A profile of science fiction author Piers Anthony at his Florida home

11:42 a.m. EST, August 2, 2012|Mike McLeod, Orlando Sentinel

Editor’s note: On this week’s edition of This American Life on Public Radio International, one of the segments featured a man recalling the time he ran away from home as a teenager to find his hero, science fiction author Piers Anthony. Using clues from Anthony’s novels, he finds him living in Citrus County.

Years ago reporter Mike McLeod also found Anthony at his home and wrote this profile for the Sentinel’s Florida magazine. This cover story was published on October 6, 1985.


 Most people can drive all the way through Citrus County without noticing.

    They see the cattle. They see the fish camps. They may even stop to stare at an occasional historical marker, finding a story about a forgotten old fort etched into its weathered green patina.

    But very few people see Orn, though his story would fill dozens of those markers. He lives there unnoticed, on the outskirts of the Withlacoochee State Forest northwest of Tampa: An earthbound bird, nearly as tall as a man and, in his own way, far more intelligent.

    Orn has razor-sharp talons, the strength of a tiger, and a memory that encompasses eons. It is Orn's great gift that he can ''remember'' the experiences of his ancestors -- all of them. His memory extends back to the single-celled creatures who sought out warmth and light in the very first stirrings of the primordial soup. And his mind can follow the trail of evolution up through the higher life forms that followed, as protoplasm defined itself into sinew and bone, as gills gave way to lungs, as limbs formed into wings.

    Orn's memory is not a scholarly thing. He is not a philosopher or a scientist. Orn's priority, like the creatures who came before him, is staying alive. To him, that vast inherited memory is simply a card catalog for survival.

    Knowing the stories of the life forms who came before him gives Orn the luxury of learning from their mistakes. Faced with a predator, he can instinctively turn to his inherited memories for guidance. Did one of his ancestors battle a similar foe? If so, what are its weaknesses? How quickly can it move, and how does it attack? It is like having a scouting report on hand, courtesy of the process of natural selection.

    Orn is a Florida native, though you will never find his like at Sea World or Lake Okeechobee or on any endangered-species list. He exists only in the imagination of a science fiction novelist named Piers Anthony.

    Anthony lives with his wife and two daughters in a quiet forest retreat in Citrus County. He writes in what amounts to a glorified garage behind his house. There is no phone and no air conditioning. The building is halfway between a barn and a pasture, and a sprawling state forest is the only thing on the horizon.

    But it would be misleading to call Anthony an isolated artist, because the truth is that he has quite a few colleagues nearby. Chance, fate, or the simple attraction of a fair weather climate has landed some of the world's finest science fiction writers in Central Florida.

    Two of them live in the Orlando area: Andre Norton, who has been called ''the grand dame of science fiction,'' and Robert Adams, author of the popular Horseclans series. Several more live within a 200-mile radius, including new talents such as David Palmer, author of Emergence (nominated by sci-fi readers for a coveted Hugo Award); Meredith Pierce (A Gathering Of Gargoyles); and more firmly established names like Keith Laumer and Joe and Jack Haldeman.

    Unless you are an s-f buff, some or even all of those names are probably unfamiliar. Of the hundreds of science fiction writers in America, only a half-dozen or so are widely recognized: Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Ursula Leguin, Frank Herbert, the British authorArthur C. Clarke, and -- though he doesn't quite seem to fit with the others -- Kurt Vonnegut. But there are dozens of other s-f writers toiling away in relative obscurity, and the quality of their workmanship may be one of the best-kept secrets of paperback publishing.

    Some of them, like Norton, Adams, Laumer and Anthony, make enough money from writing to support themselves. But few people get rich writing science fiction. The vast majority of Florida's s-f writers worry less about bracket creep and more about hanging on to the full- or part-time jobs that pay the bills while they're waiting to become famous.

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