As
you may already know, Xanth is
a land that resembles Florida in shape. However, aside from a few
aesthetic similarities,(mostly a few landmarks), that is the only
resemblance. Xanth is a magical land, populated by dragons, fairies,
magical flora and fauna, moat monsters, monsters under the beds,
magicians, gnomes, gargoyles, sirens, golems, zombies, Com Pewters,
and all manner of magical creatures. All of the essentials of life
grow on trees and bushes.
The
Demon (X)anth rests in a cave beneath Xanth proper. He is the
source of the magic that exists there. The demon is trapped
in a 'penalty box' in a game that has lasted for many centuries.
He left once, rendering Xanth mundane, but luckily he was persuaded
to come back. However, since I'm not one to spoil anyone's fun,
I won't tell you what happens. Read the book. =)
Because
of the magic the Demon emanates, Xanth natives are born possessing
magical talents, one apiece, and many of the monsters have talents
as well. These talents can be anything: one person might have useless "spot-on-the-wall"
magic, and another might have powerful magician-caliber magic. Some
talents, such as the one Bink possesses, may not be readily apparent
to other people.
Xanth
Life is, in general, pleasant and happy. That isn't to say that bad
things don't happen in Xanth though. Not all of the inhabitants are
friendly, and there are some dangerous places. First time travelers
to this magical place should be alert at all times.
Mundania
(the name that the Xanthians use to refer to our land), is a place
where no magic exists. The closest thing we have to magic is
rainbows, but they are hard to find. The Good Magician Grey
is from Mundania, and there are other mundanes who have found their
way to Xanth, but in general, contact between the two worlds is pretty
rare. When the tide is right and the sea is a certain color,
passage between Xanth and Mundania is possible, but if you don't
time it perfectly, you may end up in a different time, on a different
continent, than you intended.
Magician Trent was once banished to Mundania, where he managed to live
right outside of the shield. The shield is a deathstone, allowing
Xanth folk to travel to Mundania, but not the other way around.
This was erected after numerous mundane barbarian waves decimated the
land and killed most of the inhabitants during various points of history.
There have been other Xanthians who have gone to Mundania on occasion,
but in general, it is a very dangerous and unfriendly place for decent,
gentle folk, and best avoided. If you didn't know any of this,
then I suggest you see Magician Humphfrey about a spell to nullify
the forget whorl that you must have passed through. =)
The
tales of Xanth are chronicled by a very punny man named Piers Anthony.
And since I brought it up, I may as well warn you that the land of
Xanth is riddled with bad puns...
Piers
has written 20 books about Xanth so far, and is currently working
on publishing more of the series. The first Xanth book was written
in the 1970's, when I was a very small child ;) He has written over
100 books, not all of them fantasy and sci-fi. His works include
a series called the Incarnations of Immortality, definitely
worth a read. There is currently an entire shelf on my bookcase filled
with his work. However, since this page is concerned with Xanth,
I won't list them all. If you have a strange sense of humor and don't
mind all sorts of veiled adult references, you will probably enjoy
his other works. |
Xanth
books in the order which they were written.
01. A
Spell for Chameleon,
Del Rey 1977
02. The
Source of Magic,
Del Rey 1979
03. Castle
Roogna,
Del Rey 1979
04. Centaur
Aisle,
Del Rey 1982
05. Ogre,
Ogre,
Del Rey 1982
06. Night
Mare,
Del Rey 1983
07. Dragon
on a Pedestal,
Del Rey 1983
08. Crewel
Lye,
Del Rey 1985
09. Golem
in the Gears,
Del Rey 1986
10. Vale
of the Vole,
Avon 1987, TOR 2000
11. Heaven
Cent,
Avon 1988, TOR 2000
12. Man
From Mundania,
Avon 1989, TOR 2000
13. Isle
of View,
Morrow HC Avon 1990
14. Question
Quest,
Morrow Avon 1991
15. The
Color of Her Panties,
Avon 1992
16. Demons
Don't Dream,
Tor 1993
17. Harpy
Thyme,
Tor 1994
18. Geis
of the Gargoyle,
Tor 1995
19. Roc
and a Hard Place,
Tor 1995
20. Yon
Ill Wind,
Tor 1996
21. Faun
& Games,
Tor 1997
22. Zombie
Lover,
Tor 1998
23. Xone
of Contention,
Tor 1999
24. The
Dastard,
Tor 2000
25. Swell
Foop,
Tor 2001
26. Up
in a Heaval,
Tor 2002
27. Cube
Route,
Tor 2003
28. Currant
Events,
Tor 2004
29. Pet
Peeve,
Tor 2005
30. Stork
Naked,
Tor 2006
31. Air Apparent , Tor 2007
32. Two to the Fifth
33. Jumper Cable
34. (and more to come)
|
Autobiography
of Piers Anthony
(written, of course, by Piers Anthony,
whose website is here)
I was born in Oxford, England, in AwGhost, 1934. My parents both graduated
from the University of Oxford, but I was slow from the outset. I spent
time with relatives and a nanny while my parents went to do relief
work in Spain during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939. They were
helping to feed the children rendered hungry by the devastation of
the war. When that ended, my sister and I joined them in Spain. I left
my native country at the age of four -- and never returned. The new
government of General Franco in Spain, evidently error-prone and suspicious
of foreigners doing good works, arrested my father in 1940. They refused
to admit that they had done so, making him in effect a "disappeared"
person, but he was able to smuggle out a note. Then rather than admit
error, they let him out on condition that he leave the country. World
War II was then in progress, so instead of returning to England, we
went to my father's country. In this manner I came to America at age
six, on what I believe was the last ship out. Though I was too young
to understand what was going on, in time I learned, and I retain, an
abiding hostility to dictatorships. My parents' marriage grew strained
and finally foundered.
Suffering the consequences of separation from my first country and
my second country as well as the stress of a family going wrong, I
showed an assortment of complications such as nervous tics of head
and hands, bed-wetting, and inability to learn. It required three years
and five schools to get me through first grade. I later gained intellectual
ground, but lost physical ground. When I entered my ninth school in
ninth grade I was at the proper level but not the proper size, being
the smallest person, male or female, in my class. However, boarding
school, and later college, became a better home for me than what I
had had, and I managed to grow almost another foot by the time I got
my BA in Writing at Goddard College, Vermont, in 1956. This was just
as well, because I married a tall girl I met in college; I had to grow,
literally, to meet the challenge.
I had the hodgepodge of employments typical of writers. Of about fifteen
types of work I tried, ranging from aide at a mental hospital to technical
writer at an electronics company, only one truly appealed: the least
successful. But the dream remained. Finally in 1962 my wife agreed
to go to work for a year, so that I could stay home and try to write
fiction full time. The agreement was that if I did not manage to sell
anything, I would give up the dream and focus on supporting my family.
As it happened, I sold two stories, earning $160. But such success
seemed inadequate to earn a living. So I became an English teacher,
didn't like that either, and in 1966 retired again to writing. This
time I wrote novels instead of stories, and with them I was able to
earn a living. As with the rest of my life, progress was slow, but
a decade later I got into light fantasy with the first of my ongoing
Xanth series of novels, A Spell For Chameleon, and that proved
to be the golden ring. My sales and income soared, and I became one
of the most successful writers of the genre, with twenty-one New York
Times paperback bestsellers in the space of a decade. This enabled
me to send our two daughters to college, and drove the wolf quite far
from our door. We now live on a tree farm, and would love to have a
wolf by our door, but do have deer and wild cat and other wildlife.
I am an environmentalist. My autobiography to age 50, Bio of An
Ogre, is now in print; there may be a sequel, How Precious Was
That While, in due course. At that time I had had 50 books published,
now it is over 100.
But a writer does not live by frivolous fantasy alone. Today I am turning
back to serious writing with direct comment on sexual abuse in Firefly,
and on history in novels like Tatham Mound, which relates to the fate
of American Indians, and my GEODYSSEY series, covering man's past three
and a half million years to the present, and Volk, which shows love
and death in Civil War Spain and World War II Germany. So I close the
circle, returning in my writing to the realm I left as a child. My
literary personality is splitting, with the fantasy paying my way in
Caesar's coin, and the historical research addressing the god of this
agnostic. There has always been a serious side to my writing, even
in my fantasy, and my readers respond to it. I answer a hundred to
two hundred letters a month, so remain in close touch with them. They
tell me that I have taught many of them to read, by showing them that
reading could be fun, and that I have saved the lives of some, by addressing
concerns such as suicide. So I date my letters with my fantasy months,
such as "AwGhost,"
"OctOgre," and "FeBlueberry," but take my readers as seriously as I
take my writing. A number of them are now becoming collaborators, in
a series of joint novels I am doing. In fact I am a workaholic, and
I love my profession. I have, of course, an ongoing battle with critics,
who choose to see only the frivolous level; it is doubtful whether
my work will ever in my lifetime receive much critical applause, but
I believe in its validity for the longer haul. So do my readers. |
