Riverworld Paperback

Heaven, life after death, even Hell, are things that can drive us to endless distraction. Not surprisingly, they are also hot topics for science fiction writers. " Riverworld: Including To Your Scattered Bodies Go & The Fabulous Riverboat " is Philip Jose Farmer's classic, literary, and often brilliant attempt to deal with this question. In Farmer's vision humanity is resurrected on a world with a river that starts at the north pole, winds a long, circuitous route around the planet, and dumps back into the north pole. At the pole is also an island with a grand building that becomes the goal of the book's protagonists. They devise a variety of schemes to arrive there, all without the aid of modern industry or even any kind of economy. Farmer's vision of humanity is somewhat dark. The one theme that bothers me is the unrepentant evil that Farmer portrays as the defining feature of humanity and their newfound world. While it is not a "hell", per se, Farmer's vision of the afterlife is far more dystopian than utopian, unnecessarily so in many cases. Despite this, River World is a fascinating look at one possible afterlife and the consequences it creates.

This is an awesome book which was brought to my attention via the Nerdy Show Book Club hosted by the members of the Nerdy Show Podcast. I've never heard of this author or the Riverworld Saga before and I have to say that it was a great read. I'm already working on the second of the books in the series.The story here is absolutely awesome and delved into a realm of sci-fi that I'd never really ventured into before. The story follows the exploits of Sir Richard Francis Burton after his and millions of other humans resurrection into the "Riverworld". Burton mysteriously finds himself naked and hairless amongst many other humans from various locations on Earth. Individuals from all throughout time and geographic location have mysteriously been placed next to a massive river, naked as the day they were born with nothing more than an empty metal container.Being the explorer that he is Burton immediately sets himself to exploring his new world and trying to find the meaning behind his sudden resurrection. The further he digs in his efforts to discover the true purpose of what has happened to closer he gets to the dark truth surrounding the events.

I read this series as a child, and it is still wonderful!The imagination, imagery, and action that Philip José Farmer put into this series is timeless!

***************TL;DR VERSION***************Riverworld is awesome. Read it. The second book is kind of awful because it doesn't do the things which made the first book good, and it does some things which just don't work. I know you got both books together, but honestly don't worry about the second one. Go read Issac Asimov or something.***************REAL REVIEW***************(There's no spoilers until a kinda-spoiler at the end, which is clearly marked. Also fyi, this is Dualhammer's wife writing this review, not Dualhammers himself. My Kindle is attached to his account.)Usually the definition of science fiction and fantasy is based on setting. Science fiction is in the future/space, and fantasy in in the past/has magic. But another way to differentiate is that "classic science fiction" tries to explores idea, and fantasy is about people who are in an unusual setting. One focuses on the world, the other focuses on the people in the world.I think Riverworld is classic science fiction, To Your Scattered Bodies Go is fantasy, and Philip Jose Farmer is good at the former, but not the latter.Riverworld was fascinating to me. It explored human behaviour, the intermingling of cultures, and the search for human agency in a world where agency was taken from everyone on a deep level, from the nudity everyone must immediately get used to when humanity is resurrected, to the very inability to die. The methodology Sir Richard Francis Burton employs to find the headwaters of the River and thus learn why this has all been happening (without giving it away for those who haven't read it), struck me very powerfully. It was full of pathos and I couldn't imagine attempting such a thing myself. (Note though that I felt these strong emotions not because I cared about Burton himself, but because of the world around him and the choices he had to make because of that world.) Riverworld is, in my opinion, marvelous classic science fiction.I'm not sure what happened with To Your Scattered Bodies Go... but it decidedly does not live up to the quality of its predecessor.Sir Richard Francis Burton, the protagonist of the first book, is not very sentimental... or necessarily even empathetic. He is a character with incredible force of will, and that's his primary attribute. On some level it makes him less deep, but he doesn't need to be. The nature of the book is that the reader does not travel too deep into individual emotional territory anyways. Riverworld the Book is about learning about Riverworld the Place, and overcoming the mystery humanity has found itself in. Individual drama is simply not the point.But To Your Scattered Bodies Go is a very different sort of book. It follows Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain, a character with much more humanity to him, and when the author tries to narrate Clemen's thoughts as he feels anger and grief and determination, it just... falls flat. For one thing I think Farmer is just not be as good at portraying that kind of emotion convincingly in writing, but what I found most frustrating is that Clemens very simply does not act like Clemens, at all!There are small references scattered rarely about him chewing on a cigar, how much he loves riverboats, and he makes a joke about politicians. His former wife is a character in the book, and some history of what he did in life is stated, including an attempt to address whether or not Clemens was just a little bit racist. But all of these references only ever amount to a very surface-level resemblance, and the things he actually *does* in the book are so strikingly NOT what Mark Twain would do or say that it frustrated me on a regular basis.The largest portion of the book is devoted to the drama (which never felt dramatic) of his efforts to work alongside Robin Hood's King John to build the riverboat, employing the labour of everyone under King John's new nation. I'm not sure how Sam Clemens could really elevate himself to that level of political power in such a savage world, but okay, let's go with it. Even accepting that, over the course of the book Clemens displays very warlike attitudes, consenting to and sometimes initiating things which the real-life Clemens would have found abominable and just plain silly.The greatest moment of character-breaking for me was a moment when an engineer demonstrates for Clemens the pistols he has just made with some of the precious metal they found. But the engineer warns that they're not as useful and plain old crossbows, and he'd rather use their resources to make weapons which will serve them more practically. But Clemens insists:"That's a lot of nonsense! The mere fact that we would have these guns would demonstrate our technological and military superiority. We'd scare the enemy half to death before the battle started..."And after his engineer insists again, Sam replies:"No, sir!" Sam said. "No, sir! I insist that we make at least two hundred of these. We'll outfit a new group, the Parolando Pistoleers. They'll be the terror of The River - you watch them! You'll see!" And the chapter ends there.WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH MARK TWAIN? This is not the same man who wrote "The War Prayer." [...]Over and over, despite the historical references, I just felt like saying "You don't know who Samuel Clemens IS, do you?"There are other problems I could go into, such as the author's habit of telling you that by the way, something happened 3 months ago, just as the characters need to reference it or take advantage of that thing which already happened but the author had not told you about until now.Or that a character named Joe has a very strong lisp, which is *written out* as a strong lisp. This is not a huge problem when he says a sentence at a time, but at one point, Joe tells his story, in his written lisp, for something like ten full pages on my Kindle. Without exaggeration, it was one of the most painful things to slog through that I have ever read. Sir... this was a horrible choice. And what makes it worse is that for a paragraph or so at the beginning, Farmer switched from Joe talking to Sam retelling what Joe had said. Farmer had already set the precedent, so why did he not continue having Sam tell us? Why instead tell us Joe's story in the most reader-abusive way possible?***SPOILER*** Or I could tell you how, even though Riverworld pictured a hostile and savage world in which it is near impossible to find particular individuals, somehow, in the space of no more than two or three years, Samuel Clemens joins forces with about 8 of the dozen people selected by the friendly Ethical. WTF dude? WTF. ***END SPOILER***In short, Riverworld is great. The book stayed true to its function, kept me interested for most of it and played with amazing ideas. But To Your Scattered Bodies Go focuses on unconvincing characters who stay in the same place for years, and he doesn't depict the passage of time very well. It drags, a LOT. He writes passages as if he expected the reader to be excited, but since there was no buildup of tension, these scenes just fall flat.I don't know what happened. Perhaps he took his time with the first book and was forced to rush to create a series after that. Perhaps he had good editors for the first who could curb his bad habits and he didn't have that resource the second time around. Maybe he's just not good at character writing, and his real element is stories that play with ideas.But whatever happened, I can wholely recommend Riverworld. Just... don't bother with the second book. Perhaps the series gets better later, but that still means you have to read To Your Scattered Bodies Go, and I personally found it to be an unsatisfying slog.

One of the greatest books in all of science fiction. Philip Jose Farmer at his very best; at his peak. You cannot miss the Riverworld series. It is required.

What a surprise to find this series on Amazon.I read this while in college and enjoyed it.It is again a delight. Arrived quickly and in perfect condition.

Great read

Heureusement que j'ai lu ces quatre bouquins tardivement en me fiant à une liste des meilleurs livres de science fiction; parce que cet auteur est un nul total, il se répète dans les quatre lives, décrivant inlassablement des gens célèbres aussi stupides ou plus que dans leur vie antérieure obsédés à construire des bateaux gigantesques dans des conditions improbables ou bien des dirigeables, enfin on reconstruit la vie sur terre et on appelle ça un livre de science fiction parce qu'ils sont réssuscités! lamentable. Nul Nul Nul.

This is a great one volume edition of 2 odd and incredibly readable meditations on human ambition and purpose. My thoughts were that the language would be more dense and intricate but the prose is light, though the subject matter is about as heavy as it could get. Life and Death. Its no "Gravity's Rainbow" but well worth the limited effort that it takes to steam through it.

I loved the Riverworld series when they were first published. It’s great to read them again in hardback. Good book, arrived on time. Very pkeased