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Talk To Xanth Creator Piers Anthony
Not only is Piers Anthony one of the world's most popular fantasy authors (his books have been science fiction and fantasy staples for decades) but he has been using Linux and StarOffice 5.2 for the past year. This is your opportunity to ask Piers about either the technical aspects of using Linux and StarOffice to produce fiction or about his upcoming work (new Xanth novels coming soon!) or almost anything else. We'll forward 10 of the highest-moderated questions to Piers tomorrow, and will run his answers (verbatim, as always) as soon as he gets them back to us.
Anthony might have a little more say because of his success, but generally, authors have NO IMPUT into the cover design for their books. The cover is viewed as an advertisement for the book, and is designed and controlled by the advertising department.
Even as a guy, I would like to see his response to this. In my experience, the reason for there being more female nudity than in men is that the woman has a much more elegant shape. No "external plumbing" to deal with. Most writers visualize what they write, and another man's jewels is something I really don't want to visualize. A woman, however, is a pleasant work of art throughout. I think one thing that fascinates my about Piers Anthony is that his nudity is not always sex-related. Panties are, of course, a different matter. Now, the whole "woman relying on a man" thing is something he seems to be guilty of. He creates a female character with plenty of independence and ability to spare, yet the story always seems to concentrate on her getting her man through vixen means. However, one could argue that he is making a point that most men are simple-minded lustful dogs, rather than making a statement about women's place in society. Despite the concentration on his choice of OS and word processor, I hope you get your question.
Mr. Anthony, can you pinpoint exactly when your excellent work changed from actually being good to utter crap?
I used to read a lot of your works. "The Incarnations of Immortality" was ones of my favorites along with "Bio of a Space Tyrant". Those are the only novels of yours that I have kept. I enjoyed reading the Xanth novels, but after about the 25th or so, I realized that they just keep rehashing themselves over and over again. There is always the same formula, over and over again. When do you expect to do something original with the Xanth series, or have you completly given into just making money and stop writing good stories?
I remember one of his forewords talking about how he used CP/M and a custom-done word processor at one point. He's probably fairly technically experienced compared to what you'd expect from your Average Joe author. :-)
Anyone read Killobyte, his sci-fi VR book?
May we never see th
Listen up, US folks. In most of the world, including where I live, the age of consent is at least two years lower than 18. I am constantly jarred by references to child pornography and underage sex where the participants turn out to be 16 or 17. Try and be a little less inward-looking, please.