Flavorwire

Piers Anthony, generally

The charges: rampaging sexism, general creepiness

Flavorpill has a confession to make here: we were quite big fans of Piers Anthony’s fantasy production line in our early teens, but while he’s got a way with a narrative, he’s also got a way with spectacularly over sexism. Revisiting his work, it’s remarkable to see just how objectionable his depictions of women are (especially in the never-ending Xanth series) — they’re almost inevitably either ingenuous sex objects, or nasty deceptive tricksters who are ugly to boot. And then, of course, there’s his hugely creepy 1990 novel Firefly, where, amongst other things, a five-year-old girl gets it on with an adult man. Ewwww.