| Article: 417
From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews
Subject: REPOST: Belated Reviews PS#19: Philip Jose Farmer
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: 29 Oct 93 20:10:11 GMT
Belated Reviews PS#19: Philip Jose Farmer
When readers won't be satisfied with the number of books or stories that
their favorite authors have placed in their universes, fan fiction results.
Sometimes it's not that the readers can't get enough, so much as that they
feel that the author got it wrong. Sometimes fan fiction results from the
desire to mix and match favorite characters -- to have Dr. Who appear on
the Enterprise, for instance. Philip Jose Farmer has made a career out of
writing fan fiction professionally.
Some of Farmer's books -- some good ones, too -- are placed in his own
home-made universes, but he's never so at home as when he's playing in
someone else's sandbox. And even when the only universe he's playing in
is his own, he still overlooks no opportunity to mix and match. He does
it well, with a quirky combination of absurd premise and careful attention
to realistic detail. Philip Jose Farmer has been writing since the early
fifties, but I'd place his best work in the seventies. Among his books:
"To Your Scattered Bodies Go" (****) is placed on the ultimate mix-and-match
stage -- though the actors are drawn from history, not fiction: a literal
afterlife. The place is the Riverworld, a possibly artificial world with
an impossibly long river snaking over it. Along this river, everyone who
ever lived, from primitives to people slightly in our future, is resurrected
simultaneously. Necessities are provided, by what might as well be magic,
and humanity is left to work out its second chance. The hero of the story
is Sir Richard Francis Burton, the explorer who is best remembered today
for his translation of the Arabian Nights. With numerous other familiar
names from all of history, he sets out to discover the secrets behind the
Riverworld -- its reason for being.
It turns out to be a long search: The sequel to "To Your Scattered Bodies
Go" is "The Fabulous Riverboat" (***+), in which Burton, Samuel Clemens,
and others construct a high-tech riverboat and use it to explore the River
to its source. The series proceeds to go downhill after that. "The Dark
Design" (**) and "The Magic Labyrinth" (**) drag, and "Gods of the
Riverworld" (*) is actively bad. But "To Your Scattered Bodies Go"
stands on its own -- Farmer concentrates on telling a good story, rather
than on mixing and matching favorite historical characters -- and it's
worth reading even if you give the sequels a miss.
"Time's Last Gift" (***+) is an extrapolation from the Tarzan novels.
In the not-too-distant future, a time-travel expedition sets out for
prehistoric Europe. (The nature of time travel is such that this is the
only such expedition there'll ever be.) The leader of the expedition, a
man with extraordinary talents, turns out to be surprisingly at home in
this world of the past. Readers familiar with the Tarzan novels will
recognize the man. For readers who aren't familiar with those books, I'd
revise the rating to (**).
The great pulps are Farmer's favorite playgrounds. Some of his books are
set within an elaborately contrived 'history' in which half the heroes
of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century adventure fiction are
relatives, and interact. (Readers attracted by this notion are directed to
"Greatheart Silver" (*+).) "A Feast Unknown" (**+) links Tarzan and Doc
Savage (not called by those names) to a secret organization that has ruled
the world for tens of thousands of years. It is continued in "Lord of the
Trees" (**+) and "The Mad Goblin" (**). Again, if you're familiar with
Tarzan and Doc Savage, you're more likely to enjoy the homages. If not,
I'm afraid the main drawing card is painful sex.
"The Other Log of Phileas Fogg" (***) is a retelling of "Around the World
in Eighty Days", in which we learn that Verne's story was merely a cover
for the *real* story, which involved a struggle between competing alien
factions. If you haven't read the original, drop the rating to (**).
Farmer's other major series is his "World of Tiers" series, consisting of
"The Maker of Universes", "The Gates of Creation", "A Private Cosmos",
"Behind the Walls of Terra", "The Lavalite World", and now, "More than Fire".
So far. It's a very Farmerish milieu -- paranoid and clever -- in which a
number of immortals (heirs to god-like technology, and highly suspicious
of each other) rule private, made-to-order universes, and intrigue against
each other. (One of them is the behind-the-scenes ruler of Earth.) I'd
rate them all in the ** to **+ range: They're essentially adventure
fiction with clever props, but if you see one in a used book store, you
could do worse than to give it a try.
Farmer wrote more novels than I can reasonably begin to discuss. Honorable
mentions go to "The Wind Whales of Ishmael" (**+) and "Night of Light" (***).
And Vonnegut fans won't want to miss "Venus on the Half Shell" (**), "by
Kilgore Trout". I'd give his relatively recent 'Dayworld' trilogy (*+) a
miss, though.
The short shrift I've given most of Farmer's work might have given an
unbalanced picture of his writing. He's written numerous books, and I've
enjoyed most of them -- but not necessarily to the point of tugging on
readers' sleeves and urging them to read them. (He's also written a good
number of works which are 'historically important', but in many or most
cases, this means an unusual-twenty-years-ago use of sex embedded within
an otherwise uninspired story or novel.) I may just be the wrong person
to be reviewing Farmer, as his greatest critical successes (eg, "Riders
of the Purple Wage" (*+ -- and not to be confused with similar titles))
have tended to leave me cold.
So I recommend "To Your Scattered Bodies Go", which *was* fun to read --
and if you read that, you'll know whether you want to hunt down sequels.
Fans of Tarzan, Doc Savage, Oz, Holmes, or the writing of Vonnegut or
Verne, may enjoy what he's done with that raw material. (Frankly, I'd
avoid "A Barnstormer in Oz" (*).) And if you find that you like his
style, he's written plenty more books, most of which are fairly easy to
track down.
%A Farmer, Philip Jose
%S Riverworld
%T To Your Scattered Bodies Go
%O There are several sequels and add-ons
%T Time's Last Gift
%T The Other Log of Phileas Fogg
%T A Feast Unknown
%S World of Tiers
%T The Maker of Universes
%O There are several sequels
=============================================================================
The postscripts to Belated Reviews cover authors of earlier decades who
didn't fit into the original format -- whether because the author seemed
an inappropriate subject, or because I was unfamiliar with too much of the
author's work, or whatever -- or sometimes just isolated works of such
authors. The emphasis will continue to be on guiding newer readers
towards books or authors worth trying out, rather than on discussing them
comprehensively or in depth. I'll retain the rating scheme of ****
(recommended), *** (an old favorite that hasn't aged well), ** (a solid
lesser work), and * (nothing special).
-----
Dani Zweig
dani@netcom.com
Roses red and violets blew
and all the sweetest flowres that in the forrest grew -- Edmund Spenser
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