have worked it out.
Hapless is looking for love. He's also looking for how to defeat the irony of his magic talent: the capability to conjure musical instruments, none of which he knows how to play. The Good Magician Humphrey, with the talent of information, sends him to get an orb from the goddess Isis, who naturally doesn't want to give it up. To control the orb, a totem from each of the five forbidden regions of Xanth must be retrieved.
I read the Dreaming Big Publications 2016 edition paperback of Writer's Retweet, with cover art by Macario Hernandez III. The November 2011 newsletter indicated that Anthony was doing a new thing. Instead of having blog posts retweeted on his Twitter account (maintained by his blogger and publisher), he would have tweets that would be pieces of a story. In the end, that was five stories in all, averaging over 100 tweets per story, finished in December 2011, after finishing Board Stiff. In the June 2016 newsletter, this collection was originally called The Twitter Collection.
You can tell the paragraphs are small, but the stories follow from their own merit, and sometimes it seems that paragraphs contain several tweets as the book improves the typography and text layout. These are typical Anthony stories with a new publisher, Dreaming Big, that appears to be a common secondary publisher for him now (for instance, see the Relationships series), the main one being Open Road Media.
I read the Open Road Media 2016 hardcover edition with cover design by Amanda Shaffer. This
book was finished in March of 2015 after Noah's Brick and some short stories (e.g.
Cuisine to Die For
). It is Xanth #41, written before Lavabull.
A mysterious Mundane begins creating stories, innacted by the Night Colt during the day, that makes the inhabitants of Xanth carry out the stories, written in the sky. Meanwhile, other Mundanes find a portal into Xanth. That smells of the demons to me, but is it?
I read the Dreaming Big Publications 2016 paperback with cover art by Mac Hernandez. It was finished in August 2015, finished after the collaboration Virtue Inverted (which was finished after LavaBull). Hair Power is the first novel, or really novella, in a trilogy. The sequel is Hair Suite.
An alien hair ball saves a suicidal young cancer patient from death. The alien is telepathic and becomes a symbiant with her to save her, but it wants something in return. This is a fun, saucy fantasy. It reminds me a little bit of Aliena.
I read the Dreaming Big Publications 2016 paperback, with cover art by Macario Hernandez III. Service Goat was written in June and July of 2016. My print edition is dated 06 December 2016. This is a small novel, a novella, like Writer's Retweet, Hair Power, and Odd Exam, it seems to be Anthony's new (old original?) normal. See the July 2016 newsletter. It appears to have been finished after Fire Sail.
This is what Anthony would describe as science fantasy, though he has much more rigid standards for what makes up science fiction, though this one might count for what he'd disparingly call SciFi. Service Goat as about a goat with mysterious powers. It also has alien UAPs. (The terminology has since changed, so that unidentified flying object (UFO) is now unidentified anomalous or aerial phenomenon, with the new acronym UAP.) A blind girl, Caladia, the victim of a freak car accident, that turns out to be have been an alien space craft. It too, for the same freak reason, crashes. The aliens want to explore Earth and need a willing human to help. It's a fun, light, quick read.
I read the Dreaming Big Publications 2016 paperback with cover art by Mac Hernandez. It was finished in August 2016. This is the second book of a trilogy. The conclusion is Hair Peace. See the July and August 2016 newsletters for more details. Hair Suite appears to have been finished after Service Goat.
The Hair Balls have set up an embassy. Now another alien species, a kind of cyborg called the Chip Monks, wants to conquer Earth, and the Hair Balls intend to save it. Yeah, it's kinda silly, and typical Anthony saucy.
I read the Dreaming Big Publications 2017 paperback, with cover art by Mitchell Davidson
Bentley titled The Good, the Bat & the Ugly
. It appears to have been finished
in July 2015, a collaboration with one of Anthony's Christian correspondents. A sequel was
written: Amazon Expedient.
Virtue Inverted is sword and sorcery fantasy. It reminds me of some of the Weiss and Hickman Dungeons & Dragons books, exploring the Dragonlance realm, perhaps mixed with Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series. That's a kind of snarky comparison to Twilight's glittery vampires. It took me a bit to get into this novel, but it turned out OK. Not my favorite of Anthony's, as perhaps my least favorite collaboration of his, though I've not yet read the sequels. Perhaps that will improve my sense of the series. The Christian commentary in the author's note is kinda blah. Who cares, other than the correspondance with Anthony probably started as one of the debates Anthony sometimes can't help but not avoid.
I read the Mannison Press February 2021 first edition paperback, with cover illustrations by
Deidre J Owen and pixabay.com. Walk the Walk
was first
published in Little Girl Lost: Thirteen Tales of Youth Disrupted in 2019. Ride the
Ride
was published in Little Boy Lost: More Tales of Youth Disrupted in 2020. These
were both Mannison Press collections. The final story Fly the Fly
is unique to this volume,
finished in February 2021.
A girl meets a skeleton and becomes friends. A boyish man becomes friends with a ghost. All three finally become linked together.
©2022-2024 David Egan Evans.