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Riverworld: Including To Your Scattered Bodies Go & The Fabulous Riverboat
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From award-winning author Philip Jose Farmer comes his most famous science fiction work: the first combined edition of the first two Riverworld novels, To Your Scattered Bodies Go and The Fabulous Riverboat.
Imagine that every human who ever lived, from the earliest Neanderthals to the present, is resurrected after death on the banks of an astonishing and seemingly endless river on an unknown world. They are miraculously provided with food, but with not a clue to the possible meaning of this strange afterlife. And so billions of people from history, and before, must start living again.
Some set sail on the great river questing for the meaning of their resurrection, and to find and confront their mysterious benefactors. On this long journey, we meet Sir Richard Francis Burton, Mark Twain, Odysseus, Cyrano de Bergerac, and many others, most of whom embark upon searches of their own in this huge afterlife.
The basis of the 2010 television miniseries from Syfy.
"Charts a territory somewhere between Gulliver's Travels and The Lord of the Rings."--Time
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
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Start ReadingBook Information
Riverworld: Including To Your Scattered Bodies Go & The Fabulous Riverboat
Description
From award-winning author Philip Jose Farmer comes his most famous science fiction work: the first combined edition of the first two Riverworld novels, To Your Scattered Bodies Go and The Fabulous Riverboat.
Imagine that every human who ever lived, from the earliest Neanderthals to the present, is resurrected after death on the banks of an astonishing and seemingly endless river on an unknown world. They are miraculously provided with food, but with not a clue to the possible meaning of this strange afterlife. And so billions of people from history, and before, must start living again.
Some set sail on the great river questing for the meaning of their resurrection, and to find and confront their mysterious benefactors. On this long journey, we meet Sir Richard Francis Burton, Mark Twain, Odysseus, Cyrano de Bergerac, and many others, most of whom embark upon searches of their own in this huge afterlife.
The basis of the 2010 television miniseries from Syfy.
"Charts a territory somewhere between Gulliver's Travels and The Lord of the Rings."--Time
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
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Reviews
I was one of those who, unfortunately, saw the movie first. Even without reading the book, I knew it was both a serious departure and disappointment. For one, the movie puts Burton as the villain and some war photographer as the hero in a really contrived fight over a girl.Now let's look at the book, the incredible, fantastic book by Philip Jose Farmer.Richard Francis Burton, writer and adventurer, a real-life challenger of the unknown, wakes up in a strange place after dying an old man, young and strapped to some form of bed, floating in a nothingness surrounded by others in the exact same position. Suddenly, he awakens again on the side of a river along with hundreds of others, bald and naked. He soon learns that the people are from various eras of Earth's history, lived their lives fully, passed, then found themselves here.Thus begins one of the greatest science fiction epic adventure stories ever written. Burton sets out to find the makers of this "river world" and find out exactly what they want of him. Along the way, he makes some friends, makes some enemies, fights some battles, and meets some of histories most fascinating individuals. It amazes me that after two attempts, a descent movie has yet to be made (although it would certainly work better as a television series, I mean, book one would make up at least three seasons alone).I'll admit, it took a little while to get me hooked, the start is a bit slow; but once I was hooked, I was completely, absolutely IN. This has got a Tolkien feel of travel and adventure to it that makes it worth reading whether you're a fan of sci-fi or not.
Rating: 5This is my guilty pleasure book, and I won’t be dissuaded from my love for it.
Once upon a time, 25ish years ago, I was a kid struggling. My mom had just died, and we were learning to cope with life. My dad’s new wife (or girlfriend, I can’t remember what she was back then) got a box from one of those old book-of-the-month clubs. When the box was opened, there were two books - The Hobbit and To Your Scattered Bodies Go. I was a kid that read everything I could get my hands on, and no one was interested in these books, so they gave them to me. And so, To Your Scattered Bodies Go became the first sci-fi book I had ever read (I’ll let you figure out what the first fantasy book was)..
I absolutely adored that book when I first read it. And I read it repeatedly. There was something awesome and different about reading about a world outside of this world’s known possibilities that could be used to create something different. This kind of writing had no bounds at all, and you could use limitless worlds to explore whatever you wanted.
And I’ve always loved that about sci-fi, and still do.
I was nervous re-reading this book (I haven’t read it for nearly 20 years), because now that I’m older, wiser, and more importantly - more critical, I thought the Suck Fairy would have taken over the book. I also assumed she brought her BFF, the Sexist Fairy as well.
And they were there, but not enough to really destroy the book for me. Is it the masterpiece I thought it was as a kid? Probably not... but I can’t seem to un-love a book that brought me to an entire genre and way of thinking.
Back to the actual review:
The book has a great premise: What if everyone who had ever lived were resurrected to live together? Well, not everyone - Anyone under the age of five didn’t make the cut. Everyone resurrected in perfect health, with their 25 year old bodies. No diseases, genetic, viral, or otherwise. No pesky bugs or predatory animals. We all live in a great river valley, with all of our (physical) needs met and provided for us.
Apparently, some time in the future, an alien race (or just us, really advanced) created a planet with an endlessly long river for this ultimate social experiment. They never really get into why this was done (apparently we need to correct ourselves/make amends/etc), or how it was done. With a science-light explanation (science did it, but no details), we avoid any fantastical or religious arguments.
Our protagonist is Sir Richard Burton, probably one of the greatest adventurers ever documented. Larger than life, he is a great character to use for this story because he was an ethnologist that studies many cultures, and a polyglot who spoke many languages. He could either talk to people with languages he already knew or figure out the language and get through cultural barriers as well.
PJF seemingly inserts himself into the story as “Peter J Frigate” a 20th century sci-fi writer with a serious man-crush on Burton. There are some other auxiliary characters as well, a prehistoric man, a future-alien (which accidentally actually causes the end of the species in 2008) and others.
This book is a bit on the misogynistic side, keeping heteronormative and sexist values (seriously, the supply grails come with lipstick). It’s all about the white man, all the time. Women are only around to be raped, have sex with, be “protected”, etc. The women just don’t do much at all, but I don’t expect a lot of an old white male author that is clearly a product of his time. It’s not an excuse, I just can’t get bent out of shape about it. It’s an old book. It’s my guilty pleasure. I still love it.
Rating: 4Once upon a time, 25ish years ago, I was a kid struggling. My mom had just died, and we were learning to cope with life. My dad’s new wife (or girlfriend, I can’t remember what she was back then) got a box from one of those old book-of-the-month clubs. When the box was opened, there were two books - The Hobbit and To Your Scattered Bodies Go. I was a kid that read everything I could get my hands on, and no one was interested in these books, so they gave them to me. And so, To Your Scattered Bodies Go became the first sci-fi book I had ever read (I’ll let you figure out what the first fantasy book was)..
I absolutely adored that book when I first read it. And I read it repeatedly. There was something awesome and different about reading about a world outside of this world’s known possibilities that could be used to create something different. This kind of writing had no bounds at all, and you could use limitless worlds to explore whatever you wanted.
And I’ve always loved that about sci-fi, and still do.
I was nervous re-reading this book (I haven’t read it for nearly 20 years), because now that I’m older, wiser, and more importantly - more critical, I thought the Suck Fairy would have taken over the book. I also assumed she brought her BFF, the Sexist Fairy as well.
And they were there, but not enough to really destroy the book for me. Is it the masterpiece I thought it was as a kid? Probably not... but I can’t seem to un-love a book that brought me to an entire genre and way of thinking.
Back to the actual review:
The book has a great premise: What if everyone who had ever lived were resurrected to live together? Well, not everyone - Anyone under the age of five didn’t make the cut. Everyone resurrected in perfect health, with their 25 year old bodies. No diseases, genetic, viral, or otherwise. No pesky bugs or predatory animals. We all live in a great river valley, with all of our (physical) needs met and provided for us.
Apparently, some time in the future, an alien race (or just us, really advanced) created a planet with an endlessly long river for this ultimate social experiment. They never really get into why this was done (apparently we need to correct ourselves/make amends/etc), or how it was done. With a science-light explanation (science did it, but no details), we avoid any fantastical or religious arguments.
Our protagonist is Sir Richard Burton, probably one of the greatest adventurers ever documented. Larger than life, he is a great character to use for this story because he was an ethnologist that studies many cultures, and a polyglot who spoke many languages. He could either talk to people with languages he already knew or figure out the language and get through cultural barriers as well.
PJF seemingly inserts himself into the story as “Peter J Frigate” a 20th century sci-fi writer with a serious man-crush on Burton. There are some other auxiliary characters as well, a prehistoric man, a future-alien (which accidentally actually causes the end of the species in 2008) and others.
This book is a bit on the misogynistic side, keeping heteronormative and sexist values (seriously, the supply grails come with lipstick). It’s all about the white man, all the time. Women are only around to be raped, have sex with, be “protected”, etc. The women just don’t do much at all, but I don’t expect a lot of an old white male author that is clearly a product of his time. It’s not an excuse, I just can’t get bent out of shape about it. It’s an old book. It’s my guilty pleasure. I still love it.
In a strange landscape of plains and hills, along the banks of a seemingly endless river, every person who has ever lived on Earth has been mysteriously resurrected in a new, young, and healthy body. It's an afterlife of some kind, but not one that any religion ever anticipated.Out of all the human beings who have ever lived, the novel chooses to focus on Richard Burton, a nineteenth century Englishman known, among other things, for his extensive travels and his language skills. And Burton is determined to find out what the secrets behind this place are if he has to sail all the way to the end of the river to do it.It's a fantastic, mind-blowing, absolutely compelling premise. So I can sort of understand why this is so highly regarded. But I find what Farmer does with it incredibly frustrating. There's just really not much development of anything. I want a really close-up look at how people react to and adapt to this weird new reality, how their societies and their philosophies and their ways of relating to each other slowly evolve, but that's all dealt with very shallowly, if at all. Mostly we're told things rather than being shown them, and that's true on every scale, from human relationships to the rise and fall of mini-civilizations. We're shown a very little bit of the first few days after the resurrection, then there's a month-long time jump while Burton and his new friends build a boat, then there's a jump of well over a year while they explore the river, an expedition we get to see almost none of. Farmer seems way, way more interested in the details of Burton's life than in this amazing new setting he's created, and, while I'm sure Burton is a very interesting guy, given the choice between debates over whether he was or wasn't an anti-Semite vs. a travelog featuring a trip down a million-mile river with all of human history colliding and mutating along its banks, I know which one I'd rather hear about.In the end, there aren't any definite answers to the question of what the heck is going on here, just partial explanations and hints, which I'm sure are more fully explored in later volumes. But, while this one certainly piqued my interest, I doubt I'm going to continue on with the series unless someone can convince me that it changes its focus enough to be less frustrating for me.
Rating: 4What a wonderful and creative storyline! I really enjoyed the imaginative way Farmer brought together notables from Earth's history in the creation of a new world.
Rating: 4A fast, exciting read, with a clever premise. It's remarkably similar to the TV show Lost (right down to the lack of a satisfactory conclusion), except that instead of a handful of people finding themselves on a mysterious island, it's billions of people finding themselves on a mysterious planet.
Rating: 4I thought this novel was a bit more creative when I first read it, before I know about "Bangsian fantasy" as a genre, but it's still a fun concept fairly well-executed.
Rating: 3A classic of the genre, the first in Farmer's "Riverworld" series is a wonderful read based on a fascinating premise. All the humans who ever lived, it assumes, wake up after death in a mysterious "Riverworld" on the shores of a massive river, restored to youth and vigor and carrying with the passions that drove their time on earth. Everything they need to survive is available, but one critical thing is missing -- why are they there? A group centered around Sir Richard Burton sets off up the River to find out what's going on. The basic story is gripping, and the encounters between various people from various times are most interesting. Deserves its Hugo. The series did not, in my view, maintain this level, but that doesn't diminish this book.
Rating: 5This is the opening novel in Farmer's Riverworld and was a fantastic read. I just cracked open the book and hours later I blink having reached the last page--so smooth style and page turner. This was written in 1971 but didn't read as dated, aside from that time's Environmental Doom Fad(tm). The premise is fantastical: every humanoid being born on the Earth from Homo Erectus to early 21st Century Homo Sapiens to alien visitors, about 35 billion of them, is resurrected along the banks of a river that runs millions of miles through an alien planet. This might sound like a fantasy, but is very much science-fiction with a scientific rationale and a mysterious purpose. All this is seen through the point of view of Sir Richard Burton, not the actor, but the 19th Century British explorer and linguist. There are other characters prominent in the story, fictional and historical, including Kazz, a Neanderthal, and Monat, an alien from Tau Ceti who died on Earth. One of the fictional ones is an obvious stand-in for the author himself: Peter Jairus Frigate, born in 1918, the same year as Philip Jose Farmer. That character is a fan of Burton and knows much about his life, even if not blind to his faults. Obviously true of Farmer--because Burton is rendered in a way that is rounded, fascinating, and obviously well-researched as are many of the other characters we meet. This novel certainly makes me want to read more of the Riverworld series--not all the threads are tied up at the end and I want to find out what happens!
Rating: 5Another unique tale. Quite enjoyable.
Rating: 4The description of this book sounded intriguing, and I figured that since it won a Hugo, it must be good. Well, it isn't. The premise is certainly interesting: all humans are simultaneously resurrected on a different planet, all given young and healthy bodies, food and basic necessities. People from different time periods are all thrown in together, so people from totally different times and places suddenly meet and must deal with their extraordinary new circumstances together.This is a fascinating premise. However, the writing is incredibly dull and unimaginative. The descriptive passages are very scientific and dull, the dialog is stilted, and the narrative is just a list of events. The idea of following the resurrection of Richard Burton is fascinating, but he's a pretty dull character (well, all of the characters are dull). I didn't find him at all believable - his attitudes were way too modern. The story is told in painstakingly boring detail in places, and then all of a sudden years go by in a sentence or two. The plot revolves around the mystery of how and why everyone is resurrected. Burton can be an asshole in his quest to find out why. The whole question is never satisfactorily resolved, and the book just kindof randomly ends when Farmer got tired of writing it (or so it seems). I assume that the rest of the books in the series provide more answers, but I have no interest in reading them.Is there anything good to say about the book? Well, the premise is certainly fascinating, but that's about all that I can say.
Rating: 1Great book and a great idea. I read this in one night. I believe there is a sequel as well. Can't wait to check that out.
Rating: 4I wasn't able to summon the enthusiasm for this book that so many other people seemed to find. I was never able to get into the flow, finding it choppy and awkward. The plot premise (every person who ever lived resurrected simultaneously on a different planet) allowed quite a bit scope. There was a huge opportunity to make all kinds of comparisons between different cultures and times, but it never really happened.To this day, I find it astonishing that this beat Zelazny's Jack of Shadows...a book I'd recommend to any science fiction or fantasy fan...for the Hugo.
Rating: 3One of the most original science fiction novels I've read. It starts with a seemingly ridiculous question: What if every (or nearly every) person who ever lived were suddenly placed on a massive planet? And more importantly, why would anyone do this? Farmer answers with an unexpected and brilliant story.
Rating: 5For me, the appeal of Speculative Fiction is the breadth and depth of its scope. An author is free to explore the most difficult questions and imagine worlds vastly different from anything we have ever experienced. I often find myself questioning what it means to be human, what it means to be capable of thought and self-knowledge. Though all literature tries to tackle this issue, few outside of Sci Fi go to such lengths to address these fundamentally human questions.However, there is a drawback. Often, authors succumb to the temptation to create a world so new, so different, so complex, and so vast that it becomes almost impossible to write it. Farmer has selected too vast a canvas, too great a scene, and so the small (if engaging) story he paints upon it seems a far cry from the overarching premise.Farmer creates an artificial afterlife, one containing every human being ever born. By using the old Sci Fi trick of 'science did it', he avoids the knee-jerk response many people would have to a book about an actual afterlife. Since everyone was just recreated by aliens, Farmer is not automatically a blasphemer.Everyone is there; even, as the book jacket likes to point out, 'you!'. Farmer has the grandest possible cast of characters, and does not waste it. His protagonists, their friends, and their enemies are plucked from the greatest and most notorious men in history, as well as Farmer himself. However, we are struck with an immediate difficulty: namely, that Farmer is trying to write some of the most remarkable people in history.Unfortunately for Farmer, many of his characters' real-life counterparts were brilliant, eccentric men. Since they are more brilliant and eccentric than Farmer himself, we come to feel that he is simply writing fairly standard protagonists and attaching famous names to them.For example, he chooses one of the most remarkable men of a remarkable period, Sir Richard Burton. In a time of colonial adventurers, he was one of the greatest and most notorious. He was one of the greatest swordfighters of his day and braved and escaped death numerous times over his remarkably long career.He was also a polyglot who knew some thirty languages, making him an extremely convenient hero for a book taking place on a world where every culture was rubbing elbows with every other. He also nearly discovered the source of the Nile, giving him a thematic connection to this 'Riverworld'.In short he was a real-life hero, straight out of an adventure story. However, he was also a refined and educated man who made a full and unabridged translation of the 1,001 Arabian Nights. Though Farmer's version of Burton is as capable and impressive as we might expect, he does not have Burton's singular and remarkable personality.Perhaps it was wise of Farmer to pick a man so clearly suited to play the role of the adventure hero. Many authors have tried to create adventure heroes out of small and inexperienced men. However, in this case, Farmer has thrown his net too far, and caught too large a fish for his dinner.Farmer experiences a similar problem with all of the myriad cultures he writes. Since he is not a historical expert on any of these cultures, their portrayal tends to be rather unremarkable, such that as we travel along the river, we find Victorian Gentlemen, Dakota Indians, and Chinese Marauders are more or less interchangeable.Beyond this, their interaction with one another becomes likewise simplified. It would be a remarkable feat for any author to be able to write such interactions as might occur between Sumerians and Olmecs, but this hardly excuses Farmer. After all, he was the one who chose to write this book.Farmer took his inspiration from Edgar Rice Burroughs, who also had a mysterious and mystical river in his John Carter of Mars series. However, Farmer might have taken another lesson from Burroughs. When Burroughs wrote of strange Martian cultures, he could create as he liked without any need for research or knowledge. However, we can see by the wild inaccuracies of his 'Tarzan' that he probably should have stuck with aliens.Likewise, if Farmer's book had been about his own made up cultures, there would be little to fault him. However, since he chose such a difficult path himself, I feel no guilt in stating that he was unequal to the challenge. The book is exciting, adventurous, and the writing is not without grace, but it is certainly not what it would promise to be.The next book in the series is worse, with a hackneyed, unfunny Mark Twain taking center stage.
Rating: 3This is a very good book that I put off reading for a long time because my copy has a terrible kitschy "genre" cover. If yours does too, please disregard it; this is such a better book than that.To Your Scattered Bodies Go is speculative fiction about the resurrection and afterlife. Our protagonist is the 19th century explorer (/writer/linguist/extremely educated and curious generally) Richard Francis Burton; he is joined by other historical figures like Hermann Göring and Alice Pleasance Liddell. Earth has evidently been destroyed by an inter-galactic war, and at least a portion of its population, spanning from every time and culture, has been resurrected in Riverworld. Of course, everyone brings his or her pre-conceived notions of the afterlife to this world and an explanation of it. But Burton the explorer needs to *know* for certain what Riverworld is, who is running it, and whether this creator/force is benevolent or malignant.It's a unique book, and an interesting commentary on science-religion interaction. The book was written with the entire series already in mind, so it does not wrap up as satisfyingly as a stand-alone novel. But still a good and engrossing read.
Rating: 5This is the first book of the famous Riverworld series. It starts with what was a unique premise at the time - a famous adventurer from Earth's past wakes up in a room full of thousands or millions of dead bodies, connected to a large machine of some type (The Matrix, anyone?). Waking up later, he and countless others find themselves reincarnated on Riverworld, by no one knows who, or why. Only a few souls realize they are reincarnated and prisoners of some alien intelligence, and seek to find out why. This is a creative, well written and fascinating book. A science fiction classic that is well worth reading.
Rating: 5My first "Riverworld" book. A fun concept - you can tell Farmer did quite a bit of historical research for his main character and it's great watching to see how he has different historical figures relate to each other and to more "ordinary" people.
Rating: 4Interesting concepts of what would happen if different cultures where suddenly thrown together. Plot revolves around a flawed character and his attempt to understand it all.
Rating: 4This was the fifty-second Hugo winner for me to read, and I would have to say it was without a doubt the most disappointing. The book starts with a very cool concept (every human who has ever lived--plus one alien who killed most of humanity in self-defense--finds themselves mysteriously resurrected on a mysterious planet by mysterious beings). But where Farmer takes the story from there left me very unimpressed. You've just been resurrected and it's not really what you expected. What are you going to do? Why find a complete stranger (as in, lived hundreds of years before or after you, and doesn't speak anything remotely like the same language you do) to have sex with. And if you can't find a willing partner, don't worry . . . Just find a 10 year old to rape. And it doesn't really get much better from there. It was definitely one of those books where the more you think about it the less it holds together. Previously I had read several of Farmer's shorter works, and found his style quite appropriate to the subject matter (often surreal, at times humorous, at times almost naive). But this book felt far too episodic and choppy for the subject matter; it needed much more of a sense of wonder and vastness. The characters were not well developed, especially the women. Indeed, there is an underlying sexism to this book that I find appalling. Every human woman who has ever lived is resurrected weak and needing a male protector. And every woman (all 16 billion of them, I suspect), deep down inside, very much wants to have sex with the protagonist. Not recommended.
Rating: 2Not so much of a good story as it is a good science fiction story. What I mean is that the character development is slightly weak, but the world in which every earthling who has ever lived has been simultaneously resurrected and the main character's search to understand what has happened, is fascinating. Read this book if you like the premise, as I did. If not, you might be better off skipping this one entirely. But if the premise does strike your fancy, you are in for an astounding read.
Rating: 3This was a reread, and is one of my all-time favorite books!
Rating: 5A fascinating alternative look at "Heaven" and the afterlife... I have yet to understand the connection between the hero of the piece and a certain World War II criminal, but perhaps it will become clear in later books... A very good read, another all time favourite.
Rating: 5First, a word of warning: do NOT expect to know the answers to the questions you're going to have by the end of this book. They aren't there. So if you read this book, get to the end of it and say "this stinks! There's no resolution! I hate this book," don't say I didn't warn you! The book isn't about finding the answers...it's the journey that counts. And if by the end of the book you don't have any questions, you need to go back and read it again because your curiousity should be absolutely on fire!Second, if you are a hardcore Christian, this book just might bother you enough because of the subjects it deals with. Remember: it's Fiction!This novel is the first of the Riverworld Series, in which the reader is introduced to the Riverworld, so called because its main feature is a continuous river that doesn't seem to end. The main character is a real character, here in his fictional garb, the explorer Sir Richard Burton. One moment, he's laying in the arms of his wife, dying; the next moment, he's floating among countless numbers of sleeping people, the only one awake until he sees a canoe with strange markings floating toward him, carrying humans in it, who put him back to sleep. Shortly thereafter, he wakes up, buck naked, his mustache (his pride and joy) gone, along with all of his hair in fact, with only a cylinder attached to him. As he awakens, he realizes there are others there as well, all in the same condition. Eventually he comes to realize that they have all at some point, died, either before him or after him. All told, every single human being that ever lived on the Earth at any moment in its history are there in the Riverworld, resurrected, it seems. At first the main problems are seeking shelter and safety; afterwards, Burton is not content to simply accept his fate, but the explorer in him wants to get a boat onto the river and follow it wherever it leads and to see what lies beyond. What he finds is not pretty: it seems that people are just repeating their old bad human-nature habits. His real quest, however, is to find the who, the how and the why behind this massive resurrection.I guess what amazed me about this book was the idea that humans are humans no matter what the situation, time, place, whatever. And while I didn't always like Burton's character, the author did an amazing job with the creation of this guy. I cannot wait to read the rest of the books in the series, although I've heard that none of them can top this one. I have to say that this is probably true, considering how well done this book was.I would recommend it to sci-fi readers who aren't in to all the techno aspects of sf; this is more like a fantasy type thing. Also, if you are a reader interested in the questions of the soul as spirit or physical entity, you might also be interested.
Rating: 4Good clean fun.
Rating: 4This book contains two novels so I will be reviewing each one separately.TO YOUR SCATTERED BODIES GOHumanity has been resurrected on another planet. Not just a few people, but all of humanity, from every time period. They wake up in a new world with a long river running through it. Each one carries a cylinder, or a grail, on a chain around their wrist which when inserted in a device called a grail stone that produces whatever a person might need such as food, clothing, and even cigarettes and joints. On the first day people go through a variety of emotions; shock, anger, fear. One man, Richard Burton, the explorer, gathers together a motley crew that includes Alice Liddle, the inspiration for Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland," an alien, a neanderthal man, an American from the twentieth century, and a jewish man who lived through internment in a concentration camp during the Holocaust. We follow this group as they explore their new world. This is the first novel in the Riverworld series. Farmer uses his characters to explore the new land and set the ground rules. Using a real explorer as the main character was a good idea. The main theme of this story is what would you do if you could start your life over in a young healthy body, in a whole new place and with all your memories intact? Would you do things differently or would you do everything the same as before? When any of the characters in the novel dies they come back whole and healthy at a different spot on the river. In a way it's like the theory of reincaration with each character coming back again and again until they get their life right. A religious movement starts called the Second Chancers with the idea that this is a second chance for humanity.I really enjoy reading this book. It's a social studies lesson, a psychology lesson, and a treatise on spirtuality and eastern religion all rolled into one. THE FABULOUS RIVERBOATSam Clemens has a dream. His dream is to build a fabulous riverboat and travel up the river to the misty tower. To build this boat he needs iron, luckily a meteorite crashes up river and Sam is there to take advantage. He starts a new settlement called Parolando with King John Lackland. This new nation becomes an industrial powerhouse. Soon they have engineers building a dam for electrical power and every kind of industrial building that can spew pollution into the air. Parolando trades with other states for wood and minerals. Other nations along the river threaten to invade Parolando so they manufacture guns and an amphibious tank. Sam starts to wonder if they will ever get his riverboat built.This is the second book in the Riverworld series. Much like the first book, Philip Jose Farmer has written an intelligent story with historical characters. Among these characters are; Samuel Clemens, John Lackland, and Cyrano de Bergerac. Odysseus and Mozart make small guest apearances. My favorite character is a giant prehistoric man named Joe Miller. He is a gigantic ape like man, but he is the wisest person in the story. He puts up with Sam's wisecracks and is a loyal friend.The author covers issues of racism, religion, and politics. As in the first novel, people are haunted by the lives they lead on Earth. They bring with them their bigotry, greed, and brutality.I didn't like this story as much as the first novel in the series. The setting was mostly in Parolando. I enjoyed Richard Burton's adventures along the river in the first novel better because we were on the move and meeting different cultures and getting to know Riverworld. This story was about how an obsession can ruin a persons life and the lives around him. I got tired of the political intrigue and the wars and invasions. Sam Clemens builds this huge industrial complex just because he wants to build a riverboat. It is shear madness. The Second Chancers have it right, just get along and love one and other. Don't push or fight just live.
Rating: 5