Philip Jose Farmer
To Your Scattered Bodies Go
1971, G.P. Putnam’s Sons/ Berkley Medallion
I love Philip Jose Farmer’s imaginative, often daring, outright scandalous short stories (see “My Sister’s Brother” and “Riders of the Purple Wage”), but I’ve never gotten around to reading his popular Riverworld series of novels.
The name put me off, I think. I hate the river. There are creatures in it. I’m sick of the river. Do I want to go to a riverworld? No, I don’t.
Also, does Riverworld have anything to do with Riverdance? I hope not.
But as the pile of unread books around me expands so perhaps will my tastes, so I decided to check out Riverworld finally and this first book in the series turned out to be a perfect read for my current state of mind as a middle-aged man who worries about death all day.
Farmer wastes no time. On the first page, our main character is an aching old man who dies of natural causes, slips into black nothingness and then wakes up levitating in a brightly lit void. In all directions, left and right, above him and below him, spread out in distances too far to calculate, are other bodies in a similar state. All are nude, hairless from head to toe and young. Our hero died at age 69; now, his physical body is about 25 again.
He’s Richard Francis Burton, the famous real life English explorer and writer who died in 1890. He’s also the only person who seems to be awake.
Everyone else wakes up when they’re eventually transplanted down to some imitation of Earth. It’s a world of mountains and comfortable temperatures and a giant river. Generous daily rations of food are provided (along with liquor and even psychedelic drugs) via a mystical “grail” that everyone has.
People from all different eras mix. Primitive people still figuring out uses for their opposable thumbs wake up next to modern day man. People born in the 17th century wake up next to those born in the 20th century. Everyone who ever lived and died is in this place, along a river that must stretch out for millions of miles.
Atheists aren’t sure what to make of it. Some religious people lose their faith when this afterlife isn’t what they expected. It’s not “heaven” exactly. People are still people. They rape, enslave and conquer. New societies form and not all of them are interested in peace.
And, yes, you can be killed in this afterlife. When people die, they come back, but in a different part of the river, usually with no idea of how far they are from where they died or how much time has passed.
Richard Francis Burton is the perfect lead character because it’s a given that he’s not going to be content to settle anywhere. He has to explore. There is an intelligent design to all of this. He needs to build a raft and see what’s out there and get some answers.
From there, this strangely evolves into an old-fashioned adventure story as Burton and his crew tangle with slavers, cross paths with exotic communities and Burton is pursed by the mysterious entity behind the Riverworld because he knows too much.
Meanwhile, there are perverse details that remind you that this is not exactly Jules Verne and that Farmer is a weirdo. I’m talking about how Burton sometimes gets out of jams by committing suicide, knowing that he’ll just be resurrected elsewhere. I’m talking about the hint that all life on Earth may have been extinguished early in the 21st century by aliens. Then there’s famous Nazi Hermann Göring, who becomes a recurring character and goes through a curious evolution, beginning here as a tyrant before he goes through at least one severe mental breakdown.
(Let’s also mention the very blasphemy of the concept. If there is a God in this world, He’s kinda sinister.)
We don’t learn all of the secrets of the Riverworld here, but we do get intriguing hints clearly intended to be teased out in later volumes. I kinda like the mystery though and found this book satisfying on its own.
I will still read the other books in time. I’m gonna trust Farmer to keep things offbeat.