Life & Wisdom Quote by Piers Anthony

A backhanded compliment can be its own kind of manifesto, and Piers Anthony delivers one with disarming casualness. By calling Douglas Adams evidence of the "potential of lighter fantastic fiction", Anthony is quietly arguing for legitimacy: comedy, breeziness, and genre-play aren’t guilty pleasures but proof that the fantastic can carry cultural weight without lugging around solemn symbolism.

The phrasing matters. "Also shows" positions Adams as exhibit B in an ongoing case, not a lone genius. Anthony is speaking as a working fantasist defending a lane he himself occupies, nudging readers (and perhaps gatekeepers) to stop treating humor as a dilution of craft. That little word "lighter" does double duty: it flatters by contrast to dreary seriousness, while hinting at the condescension the field routinely faces. The subtext: people keep acting like funny fantasy is disposable; here is the counterexample that sells.

Then Anthony undercuts his own authority in a very human way: "I read the first, and listened to a tape of a later one". Not a scholarly survey, not even full commitment. It signals how Adams traveled through pop channels in real time - paperback culture, audio tapes, comedy as something you could literally play in the background. "It's fun" lands like a shrug, but it’s strategic. Fun is the feature being defended, and Anthony refuses to apologize for it.

Contextually, this reads like a genre insider marking a shift: late-20th-century speculative fiction beginning to admit that entertainment isn’t the enemy of imagination, it’s often the delivery system.