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A world of tomorrow, close to home

Piers Anthony pens stories of fantastic worlds and magical monsters, all while rooted in Florida's Suncoast.

By ADRIENNE P. SAMUELS
Published February 9, 2005

Florida has always bred good writers, but not many write of dragons and centaurs and alternate worlds where the Withlacoochee River is renamed With-A-Cookie.

Except for Piers Anthony.

Decades ago, the millionaire imaginist mixed his love of Florida with a bit of magic and came up with the kingdom of Xanth, a place where dreams are real and non-Xanth citizens (read: you) live in a land called Mundania (read: mundane).

Anthony's 126 books are hugely popular within the world of science fiction and fantasy.

He has made the New York Times bestseller list 21 times and is waiting for Disney to turn one of his novels, On a Pale Horse, into a movie starring Oscar contender Jamie Foxx.

Today, Anthony joins sci-fi heavyweights Joe Haldeman and Harry Harrison at the University of South Florida to talk about the writing life and the future of the genre, which is experiencing a resurgence.

He likes to meet his fans and is not afraid to explain how and why Xanth - and his other series - came about.

"The same thing that terrified me as a child makes my living today," said Anthony, who vividly remembers the monster that followed him home from school. "I turned around and it hid behind a tree and I never saw it, but I knew it was there."

Those same monsters terrorize Xanth. But most beings there have magical powers - those who don't are banished to Mundania.

Anthony's stories follow a general story arc where a person in trouble has to visit a magician for help. Everything else varies book to book.

It's not Dante's Inferno, but college kids seem to like it, said Bill Scheuerle, director of USF's Humanities Institute.

And he's okay with that because sci-fi is literature.

Don't believe it? Take a second look at George Orwell's 1984 or Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.

"The humanities deals with anything that has humanistic context," Scheuerle said. "Just because something is set in the future or is interstellar does not mean it's not literature."

Though he's planning a lecture on the aspects of King Lear, Scheuerle thought sci-fi deserved some campus space, especially after an informal study of USF students found that many read sci-fi, mysteries and romance in their spare time.

Anthony, who is 70, thinks he knows why.

"I read Shakespeare for pleasure until I had to read him for class," said the former English teacher, who lamented that much of Shakespeare's rowdiness is removed from campus texts. "They just cut it out. No wonder. Shakespeare is not given a chance to compete."

As the world advances, sci-fi folk sometimes joke that the future is not what it used to be.

That future might limit future sci-fi writers who spend their time immersed in movies and role-playing games, said Anthony, who reads many letters where fans' "original ideas" reek of a plot borrowed from the weekend's top movie hit.

Writing is not meant for everyone, Anthony said.

Sometimes publishers want you to write only what's popular now (i.e. the 30th Xanth book).

Others don't want you to branch outside of your genre (hence the popularity of pseudonyms).

Anthony, who lives in Citrus County, self-publishes a fair amount of his works because, he says, his "serious" stuff is often ignored.

He's a bit jaded with the industry but loves to write and is planning to release another Xanth book this year.

He's also too old to mess with that monster in the forest of his childhood.

"Here in Mundania, I've made my fortune and reputation writing about Xanth, but in Xanth I wouldn't be anything," he said. "I'd stay in Mundania. ... The thing people don't realize about Xanth is that there are dragons there."

Adrienne Samuels can be reached at samuels@sptimes.com or 727 445-4157.

Authors Piers Anthony, Harry Harrison and Joe Haldeman will speak twice today at USF.

The daylong program includes a panel discussion from 10 a.m. to noon in the Phyllis P. Marshall Center Ballroom. A book signing and reception will be held in the Grace Allen Room, fourth floor of the USF Tampa Library, from 2 to 4 p.m.

Both events are free.

[Last modified February 9, 2005, 00:43:19]