"No novel is a clone of any preceding one, though with a background cast of characters and things that has grown to thousands, there are many familiar aspects"
About this Quote
Piers Anthony is defending the long-running series as an ecosystem, not a copy machine. The line is a preemptive rebuttal to the oldest critique of prolific genre writers: that they’re churning out the same book with the nouns swapped. By insisting that “no novel is a clone,” he asserts artistic agency; by immediately conceding “many familiar aspects,” he signals he understands the reader’s suspicion and is willing to bargain with it.
The cleverness is in the scale argument. A “background cast… grown to thousands” reframes repetition as continuity. In a shared-world fantasy, familiarity isn’t evidence of laziness; it’s infrastructure. The subtext: the pleasure is partly archival. Readers return not just for plot but for the comfort of a remembered geography, the inside jokes of recurring objects, the sense that the world has outlived any single installment. Anthony’s phrasing makes novelty sound like a local variation on a stable climate rather than a radical reinvention.
Context matters: Anthony’s career is built on series fiction (most famously Xanth), a form that thrives on iterative promise. Each book must feel both accessible and additive, like a sitcom episode with consequences. The quote quietly articulates the contract: you’re not buying surprise from scratch; you’re buying another pass through a universe that already feels lived-in. The “familiar aspects” are not an apology. They’re the product.
The cleverness is in the scale argument. A “background cast… grown to thousands” reframes repetition as continuity. In a shared-world fantasy, familiarity isn’t evidence of laziness; it’s infrastructure. The subtext: the pleasure is partly archival. Readers return not just for plot but for the comfort of a remembered geography, the inside jokes of recurring objects, the sense that the world has outlived any single installment. Anthony’s phrasing makes novelty sound like a local variation on a stable climate rather than a radical reinvention.
Context matters: Anthony’s career is built on series fiction (most famously Xanth), a form that thrives on iterative promise. Each book must feel both accessible and additive, like a sitcom episode with consequences. The quote quietly articulates the contract: you’re not buying surprise from scratch; you’re buying another pass through a universe that already feels lived-in. The “familiar aspects” are not an apology. They’re the product.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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