Piers Anthony is an English-born (Oxford) American science fiction and fantasy writer who has written many novels and short stories; his real name is Anthony Dillingham Jacob Piers. In his SF, Anthony delights in exploring alternative life forms and varieties of communication. Prostho Plus (1971), for example, offers up a playful smorgasbord of potential extraterrestrial forms, while Omnivore (1968) considers a species of fungi-animals. Macroscope (1969) has scientists discovering an intergalactic information beam, very similar to a universe-wide Internet.