I have been -- am not currently, couldn't say if that will remain the case -- but I have been very invested in the song of ice and fire series, but even at my most invested I have long thought GRRM is better as an editor and facilitator (a la Wild Cards) than an author himself.
I'm way out of date in the Wild Cards series, even as I know more and more authors who are involved in it, just because I've had a years-long period where I struggled to read long-form fiction, out of a combination of eyesight-related physical strain and *gestures around*.
But this gives me complicated feelings about the pressure on him to finish his own series, as I'm sure one of the many factors there is his deep involvement with a complex machine of so many moving parts, that benefits and highlights younger and less established authors.
Don't have a big point to make here. I know Wild Cards is far from perfect and I would not uncritically or unqualifiedly recommend it to anyone (and the same is true for my own extended body of work), it's basically content warning: everything.
I have seen authors note that their work does not contain any threat of or actual sexual violence and I'm glad that kind of work exists but having grown up reading GRRM and MZB as the first "adult" sff I was exposed to, I... I honestly never thought/felt like that was an option.
I don't know that I wouldn't still have written about sexual violence, as for me doing so was part of a process of... processing. Examining and dealing with and moving past trauma. And I'm glad I was able to do so.
But part of why I recognized that outlet, why I found it, was because my foundational experiences in sf/f were basically that, when you start writing as an "adult", these are some of the trappings of the genres, along with spaceships and sorcerers and superpowers.
I think I would add Stephen King to that pile. Stephen King and Marion Zimmer Bradley were the first adult authors I read, Stephen King specifically because there was some kind of development relationship with ABC in the 80s-90s so I saw lightly-sanitized-for-TV versions of him.
And if you don't know about Marion Zimmer Bradley's real-life transgressions... phew. I honestly hate to be the one to impart this knowledge and I can barely type it out, but observe content note for child sexual abuse and incest, and search for "Walter Breen".
I guess what I'm saying is, I wish my foundational experiences in adult speculative fiction had been a little more varied when it came to the handling of both consensual sex, and sexual violence.
...although I guess, having typed that out, that part of what made some authors explicltly shelved as "adult" or "mature" was their embrace of themes, as opposed to those who didn't. Ursula Le Guin was not *not* writing for adults and I read her first.
Also Piers Anthony's name should be in this thread but part of what makes his work so... I don't know, confusing, compelling... for young people is the way it erases/straddles the line between young and adult.
I mean, he wrote a series about how a wise silver fox of a wizard crossed time and space to take a depressed teenage girl who was Mature For Her Age away from all of her troubles, and when he realized she was not of age he did the noble thing and refused, so she chased him.
Did I eat that up? With a comically large spoon in each hand.
I hate the way that segments of internet fandom aggressively police people who are using art to Deal With Some Things, when we bear the scars of having grown up in a minefield thinking the minefield was normal.
Piers Anthony's most famous for his beloved fantasy series, Barely Legal Nymphs in the Land of Magical Dad Jokes.
Which I can point out what he was doing there now, but I read religiously as a tween and teen and it had a huge impact on how I approached fantasy in my early adulthood.
I think for me there was almost flattering about the Xanth books, which were written with sexual stuff aimed to children, with glib references to the Adult Conspiracy that would keep it from us.
"I trust you. I know you can handle it. You're growing up."
"I trust you. I know you can handle it. You're growing up."
I'm not trying to Cancel (Xancel?) Piers Anthony. I don't have that power and I don't know what it would mean to do so. I have no idea what the state of his career even is now (nor am I asking).
But. I would say the subtext of his body of work is very... groomy.
But. I would say the subtext of his body of work is very... groomy.
I mean, when I say "flattering" and "groomy"... his books made us uncomfortable from the beginning but we kept reading because he kept it light and funny and he talked to us in a way that we'd feel like we were being treated like grown-ups.
And going back around to things that "fanpol" (fandom police) go after on the idea that art influences life and stuff they don't...
There's a lot of people, not only but mainly guys, who have the idea that. Oh, this is going to get messy. Continued content note for child abuse.
There's a lot of people, not only but mainly guys, who have the idea that. Oh, this is going to get messy. Continued content note for child abuse.
Even without getting into the "It's not pedophilia, it's ephebophilia" stuff... there's a viewpoint out there that it's *natural* for men to prefer younger partners because biology, and so we have to expect their attraction to straddle age of consent.
I'm not talking about a slippery slope of "If feminists think it's creepy for a 40-something guy to have a 20-something girlfriend, then they're basically saying the 40-something guy is a pedophile."
I'm talking about the 40-something guy making that argument.
I'm talking about the 40-something guy making that argument.
These same guys will defend, in most contexts, age of consent laws, but always want to make it clear that they find it understandable. To them, the age of consent laws make sense because OF COURSE guys would go for teens, including very young teens, if they could.
Like in Pure Xanthony's books, a VERY FREQUENT theme is a guy who is manifestly interested in pursuing a relationship with someone underage, and it becomes clear there's a social context where this is not allowed, and thus begins a quest for a different social context.
Like the aforementioned silver fox space wizard discovering that on his Lolita's earth and in her country, there are states where he can legally marry a child with the parents' consent. So his moral dilemma is resolved.
(To be clear, her earth is our earth and her country is the United States. It was a fantasy story about a girl from the real world escaping into a magical land.)
And I said this was going to get messy, so I want to make it *very* clear I'm not offering this as a defense or making excuses, this is just another angle to ascending to the peak of terribleness... but when news breaks that someone indulged in Epstein's trafficked children?
I don't think every single person who did that was actively, consciously harboring a specific desire for child sex slaves.
I think more of them had internalized "Younger = more desirable, so. Ipso facto, this is better. And if the opportunity exists without consequences?"
I think more of them had internalized "Younger = more desirable, so. Ipso facto, this is better. And if the opportunity exists without consequences?"
And there is a rotting, frayed thread of that woven throughout our culture. Scratch the belief that sundry queers are all obviously raging pedophiles and you'll find a certainty that *everybody* *naturally* wants that kind of thing but "decent" people simply don't have the option
And I think Xanthony has written about this impulse coming through in his own writing as it's a harmless indulgence, he's a "dirty old man" and after all, when all is said and done it's fiction.
And I do not in any way want to fan the flames of the fictional purity police who treat it as though if you depict something you will it into being, because I don't believe that and I don't believe it's healthy or helpful to act as though it's true.
I know this has gone very far afield of where I started this thread talking about GRRM, but I also said at the start that I didn't know if I had one single coherent point to make.
A Spell for Chameleon, the first Xanth book, is not the first one that I read -- that they could be read in any order and the used bookstores always had them was a huge point in their favor -- but it's one of my most vivid memories of reading a book as a child.
I couldn't tell you exactly where I was when I read a lot of books. I could venture a guess. I did a lot of reading in bed, for instance. Made the mistake of reading Misery and Gerald's Game in one night, in bed. Two horror novels that take place almost entirely in bed.
So I can tell you where I was when I read those books, because there was a reason the location stuck in my mind.
I remember vividly reading A Spell for Chameleon in study hall in fifth grade.
I remember vividly reading A Spell for Chameleon in study hall in fifth grade.
And I remember that because there were multiple points where I became *intensely* aware that I was reading these words in school, with a teacher at the front of the room and surrounded by my classmates, and it felt dirty and shameful?
But I kept reading because this was Piers Anthony, my favorite author, the funny guy who wrote the funny books, and again, he wrote them *to me*. Not me in particular. Kids like me. I was his audience and he trusted me with these very adult words.
I would worry less about a teenager who picked up A Game of Thrones than I would one who picked up Piers Anthony. A lot less.
With George R. R. Martin, it's more like... well, he made choices and maybe we should talk about those choices, parent to child.
And honestly, one of the reasons I am not on board with FanPol/purity police is that it's already *hard* to talk about this stuff, to tease out the influences and the ramification and the harm, without having to reduce everything to Pure And Permitted or Impure And Banned.
Apparently a lot of people had very similar experiences with Piers Anthony so I'm glad the thread worked its way around to him.
...I read the first six books of the Incarnations of Immortality series and they were some of my favorite books, even as an adult I've followed with interest news of adaptations in the works, but man, multiple people have brought up book 7, and. Wow.
And see I used to feel so bad that publishers were only interested in his cash cow series. As late as my twenties I was still pining for more of Magic Space Wizard Take Me Away and hoping he'd find ways to continue it.
As I very publicly process my baggage of having been a teenage girl who read Piers Anthony, I'm remembering that his fight with publishers over continuing that series influenced my decision to forge a path through self-publishing.
I'm remembering now that he used his web presence/newsletter in the early 21st century to explore what was possible in self-publishing vs. vanity publishing and that was an influence and inspiration.
As I write this... I find I'm still nostalgic over those Mode books (the ones I referred to as Space Wizard Take Me Over) and the Incarnations and the floridly awful Tarot books, and even the aforementioned Land of Magical Dad Jokes.
Influences run deep.
Influences run deep.
