Philip José Farmer
Encyclopedia
Philip José Farmer was an American
author
, principally known for his award-winning science fiction
and fantasy novel
s and short stories
.
Farmer is best known for his sequences of novels, especially the World of Tiers
(1965–93) and Riverworld
(1971–83) series. He is noted for the pioneering use of sexual and religious themes in his work, his fascination for, and reworking of, the lore of celebrated pulp heroes, and occasional tongue-in-cheek pseudonymous works written as if by fictional characters. Farmer often mixed real and classic fictional characters and worlds and real and fake authors as epitomized by his Wold Newton family
group of books. These tie all classic fictional characters together as real people and blood relatives resulting from an alien conspiracy. Such works as The Other Log of Phileas Fogg
(1973) and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life
(1973) are early examples of literary mashup.
Literary critic Leslie Fiedler
compared Farmer to Ray Bradbury
as both being "provincial American eccentrics" ... who... "strain at the classic limits of the [science fiction] form", but found Farmer distinctive in that he "manages to be at once naive and sophisticated in his odd blending of theology, pornography, and adventure".
. According to colleague Frederik Pohl
, his middle name was in honor of an aunt, Josie.
Farmer grew up in Peoria, Illinois
, where he attended Peoria High School
. His father was a civil engineer and a supervisor for the local power company. A voracious reader as a boy, Farmer said he resolved to become a writer in the fourth grade. He became an agnostic at the age of 14. At age 23, in 1941, he married and eventually fathered a son and a daughter. After washing out of flight training in World War II
, he went to work in a local steel mill. He continued his education, however, earning a bachelor’s degree in English
from Bradley University
in 1950.
Farmer had his first literary success in 1952 with a novella
called The Lovers, about a sexual relationship between a human and an extraterrestrial
. It won him the Hugo Award
as "most promising new writer", the first of three. Thus encouraged, he quit his job to become a full-time writer, entered a publisher’s contest, and promptly won the $4,000 first prize for a novel that contained the germ of his later Riverworld
series. The book was not published and Farmer did not get the money. Literary success did not translate into financial security, and in 1956 he left Peoria to launch a career as a technical writer
. He spent the next 14 years working in that capacity for various defense contractor
s, from Syracuse, New York
to Los Angeles, California
, while writing science fiction in his spare time.
He won a second Hugo after the publication of his 1967 novella Riders of the Purple Wage
, a pastiche
of James Joyce
’s Finnegans Wake as well as a satire
on a futuristic, cradle-to-grave welfare state
. Reinvigorated, Farmer became a full-time writer again in 1969. Upon moving back to Peoria in 1970, he entered his most prolific period, publishing 25 books in 10 years. His novel To Your Scattered Bodies Go
(a reworked, previously unpublished version of the prize-winning first novel of 20 years before) won him his third Hugo in 1971. A 1975 novel, Venus on the Half-Shell
, created a stir in the larger literary community and media. It purported to be written in the first person
by one “Kilgore Trout
”, a fictional character appearing as an underappreciated science fiction writer in several of Kurt Vonnegut
’s novels. The escapade did not please Vonnegut when some reviewers not only concluded that it had been written by Vonnegut himself, but that it was a worthy addition to his works. Farmer did have permission from Vonnegut to write the book, though Vonnegut later said he regretted giving permission.
Farmer had both critical champions and detractors. Leslie Fiedler
proclaimed him "the greatest science fiction writer ever" and lauded his approach to storytelling as a “gargantuan lust to swallow down the whole cosmos, past, present and to come, and to spew it out again”. Isaac Asimov
praised Farmer as an "excellent science fiction writer; in fact, a far more skillful writer than I am...." But Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
described him in The New York Times
in 1972 as “a humdrum toiler in the fields of science fiction”.
Farmer died on February 25, 2009.
At the time of his death, he and his wife Bette had two children, six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
, Hermann Göring
, and Samuel Clemens through a bizarre afterlife in which every human ever to have lived is simultaneously resurrected along a single river valley that stretches over an entire planet. The series consists of To Your Scattered Bodies Go
(1971), The Fabulous Riverboat
(1971), The Dark Design
(1977), The Magic Labyrinth
(1980) and Gods of Riverworld
(1983). Although Riverworld and Other Stories (1979) is not part of the series as such, it does include the second-published Riverworld
story, which is free-standing rather than integrated into one of the novels.
The first two Riverworld
books were originally published as novellas, "The Day of the Great Shout" and "The Suicide Express", and as a two-part serial, "The Felled Star", in the science fiction magazines Worlds of Tomorrow
and If
between 1965 and 1967. The separate novelette "Riverworld" ran in Worlds of Tomorrow in January 1966. A final pair of linked novelettes appeared in the 1990s: "Crossing the Dark River" (in Tales of Riverworld, 1992) and "Up the Bright River" (in Quest to Riverworld, 1993). Farmer introduced himself into the series as Peter Jairus Frigate (PJF).
The Riverworld series originated in a novel, Owe for the Flesh, written in one month in 1952 as a contest entry. It won the contest, but the book was left unpublished and orphaned when the prize money was misappropriated, and Farmer nearly gave up writing altogether. The original manuscript of the novel was lost, but years later Farmer reworked the material into the Riverworld magazine stories mentioned above. Eventually, a copy of a revised version of the original novel surfaced in a box in a garage and was published as River of Eternity
by Phantasia Press
in 1983. Farmer's Introduction to this edition gives the details of how it all happened.
s, created tens of thousands of years ago by a race of human beings who had achieved an advanced level of technology which gave them almost godlike power and immortality. The principal universe in which these stories take place, and from which the series derives its name, consists of an enormous tiered planet, shaped like a stack of disks or squat cylinders, of diminishing radius, one atop the other. The series follows the adventures of several of these godlike humans and several "ordinary" humans from Earth who accidentally travel to these artificial universes. (One of those "ordinary" humans was Paul Janus Finnegan (PJF) who becomes the main protagonist in the series.) The series consists of The Maker of Universes (1965), The Gates of Creation (1966), A Private Cosmos (1968), Behind the Walls of Terra (1970), The Lavalite World (1977) and More Than Fire (1993). Roger Zelazny
has mentioned that The World of Tiers was something he had in his mind when he created his Amber series. A related novel is Red Orc's Rage
(1991), which does not involve the principal characters of the other books directly, but does provide background information to certain events and characters portrayed in the other novels. This is the most "psychological" of Farmer's novels.
The Lovers, earned him the Hugo Award
for "most promising new writer" in 1953, and is critically recognized as the story that broke the taboo on sex in science fiction
. It instantly put Farmer on the literary map. The short story collection Strange Relations (1960) was a notable event in the genre. He was one of three persons to whom Robert A. Heinlein
dedicated Stranger in a Strange Land
(1961), a novel which explored sexual freedom as one of its primary themes. Moreover, Fire and the Night (1962) is a mainstream novel about an interracial romance; it features sociological
and psychosexual twists. In Night of Light
(1966), he devised an alien race where aliens have only one mother but several fathers, perhaps because of an unusual or untenable physical position that cannot be reached or continued by two individuals acting alone. Both Image of the Beast
and the sequel Blown from 1968–1969 explore group sex
, interplanetary travel, and interplay between fictional figures like Childe Harold and real people like Forry Ackerman. In the World of Tiers series he explores Oedipal
themes.
shows up as a character in both the Riverworld series (in the novelette "Riverworld" but not in the novels, except for the mentioning of him dying early in The Magic Labyrinth) and Jesus on Mars. Night of Light
(1957, expanded 1966) takes the rather unholy Father John Carmody on an odyssey on an alien world where spiritual forces are made manifest in the material world. In Flesh
(1960) astronauts return to an Earth 800 years in their future dominated by a pagan
Goddess-worshiping religion. Other examples include the short stories "J.C. on the Dude Ranch", "The God Business", "The Making of Revelation, Part I" and the novels Inside, Outside (1964) (which may or may not be set in Hell) and Traitor to the Living (1973), among many others.
's Moby-Dick
; The Other Log of Phileas Fogg
(1973), which fills in the missing time periods from Jules Verne
's Around the World in Eighty Days; and A Barnstormer in Oz
(1982), in which Dorothy's
adult son, a pilot, flies to the Land of Oz
by accident.
He has often written about the pulp heroes Tarzan
and Doc Savage
, or pastiches thereof: In his novel The Adventure of the Peerless Peer, Tarzan and Sherlock Holmes
team up. Farmer's Lord Grandrith and Doc Caliban series portrays analogues of Tarzan and Doc Savage. It consists of A Feast Unknown
(1969), Lord of the Trees
(1970) and The Mad Goblin
(1970). Farmer has also written two mock biographies of both characters, Tarzan Alive (1972) and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life
(1973), which adopt the premise that the two were based on real people fictionalized by their original chroniclers, and connect them genealogically with a large number of other well-known fictional characters in a schema now known as the "Wold Newton family
". Further, Farmer wrote both an authorized Doc Savage
novel, Escape from Loki (1991) and an authorized Tarzan novel, The Dark Heart of Time
(1999). In his 1972 novel Time's Last Gift, Farmer also explored the Tarzan theme combined with time travel
, using the transparently reverse-syllabled name of "Sahhindar" for his hero (and the book's initials, TLG, as code for "Tarzan, Lord Greystoke"). A short story on this theme is "The Jungle Rot Kid On the Nod" (1968): "if William S.
rather than Edgar Rice
[Burroughs] had written Tarzan". Farmer also wrote Lord Tyger (1970) about a ruthless millionaire who tries to create a real Tarzan by having a child kidnapped and then brought up subject to the same tragic events which shaped Tarzan in the original books.
In his incomplete historical Khokarsa cycle — Hadon of Ancient Opar
(1974) and Flight to Opar
(1976) — Farmer portrayed the "lost city" of Opar, which plays an important part in the Tarzan saga, in the time of its glory as a colony city of the empire of Khokarsa. One of the books mentions a mysterious grey-eyed traveller, clearly "Sahhindar"/Tarzan.
Farmer wrote Venus on the Half-Shell
(1975) under the name Kilgore Trout
, a fictional author who appears in the works of Kurt Vonnegut
. He had planned to write more of Trout's fictional books (notably Son of Jimmy Valentine), but Vonnegut put an end to those plans. Farmer's use of the pseudonym had caused confusion among many readers, who for some time assumed that Vonnegut was behind it; when the truth of Venus on the Half-Shells authorship came out, Vonnegut was reported as being "not amused". In an issue of the semi-prozine The Alien Critic/Science Fiction Review, published by Richard E. Geis, Farmer claimed to have received an angry, obscenity-laden telephone call from Vonnegut about it. Thereafter Farmer wrote a number of pseudonymous "fictional author" stories, mostly for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. These were stories whose "authors" are characters in other stories. The first such story was "by" Jonathan Swift Somers III (invented by Farmer himself in Venus on the Half-Shell but inspired by one of the dead voices of Spoon River Anthology
), and later Farmer used the "Cordwainer Bird" byline, a pseudonym invented by Harlan Ellison
for film and television projects from which he wished to disassociate himself.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
, principally known for his award-winning science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
and fantasy novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
s and short stories
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
.
Farmer is best known for his sequences of novels, especially the World of Tiers
World of Tiers
The World of Tiers is a series of science fiction novels by American writer Philip José Farmer. They are set within a series of artificially-constructed universes, created and ruled by decadent beings who are genetically identical to humans, but who regard themselves as superior, the inheritors of...
(1965–93) and Riverworld
Riverworld
Riverworld is a fictional planet and the setting for a series of science fiction books written by Philip José Farmer . Riverworld is an artificial environment where all humans are reconstructed. The books explore interactions of individuals from many different cultures and time periods...
(1971–83) series. He is noted for the pioneering use of sexual and religious themes in his work, his fascination for, and reworking of, the lore of celebrated pulp heroes, and occasional tongue-in-cheek pseudonymous works written as if by fictional characters. Farmer often mixed real and classic fictional characters and worlds and real and fake authors as epitomized by his Wold Newton family
Wold Newton family
The Wold Newton family is a literary concept derived from a form of crossover fiction developed by the science fiction writer Philip José Farmer...
group of books. These tie all classic fictional characters together as real people and blood relatives resulting from an alien conspiracy. Such works as The Other Log of Phileas Fogg
The Other Log of Phileas Fogg
The Other Log of Phileas Fogg is a science fiction/Steampunk parallel history novel written by American author Philip José Farmer in 1973. It was originally published by DAW Books and later reprinted in 1979 by Hamlyn and again in 1982 by Tor Books...
(1973) and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life
Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life
Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life is a fictional biography by Philip José Farmer about pulp fiction hero Doc Savage.The book is written with the assumption that Doc Savage was a real person. Kenneth Robeson, the author of the Doc Savage novels, is portrayed as writing fictionalized memoirs of the...
(1973) are early examples of literary mashup.
Literary critic Leslie Fiedler
Leslie Fiedler
Leslie Aaron Fiedler was a Jewish-American literary critic, known for his interest in mythography and his championing of genre fiction. His work also involves application of psychological theories to American literature. He was in practical terms one of the early postmodernist critics working...
compared Farmer to Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man , Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th...
as both being "provincial American eccentrics" ... who... "strain at the classic limits of the [science fiction] form", but found Farmer distinctive in that he "manages to be at once naive and sophisticated in his odd blending of theology, pornography, and adventure".
Biography
Farmer was born in North Terre Haute, IndianaNorth Terre Haute, Indiana
North Terre Haute is a census-designated place in Vigo County, Indiana, United States. The population was 4,305 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Terre Haute Metropolitan Statistical Area.-Geography:...
. According to colleague Frederik Pohl
Frederik Pohl
Frederik George Pohl, Jr. is an American science fiction writer, editor and fan, with a career spanning over seventy years — from his first published work, "Elegy to a Dead Planet: Luna" , to his most recent novel, All the Lives He Led .He won the National Book Award in 1980 for his novel Jem...
, his middle name was in honor of an aunt, Josie.
Farmer grew up in Peoria, Illinois
Peoria, Illinois
Peoria is the largest city on the Illinois River and the county seat of Peoria County, Illinois, in the United States. It is named after the Peoria tribe. As of the 2010 census, the city was the seventh-most populated in Illinois, with a population of 115,007, and is the third-most populated...
, where he attended Peoria High School
Peoria High School (Peoria, Illinois)
Peoria High School is a public high school in Peoria, Illinois. Peoria High School was established in 1856 and is the oldest continually operating high school west of the Allegheny Mountains. Peoria High is located at 1615 N. North Street and moved to this location in 1916...
. His father was a civil engineer and a supervisor for the local power company. A voracious reader as a boy, Farmer said he resolved to become a writer in the fourth grade. He became an agnostic at the age of 14. At age 23, in 1941, he married and eventually fathered a son and a daughter. After washing out of flight training in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, he went to work in a local steel mill. He continued his education, however, earning a bachelor’s degree in English
English studies
English studies is an academic discipline that includes the study of literatures written in the English language , English linguistics English studies is an academic discipline that includes the study of literatures written in the English language (including literatures from the U.K., U.S.,...
from Bradley University
Bradley University
Bradley University, founded in 1897, is a private, co-educational university located in Peoria, Illinois. It is a small institution with an enrollment of approximately 6,100 undergraduate and postgraduate students and a full-time faculty of approximately 350....
in 1950.
Farmer had his first literary success in 1952 with a novella
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
called The Lovers, about a sexual relationship between a human and an extraterrestrial
Extraterrestrial life
Extraterrestrial life is defined as life that does not originate from Earth...
. It won him the Hugo Award
Hugo Award
The Hugo Awards are given annually for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was officially named the Science Fiction Achievement Awards...
as "most promising new writer", the first of three. Thus encouraged, he quit his job to become a full-time writer, entered a publisher’s contest, and promptly won the $4,000 first prize for a novel that contained the germ of his later Riverworld
Riverworld
Riverworld is a fictional planet and the setting for a series of science fiction books written by Philip José Farmer . Riverworld is an artificial environment where all humans are reconstructed. The books explore interactions of individuals from many different cultures and time periods...
series. The book was not published and Farmer did not get the money. Literary success did not translate into financial security, and in 1956 he left Peoria to launch a career as a technical writer
Technical writer
A technical writer is a professional writer who designs, creates, and maintains technical documentation...
. He spent the next 14 years working in that capacity for various defense contractor
Defense contractor
A defense contractor is a business organization or individual that provides products or services to a military department of a government. Products typically include military aircraft, ships, vehicles, weaponry, and electronic systems...
s, from Syracuse, New York
Syracuse, New York
Syracuse is a city in and the county seat of Onondaga County, New York, United States, the largest U.S. city with the name "Syracuse", and the fifth most populous city in the state. At the 2010 census, the city population was 145,170, and its metropolitan area had a population of 742,603...
to Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
, while writing science fiction in his spare time.
He won a second Hugo after the publication of his 1967 novella Riders of the Purple Wage
Riders of the Purple Wage
Riders of the Purple Wage is a science fiction novella by Philip José Farmer. It appeared in Dangerous Visions, the famous New Wave science fiction anthology compiled by Harlan Ellison, in 1967, and won the Hugo Award for best novella in 1968, jointly with Weyr Search by Anne McCaffrey.-Title:The...
, a pastiche
Pastiche
A pastiche is a literary or other artistic genre or technique that is a "hodge-podge" or imitation. The word is also a linguistic term used to describe an early stage in the development of a pidgin language.-Hodge-podge:...
of James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
’s Finnegans Wake as well as a satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
on a futuristic, cradle-to-grave welfare state
Welfare state
A welfare state is a "concept of government in which the state plays a key role in the protection and promotion of the economic and social well-being of its citizens. It is based on the principles of equality of opportunity, equitable distribution of wealth, and public responsibility for those...
. Reinvigorated, Farmer became a full-time writer again in 1969. Upon moving back to Peoria in 1970, he entered his most prolific period, publishing 25 books in 10 years. His novel To Your Scattered Bodies Go
To Your Scattered Bodies Go
To Your Scattered Bodies Go is a science fiction novel and the first book in the Riverworld series of books by Philip José Farmer. It won a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1972 at the 30th Worldcon...
(a reworked, previously unpublished version of the prize-winning first novel of 20 years before) won him his third Hugo in 1971. A 1975 novel, Venus on the Half-Shell
Venus on the Half-Shell
Venus on the Half-Shell is a science fiction novel attributed to the fictional author Kilgore Trout but actually written by Philip José Farmer. Kilgore Trout is a recurring character of many of the novels of Kurt Vonnegut and this book was first mentioned as a fictional work in his novel God Bless...
, created a stir in the larger literary community and media. It purported to be written in the first person
First-person narrative
First-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...
by one “Kilgore Trout
Kilgore Trout
Kilgore Trout is a fictional character created by author Kurt Vonnegut. He was originally created as a fictionalized version of author Theodore Sturgeon , although Trout's consistent presence in Vonnegut's works has also led critics to view him as the author's own alter ego...
”, a fictional character appearing as an underappreciated science fiction writer in several of Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a 20th century American writer. His works such as Cat's Cradle , Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions blend satire, gallows humor and science fiction. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association.-Early...
’s novels. The escapade did not please Vonnegut when some reviewers not only concluded that it had been written by Vonnegut himself, but that it was a worthy addition to his works. Farmer did have permission from Vonnegut to write the book, though Vonnegut later said he regretted giving permission.
Farmer had both critical champions and detractors. Leslie Fiedler
Leslie Fiedler
Leslie Aaron Fiedler was a Jewish-American literary critic, known for his interest in mythography and his championing of genre fiction. His work also involves application of psychological theories to American literature. He was in practical terms one of the early postmodernist critics working...
proclaimed him "the greatest science fiction writer ever" and lauded his approach to storytelling as a “gargantuan lust to swallow down the whole cosmos, past, present and to come, and to spew it out again”. Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000...
praised Farmer as an "excellent science fiction writer; in fact, a far more skillful writer than I am...." But Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt is an American journalist, critic and novelist who has worked in the field of books all of his professional career. He began as an editor for various New York City publishing houses, among them Holt, Rinehart and Winston and The Dial Press, from where he moved in 1965 to...
described him in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
in 1972 as “a humdrum toiler in the fields of science fiction”.
Farmer died on February 25, 2009.
At the time of his death, he and his wife Bette had two children, six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Riverworld series
The Riverworld series follows the adventures of such diverse characters as Richard BurtonRichard Francis Burton
Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton KCMG FRGS was a British geographer, explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, linguist, poet, fencer and diplomat. He was known for his travels and explorations within Asia, Africa and the Americas as well as his...
, Hermann Göring
Hermann Göring
Hermann Wilhelm Göring, was a German politician, military leader, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. He was a veteran of World War I as an ace fighter pilot, and a recipient of the coveted Pour le Mérite, also known as "The Blue Max"...
, and Samuel Clemens through a bizarre afterlife in which every human ever to have lived is simultaneously resurrected along a single river valley that stretches over an entire planet. The series consists of To Your Scattered Bodies Go
To Your Scattered Bodies Go
To Your Scattered Bodies Go is a science fiction novel and the first book in the Riverworld series of books by Philip José Farmer. It won a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1972 at the 30th Worldcon...
(1971), The Fabulous Riverboat
The Fabulous Riverboat
The Fabulous Riverboat is a science fiction novel, the second book in the Riverworld series by Philip José Farmer.A shorter version of the novel was serialized in If magazine as "The Felled Star" and "The Fabulous Riverboat" .-Overview:Departing from the plot of To Your Scattered Bodies Go, the...
(1971), The Dark Design
The Dark Design
The Dark Design is a science fiction novel, the third in the series of Riverworld books by Philip José Farmer. The title is derived from lines in Sir Richard Francis Burton's poem The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî:-Overview:...
(1977), The Magic Labyrinth
The Magic Labyrinth
The Magic Labyrinth is a science fiction novel, the fourth in the series of Riverworld books by Philip José Farmer. The title is derived from lines in Sir Richard Francis Burton's poem The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî:...
(1980) and Gods of Riverworld
Gods of Riverworld
Gods of Riverworld is a science fiction novel, the fifth and last in the series of Riverworld books by Philip José Farmer. It was reprinted in 1998 by Del Rey under the title The Gods of Riverworld....
(1983). Although Riverworld and Other Stories (1979) is not part of the series as such, it does include the second-published Riverworld
Riverworld
Riverworld is a fictional planet and the setting for a series of science fiction books written by Philip José Farmer . Riverworld is an artificial environment where all humans are reconstructed. The books explore interactions of individuals from many different cultures and time periods...
story, which is free-standing rather than integrated into one of the novels.
The first two Riverworld
Riverworld
Riverworld is a fictional planet and the setting for a series of science fiction books written by Philip José Farmer . Riverworld is an artificial environment where all humans are reconstructed. The books explore interactions of individuals from many different cultures and time periods...
books were originally published as novellas, "The Day of the Great Shout" and "The Suicide Express", and as a two-part serial, "The Felled Star", in the science fiction magazines Worlds of Tomorrow
Worlds of Tomorrow
Worlds of Tomorrow is an anthology of science fiction stories edited by August Derleth. It was first published by Pellegrini & Cudahy in 1953...
and If
If (magazine)
If was an American science fiction magazine launched in March 1952 by Quinn Publications, owned by James L. Quinn. Quinn hired Paul W. Fairman to be the first editor, but early circulation figures were disappointing, and Quinn fired Fairman after only three issues. Quinn then took over the...
between 1965 and 1967. The separate novelette "Riverworld" ran in Worlds of Tomorrow in January 1966. A final pair of linked novelettes appeared in the 1990s: "Crossing the Dark River" (in Tales of Riverworld, 1992) and "Up the Bright River" (in Quest to Riverworld, 1993). Farmer introduced himself into the series as Peter Jairus Frigate (PJF).
The Riverworld series originated in a novel, Owe for the Flesh, written in one month in 1952 as a contest entry. It won the contest, but the book was left unpublished and orphaned when the prize money was misappropriated, and Farmer nearly gave up writing altogether. The original manuscript of the novel was lost, but years later Farmer reworked the material into the Riverworld magazine stories mentioned above. Eventually, a copy of a revised version of the original novel surfaced in a box in a garage and was published as River of Eternity
River of Eternity
River of Eternity is an early version of what became the Riverworld series by Philip José Farmer.The original "Riverworld" story was a 150,000-word novel titled Owe for the Flesh, which ended with the protagonist finding the tower at the end of the river...
by Phantasia Press
Phantasia Press
Phantasia Press Inc. was a small publisher formed by Alex Berman publishing short-run, hardcover limited editions of science fiction and fantasy books. It was active from 1978-1989. The company was based in West Bloomfield, Michigan. The publisher specialized in limited quality first hardcover...
in 1983. Farmer's Introduction to this edition gives the details of how it all happened.
World of Tiers series
The series is set within a number of artificially constructed parallel universeParallel universe (fiction)
A parallel universe or alternative reality is a hypothetical self-contained separate reality coexisting with one's own. A specific group of parallel universes is called a "multiverse", although this term can also be used to describe the possible parallel universes that constitute reality...
s, created tens of thousands of years ago by a race of human beings who had achieved an advanced level of technology which gave them almost godlike power and immortality. The principal universe in which these stories take place, and from which the series derives its name, consists of an enormous tiered planet, shaped like a stack of disks or squat cylinders, of diminishing radius, one atop the other. The series follows the adventures of several of these godlike humans and several "ordinary" humans from Earth who accidentally travel to these artificial universes. (One of those "ordinary" humans was Paul Janus Finnegan (PJF) who becomes the main protagonist in the series.) The series consists of The Maker of Universes (1965), The Gates of Creation (1966), A Private Cosmos (1968), Behind the Walls of Terra (1970), The Lavalite World (1977) and More Than Fire (1993). Roger Zelazny
Roger Zelazny
Roger Joseph Zelazny was an American writer of fantasy and science fiction short stories and novels, best known for his The Chronicles of Amber series...
has mentioned that The World of Tiers was something he had in his mind when he created his Amber series. A related novel is Red Orc's Rage
Red Orc's Rage
Red Orc's Rage is a recursive science fiction novel and part of the "World of Tiers" series of novels by Philip José Farmer. The plot of the book was inspired by the work of American psychiatrist A.James Giannini, M.D, who used earlier books in Farmer's series as role-playing tools and aids to...
(1991), which does not involve the principal characters of the other books directly, but does provide background information to certain events and characters portrayed in the other novels. This is the most "psychological" of Farmer's novels.
Sexual
Farmer's work often handles sexual themes; some early works were notable for their ground-breaking introduction of such to science fiction literature. His first (with one minor exception) published science fiction story, the novellaNovella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
The Lovers, earned him the Hugo Award
Hugo Award
The Hugo Awards are given annually for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was officially named the Science Fiction Achievement Awards...
for "most promising new writer" in 1953, and is critically recognized as the story that broke the taboo on sex in science fiction
Sex in science fiction
Sexuality in science fiction refers to the incorporation of sexual themes into science fiction or related genres. Such elements may include depictions of realistic sexual interactions in a science fictional setting, a character with an alternative sexuality as the protagonist, or exploration of the...
. It instantly put Farmer on the literary map. The short story collection Strange Relations (1960) was a notable event in the genre. He was one of three persons to whom Robert A. Heinlein
Robert A. Heinlein
Robert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction writer. Often called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was one of the most influential and controversial authors of the genre. He set a standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of...
dedicated Stranger in a Strange Land
Stranger in a Strange Land
Stranger in a Strange Land is a 1961 science fiction novel by American author Robert A. Heinlein. It tells the story of Valentine Michael Smith, a human who comes to Earth in early adulthood after being born on the planet Mars and raised by Martians. The novel explores his interaction with—and...
(1961), a novel which explored sexual freedom as one of its primary themes. Moreover, Fire and the Night (1962) is a mainstream novel about an interracial romance; it features sociological
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
and psychosexual twists. In Night of Light
Night of Light
Night of Light is a science fiction novel by American writer Philip Jose Farmer. It was published in June 1957 by Lawrence E. Spivak's publishing house, The Mercury Press, Inc. It was published a second time in 1966 by Berkeley Medallion Books with copyright reserved to the author...
(1966), he devised an alien race where aliens have only one mother but several fathers, perhaps because of an unusual or untenable physical position that cannot be reached or continued by two individuals acting alone. Both Image of the Beast
Image of the Beast (novel)
Image of the Beast is a science fiction novel by Philip José Farmer. The story follows Herald Childe, a private detective, who is sent a snuff film of his partner being murdered by what appears to be a vampire. His investigation into the identity of the killers leads him into a world of apparent...
and the sequel Blown from 1968–1969 explore group sex
Group sex
Group sex is sexual behavior involving more than two participants. Group sex can occur amongst people of all sexual orientations and genders...
, interplanetary travel, and interplay between fictional figures like Childe Harold and real people like Forry Ackerman. In the World of Tiers series he explores Oedipal
Oedipus complex
In psychoanalytic theory, the term Oedipus complex denotes the emotions and ideas that the mind keeps in the unconscious, via dynamic repression, that concentrate upon a boy’s desire to sexually possess his mother, and kill his father...
themes.
Religious
His work also sometimes contains religious themes. JesusJesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
shows up as a character in both the Riverworld series (in the novelette "Riverworld" but not in the novels, except for the mentioning of him dying early in The Magic Labyrinth) and Jesus on Mars. Night of Light
Night of Light
Night of Light is a science fiction novel by American writer Philip Jose Farmer. It was published in June 1957 by Lawrence E. Spivak's publishing house, The Mercury Press, Inc. It was published a second time in 1966 by Berkeley Medallion Books with copyright reserved to the author...
(1957, expanded 1966) takes the rather unholy Father John Carmody on an odyssey on an alien world where spiritual forces are made manifest in the material world. In Flesh
Flesh (novel)
Flesh is an American science fiction novel written by Philip José Farmer. Originally released in 1960, it was Farmer's second novel-length publication, after The Green Odyssey. Flesh features many sexual themes, as is typical of Farmer's earliest work.-Overview:In Flesh, Peter Stagg and a group of...
(1960) astronauts return to an Earth 800 years in their future dominated by a pagan
Paganism
Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....
Goddess-worshiping religion. Other examples include the short stories "J.C. on the Dude Ranch", "The God Business", "The Making of Revelation, Part I" and the novels Inside, Outside (1964) (which may or may not be set in Hell) and Traitor to the Living (1973), among many others.
Pulp heroes
Many of Farmer's works rework existing characters from fiction and history, as in The Wind Whales of Ishmael (1971), a far-future sequel to Herman MelvilleHerman Melville
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd....
's Moby-Dick
Moby-Dick
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, was written by American author Herman Melville and first published in 1851. It is considered by some to be a Great American Novel and a treasure of world literature. The story tells the adventures of wandering sailor Ishmael, and his voyage on the whaleship Pequod,...
; The Other Log of Phileas Fogg
The Other Log of Phileas Fogg
The Other Log of Phileas Fogg is a science fiction/Steampunk parallel history novel written by American author Philip José Farmer in 1973. It was originally published by DAW Books and later reprinted in 1979 by Hamlyn and again in 1982 by Tor Books...
(1973), which fills in the missing time periods from Jules Verne
Jules Verne
Jules Gabriel Verne was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , A Journey to the Center of the Earth , and Around the World in Eighty Days...
's Around the World in Eighty Days; and A Barnstormer in Oz
A Barnstormer in Oz
A Barnstormer in Oz: A Rationalization and Extrapolation of the Split-Level Continuum is a 1982 novel by Philip José Farmer and is based on the setting and characters of L...
(1982), in which Dorothy's
Dorothy Gale
Dorothy Gale is the protagonist of many of the Oz novels by American author L. Frank Baum, and the best friend of Oz's ruler Princess Ozma. Dorothy first appears in Baum's classic children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and reappears in most of its sequels...
adult son, a pilot, flies to the Land of Oz
Land of Oz
Oz is a fantasy region containing four lands under the rule of one monarch.It was first introduced in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, one of many fantasy countries that he created for his books. It achieved a popularity that none of his other works attained, and after four years, he...
by accident.
He has often written about the pulp heroes Tarzan
Tarzan
Tarzan is a fictional character, an archetypal feral child raised in the African jungles by the Mangani "great apes"; he later experiences civilization only to largely reject it and return to the wild as a heroic adventurer...
and Doc Savage
Doc Savage
Doc Savage is a fictional character originally published in American pulp magazines during the 1930s and 1940s. He was created by publisher Henry W. Ralston and editor John L...
, or pastiches thereof: In his novel The Adventure of the Peerless Peer, Tarzan and Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...
team up. Farmer's Lord Grandrith and Doc Caliban series portrays analogues of Tarzan and Doc Savage. It consists of A Feast Unknown
A Feast Unknown
A Feast Unknown is a novel written by American author Philip José Farmer. The novel is a pastiche of pulp fiction, erotica, and horror fiction...
(1969), Lord of the Trees
Lord of the Trees
Lord of the Trees is an American novel by Philip José Farmer. Originally released in 1970, it was one of two intertwining sequels to Farmer's previous A Feast Unknown, along with The Mad Goblin...
(1970) and The Mad Goblin
The Mad Goblin
The Mad Goblin is an American novel by Philip José Farmer. Originally released in 1970, it was one of two intertwining sequels to Farmer's previous A Feast Unknown, along with Lord of the Trees...
(1970). Farmer has also written two mock biographies of both characters, Tarzan Alive (1972) and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life
Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life
Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life is a fictional biography by Philip José Farmer about pulp fiction hero Doc Savage.The book is written with the assumption that Doc Savage was a real person. Kenneth Robeson, the author of the Doc Savage novels, is portrayed as writing fictionalized memoirs of the...
(1973), which adopt the premise that the two were based on real people fictionalized by their original chroniclers, and connect them genealogically with a large number of other well-known fictional characters in a schema now known as the "Wold Newton family
Wold Newton family
The Wold Newton family is a literary concept derived from a form of crossover fiction developed by the science fiction writer Philip José Farmer...
". Further, Farmer wrote both an authorized Doc Savage
Doc Savage
Doc Savage is a fictional character originally published in American pulp magazines during the 1930s and 1940s. He was created by publisher Henry W. Ralston and editor John L...
novel, Escape from Loki (1991) and an authorized Tarzan novel, The Dark Heart of Time
The Dark Heart of Time
The Dark Heart of Time: a Tarzan novel is a 1999 work by Philip José Farmer authorized by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. The book was first announced under the title Tarzan's Greatest Secret in 1997....
(1999). In his 1972 novel Time's Last Gift, Farmer also explored the Tarzan theme combined with time travel
Time travel
Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space. Time travel could hypothetically involve moving backward in time to a moment earlier than the starting point, or forward to the future of that point without the...
, using the transparently reverse-syllabled name of "Sahhindar" for his hero (and the book's initials, TLG, as code for "Tarzan, Lord Greystoke"). A short story on this theme is "The Jungle Rot Kid On the Nod" (1968): "if William S.
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
rather than Edgar Rice
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Rice Burroughs was an American author, best known for his creation of the jungle hero Tarzan and the heroic Mars adventurer John Carter, although he produced works in many genres.-Biography:...
[Burroughs] had written Tarzan". Farmer also wrote Lord Tyger (1970) about a ruthless millionaire who tries to create a real Tarzan by having a child kidnapped and then brought up subject to the same tragic events which shaped Tarzan in the original books.
In his incomplete historical Khokarsa cycle — Hadon of Ancient Opar
Hadon of Ancient Opar
Hadon of Ancient Opar is a fantasy novel by Philip José Farmer, first published in paperback by DAW Books in April 1974, and reprinted three times through 1993. The first British edition was published by Magnum in 1977...
(1974) and Flight to Opar
Flight to Opar
Flight to Opar is a fantasy novel by Philip José Farmer, first published in paperback by DAW Books in June 1976, and reprinted twice through 1983. The first British edition was published by Magnum in 1977....
(1976) — Farmer portrayed the "lost city" of Opar, which plays an important part in the Tarzan saga, in the time of its glory as a colony city of the empire of Khokarsa. One of the books mentions a mysterious grey-eyed traveller, clearly "Sahhindar"/Tarzan.
Pseudonyms
Farmer wrote Venus on the Half-Shell
Venus on the Half-Shell
Venus on the Half-Shell is a science fiction novel attributed to the fictional author Kilgore Trout but actually written by Philip José Farmer. Kilgore Trout is a recurring character of many of the novels of Kurt Vonnegut and this book was first mentioned as a fictional work in his novel God Bless...
(1975) under the name Kilgore Trout
Kilgore Trout
Kilgore Trout is a fictional character created by author Kurt Vonnegut. He was originally created as a fictionalized version of author Theodore Sturgeon , although Trout's consistent presence in Vonnegut's works has also led critics to view him as the author's own alter ego...
, a fictional author who appears in the works of Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a 20th century American writer. His works such as Cat's Cradle , Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions blend satire, gallows humor and science fiction. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association.-Early...
. He had planned to write more of Trout's fictional books (notably Son of Jimmy Valentine), but Vonnegut put an end to those plans. Farmer's use of the pseudonym had caused confusion among many readers, who for some time assumed that Vonnegut was behind it; when the truth of Venus on the Half-Shells authorship came out, Vonnegut was reported as being "not amused". In an issue of the semi-prozine The Alien Critic/Science Fiction Review, published by Richard E. Geis, Farmer claimed to have received an angry, obscenity-laden telephone call from Vonnegut about it. Thereafter Farmer wrote a number of pseudonymous "fictional author" stories, mostly for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. These were stories whose "authors" are characters in other stories. The first such story was "by" Jonathan Swift Somers III (invented by Farmer himself in Venus on the Half-Shell but inspired by one of the dead voices of Spoon River Anthology
Spoon River Anthology
Spoon River Anthology , by Edgar Lee Masters, is a collection of short free-form poems that collectively describe the life of the fictional small town of Spoon River, named after the real Spoon River that ran near Masters' home town. The collection includes two hundred and twelve separate...
), and later Farmer used the "Cordwainer Bird" byline, a pseudonym invented by Harlan Ellison
Harlan Ellison
Harlan Jay Ellison is an American writer. His principal genre is speculative fiction.His published works include over 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays, teleplays, essays, a wide range of criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media...
for film and television projects from which he wished to disassociate himself.
Awards
- 1953: Hugo AwardHugo AwardThe Hugo Awards are given annually for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was officially named the Science Fiction Achievement Awards...
, Most Promising New Talent, The Lovers - 1968: Hugo Award for Best NovellaHugo Award for Best NovellaThe Hugo Awards are given every year by the World Science Fiction Society for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was once officially...
, Riders of the Purple Wage - 1972: Hugo Award for Best NovelHugo Award for Best NovelThe Hugo Awards are given every year by the World Science Fiction Society for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was once officially...
, To Your Scattered Bodies Go - 2000: Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master AwardDamon Knight Memorial Grand Master AwardThe Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award is an award given by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. It is awarded to a living author for lifetime achievement in science fiction and/or fantasy. Officially, it is not a Nebula Award though it is awarded at the Nebula ceremony...
, lifetime achievement, awarded at the Nebula Awards Ceremony - 2001: World Fantasy Award for Life AchievementWorld Fantasy Award for Life AchievementThis World Fantasy Award is presented to individuals for their outstanding service to the fantasy field, and decided by a panel of judges at the World Fantasy Convention.-1984:* L. Sprague de Camp* Richard Matheson* E. Hoffmann Price* Jack Vance* Donald Wandrei...
- 2003: Forry Award for Lifetime Achievement
Nominations
- 1960: Hugo Award for Best Short StoryHugo Award for Best Short StoryThe Hugo Awards are given every year by the World Science Fiction Society for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was once officially...
, "The Alley Man" - 1961: Hugo Award for Best Short Story, "Open to Me, My Sister"
- 1966: Hugo Award for Best Short Story, "The Day of the Great Shout"
- 1967: Nebula Award for Best NovellaNebula Award for Best NovellaWinners of the Nebula Award for Best Novella. The stated year is that of publication; awards are given in the following year.-Winners and other nominees:-External links:**...
, Riders of the Purple WageRiders of the Purple WageRiders of the Purple Wage is a science fiction novella by Philip José Farmer. It appeared in Dangerous Visions, the famous New Wave science fiction anthology compiled by Harlan Ellison, in 1967, and won the Hugo Award for best novella in 1968, jointly with Weyr Search by Anne McCaffrey.-Title:The... - 1972: Locus AwardLocus AwardThe Locus Award is a literary award established in 1971 and presented to winners of Locus magazine's annual readers' poll. Currently, the Locus Awards are presented at an annual banquet...
for Best Science Fiction Novel, To Your Scattered Bodies Go - 1974: Nebula Award for Best Short StoryNebula Award for Best Short StoryWinners of the '“Nebula Award for Best Short Story”'. The stated year is that of publication; awards are given in the following year. Winning titles are listed first, with other nominees listed below.-Winners and nominees:-External links:* *...
, "After King Kong Fell"
See also
- Wold Newton familyWold Newton familyThe Wold Newton family is a literary concept derived from a form of crossover fiction developed by the science fiction writer Philip José Farmer...
- Dungeon seriesDungeon seriesThe Dungeon Series is a series of fantasy novels written under the auspices of Philip José Farmer, who wrote an introduction for each book in the series...
- Riverworld (2003 film)
- Riverworld (2010 film)Riverworld (2010 film)- Caretakers :The caretakers appear as blue-skinned robe-clad figures who watch over the humans. They were the beings who created Riverworld and are occasionally described as "demons." The caretakers are mostly divided between two separate factions: the Salvationists and the Second Chancers -...
Other sources
- Brizzi, Mary (Mary TurzilloMary TurzilloMary A. Turzillo is an American science fiction writer noted primarily for short stories. She won the Nebula Award for Best Novelette in 2000 for her story Mars is No Place for Children, published originally in Science Fiction Age, and her story "Pride," published originally in Fast Forward 1, was...
). Reader's Guide to Philip José Farmer, Starmont House, Mercer Island, WA., (Starmont Reader's Guides to Contemporary Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors series, #3, ed. Roger C. Schlobin) ISBN 0916732053, 1981. - The Official Philip José Farmer Home Page
External links
- P. J. Farmer at SciFiWorld
- International bibliography of Philip José Farmer
- An Expansion of Philip José Farmer's Wold Newton Universe
- Farmerphile: The Magazine of Philip José Farmer
- "Yesterday's Tomorrows: Philip José Farmer" by Graham Sleight
- Philip Jose Farmer papers at the University of WyomingUniversity of WyomingThe University of Wyoming is a land-grant university located in Laramie, Wyoming, situated on Wyoming's high Laramie Plains, at an elevation of 7,200 feet , between the Laramie and Snowy Range mountains. It is known as UW to people close to the university...
- American Heritage CenterAmerican Heritage CenterThe American Heritage Center is the University of Wyoming's repository of manuscripts, rare books, and the university archives. Its collections focus on Wyoming and the Rocky Mountain West and a select handful of national topics: environment and conservation, the mining and petroleum industries,...