Book description
Welcome to Riverworld . . .
It is not like our world - or any world that can be imagined by anyone
but Philip Jose Farmer. It is huge and mysterious. It has a central
river, rimmed by mountains, with a hidden source and an unknown end.
Reborn there is every last soul who ever lived on Earth - from
prehistoric apemen to moondwelling future civilisations.
Reborn there is Sir Richard Francis Burton, translator of The Arabian
Nights, explorer, brawler, scholar, womaniser - adventurer. His quest to
discover the end of the river, the meaning of the world's existence -
and lovely Alice Hargreaves (the real-life model for Alice in
Wonderland) form a science fiction adventure that is already recognised
as a classic.
Winner of the Hugo Award for best novel, 1972 Philip José Farmer
(1918 - 2009)
Philip José Farmer was born in Indiana in 1918. Although he once said he
resolved to become a writer in the fourth grade, it wasn't until 1952
that his first SF was published - the novella 'The Lovers', which won
him the Hugo Award for Most Promising New Author. Although best known
for his Riverworld sequence, beginning with the Hugo Award-winning To
Your Scattered Bodies Go
, Farmer also pioneered the use of sexual and religious themes in SF and
wrote several novels reworking the lore of celebrated pulp heroes such
as Tarzan and Doc Savage. He also wrote the tongue-in-cheek Venus on
the Half-Shell
using the pseudonym 'Kilgore Trout', a character who appeared in
several Kurt Vonnegut novels. Philip José Farmer won three Hugos, a
World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement and the Damon Knight Memorial
Grand Master Award. He died in 2009.
