[Werthead]

And his wife too.

This isn't even a Marion Zimmer Bradley, allegations made after death kind of thing. They were arrested, put on trial and they both went to jail for a year in 1970 for imprisoning and torturing their adopted son. Both their adopted son and daughter were removed from their custody and their adoption papers revoked. Eddings lost his job working in academia in South Dakota and they were forced to relocate to another state, Eddings having to take a job working in a grocery store because he couldn't get another job teaching young people for love nor money (and probably legal requirements).

There is no suggestion of sexual abuse, but the details of the story are still pretty grim. They had a dog cage in their basement (where several animals lived) that they made their four-year-old adopted son sit in for hours and perhaps days at a time, and inflicted physical punishment on him with a belt and other implements. They were literally caught red-handed in the middle of beating him when the cops showed up and arrested them.

After becoming famous, Eddings joked that he left academia because the pay was better working in groceries. In the pre-Internet age the story never came up (in fact, they didn't even change their names, otherwise the story may have never come to light).

It should be noted you don't need to go burn your Eddings books: Leigh died in 2007, David in 2009 and all proceeds from their estate now go to Reed College in Portland, Oregon.

[amphibian]

Wow. This is awful and many people have to make their decisions on how they want to proceed going forward.

[Abyss]

Fuck.


Seriously... I had no particular attachment to the various classic authors who have been revealed as horrible the last few years. But this....
....this is viscerally disturbing.

I have reco'd Belgariad to so so many people.
Sometimes for their kids.


...FUCK.

[Whisperzzzzzzz]

Yeah, but:
1. They're dead.
2. The books are still good (I presume, I haven't read them).
3. The proceeds go to fund students' education.

If anything, it's your moral duty to buy them to support the pursuit of knowledge in school.

[Macros]

They're dead, the books aren't great, and silk is indeed a douche

[Aptorian]

The Belgariad is awesome. The authors' past doesn't change that.

Now that Elder Gods book they wrote. That's a book that should be burned.

This post has been edited by Aptorian: 03 May 2020 - 10:29 AM

[Tiste Simeon]

I remember reading this a while back but there wasn't much in the way of details.

Silk is a cretin. Unrelated but I wanted to say it.

[Aptorian]

A charming lovable cretin. It's the stereotypicalness of these fantasy charicatures that I loved about reading Belgariad. You knew what their fantasy roles where and as such you can enjoy them for what they are.

[Macros]

I did the reread a few years back, man it was painfull how badly they had aged.

The Redemption of Althalus was awful, like every bad bit of writing eddings did condensed into one book of awful

[End of Disc One]

I read about this on reddit a couple of years ago. I’m surprised this news is just now finding its legs given how awful it is.

[Werthead]

End of Disc One, on 03 May 2020 - 03:19 PM, said:

I read about this on reddit a couple of years ago. I’m surprised this news is just now finding its legs given how awful it is.

Must have broken at a time when a lot of other things were going on and it got buried.

[Mentalist]

Briar King, on 03 May 2020 - 01:07 AM, said:

Well dang isn’t the author Mac and Abyss are always talking about which set is better he did?

Abyss is all about Eddings

Maccy is a Feist fan.

[Werthead]

Feist is a bit of a doofus (he likes to overshare stories of personal failings on his various forums and then delete them) but there doesn't appear to be too much in his closet, mainly because of his apparent inability to stop talking about things he really shouldn't in public. Brooks is, by multiple and all accounts, the nicest guy on Earth. From that era, Pratchett and Gemmell were total legends as people and authors from large numbers of multiple sources.

We always knew that Eddings was a bit of an oddball. There was that time he set his garage on fire (after his wife passed away but before he did), which was a bit weird.

[amphibian]

Whisperzzzzzzz, on 03 May 2020 - 04:17 AM, said:

Yeah, but:
1. They're dead.
2. The books are still good (I presume, I haven't read them).
3. The proceeds go to fund students' education.

If anything, it's your moral duty to buy them to support the pursuit of knowledge in school.

What is wrong with you?

The Eddings being dead don't magically cleanse the horrific abuse that they did for a long time to a child.

The quality of books has little to nothing to do with this. They tortured a four year old child and went to prison for it. They probably should have stayed in there longer in my view because that's a horrible, horrible thing to do.

I don't know what the Eddings did in regards to making amends, but even with a "proceeds go to a college" thing attached to their books, I don't know that I can support their purchase. I get why they're a common experience in fantasy, but I think time has moved past them and that there are/will be a lot of better books in that zone that are not written by child abusers.

I'm out. I get why some people are ok with staying. But there's no moral duty to keep buying the books.

[Tsundoku]

It's like all the foundations of my adolescence are crumbling.

Next thing you know they'll say Arnie boinked the housekeeper, or something.

Slightly more seriously, I did not know about this at all. I knew about the garage fire, but I think everyone went "Silly old coot" but that was about it.

On Feist and his oversharing: a mate and I went to two author meet-and-greets in Brisbane with Feist back in the late 90s and early 00s. We even had photos taken on both occasions with him (which I WILL find one day). The second time round he looked slimmer, the beard was darker etc, he dressed more stylish. We showed him the photo from about four years before and he remarked on the difference. We asked what happened. He replied he lost "lost about 105 pounds". My friend and I must have looked confused because he said he got a divorce.
In the talk after that with the Q&A he referred to the divorce a few times and yeah it did seem a little like oversharing then. But that's the way he came across - no or very few filters.
It was there and on the old feistfans list we found out he knew David Brin (both lived around San Diego) and that's why I think in "The Practice Effect" you see mention of a couple of places from Midkemia.

Back on Eddings - I think I'll always remember the Belgariad fondly, the other stuff less so. But I now feel no compunction to fill out the collection.
And if anyone wants a hardback of The Redemption of Althalus, let me know. Pretty much as new because after I finished I put it on the shelf, never to touch it again except when moving. I honestly have no idea why I still have it. Like Maccy says a distillation of all the shitty stuff in his/their books.

This post has been edited by Tsundoku: 04 May 2020 - 03:05 AM

[Abyss]

1. The Belgariad and even The Mallorean are great. Pretty much everything else he/they wrote was not. The knights thing was derivative of the Belgariad and poorly so, also icky weird Princess/knight romance thing. Althalus was insultingly bad. I gave up at that point.

2. Silk is a fucking legend.

3. What they did was inexcusable and had much younger me know it way back when, he would not have spent the dollars. I can't say I regret reading the books, any more than I would say I regret reading ENDER'S GAME, but knowing this now, I won't reco them.

[Whisperzzzzzzz]

amphibian, on 04 May 2020 - 02:37 AM, said:

Whisperzzzzzzz, on 03 May 2020 - 04:17 AM, said:

Yeah, but:
1. They're dead.
2. The books are still good (I presume, I haven't read them).
3. The proceeds go to fund students' education.

If anything, it's your moral duty to buy them to support the pursuit of knowledge in school.

What is wrong with you?

The Eddings being dead don't magically cleanse the horrific abuse that they did for a long time to a child.

The quality of books has little to nothing to do with this. They tortured a four year old child and went to prison for it. They probably should have stayed in there longer in my view because that's a horrible, horrible thing to do.

I don't know what the Eddings did in regards to making amends, but even with a "proceeds go to a college" thing attached to their books, I don't know that I can support their purchase. I get why they're a common experience in fantasy, but I think time has moved past them and that there are/will be a lot of better books in that zone that are not written by child abusers.

I'm out. I get why some people are ok with staying. But there's no moral duty to keep buying the books.

I was being sarcastic: "/s"

[amphibian]

Oh - I didn't recognize the sarcasm. My apologies for that.

[Morgoth]

Abyss, on 04 May 2020 - 03:19 AM, said:

1. The Belgariad and even The Mallorean are great. Pretty much everything else he/they wrote was not. The knights thing was derivative of the Belgariad and poorly so, also icky weird Princess/knight romance thing. Althalus was insultingly bad. I gave up at that point.

2. Silk is a fucking legend.

3. What they did was inexcusable and had much younger me know it way back when, he would not have spent the dollars. I can't say I regret reading the books, any more than I would say I regret reading ENDER'S GAME, but knowing this now, I won't reco them.

The first book i remember reading in English was Belgarath the Sorceror, which I loved at the time, and it still holds a very special place in my heart to this day. So... shit.

[stone monkey]

I bought the Belgariad books way too many years ago, as they were published. Over the years I'd read things one or two statements Eddings had made that seemed a bit... off, but they struck me more as cultural and generational difference stuff more than anything. It's was very shocking to find that this was what was hiding in their closet.

I'm with Abyss on this, I don't regret enjoying his/their earlier work back in the day, but this definitely puts a new wrinkle on it. And, much like the Zimmer Bradley horror story, it definitely puts the blocks on me actually recommending them to anyone in future