Oh my, Chalker's Well World saga? That takes me back. I was a teenager when I read it and it blew me away. I have to say the details of the different races have faded over the years, but now it makes me want to paw through my boxes of paperbacks and see if the stories stand up to a more jaded palate.
Happy hunting. I won't spoil any of the other races, or major plot points, though I can't promise others won't, if this thread takes off.
R.I.P. Jack L. Chalker, he died a few years ago. His memory will live on in his stories.
ETA: I just started the Well World YMMV page by adding in a Paranoia Fuel entry. It's not the only one I can think of, but anyone who has read this series is encouraged to add more to the Well World pages too.
edited 11th May '12 5:09:58 PM by Journeyman
There's a pair of appendices in the back of Quest for the Well of Souls that lists the different races/hexes that were dealt with. Some of the entries are funny, like the one for the Makiem, which states that they "hop like mad." That's right, he used that exact phrase in an appendix about different species. He really was an amusing writer as long as you could overcome the formulaic nature of his work.
I'm currently on the Return of Nathan Brazil. Man those Dreel were a horrible enemy.
Wow, the fate of Nikki Zinder is rather depressing: she was one of the founders of the Olympians, a group of ultra-sexy men and women who were capable of living in extreme conditions. They were created by Ben Yulin though Obie's powers, and formed a cult that worshipped the Well World and Nathan Brazil. When the other founders started aging, and decided to go back to the Well for another lifetime, Nikki remained behind and became a brain in a jar to guide her people for centuries. She's insane, and begs for her father to come back to her. When he finally does, he puts her out of her misery.
What a way to go. . .
Chalker took a lot of heat back when he was churning out novels for the way he treated the women in his stories, and not just in the Wellworld series. There was an obvious pattern of any woman showing up being mindraped, turned into willing sex puppets, human cattle, and even human furniture. He was such a talented writer that he mostly got away with it, but if you have a low tolerance for borderline S&M at times, his books aren't for you.
Aye, The Rings of the Masters had a strong-willed woman struck blind by something, and she had to rely on her handmaidens to help her along. It doesn't help that they fell under the "care" of a freighter pilot who had a lot of interactive sex tapes lying around, and would plug the girls into them. . .
I've added an entry for And I Must Scream and Fate Worse Than Death on the Wellworld page.
Jerry, have you dug up the Wellworld books and started reading them yet?
ETA once more: Doing the tropes for something while you're rereading it has serious advantages. Just ran into another example of Power Perversion Potential. One for Nathan B. himself, even. . .
edited 16th May '12 2:59:45 PM by Journeyman
And I created a Headscratchers page, with one entry. I also found an old Well of Souls headscratcher, and am currently looking into merging the two pages under our Well World pages. I'm slowly building up the Well World pages as I can, but as always, anyone who has a grip on the novels is fully welcome to help out.
Finished the last book yesterday. Now I'm sad. This is a series that could never end, and only the author's death finished it off, you know. The ending to Ghost of the Well of Souls isn't really much of one. Less of an ending than doing a book ends deal with the re-creation of the world and almost repeating the last line of the first book.

Who here has read this series? I read it years ago, and started getting back into it when my dad bought me a copy of the first Watchers at the Well book a couple months ago. I gotta say, this is one fun series, and even during the times where Chalker retreads old ground sociologically, he changes the perspective enough to make it feel fresh.
Like how Ben Yulin gets to live the harem fantasy in Dasheen, with a whole herd of wives he's completely reliant on, yet when Lori Sutton and Julian Beard wind up in Erdom, that same sort of system becomes a battered and twisted version of what Yulin had.
Also, what's your favorite race? Mine's the Agitar. Seriously, how cool is a satyr that rides on the back of a Pegasus, while shooting enemies with assault weapons and finishing them off with 60,000 volts of electricity it stored in its own body?