Book description
Resurrected on the lush, mysterious banks of Riverworld, along with the
rest of humanity, Samuel Langhorne Clemens (a. k.a. Mark Twain) has a
dream: to build a riverboat that will rival the most magnificent
paddle-wheelers ever navigated on the mighty Mississippi. Then, to steer
it up the endless waterway that dominates his new home planet - and at
last discover its hidden source.
But before he can carry out his plan, he first must undertake a
dangerous voyage to unearth a fallen meteor. This mission would require
striking an uneasy alliance with the bloodthirsty Viking Erik Bloodaxe,
treacherous King John of England, legendary French swordsman Cyrano de
Bergerac, Greek adventurer Odysseus, and the infamous Nazi Hermann
Göring. All for the purpose of storming the ominous stone tower at the
mouth of the river, where the all-powerful overseers of Riverworld - and
their secrets - lie in wait . . . 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.
