Why Scientific Protests Don't Catch On

My new favorite meme of all time.


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Genre Fantasy Bestsellers through 1990

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I've been studying Keith Justice's Bestseller Index , which compiles information from two separate bestseller lists -- New York Times Book Review and Publishers Weekly -- up through 1990, and the results are ridiculously fascinating. For instance, you wanna take a stab at which SFF author has the most individual books appear on a bestseller list? No, it ain't Heinlein, Clark, Herbert, or Asimov. It's not even Terry Brooks or David Eddings. No, the answer is Piers Anthony ... and even if you somehow pulled that name out of thin air, you'll still never guess how truly dominate Anthony was. Up through 1990, he had more than double than number of distinct bestsellers than Anne McCaffrey, the next most frequent bestseller. Whereas Anthony had an astounding  21 different books appear on a bestseller list, McCaffrey had "only" nine.** Now, caveats. These numbers need to be taken with one (or two) grains of salt. For instance, although Anthony had 22 two distinct...
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Defending Del Rey Books: The Misunderstood Hero

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A friend just sent me a youtube video "guaranteed to piss me off" (as he says) ... and boy oh boy, was he right. Now, I don't wanna dunk too hard on a random, passionate, sincere fantasy fan with a youtube channel. Since I'm writing a book on this exact topic, though, it's worth spelling out the myriad things problematic with " This is Why We Never Got Another Lord of the Rings ", a 30-minute hit job on Del Rey Books by a young youtuber named Hilary Layne, whose handle is "The Second Story". First, though, let me state for the record I think Layne makes a relatively solid attempt at research, at least for a non-academic. For the most part, she gets historical facts right, and she clearly put some legwork into tracking down sources. (She even briefly screenshots my article on Judy-Lynn , albeit without addressing my arguments.) Nonetheless, how Layne interprets her historical facts -- that is, the story she tells -- is what should raise red flag...
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Reading Piers Anthony's novel, FIREFLY

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After reading the initial trilogy in Piers Anthony 's Xanth series , I really wanted a more thorough exploration of his work ... something to help me understand just how badly underappreciated he has been. So, for this project, I wanted to avoid fantasy as "been there, done that." I also wanted to avoid novels that I'd read as a teenager. Eventually I settled on the three notable titles: Macroscope (1969), his best-known SF novel Firefly (1990), a horror thriller about sexual abuse and domestic violence Tatham Mound (1991), a historical novel about Native Americans that Anthony considers his best. Basically, for someone who's written 150+ novels, it seems like a sad stroke of misfortune that critics -- usually hostile critics -- seemingly know only Xanth , which Anthony himself dismisses as popular entertainment. Overall, critics have simply never made the same transition for Anthony that they afforded Michael Moorcock, who began as a pulp author who ended writing...
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