Piers Anthony
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| Piers Anthony | |
| Born: | August 6, 1934 Oxford, England |
|---|---|
| Occupation: | novelist short story writer |
| Genres: | science fiction fantasy |
| Website: | http://www.hipiers.com/ |
Piers Anthony Dillingham Jacob (born August 6, 1934 in Oxford, England) is an American writer in the science fiction and fantasy genres, publishing under the name Piers Anthony.
He has written many novels and short stories, but is most famous for his long-running series set in the fictional realm of Xanth. Many of his books have appeared on the New York Times Best Seller list. He is one of the most prolific science fiction/fantasy authors of all time. He has claimed that one of his greatest achievements has been to publish a book for every letter of the alphabet, from Anthonology to Zombie Lover.
Anthony's family emigrated to the United States from Britain while he was four. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in his twenties. After completing a two year stint in military service, he briefly taught public school before becoming a fulltime writer. Anthony currently lives with his wife on a tree farm which he owns in Florida. He is a vegetarian, an agnostic, a proud liberal, a workaholic, and dislikes travel (hence his rarity at conventions). He and his wife have two daughters. He also has one grandchild.
Anthony was blacklisted at one time, and thus feels that it is his duty to help aspiring writers circumvent traditional publishing houses and their stranglehold on the industry.
On multiple occasions he has moved from one publisher to another (taking a profitable hit series with him), when he felt the editors were unduly tampering with his work. He has even sued publishers for accounting malfeasance and won judgments in his favor.
He also maintains an Internet Publishers Survey, in the interest of helping aspiring writers. For this service, he won the 2003 "Friend of EPIC" award for service to the electronic publishing community. For his HiPiers website, he won the Special Recognition for Service to Writers award from Preditors and Editors, an author's guide to publishers and writing services.
Anthony invested as an angel investor in Xlibris at one point, and is now a co-owner along with Random House.
Many of his popular novels have been optioned for movies at various times. His popular series, Xanth, has a video game, titled "Companions of Xanth" by Legend Entertainment. It is made for PCs and on CD-ROM, although it is DOS-based. There is also a board game called Xanth by Mayfair Games.
Piers Anthony's novels usually end with a chapter-long Author's Note, in which he talks about himself, his life, and his experiences as they related to the process of writing the novel. He often discusses correspondence with readers and any real-world issues that influenced the novel.
Contents |
[edit] Marriage and early career
Piers Anthony met his future wife, Carol Marble, while both were attending college. The young couple married immediately after graduation, over the objections of the bride's parents, who considered him too financially destitute for her (he had spent one summer walking around campus barefoot because he couldn't afford shoes).
He married her (in 1956) on the condition that she would also become a vegetarian, because he had seen his parents get divorced over disputes and lifestyle friction where one spouse was a vegetarian and the other wasn't. The same year (1956) he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Goddard College, Plainfield, Vermont.
After graduation and marriage, and the financial burdens of starting a new life together at such a young age, the newly wed couple found it difficult to make ends meet.
After a series of odd jobs, in 1957, Piers Anthony eventually decided to join the U.S. Army for a steady source of income and medical coverage for his pregnant wife. He would stay in the Army until 1959. He became a U.S. citizen during this time.
It was during his time in the army that he developed his newfound (and now lifelong) attention to fitness and regimental exercise.
Despite being in a very physical environment in the army, he found himself drawn to his interest in writing, and got the job of being an editor and cartoonist for the Battalion newspaper. After leaving the army, he spent a brief stint as a public school teacher before trying his hand at becoming a fulltime writer.
In order for him to be able to leave teaching and spend a year writing fulltime, his wife would have to support them. The two of them made a deal -- that if he could sell a piece of writing in that year, then she would continue to work to support him.
But if he couldn't sell anything in that year, then he would forever give up his dreams of being a writer and not write any stories ever again. At the end of the year, he managed to get a short story published.
He credits his wife as the person who made his whole writing career possible, and advocates aspiring writers that they need to have a source of income or support other than their writing in order to get through the early years of a writing career.
[edit] But What of Earth? controversy
One important event in Anthony's early literary career was the hullabaloo about the original publication of Anthony's 1976 novel But What of Earth?. Editor Roger Elwood commissioned the novel for his nascent science-fiction line, Laser Books. As the novel opens, the governments of Earth have just developed the secret of matter transmission (mattermission), the instantaneous transport of matter between points in space without limitation by the speed of light.
The book follows college student Scot Krebs as he continues to live on a radically depopulated Earth. Anthony's position in the novel is that as population decreases, technology and civilization go along with it, so Scot and his companions must re-learn primitive agriculture while dealing with tribes of hostile nomads.
While writing But What of Earth?, Anthony developed the idea for two of his science-fiction series, Cluster and Tarot, both of which are in continuity with Earth?; Tarot takes place some years later, and the Cluster series opens roughly 500 years after that.
In addition, one of Earth?'s main supporting characters, Brother Paul of the Holy Order of Vision, is the protagonist of the Tarot books.
According to Anthony, he completed But What of Earth?, and Elwood accepted and purchased it. Elwood then told Anthony that he wished to make several minor changes and in order not to waste Anthony's time, he had hired copyeditor (and author) Robert Coulson to retype the manuscript with the changes. Anthony described Coulson as a friend he had met through science fiction fandom, so he was happy to throw Coulson the work.
Apparently, however, Elwood told Coulson something entirely different about the situation. Coulson understood himself to be a full collaborator, free to make his own significant revisions to Anthony's text, in line with suggestions made by Laser's previous line editors. In exchange, Elwood promised Coulson a 50/50 split with Anthony on all future royalties.
According to Anthony, the published novel is different in many respects from his version: most characters were imagined differently, their motivations revised and often left unclear, much of the dialogue had been reworked, and Coulson had cut many of Anthony's scenes and added several of his own invention. In Anthony's view, Coulson's efforts completely changed the tenor of the work, and (again according to Anthony) not for the better.
In Laser's ultimate publication of But What of Earth?, it listed Anthony and Coulson together as collaborators. Anthony says Elwood consulted him about none of the revisions. The first time he learned that the novel would see any significant changes was when he got Laser's brochure advertising the Anthony/Coulson "collaboration" as forthcoming.
While Anthony prepared for legal action, the entire Laser line was on the brink of failure. So a settlement was reached, including reversion of publication rights to Anthony. Laser folded the next year, in 1977.
In 1989, Anthony (re)published his original But What of Earth? in an annotated edition through Tor Books. This edition contains an Introduction and Conclusion setting out the story of the novel's permutations and roughly 60 pages of notes by Anthony giving examples of changes to plot and characters and describing some of the comments made by copyeditors to his manuscript.
[edit] Partial bibliography
[edit] Series
- Apprentice Adept
- Split Infinity (1980)
- Blue Adept (1981)
- Juxtaposition (1982)
- Out of Phaze (1987)
- Robot Adept (1988)
- Unicorn Point (1989)
- Phaze Doubt (1990)
- Aton
- Chthon (1967, his first published novel, nominated for the Hugo and Nebula Awards)
- Phthor (1975)
With Anthony's permission, Charles Platt wrote two further books in this series, Plasm (1987) and Soma (1988).
- Battle Circle
- Sos the Rope (1968)
- Var the Stick (1972)
- Neq the Sword (1975)
- Bio of a Space Tyrant
- Refugee (1983)
- Mercenary (1984)
- Politician (1985)
- Executive (1985)
- Statesman (1986)
- The Iron Maiden (2001)
- ChroMagic series
- Key to Havoc (2002)
- Key to Chroma (2003)
- Key to Destiny (2004)
- Key to Liberty (in progress)
Key to Survival (proposed)
- Cluster
- Cluster (1977, aka Vicinity Cluster in UK edition)
- Chaining the Lady (1978)
- Kirlian Quest (1978)
- Thousandstar (1980)
- Viscous Circle (1982)
- Geodyssey
- Isle of Woman (1993)
- Shame of Man (1994)
- Hope of Earth (1997)
- Muse of Art (1999)
- Climate of Change (unfinished)
- Incarnations of Immortality
- On a Pale Horse (1983)
- Bearing an Hourglass (1984)
- With a Tangled Skein (1985)
- Wielding a Red Sword (1986)
- Being a Green Mother (1987)
- For Love of Evil (1988)
- ...And Eternity (1990)
- Under a Velvet Cloak (unpublished)
- Of Man and Manta
- Omnivore (1968)
- Orn (1970)
- 0X (1976) (Note: Title is commonly listed as "OX", but should be "0X".)
- Mode
- Virtual Mode (1991)
- Fractal Mode (1992)
- Chaos Mode (1993)
- DoOon Mode (2001)
- Tarot (According to Anthony, he wrote these as a single novel which his publisher asked him to split up due to length.)
- God of Tarot (1977)
- Vision of Tarot (1980)
- Faith of Tarot (1980)
The Tarot series is in continuity with Anthony's Cluster series, which takes place decades later.
- Xanth - Anthony's most extensive series, with 31 novels and growing.
[edit] Non-series novels
- Macroscope (1969, nominated for a 1970 Hugo Award)
- Hasan (1969, 1977 revised)
- Prostho Plus (1971)
- Race Against Time (1973)
- Rings of Ice (1974)
- Triple Detente (1974)
- But What of Earth? ("Collaboration" with Robert Coulson, 1976; Anthony's original republished, with annotations, 1989. See above.)
- Steppe (1976)
- Mute (1981) (a sequel named "Moot" was shelved, with extensive notes. Unfortunately, those notes are now lost and that sequel will not be written.)
- Anthonology (1985, short story collection)
- Ghost (1986)
- Shade of the Tree (1986)
- Pornucopia (1989)
- Total Recall (1989) (a novelization of the movie Total Recall, which is based on the short story/novella We Can Remember It For You Wholesale by Phillip K. Dick)
- Hard Sell (1990)
- Firefly (1990)
- Balook (1990)
- Tatham Mound (1991)
- MerCycle (1991)
- Alien Plot (1992, short story collection)
- Killobyte (1993)
- Volk (1996)
- Realty Check (1999)
- The Magic Fart (2003)
- Relationships (2006)
[edit] Autobiographical works
- Bio of an Ogre (1988, to age 50)
- How Precious was that While (2001, to age 65)
- Letters to Jenny -- The mother of a teenage fan wrote to Piers Anthony about her daughter Jenny, the victim of a drunk driver, being paralyzed and in a coma. The mother felt that having letters from Jenny's favorite author read to her might help bring her out of her coma. He wrote her constantly and for a long period of time, even naming a Xanth character after her. Jenny eventually came out of her coma, but remains paralyzed and has difficulty communicating. This book is a collection of the letters from the first year of correspondence.
[edit] Collaborations
- The Ring (1968, with Robert E. Margroff)
- The ESP Worm (1970, with Robert E. Margroff)
- Pretender (1979, with Frances Hall)
- Through the Ice (1989, with Robert Kornwise, posthumously -- Kornwise was a high school student who died tragically. His friends sent his unfinished manuscript and a plea to Piers Anthony to help their deceased friend get published. To make sure that the book was a fitting memorial tribute, Piers Anthony made sure it was printed on acid-free paper despite the expense.)
- Dead Morn (1990, with Roberto Fuentes)
- The Caterpillar's Question (1992, with Philip José Farmer) -- This collaboration was actually the result of another proposed collaborative project. The original idea proposed by an editor was to have a book where each chapter was written by a different author. That project fell apart, but Piers Anthony and Philip José Farmer later decided they wanted to salvage something from it by morphing it into a two person collaboration, where the two alternated chapters, without revealing who wrote which chapters.
- If I Pay Thee Not in Gold (1993, with Mercedes Lackey)
- The Willing Spirit (1996, with Alfred Tella)
- Spider Legs (1998, with Clifford A. Pickover)
- Quest for the Fallen Star (1998, with James Richey and Alan Riggs)
- Dream a Little Dream (1999, with Julie Brady)
- The Gutbucket Quest (2000, with Ron Leming)
- The Secret of Spring (2000, with Jo Anne Taeusch)
- Kelvin of Rud series (with Robert E. Margroff)
- Dragon's Gold (1987)
- Serpent's Silver (1988)
- Chimaera's Copper (1990)
- Orc's Opal (1990)
- Mouvar's Magic (1992)
- Jason Striker series (with Roberto Fuentes)
- Kiai! (1974)
- Mistress of Death (1974)
- Bamboo Bloodbath (1974)
- Ninja's Revenge (1975)
- Amazon Slaughter (1976)
- Curse of the Ninja (1976)
[edit] Related works
- Cut By Emerald (1987, by Dana Kramer) a Combat Command game book set in the Bio of a Space Tyrant universe.
- Encyclopedia of Xanth (1987, by Jody Lynn Nye) a Crossroads Adventure game book set in the Xanth universe.
[edit] See also
- Piers Anthony sequences
- Science fiction
- List of science fiction authors
- List of science fiction novels
- List of science fiction short stories
- List of science fiction television
- Jack Woodford and his books on writing and getting published.
[edit] External links
- Official web site
- Complete bibliography
- Extensive 2005 Interview - via InternetArchive as original page is gone
- Interview with Piers Anthony at SFFWorld.com
- Piers Anthony at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- 1987 Audio Interview with Piers Anthony - RealAudio (47 min 42 s)
- Piers Anthony Manuscript Collection at the University of South Florida-Tampa
- Piers Anthony at the Internet Movie Database
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Anthony, Piers |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Jacob, Piers Anthony Dillingham |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | American novelist and short story writer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 6, 1934 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Oxford, England |
| DATE OF DEATH | |
| PLACE OF DEATH | |
Categories: Wikipedia articles needing style editing | English fantasy writers | English science fiction writers | Florida writers | Naturalized citizens of the United States | English Americans | American agnostics | English Quakers | American Quakers | 1934 births | Living people | Bibliographies by author
