LitReactor

I really enjoy the concepts in H.P. Lovecraft's mythos, particularly where horror intersects with science fiction, but I also enjoy it a lot less after learning about his rabid antisemitic and racist views[0], which were extreme even for the time. I also used to like Piers Anthony's books when I was young, and too naive to pick up on how much the author seemed to like writing about little girls panties and fetishizing pedophilia[1]. Some people can ignore the problematic elements, and some can't. You don't have to read The Shadow Over Innsmouth as metaphor for race mixing, but once you know it's there, you can't unknow it. [0]https://lithub.com/we-cant-ignore-h-p-lovecrafts-white-supremacy/ [1]https://litreactor.com/columns/themes-of-pedophilia-in-the-works-of-pi…

This is especially bad when compared to a great first sentance: "The man in Black fled across the Desert, and the Gunslinger followed." - (Steven King, 1982 "The Gunslinger") [1] 1: https://litreactor.com/columns/the-top-10-best-opening-lines-of-novels

To head off on an even further tangent for a second: Piers Anthony is pretty deeply problematic himself, and I don't mean that in an "insufficiently 'woke'" sense, either. Many of his works have an unhealthy fascination with sexualized adolescent characters; one of them (his 1990 adult novel Firefly) graphically and sympathetically depicts the rape of a child. https://www.filfre.net/2019/12/companions-of-xanth-preceded-by-the-wor… https://litreactor.com/columns/themes-of-pedophilia-in-the-works-of-pi… There are plenty of other far more deserving authors that could take his place in such a comparison. Terry Pratchett is a pretty obvious choice, for instance. Or Tolkien, as someone else mentioned.

It's a technique typically referred to as 'free indirect discourse' (or 'style' or 'speech'). The details aren't irrelevant; they're part of the characterization of Oedipa. https://litreactor.com/columns/the-benefits-of-free-indirect-discourse http://faculty.washington.edu/cbehler/glossary/freeindsty.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_indirect_speech

Grooming generally consists of showing kids porn, drugging them and then raping them and making them feel guilt over their own abuse so that they do not disclose it. So it's understandable that people are concerned by people who want to give sexually explicit material to preteens. And some authors of children's works have long attracted controversy, like Piers Anthony who had that hotline to contact him in his books (1-800-HI-PIERS) and who wrote extensively about child sexuality both in children's books (the "adult conspiracy" in Xanth) and quite explicitly in his adult works, like Firefly which has explicit sex involving a 5 year old girl. Quotes of that and some similar works of his can be found here, you have been warned: https://litreactor.com/columns/themes-of-pedophilia-in-the-works-of-pi… https://hradzka.livejournal.com/392471.html I think it's fair to be concerned about such things, and I say that as someone who read much of the Xanth series as a teenager and only figured out how damned creepy it was a very long time afterwards. Note that I do not claim to have any proof that he's a pedophile, nor do I have any evidence of him harming any kids. But at the same time, I think it's fair for people to want to keep their children away from dirty old men like him and I wouldn't give any kids of mine a Xanth book.

It's interesting where he talks about having an imaginary meter on your forehead and moving the needle to (P)ositive or (N)egative. He explains this with a nice example: > When I write, “Bob was an asshole,” and then, feeling this perhaps somewhat lacking in specificity, revise it to read, “Bob snapped impatiently at the barista,” then ask myself, seeking yet more specificity, why Bob might have done that, and revise to, “Bob snapped impatiently at the young barista, who reminded him of his dead wife,” and then pause and add, “who he missed so much, especially now, at Christmas,” – I didn’t make that series of changes because I wanted the story to be more compassionate. I did it because I wanted it to be less lame. Chuck Palahniuk (author of Fight Club) suggests a similar exercise for writers [1]. > From this point forward – at least for the next half year – you may not use “thought” verbs. > You can’t write: Kenny wondered if Monica didn’t like him going out at night…” > Instead, you’ll have to Un-pack that to something like: “The mornings after Kenny had stayed out, beyond the last bus, until he’d had to bum a ride or pay for a cab and got home to find Monica faking sleep, faking because she never slept that quiet, those mornings, she’d only put her own cup of coffee in the microwave. Never his.” Writing "Bob was an asshole" or "Kenny wondered if Monica didn’t like him going out at night." is lazy writing and stops us from exploring the characters and getting to…

Like with any such claims, I opened up a tor-browser and looked if the claim can be supported by sources. Demanding sources, is the one rule that Wikipedia can never drop, in the same way that HN can't drop rules against spam. If HN became a cesspool of spam, HN would die. If Wikipedia dropped the requirement for sources, it would die. Checking the wikipedia talk page of Piers Anthony, not a single editor is brining a source to the discussion. A google search gave a hasty reference in a respectable article (http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-defends-pulls-self-published-ped… a newspaper columnists article (http://litreactor.com/columns/themes-of-pedophilia-in-the-works-of-pie… and a bunch unverifiable blog posts. So... its a fair chance to include such statement if someone used those sources to support such edit. Without any sources however, any such edit should not be on wikipedia. If you want to complain about whitewashing, please leave out discussions where a bunch of opinionated people are simply voicing their opinions but can't be bothered to do a simple google search.

That's tainted by selection bias. How about all the times predictions didn't come true? http://www.theguardian.com/science/occams-corner/2013/jan/24/science-f… https://litreactor.com/columns/the-accuracy-of-edward-bellamy-predicti… http://www.wired.com/2012/09/interview-with-william-gibson/ http://unrealitymag.com/movies/specific-dates-in-science-fiction-movie… https://medium.com/sci-fi-strange/science-fiction-doesnt-predict-the-f…