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Philip Jose Farmer
Some of Philip Jose Farmer's early works were notable for their groundbreaking introduction of sexual themes to science fiction. Farmer's first published science fiction story "The Lovers" which won him the Hugo Award for most promising new writer in 1953, was the first sci-fi story to deal with sexual relations between humans and aliens. It was considered ground breaking and instantly put Farmer on the map. He is best known, however, for his Riverworld series and the earlier World of Tiers series, as well as his fascination for and reworking of the lore of legendary pulp heroes. Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld series follows the adventures of such diverse characters as Richard Burton, 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). Riverworld and Other Stories (1979) is not part of the series as such but a collection that includes the second-published Riverworld story, which is free-standing rather than integrated into one of the novels. The first two books were originally published as two novellas, "The Day of the Great Shout" and "The Suicide Express," and 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). 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 It won the contest, but the book was left unpublished and orphaned when the prize money was misappropriated, and a disappointed and depressed Philip Jose Farmer nearly gave up writing altogether.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. (Some of the same events are also fictionalized near the beginning of To Your Scattered Bodies Go.) The World of Tiers series is regarded by many fans as equal to or better than the Riverworld series, however it is less well known. The series is set within a number of artificially-constructed parallel universes, 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 a few humans from Earth who accidentally travel to these artificial universes, and 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). The World of Tiers series inspired Roger Zelazny's 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. Many of Philip Jose Farmer's works involve reworking existing characters from fiction and history, such as The Wind Whales of Ishmael (1971), an otherwordly sequel to Herman Melville'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 there by accident. His favorite subjects for this type of work are the pulp heroes Tarzan and Doc Savage: in his novel The Adventure of the Peerless Peer, Tarzan and Sherlock Holmes team up. Philip Jose Farmer also created the Lord Grandrith and Doc Caliban series, wherein we see disguised but less-than-innocent versions of Tarzan and Doc Savage. These consist of A Feast Unknown (1969), Lord of the Trees (1970) and The Mad Goblin (1970). Farmer has also written two witty mock biographies of both characters—Tarzan Alive (1972) and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life (1973)—wherein he conducts an exigetic mock-biography that winds either character in with a mind-boggling array of other fictional characters.
Philip Jose 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 a disagreement with Vonnegut put an end to those plans. 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" Jonathon Swift Somers III (invented by Farmer himself in Venus on the Half-Shell), 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. Philip Jose Farmer's works often contain sexual themes: his collection of short stories Strange Relations (1960) was a notable event in the history of sex in science fiction. He was one of three dedicatees of Robert A. Heinlein's 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land, which was also noted for breaking ground for sexual themes. Fire and the Night (1962) is a non-science-fiction novel about a love affair between a white man and a black woman that features some interesting sociological and psychosexual twists. Philip Jose Farmer's work also sometimes contains religious themes. Jesus shows up as a character in both the Riverworld series (in the novelette "Riverworld" but not in the novels) and Jesus on Mars. Night of Light (1966) takes the rather un-holy Father John Carmody on an odyssey on an alien world where spiritual forces are made manifest in the material world. Pseudonyms: Harry Manders, Jonathan Swift Sommers, III, Kilgore Trout, Rod Keen, Lord Grandith, Paul Chapin Selected Bibliography
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Philip Jose
Farmer (born January 26, 1918) is an American author, principally known
for his science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories. He was born in
Terre Haute, Indiana but spent much of his life in Peoria, Illinois, where he
currently lives.
This has led to a burgeoning of a particular type of this form of fiction which
is frequently referred to by reference to
Philip Jose Farmer's original premise, the Wold
Newton family.