This review is taken from Piers Anthony's column, Off The Deep End, which he wrote about Essex House and five of their novels. Blown by Philip Jose Farmer. This is listed as the sequel to The Image of the Beast, a novel I have not seen. The subtitle is Sketches Among the Ruins of My Mind—and I presume that is Farmer's original title, certainly a far more evocative concept. My rule of thumb is that only the editors with the worst taste in titling insist on changing the author's title, with the result you see here.
((Editors Note: Brian Kirby, editor of Essex House, told me Blown was Farmer's own title for the book. I do not believe Brian changed any of Phil's titles.))
    Farmer's style here, to my surprise, is quite unlike that of Lovely or of his own novelette "Riders of the Purple Wage." The prose of Blown is lucid, simple, linear—in fact, pedestrian. Since I know how Farmer can sparkle when he chooses, I am amazed to discover a determinedly dull finish here. It is as though he wants nothing to detract from his story—yet the story, apart from certain remarkable exceptions, is routine science fiction.
    Let's skip the routine and concentrate on those exceptions. There is of course the sexula element. The book works carefully into a thoroughly compelling sexual episode. It begins voyeuristically: Herald Childe (others have remarked on the obviously literary symbolism of the name) watches the beautiful Vivienne anesthetize a mark and insert his penis into her anus. Her vagina then opens and a tiny human head emerges, mounted on a snakelike torso. This head glides down and enters the marks anus. Etc. I don't believe I need to point out the diverse elements of this concept; few if any beside Farmer seem able to achieve such effects. Some critics condemn him, some praise him; I doubt many are indifferent.
    Ted White has remarked on the confusion of those who fail to differentiate good and bad from type, and condemn a good story because it is of a type the critic doesn't happen to like. I suspect many critics have done this with Farmer's sexual concepts, including white himself: revolted by the aberated eroticism, they believe the writing is bad. I suggest the opposite: this is good writing, for it moves the reader, and plants an image in his mind he can not expunge. Good writing is not at all the same as nice writing.
    Another element is Forrest J. Ackerman. No, this is no coincidence of names. I don't know Forry, but I'm prepared to believe this is the Forry. Yet he is so determinedly mundane it's a crime. He resides in the 800 block of Sherbourne Drive. He has a left a party to get out a comic magazine. He has found a rare picture to be missing from his home, and now he is standing in the rain outside the house of Heepish, who has stolen the item, and he's mad. Good God, the contrast with the preceding episode is so sharp it's shocking; it's as though pages from another book have been spliced in. Yet Forry amounts to a co-protagonist with Herald. The two finally interact and consummate the story.
    I don't know what Farmer is doing here, but I certainly can't ignore it. I'm certain he is broadening the field in ways not purely sexual, and that must be good. More on that too, anon. (Piers Anthony)

This is the first in a projected series of science fiction novels about the Riverworld. Heaven, purgatory or hell, perhaps all three, the Riverworld contains the resurrected remains of all beings who dwelt on earth from the beginning of time till 2000 A.D. The chief character in the book is the famous Victorian adventurer, Richard Burton. Accompanied by a changing cast of characters, including Herman Goering and Alice Hargreaves (the model for Alice in Wonderland), Burton explores the Riverworld and begins what will evidently be a series of encounters with the Ethicals, who control the existence of people in the Riverworld. Much of the book is intriguing and ingenious; occasionally there are minor plot confusions, but perhaps these will clear up with the succeeding volumes. (Judy Faria)

From the May 28th issue of The UCLA Daily Bruin:

Letters to the Editor: Trout Fishing
    In your book review section for May 20th, Mr. Steve Ainsworth states that "Venus on the Half-Shell (by Kilgore Trout) is a (Kurt) Vonnegut creation." Sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Ainsworth, but t'aint so. It was recently revealed at the University Extension science fiction class that Mr. Philip Jose Farmer is really Kilgore Trout. Mr. Farmer, a brilliant writer in his own right and a great admirer of Vonnegut's work, conceived the idea of actually taking the description of one of Trout's books provided by Vonnegut and writing the novel.
    With Vonnegut's approval Farmer wrote Venus on the Half-Shell, which was then published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Due to an unfortunate series of events, Vonnegut later withdrew his permission for the use of the Trout name, so no more Kilgore Trout books will be appearing.
    However, it was revealed that Simon Wagstaff, the hero of Venus, has his own favorite science fiction writer, Jonathon Swift Somers III. By a strange coincidence, A Scarletin Study, by Mr. Somers, was recently published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. In addition, Ralph von Wau Wau, hero of A Scarletin Study has his own favorite science fiction writer, whose work will soon be published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction...
    I am indebted for this information to Mr. Farmer himself, who appeared on a panel for the May 13 session of Ten Tuesdays Down a Rabbit Hole, the University Extension science fiction class. Chalk up another one, Mr. Farmer.
                Mayer A. Brenner
                Bioengineering

Correction
    We've been had. It seems Venus on the Half-Shell, reviewed last week in this section, was in reality not written by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., but by Phillip Jose Farmer, author of four science fiction novels. Farmer, with Vonnegut's permission, wrote under the pseudonym, "Kilgore Trout," one of the principle characters in Vonnegut's latest book, Breakfast of Champions. Vonnegut subsequently revoked that permission.
    It was a good hoax. It worked. Beyond the (now) obvious mimicking of Vonnegut's style and themes, Farmer got help in the form of some very deceptive promotional material. Furthermore, it seems that the book's sales are dependant on upon the association of "Kilgore Trout" with Kurt Vonnegut.
    But not wishing to spoil a good joke (even one at our own expense), we'd like to restate our opinion that Venus on the Half-Shell, in its own right, is well worth reading. Reviewer Steve Ainsworth, last seen hitchhiking north on the Ventura Freeway in search of a large rock to crawl under, maintains it's one of the best books Farmer ever wrote. By the way, hemlock tastes lousy.
(I usually don't comment on reviews and I can even tolerate their misspelling Philip, but to say that he is the "author of four science fiction books" is a bit much. By the time VENUS came out he had published; one mainstream novel, one anthology, two biographies, five short story collections, thirty science fiction novels and won three Hugo awards! And they make it sound like no one had ever heard of Farmer, when he had been a guest speaker on campus the week before. - Mike)

Science Fiction Review Monthly #14, April 1976

(DAW, $1.95, Original) Leave it to Philip Jose Farmer to collaborate with two dead Frenchmen.
    With Farmer's well known penchant for work that makes the fictitious real (the Tarzan and Doc Savage biographies, the novel by "Kilgore Trout"), it's hardly surprising to find him now capable of making the real appear fictitious. Who ever heard of J.H. Rosny? But alas, Rosny was the collective pseudonym of two brothers, Joseph-Henri Boex and Justin Boex, who wrote a number of novels jointly between 1886 and 1928, many on themes now claimed to belong properly to science fiction. The brothers also wrote individually: Joseph as Rosny aine and Justin as Rosny jeune. Over the years, many French critics have speculated that Rosny aine may be of equal importance in the development of French science fiction to the more popular figure, Jules Verne. To date, little of their work has been found in English.
    Ironcastle, Eyimah in French, was first published in France in 1895; it was contemporary with the work of Verne, Doyle, Wells, and Haggard, and somewhat earlier than Burroughs. Hareton Ironcastle, himself, is an American explorer who travels with some close male friends and a quite voluptuous daughter to a hidden and nearly inaccessible part of Africa, a veritable Lost-World-That-Time-Forgot. There are intelligent great apes, evil and cunning Stunted Men, hostile natives, the de rigueur exotic and extinct animal life, and strange intelligent plant life. It is difficult to disavow that notion that Rosny "borrowed" from Doyle, Haggard, or Burroughs, but this is quite literally impossible, and in fact, the opposite may be true.
    But this Ironcastle is not a "translation", it is a "collaboration", and one cannot be certain where Rosny ends and Farmer begins. The novel is similar enough to other work by Rosny (see "Another World" translated by Damon Knight in A Century of Science Fiction); but it is also strikingly like much of Farmer's work. Part of Farmer's value as an author is his clever use and re-use of literary devices which reach us on an archetypal-mythic level, and Ironcastle is more than the relatively simple and manifest adventure yarn on first encounters; it is a potpourri of symbol and archetype. But is it Farmer's or Rosny's?
    There's a Ph.D. in Ironcastle, somewhere; but for the general reader, it's an exciting story, full of surprises. (L.J. Knapp)

Captain George's Penny Dreadful #392, 1976

(Daw $1.95) Technically this is a novel written by Rosny and originally published in Paris in 1922; the credit reads, "translated and retold in English by Philip Jose Farmer." Obviously there is more in the retelling than any straight translation. For one thing, I doubt that Rosny in 1922 included reference to "the well-known surgeon and explorer, Dr. Savage"--one of Farmer's notable literary hobby-horses.
    What Farmer has done is to rediscover the once popular fantasist who was a contemporary of Verne, Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Only one of Rosny's books (a 1909 caveman story) is still in print in English so this retelling of a lost race adventure in the heart of Haggard's Africa should be of interest to scholars as well of fans of Verne, Burroughs or Haggard.
    Ironcastle is a Tarzanic adventure novel which culminates with the discovery of an awesome extraterrestrial life form buried in the heart of the jungle. It comes complete with some delightfully old-fashioned illustrations by Roy Krenkel and chapter headings such as, "The Wild Cavern," "Stunted Men and Goura-Zankkas," "The Unrelenting Night," and "In the bowels of the Earth." What more could you ask for? (Don Hutchinson)

Library Journal, May 15 1976

Farmer retells Rosny's classic tale of adventure set in the "darkest Africa" of the 1920's. A troupe led by intrepid explorer Hareton Ironcastle sets off to join naturalist Samuel Darnley, who has reported discovery of warm-blooded reptiles and sentient plants. This familiar cast overcomes tribes of hostile natives, the abduction of Ironcastle's daughter, exotic wild beasts, and hypnotic plants, and eventually meets Darnley, who has discovered the secret of the strange manifestations in the jungle. A real treat for fans of Burroughs and Haggard. (Marjorie L. Peffers)

Locus #190, June 30 1976

(DAW UY1225, 175 pp., 1.25) A translation and "retelling" by Farmer of a 1923 French Tarzanlike adventure by Rosny. Cover is a mnior effort by Krenkel.

The Diversifier #19, March 1977

(DAW, with J.H. Rosny $1.25)(This review begins with FLIGHT TO OPAR)
    I wish the problems of IRONCASTLE were that minor. Unfortunately, they are not. This novel is Farmer's rewrite of a 1922 story by J.H. Rosny, blurbed as "the Burroughs of France". Now Burroughs was never known as a literary stylist. Compared to Rosny, though, ERB looks like Shakespeare.
    If IRONCASTLE had also a story to tell, the bad writing wouldn't have made that much difference. Good story-telling has been the saving grace of more than one bad writer. Not this time, though.
    IRONCASTLE is the name of the lead character, a gentleman-explorer who learns that a friend of his has become lost in an unexplored section of Africa. A garbled report from the friend hints of such strange things as furred, warm-blooded reptiles, Neanderthal men, serpent-men, and sentient plants. All this could have been the basis for a good old-fashioned adventure yarn, but it fails, despite whatever help Farmer attempted to give it. None of the plot-elements connect in any meaningful way.
    The story revolves around Ironcastle's expedition to rescue his lost friend. The expedition consists of the usual jungle-story stereotypes; Ironcastle's beautiful-but-head-strong niece; her wealthy, foppish boyfriend, the Uncle Tom chief of the bearers, etc. There is also Sydney Guthrie, a 6-foot-6 giant of a man who performs feats of strength and derring-do worthy of Tarzan. Where Guthrie got his superhuman strength is unexplained.
    The climax of the story is pretty unusual, and I would guess more suitable to Farmer than to Rosny. I won't give it away but it's at least as inventive as Burroughs' successive-evolution concept of the Caspak series. However, the climax fails to tie in well with an already disjointed story.
    Even Roy Krenkel bats only .500 in these two books. His interiors for FLIGHT TO OPAR were terrific, but he fell down as badly as Farmer did in IRONCASTLE. For example, FARMER includes the recent scienctific hypothesis that some dinosaurs may have been warm-blooded and covered with hair. This idea has interesting possibilities but Krenkel makes the creatures look like crocodiles wearing fright-wigs!
    In short, one book is as bad as the other is good. Buy selectively. (Charles Saunders)

Captain George's Penny Dreadful #392, 1976

    (Daw $1.95) The distinguished critic Leslie Fiedler has faulted science fiction for failing to live up to its mythmaking potential. Smal wonder that Fiedler is an avowed fan of Phil Farmer, one of the true mythmakers in modern sf.
    In his "biographies" of Lord Greystoke and Doc Savage, Farmer displayed his understanding of the nature and importance of mythmaking and of the archetypal hero. In this new series he employs that understanding to great advantage. With the permission of Hulbert Burroughs (Ed's son) he has returned to Burrough's lost city of Opar some 12,000 years before Tarzan, when the Atlantean Opar was in its prime and vast inland seas stood where only the Sahara is now. But the Hadon series is no mere pastiche of a dead writer's work; it is an original, complex, highly detailed example of fictional history.
    For all his alleged stylistic crudities (something on which jios critics seem fixated) Burroughs had few if any peers when it came to writing rousing action scenes. Farmer does not attempt to compete on that level. Instead, he gives us a rich, realistic tapestry of a dead time and place which could easily pass as a thoroughly researched historical novel.
    Like most of Farmer's heroes (and unlike most others in this limited sub-genre) Hadon emerges as a fully realized individual who is mortal enough to keep the action suspensful. As a plus, there are more of those delightful Krenkel sketches, and each book ends in a cliffhanger. Recommended for the young in heart who are old enough to require a little substance with their escapism. (Don Hutchison)

Publisher's Weekly, May 10 1976

Tarzan had a high old time in quest of the jewels of the lost African Empire of Opar, and Farmer has a higher one with his saga of what the place was like 12,000 years ago. Readers who have encountered Hadon of Opar and his Lalila in the previous book in the series, and mean to read the next one, will get the most out of this, which, taken on its own, has a number of loose threads. But there is enough gore, pulp-style sex, monsters, action and sardonic byplay to keep heroic-fantasy fans happy.

Erbania 38, Spring 1976

(Daw Books, 212 pages $1.50) The second book of the Chronicles of Opar opens with the sounds of creaking and grating---; the long unused muscles and joints of Hadon of Opar comes to life. After leaning upon his sword awaiting death for over two years he must again contend with the minions of Minruth in trying to save Lalila, Abeth and Awineth. His long wait must have weakened his resolve; the blood feeding oxygen to his brain slowed hi intellect. He spends much time trying to figure out ways of abandoning Lalila.
     This does not sound like the Hadon from the first volume but after much running around and strenous excercise is blood seems to be flowing again and his thoughts not so sluggish. He gives in to deeds of heroism but, possibly because he has aged, he still reflects on the psychology of life and sometimes we get the feeling Hadon wonders if it is all worth while.
    These words, written with evident tongue-in-cheek, might give rise to speculation that I did not enjoy this book. Nothing could be further from the truth. It does not live up to the first book in the series but I feel that the reason is that Phil became more interested in the life and setting of the novel than the further development of Hadon as a hero of heroic fiction. This does not detract that much from the story because the action is, most times, fast and furious and the topography and the detailing of the various races which they come across extremely interesting. Especially the K'ud''em'o, the people of the sea otter who build rafts a mile and a half long and half a mile wide with which to ply the sea.
    We are also introduced to the four year old son of Hadon by a temple priestess, Klyhy. His name is Kohr--which gives rise to the speculation that he may become the founder of the city of Kor, ruled over in later years by she-who-must-be-obeyed.
     Hadon finally wins his way back to Opar with Lalila, Pag and the rest of his companions and upon closing the book one hopes that we do not have another two year wait for the third volume. One very interesting development happens in chapter 13. hadon comes face to face with Sahhindar the Time Lord. I had been lead to believe that although would figure prominately in these Chronicles it would be as an off-stage actor. It would appear that Phil has revised his thoughts in this matter and I, for one, am very pleased.
    The book contains eleven pen & ink sketches by Roy Krenkel which vary in quality. Two of especial note are those on pages 5 and 36. I am sorry to report that the cover painting is not particularly noteworthy Krenkel has and can do better. (Robert Barrett)

The Science Fiction Review Monthly #16, June 1976

(Original DAW, $1.50) {This review is continued from HADON OF ANCIENT OPAR} Flight To Opar opens with the soldiers close behind. Hadon's hard fought victory heralds a second round of adventure with night sea journies, mysteries, hints of magic, secret religious rites, blasphemy, and a climactic Father Atonement when Hadon commits regicide by killing the city-king of Opar. In doing so, Hadon makes his de rigeur visit to the underground and falls into a stygian pool of meateating, blind cave-fish. The story, of course, is to be continued.
    Brief and sketchy plot summaries rarely sound as rewarding as the total work they are intended to describe, but as Campbell points out in his Hero With A Thousand Faces, "The changes rung on the simple scale of the monomyth defy description." The changes Farmer has made are both entertaining for a quick read, rewarding on closer examination, and revealing under real explication. (L.J. Knapp)

The Diversifier #19, March 1977

(DAW, $1.50) Phillip Jose Farmer is the most audacious science fiction writer around today. Now, I didn't say the best....just the most audacious. Not even Harlan Ellison has managed to pull off such an outrageous list of coups as:
    (1) Successfully posing as Kilgore Trout in VENUS ON THE HALF-SHELL: (2) Turning the idea of the Resurrection into a science fiction classic, the RIVERWORLD series, featuring such notables as Sir Richard Burton, Samuel Clemens, and Herman Goring: (3) Produce a geneology that "proves" that Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, and Doc Savage are real people who share the same family tree: (4) Advance the hypothesis that our so-called "expanding universe" is really a mockup created by superscientific interdimentional "Lords" in the Wolff-Jadawin series.
    Somehow Farmer has managed to get away with all these things while picking up a Hugo along the way. Recently he has turned his hand to pastiches of Edgar Rice Burroughs. In his latest offerings in this vein, Farmer tills the alluvial soil of African adventure first turned by H. Rider Haggard and subsequently well-plowed by Burroughs. Farmer's results are ambivalent: FLIGHT TO OPAR is very good, while IRONCASTLE is very bad.
    FLIGHT is the second volume in the Ancient Opar series, in which Farmer recreates a prehistoric Caucasian civilization in what is now the Sahara and Central Africa. A world-builder par excellence, Farmer has taken a few strands from the Opar of the Tarzan series and woven a cultural and linguistic tapestry far beyond anything Burroughs ever did with the idea. Despite the claims of the inside front cover blurb, FLIGHT is not written "in the style of the master, ERB". On the contrary, Farmer is the master of his own style.
    The events of FLIGHT commence immediately from the end of HADON OF ANCIENT OPAR, the first novel of the series. The hero Hadon and the enigmatic Lalila mange to escape the forces of Minruth, emperor of Khokarsa (the ancient civilization of which Opar is a part), only to end up rather reluctantly in the service of Awineth, Khokarsa's fugitive queen. Awineth and Lalila each continue their rivalry over the affections of Hadon, each having a legitimate claim.
    To preserve the life of Lalila, Hadon must fight on the side of the queen in a war based partly on sectarian strife and partly on sexual politics. Farmer shows great skill in weaving these basically modern concepts into his narrative without falling into the danger of anachronism...though the Sergeant Bilko-style slang used by Khokarsan military types sometimes sounds out of place in the world of 10,000 B.C. An interesting sidelight is the ingenious use Farmer makes of a well known Burroughs character whose Khokarsa name is "Sahhindar", but whose real name is a thinly-veiled secret.
    After some absorbing adventures, Hadon and Lalila wind up in Opar, Hadon's home town. There Lalila gives birth to a girl-child christened with and familiar and incredible name, which provides the book for the next Ancient Opar novel.
    This book is excellent fantasy/adventure, partly because Farmer chooses not to simply imitate Burroughs but to create his own interpretation of a few clues left by ERB. To some FLIGHT might seem top-heavy with cultural detail, but then few fantasy worlds have been better constructed than Khokarsa.
    My only quibble with FLIGHT lies not with the text itself but with the content of the inside front-cover blurb. In large bold-face type it declaims; "Twelve thousand years ago Africa is not the continent we know now, a land of waterless wastes, infested jungles, and primative villages". Surely the writer of the blurb realizes that there is more to Africa than what he describes. Are Lagos or Nairobi "primative villages"? Is this type of subtle slur really necessary to advertise so excellent a book as FLIGHT TO OPAR?     (for the rest of this review, please see IRONCASTLE)

Moebius Trip, December 1977

(DAW Books, #197/VW1238; x+212p; $1.50) FLIGHT TO OPAR is the second volume in Farmer's history of Hadon of Opar (the first being HADON OF ANCIENT OPAR) and picks up exactly where the first left off.
    Divergence one: that first volume dealt with the 19-year-old Hadon's victory in the Great Games at Khokarsa and subsequent deprival of the crown and hand of Awineth by the actions on Minruth. Hadon is sent on a wild goose chase for three people who have seen the time-travelling god, Sahhindar, but he succeeds; his return and subsequent escape with Awinethand the rest of his party forces Minruth's hand.
    Thus the second novel opens with the kingdom in a revolutionary period as the followers of the Sun God, Resu, try to supplant the goddess Kho and the matriarchal system which places the real power in the hands of the priestesses of Kho rather than with the kings. Hadon has remained behind Queen Aniweth and her fleeing party with the injured woman he loves, Lalila. He hopes to gain time for them by holding a pass.
    This ending of the first novel ("He leaned on his sword and waited") is ideal: a proud ending for a hero repeatedly thwarted of everything except honor, if another book were never written; yet an ending which begs for a sequel.
    After his valiant stand at the pass, Hadon must attempt to consolidate his party once more and to secure the position of his queen, Awineth; this is the subject of the first section of the book. The rest of it concerns Hadon's flight to Opar so that Lalila may have her child there.
    Farmer has woven an exciting narrative which suffers only the most occasional element of boredom. Hadon is a well-drawn character who dominates in spite of the spectacle and the supporting characters do not suffer in comparison — not even the walk-on appearance of a familiar face in chapter 14.
    There is sufficient detail and background to make the story enjoyable without having read the first book.
    Okay, I've given the novel 'excellents' for plot and character: the next question is, 'Does it mean anything?' Like ZORBA THE GREEK or Homer's ODYSSEY or THE ROOTS OF HEAVEN? My immediate reaction is to answer 'no', but lets keep the question in mind a moment more.
    Divergence two: The "Hadon" series represents adoption of Burroughs territory. Allowing for the fact that the Tarzan books are virtually my only weekness in Burroughs' output, how does the Farmer product compare with Burroughs? First of all, there is no problem with mistaken identity: Farmer isn't Burroughs and the two write differently. There is also definitely a greater verisimilitude with Farmer's characters: Hadon particularly, changes far more than any of ERB's characters (appropriately, since the period described ranges from the hero's 19th to 25th year, when a certain amount of maturation is to be expected). Farmer's heros are also more likely to deviate from socialized codes of behavior than Burroughs'. (The defense of the pass at the beginning of FLIGHT is a case in point; ERB's hero wouldn't have broken the code.)
    But we have still the same intricate attention to social customs, ritual, and detail that was one of the great strengths of ERB's writing. There is not just the detail of adventure (Joe Millard does a nice job of this for the "Man With No Name" westerns), but the distinctive flavor of the exotic permeating these words as they marbled ERB's. To what extent Farmer has adopted the Master's descriptions and what he has created himself, I do not know. It doesn't matter. The society that forms the background for these adventures is alive and plausible; it exists just around the corner for all its strangeness.
    Partway through the Great Games (HADON OF ANCIENT OPAR), I was ready to swear I was reading ERB, though certain touches rendered the theory impossible. Which brings us to:
    Diversion three: I asked above if there was anything 'serious', anything 'literary' about this and said that my immediate reaction was that there was not. But then I said that Farmer recaptured the mood of ERB at times. I cannot estimate the full effect of Burroughs on my own attitudes, but I learned much from him. Some I have had to throw off, while other attitudes seem wholly honorable approaches to life. Perhaps there is some confusion with the impact of Homer's ODYSSEY, clearly the most important book in my own psychological make up. That latter work, though, is nothing if it is not a documentation of a culture and its values and of coming-of-age in that culture. If we allow for the fictitious origins of the Oparian society Farmer writes about, the description above describes this work well.
    I wonder if Homer's contemporaries felt he had a masterpiece on his hands, or if they just regarded it as I might regard this work (allowing for its origins of course). Are we, as SF readers, seeing them created in our midst for cultures which never exisited outside one man's mind? (How else do you describe THE DEMOLISHED MAN or LAST AND FIRST MEN?) Or are we seeing the ODYSSEYS of the 20th Century etched here as surely as they are in the works of Nikos Kazantzakis or the bloody symphonic conflicts of Carl Nielson and Dimitri Shostakovich? (Don Ayres)

Publishers Weekly, July 25 1977

(Berkley/Putnam) The third in the massive Riverworld series, with a cast of literally everybody who ever lived, resurrected on a planet dominated by a giant river. As before, the principals are Samuel L. Clemens and Richard Burton (the explorer, not the actor) with Clemens pursuing King John and his stolen riverboat, and Burton seeking to join John and find his way to the end of the river and the secret of the Immortals who have contrived the whole setup. Tom Mix, Jack London, Cyrano do Bergerac and Alice Liddell (Lewis Carroll's inspiration) also figure in the action. A dirigible, a hot-air balloon, and riverboats bring most of the characters together in a catastrophe that ends the book, but evidently not the series. Some threads in the design are loose or overknotted, but the dash and grand scope of the project and this installment of it are compellingly fascinating.

Kirkus Reviews, August 15 1977

(Berkley/Putnam) Farmer's Riverworld series (To Your Scattered Bodies Go; The Fabulous Riverboat) may come to an end some day, but at one point in the present installment the figure of twelve is mentioned as the minimum number of books necessary to do justice to the whole scheme. Oh, dear. Certainly the premise is an infinitely usable one: practically every human being born between 2,000,000 B.C. and 2008 A.D. has reawakened as a healthy 25-year-old on an unknown planet that appears to consist of one enormous, tortuous river valley walled by impassable cliffs. The present volume continues the Riverworlders' efforts to conquer the benevolent (or perhaps not so benevolent) prison of the River and the valley. Sam Clemens is still commanding his second riverboat and plotting revenge on King John, who stole the first. A dirigible party including Cyrano de Bergerac is planning an expedition to the legendary stronghold of the planet's unseen masters at the North Pole. Another riverboat crew, headed by Jack London and Tom Mix under noms de guerre, manages to graduate to balloon flight. A few select individuals ponder a mysterious communication to the effect that the entire Riverworld is part of a cruel and cynical scientific experiment. Is it possible that such materials could be boring? Yes, given Farmer's shaky command of English grammar, tin ear for stylistic effects, and general insensitivity to the shape of a narrative. Enough already.

Library Journal, September 15 1977

(Berkley/Putnam) In this third volume of the "Riverworld Series," Farmer's motley crew of historical figures continues to steer its way along a fantastically long river in search of both the river's source and some explanation of the strange "afterlife" which has been granted to humanity. Unfortunately, in the tradition of much pulp sf, Farmer is more concerned with his gimmicks than with their implications. Much more could be done with the clever idea of sending such personalities as Samuel Clemens, Cyrano de Bergerac, and a 20th-Century feminist called Jill Gulbirra on a common journey through an extraordinary world. Richard Burton (the 19th-Century explorer renowned for his quest for the Nile's headwaters and his eccentric translation of The Arabian Nights) also makes an appearance. Recommended with hesitation to libraries that own the first two "Riverworld" volumes; otherwise not recommended. (Rosemary Herbert)

Booklist, October 1 1977

(Berkley/Putnam) The third, but not the last, in Farmer's immensely popular Riverworld series continues the adventures of explorer Sir Richard Burton, Mark Twain, and scores of others who are resurrected along the banks of the multimillion-mile-long River, one of the most imaginative worlds to be found in science fiction. In dirigibles and riverboats, through heroism and treachery, a band of restless explorers attains the headwaters home of the mysterious Ethicals, who apparently are responsible for creating the Riverworld and resurrecting its confused populace. Though enthusiasm sometimes runs the narrative aground, the excitement and imagination sail blithely on. The previous volumes in the series are The Fabulous Riverboat (Booklist 65:649 Ap 1 72) and To Your Scattered Bodies Go (Booklist 68:649 Ap 1 72). (Dan Miller)

Locus #206, November 1977

Books Received: (Berkley/Putnam 399-12031-9, 412pp, $9.95 hc) Original novel - Third book in the "Riverworld" series. It isn't complete though, and there will be at least a fourth one. For all its length, nothing much happens in this one.

School Library Journal, November 1977

(Berkley/Putnam) Not the end of the Riverworld series, this follows the premise set in the provocative To Your Scattered Bodies Go and The Fabulous Riverboat (both Putnam, 1971). Everyone who ever lived, including some of Farmer's fondest heroes from the earlier books (Samuel Clemens, Cyrano de Bergerac, Ulysses) finds himself suddenly resurrected on an unknown planet. In this installment there is more mystery, sabotage, death (it has returned), double dealing, and revenge. The plot thickens until at times it is a mire; however, while this novel does not live up to the high quality of its predecessors, no fan of Farmer's will want to miss it. (Ellen Sisco)

Science Fiction Review #23, November 1977

(Putnam, hardcover, 1977) (From "the Alter-Ego Viewpoint")
    "I guess you want me to review a couple books, huh?"
    Yes. That would be the thing to do in this space.
    "Okay, line them up and I'll knock them down."
    The first is the long-awaited third (but not final) volume of the Riverworld series by Philip Jose Farmer. I noticed, Alter, that it took you weeks to finish the book. Howcum?
    "Geis, you forgot to mention that the title of the third volume is THE DARK DESIGN."
    Sorry. Your opinion of it?
    "Oh, shit. Phil Farmer got self-indulgent and thought he should introduce a lot of new minor characters and follow three interwoven plots and make these characters "deep"... especially a woman name of Jill Gulbirra."
    Nothing wrong with characterization, Alter.
    "Of course not. Except Phil is no great shakes at it and his attempts in this book only slow the pace to a crawl and are in the category of ho-hum and so-what. All his characters are virtually indistinguishable anyway. So much so that I couldn't keep Frigate and Mark Twain and Burton straight in my mind as he switched from plot-line to plot-line."
    He also had to repeat himself a lot, reminding readers of past event.
    "That's always a problem with writing saga novels like this. New readers have to be brought up to date and old readers reminded of what happened in the previous two books. Look what has happened to Roger Zelazny in his Amber series. A disaster. At least Roger's Amber novels are short. This one of Phil's runs around 190,000 words and all it is is a setting of the stage for the final revelations/confrontations between humanity and the Ethicals who have set up and run the Riverworld planet."
    That's your summing up?
    "Yeah. At $9.95 this volume is not what it is supposed to be, and it is a disappointment. It is published now in hardback by Putnam's and will appear later in paperback by Berkley." (Richard E. Geis and his Alter-Ego)

Analog, December 1977

(Berkley/Putnam's, 416 pp., $9.95) Of Time and the River: To end the suspense that seems to have plagued a great many readers, let me announce at once that the third Riverworld novel has finally been published! This is The Dark Design by Philip José Farmer.
    A lot of time has passed since the first two books in this series first appeared in 1971. During the years since then, I have received quite a few inquiries from readers about various things connected with science fiction—not to mention some on astral projection, religion, and other related subjects! By rough estimate, eighty percent of those ask, "When will the next Riverworld novel appear?"
    Or at least, that's the way the question was phrased at first. Later, the queries were simplified to the less hopeful, "Will the next Riverworld novel ever appear?"
    I could get no definite answer, even from the author. While time went by, everything was in abeyance. Apparently there was some disagreement between publisher and author on how the rest of the story was to be done. As I gathered, the publisher was unwilling to continue the series in the length that Farmer felt he needed. (This disagreement, incidentally, had nothing to do with the present editor for the publisher.) I found such reluctance hard to understand; most publishers who find themselves with a successful series are delighted to keep it going as long as they can. But at any rate, six long years went by without the third book seeing print.
    Ordinarily, after so much time, public interest begins to die down and readers forget. But that certainly wasn't the case this time, judging by the inquiries I received and comments from book sellers who were still finding a continually increasing demand for the book.
    Perhaps something like the long delay should have been expected. The whole history of the story of the Riverworld is one of delay, difficulty, and bitter defeat for the author's hopes.
    It all began in 1953, almost a quarter century ago. Shasta Publishers was running a contest for the best new novel submitted, offering $1000 of their own money and $3000 from Pocket Books for the paperback rights. This was a princely sum for a science fiction novel in those days.
    At that time, Farmer was just establishing himself as a major writer, one with quite unusual ideas. For the contest, he came up with the idea of having all humanity—everyone who had ever lived and died—resurrected along the banks of an enormous river on an obviously artificial world; how they got there the resurectees could not guess, except for Richard Burton, who had caught a glimpse of what went on behind the scenes.
    The boldness of the concept and the drama of Burton's search for the truth behind the resurrection were detailed in a novel of about 100,000 words. The novel won the contest, with much publicity and much promises of early publication. (This original version was entitled I Owe for the Flesh.)
    Then the publisher began stalling, claiming that the novel had to be rewritten to please the editors at Pocket Books. Farmer rewrote the novel twice, and still did not receive his money. Then he learned that Pocket Books had eccepted the book as it was and had paid in full to Shasta long before. None of this money ever reached Farmer, since Shasta collapsed. The book remained unpublished. And Farmer, who had naturally counted heavily on the money due him, was forced to abandon his writing career and get a regular job.
    This is probably the ugliest event in the history of science fiction.
    Twelve years later, some of the story received publication in a changed form. Fred Pohl was editing the Galaxy Publications, and he read the book and suggested that Farmer turn it into a series of novelettes which he could publish. (At one time, I actually had the original manuscript in my hands; I picked it up from the office to take it to Pohl at his home. But, damn it, I didn't realize what I had, so I didn't sneak a chance to read it.) A lot of time had passed and Farmer had more ideas to add to the original, so the new series grew to be longer than the original novel. Then he recast the novelettes into two books, which were finally published as To Your Scattered Bodies Go (which won Farmer a much-deserved Hugo) and The Fabulous Riverboat, the second centered about Mark Twain's efforts to build a steamboat to navigate the river. But the solution to the mystery behind the Riverworld was still to be settled in later work.
    Then, unfortunately, came the impasse between Farmer and his publisher, while readers apparently waited with very little patience.
    Well, The Dark Design is finally with us. It's a much longer book than the previous two—nearly as long as both of those together—and brings the total wordage up to about three times that of the first version. And it still doesn't tell us the promised secret of the Ethicals and what lies behind the whole concept of the Riverworld! There's more to come.
    This is a more complex book than the previous ones. The first dealt with Richard Burton, the second with Mark Twain. This new volume deals with both of them, while also introducing a number of new characters who must work out their strange destiny. And there is a rather strange hiatus between events that we saw before and the beginning of the new book. Much time has passed. It is now more than 30 years after the first day of resurrection. And one of the major features of life along the River has changed.
    Previously, whenever anyone who had been revived was killed in the numerous fights or accidents during the early years, he was again resurrected somewhere else along the ten-million-mile length of the river. Now this no longer seems to be the case; death, it is believed, is final. Burton, who has used "the suicide express" to cover most of the River, must now guard his life as carefully as any normal man back in the days of Earth. He has returned to the group with whom he began his trip and is now continuing down the river in a boat.
    Meantime, Sam Clemens has departed. At the end of the second book, he'd just finished his first riverboat, to have it stolen by wiley King John. But in the intervening years, apparently he has mananged to construct his second boat, the Mark Twain, and to take off down the river in pursuit of his betrayer.
    Twain's "colony" at Parolando where the technology to build the boats was developed, is now in the hands of man named Firebrass, who apparently died in 1984. There he has been joined ny Cyran de Bergerac, among others. And there comes Jill Gulbirra, who plays a central part, and who died in 1983.
    Watch those dates, incidentally, when you read the book. And don't axpect to find out exactly why you should watch them! But there's something strange going on. Burton had apparently discovered that Earth was destroyed sometime after the year 2000. But, while the population kept increasing and there should be hordes who died towards the end, there seems to be a shortage of people who died after 1983; and among those who gave dates after that for their demise, some at least are suspicious characters.
    Among other new characters who are important to this novels are Jack London and Tom Mix. They are joined by Peter Jarius Frigate, another major character. He appeared as a companion of Burton at the very beginning—or someone with that name did. But hold onto your hat.
    Frigate is with Burton—has been for many years—on his current trip down the River. And things grow suspicious suddenly; Frigate disappears from Burton's company as a result in 32 A.R.D. (After Resurrection Day). But Frigate—or a man with that name, Peter Jarius Frigate—joins with London and Mix in 7 A.R.D. In the past, he was apparently a writer, one who had written a great deal of science fiction. To belabor what seems obvious, you might check his initials against those of the author of the book. Anyhow, he seems to be two characters, one of whom is probably a real person.
    Complicated? That's only the beginning, folks. Obviously, there's a lot more to what goes on in the Riverworld than has shown in the first two books. (If nothing else, the character who appears at the very end of this book is evidence that there is a great deal more to come about which we—and Burton, among others—know very little yet.)
    The first book dealt with Burton, who tried to reach the end of this twisting and redoubling River by committing suicide or being killed and then being resurrected—hoping in one return to life to be near the River's end. The second dealt with Sam Clemens-Mark Twain who wanted to reach the end of the river by building a riverboat and steaming downstream. This book details a different approach to reaching the goal, and a more logical one.
    The River is about ten million miles long, which would make for quite a voyage. But since it loops back and forth in great horseshoe bends, the distance across it to the source is measured in only thousands of miles. Obviously, the sensible course must be by air. (Overland travel is impossible because all the river is embanked in impassable mountains.)
    So Firebrass and his crew at Parolando are now building a zeppelin that will make the Hindenburg look like small stuff indeed. It's the logical solution to the problem of reaching the headquarters of whatever group lies behind all the things going on, of course.
    And despite strange betrayals and stranger confusions as to who is and who is not trustworthy, the airship works. I'm not giving away anything when I tell you that Firebrass and his crew do reach their goal. Let's say simply that they don't find yet what they are seeking, exactly. And there's a lot more to the book than their trip.
    If Farmer knows what's behind all this, he must be having a marvelous time confusing us with it. (After all this time, I'm pretty sure he knows exactly what goes on; if not, I may strangle him before the other readers can!) And so far, I think the readers will have a marvelous time being delighted and confused by his inventions.
    I have a number of reservations. I rather resent having Sam Clemens left without a ship in the second book and finding him happily cruising down the River in the third—having completed his second boat offstage. I wish the second book had been long enough to show him at least making a good start toward building the next boat.
    And I'm rather less than delighted with some of the attention paid to Jill Gulbirra. She's a perfectly good character, but to me she remains something of an extra, not having an essential part to play (so far, of course) as most of the other major viewpoints. It strikes me that she may have been given than her due to give us a "female-lib" person, not because the story itself demanded it. I'd rather have seen more of Cyrano, for instance, whi is a totally delightful character as he masters the fine art of handling modern technology.
    And one little detail kept annoying me—particularly early in the book—as I read. Farmer is converting the metric system, so everything is given in feet and meters. Okay. But the method is unnatural. I'd guess that Farmer got himself a calculator and very carefully figured each of his conversions. Thus, if he gives a rounded-out figure in feet, he gives far to exact a metric equivalent. A mile is translatted to 1609 meters, say. Somehow that felt awkward; the metric unit should also have been as approximately natural as the english unit—say rounded too 1600 feet. If we approximate a height of 20,000 feet, why make it 6098 meters? It would seem more natural to say 6000 meters—or 6100, if more precision is needed. A typewriter is enough machinery in the writing process; adding a calculator is just a bit too much, dearly as I love the gadget!
    Still, this Riverworld is a really grand creation—one of the greatest inventions of science fiction. And The Dark Design adds a great deal to it. It's a book no reader should miss. Let's hope the next book doesn't take so long to be published. I'd like to finish the whole series before I die of old age. (Lester del Rey)

Galileo, January 1978

(Berkley/Putnam $9.95) It has been twelve years since we first encountered the Riverworld with its multimillion-kilometer-long River and thirty-six billion resurectees. In To Your Scattered Bodies Go, The Fabulous Riverboat, and "Riverworld," Philip José Farmer follows the wanderings and adventures of Sir Richard Francis Burton, Sam Clemens, and Tom Mix; we have been waiting for the sequel, and it has at last arrived.
    This third Riverworld is the longest (412 pages) Farmer has written; in fact properly speaking, it is only the first half of his longest novel, since he cut the original manuscript in half before revising this part for publication. It is also one of his most ambitious and complex books, a concentration of the preoccupations and motifs that he has pursued not only in this series but in all of his work. In addition to the expected Riverworld features—the mystery of the Riverworld and its purpose, adventures in strange and wonderful circumstances, ironic and satiric examinations of human nature, a sometimes revisionist view of historical figures and events—Farmer has put into this book an unusually large piece of himself in the form of fictionalized autobiography and self-examination, for one of the major characters is Farmer's Riverworld avatar, Peter Jairus Frigate, SF writer, punster, would-be Burton biographer, and zeppelin fanatic.
    Farmer's heroes have always been more introspective than the usual adventure hero, and in the Riverworld books than tendency is more marked; not only does everyone have plenty to think about concerning the mysteries of resurrection, but the viewpoint characters are all troubled people. The earlier main characters, Burton and Sam Clemens, are driven men, subject to violent actions. They are no more able to accept things as they stand in the Rivervalley than they were on Earth, and this restlessness extends to doubts about themselves and their own motives. To these two we can now add Peter Frigate, who emerges from his sidekick status to become another of the dream-tormented seekers of the source of the River, and Jill Gulbirra, an ambitious and aggressively feminist airship officer.
    Some of the complexity of the novel xomes from the need to follow the actions of four sets of characters-the companions of Burton, Clemens, Frigate, and Gulbirra—through gradually converging lines of action. Farmer handles this by reverting to an old narrative pattern, familiar from the romances of Edgar Rice Burroughs and others: the alternate—section (with optional cliffhanger ending) plot. Readers who have been waiting several years for the solution to the mysteries of the Riverworld, however, will be frustrated, for instead of tying the strands together at the end, Farmer finishes with a multiple cliffhanger whose impact is only slightly softened by the final chapter he wrote to provide a transition to the next—and presumably for-real last—volume.
    These complications of storyline are only surface complexities, though: what sets the book apart from its predecessors is the way the Farmer deals with the mysteries of the Riverworld and the characters who inhabit it. Anyone who has read much Farmer is familiar with the way he pursues the implications of an idea or the multiple possible explanations for an event or a character's behavior (for an example of this, read his afterword to "Sail On! Sail On!" reprinted in Worlds of Maybe, ed. Robert Silverberg, Dell, 1974). In The Dark Design, this means postulating and considering all the possibilities of the various mysteries involved in the existence of the Riverworld, the purposes of the Ethicals, and the apparent counterplotting of the Mysterious Stranger. As the book's title suggests, most of the implications are sinister, but obscure and twisted, almost impossible to untangle. And as usual in Farmer's fiction, part of the mystery is man himself, the self-conscious, self-examination, self-contradiction creature who cannot deal effectively with his own conflicting desires, let alone the meta-physical riddle of his resurrection and life in the Rivervalley. We spend as much time with the individual puzzlements of Burton, Frigate and Jill Gulbirra as with the external problems. For example, every character whose consciousness we share is haunted by dreams and nightmares whose themes are not the Riverworld itself, but the personal desires and fears of the dreamers. Frigate dreams that he returns to his childhood home only to find it empty—"Everybody, even the dog, had gone off without a word. What nameless crime had he committed?" No matter what the outcome of the last volume, these mysteries, I suspect, will never be entirely solved.
    Farmer's best work is always recognized as his own and no one else's, not only because of the endless inventiveness of his fictional worlds—Riverworld, the pocket universe, Dante's Joy, Ozagen—not even because of the way his personal fascinations—airships, Tarzan and the adventure fiction of his youth, linguistics, anthropology—become part of the furniture of his fiction. It is, I think, that he is able to descend into his own subconcious mind and bring back visions that we can share because they are somehow our visions too. This world is the Riverworld, and we are the ressurected ones. As the nonstandard disclaimer as the book's beginning says, "You may not be mentioned, but you're here." (Russell Leston)

Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1978

(Berkley/Putnam, $9.95) No one knows what Philip Jose Farmer believes anymore. He is too busy playing games. When well played, as in TO YOUR SCATTERED BODIES GO, they are well worth the candle. But those who fondly believed the "Riverworld" series would end with this third book are in for a stall. And those who expected THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT to be followed by at least a coherent extension of that sub-plot are going to be particularly infuriated by THE DARK DESIGN. This third book simply plucks at old threads, introduces new ones for the same purpose, and, in 400-some pages of text, builds and crashes a lot of machinery, kills some people - apparently permanently - and loses a bunch of others, but goes nowhere.
    Farmer has become self-conscious about his idea. THE DARK DESIGN devotes inordinate wordage to rationalizing and papering-over logical discontinuities in the original concept, as if anyone cared about that, or should care. Alternatively, characters come and go, build, crash, are dropped... at one point, Peter Frigate, Farmer's alter ego, promises that the series will contain a dozen books. At this pace, it will need them, but who will read them?
    Farmer has all the equipment necessary to deal with life, and in such books as THE LOVERS, he demonstrated that. Now he plays with the appurtenances of his mind. And in this book, he shows that he is tiring of the game. What's left, Philip Jose Farmer? (Algis Budrys)

Science Fiction Review #24, February 1978

(Berkley, 412 pp, 1977, $9.95) THE DARK DESIGN marks the triumph of the novel as Hydra - no matter how many heads Philip José Farmer lops off, two more spring up to replace every one removed. Unmanageable is perhaps the best word to describe this book.
    Originally meant to be the final book in the "mystery" phase of the Riverworld novels, THE DARK DESIGN is only part one of the concluding novel. A fourth Riverworld novel will bring the series to an official end though future stories and novels may trace the adventures of various historical personages in the Riverworld.
    To enjoy THE DARK DESIGN one should read Volumes I and II (TO YOUR SCATTERED BODIES GO and THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT) first. Since those two novels came out more than five years ago it may prove difficult to remember who's doing what to whom. Even if read fairly recently this may prove difficult for anyone who doesn't have a homebuilt HAL 9000 to keep track of the dramatis personae.
    As Farmer's alter-ego, Peter Jairus Frigate, comments, the concept of the Riverworld deserves a dozen volumes. Perhaps the problem is that Farmer, in an effort to complete his masterwork, has tried to jam too much into too small an area.
    Maybe, ideally, the Riverworld saga should have been told over a series of 12 conventional sized novels rather than the present tomes which seem to double in size every volume.
    The first two thirds of the book move fairly well, earmarked by the clear, action-filled prose which marks so much of Farmer's work. However, while trying to handle three (or four? That depends on just who Peter Jairus Frigate really is) major plotlines with perhaps a half-dozen subplots to each of the major ones, the novel tends to bog down and become not so much incredible as unbelievable.
    Characters work literally for years building boats and airships, decades traveling up the River, yet there's almost no feeling for passage of time in the book.
    TO YOUR SCATTERED BODIES GO introduced a world without metal, a world with a flint and wood technology. In THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT an iron meteorite crashes in the Riverworld, enabling Sam Clemens to build (over a period of several years) an electric powered riverboat, which is promptly hijacked by Prince John (reading a name and event synopsis of the series makes it sound a trifle ridiculous). THE DARK DESIGN, however, has two riverboats, numerous rafts, schooners, dugouts, and other Rivercraft as well as steampowered machine guns, alcohol powered internal combustion engines, jeeps, printing presses, computers and not one but five - count 'em, five - airships, one of which carries a pair of 32-seat helicopters and a glider!
    The Riverworld is relatively at peace in THE DARK DESIGN. Gone are the maniacal warlords of TO YOUR SCATTERED BODIES GO and the THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT. Gone are the grail slaveries. Gone are the "translations" (or mini-resurrections from death).
    Apparently Farmer has abandoned these things which he so carefully established in the earlier books in fear of making THE DARK DESIGN's completion an impossible task. Lack of grail slaveries allows the characters to proceed unmolested upriver to the Dark Tower. No warlord enables the Parolandons to complete their numerous airships without fending off invading hordes. No more translations disposes of characters who previously would have gone lackadaisically to their deaths.
    It's clear the series has turned into something bigger than Farmer anticipated with when he first began the series in 1972. He uses arbitrary plot twists to forcibly manipulate his characters through their appointed rounds, rather than let the novels take their normal course. To solve a mystery he provides a solution which unleashes another, deeper mystery.
    Instead of proceeding in an orderly manner, one feels the River is jerking along, stopping and starting irregularly, capriciously jumping its banks and at times drying up completely.
    THE DARK DESIGN doesn't end so much as it's amputated, a cliffhanger thrown in just to keep the pot boiling.
    At first glance the novel reads as if Philip José Farmer has bitten off more than he can chew. Yet Farmer is too good an author to reduce perhaps the grandest scheme in science fiction to poor pulp plot hacking. Nothing on the Riverworld is ever as it seems. As Jill Gulbirra, the final captain of the giant airship "Parseval", remarks in a later chapter, "Purposes, cross-puposes, counter-cross-purposes. Wheels within wheels within wheels. Maya lowers seven veils of illusion between us and them." Farmer, through his self-Tuckerization, Frigate, comments on the inherent paranoia of the Riverworld. Even the title of the book is a quotation from a poem (imaginary? I wouldn't put it beyond Farmer) reading, "And still the Weaver plies his loom, whose warp and woof is wretched Man/Weaving th' unpatteren'd dark design, so dark we doubt it owns a plan."
    There's much in this novel which needs explaining; all the way from Sam Clemmens' uncharacteristic militaristic bent to Firebrass' strange tiny black sphere imbedded in his head to the mysterious ultra-violet (or lack thereof) tattoos on most people's foreheads.
    The mystery of Riverworld is far from solved, though one senses the stage being set. THE DARK DESIGN's main failing is that it is this stage setting, not a truly independent book as the first two were. One can only wait with great anticipation for Volume IV, when Farmer promises to answer all our questions. (Buzz Dixon)

Locus #208, January-February 1978

(Ace 441-47420-9, 282pp, $1.75) Original Novel; the fifth and final volume in the "World of Tiers" series. It's a fast moving Burroughs type adventure which reads like somewhat sloppy first draft.

Analog, July 1978

(Ace, 282pp, $1.75) Ace Books has finally completed reissueing all of Philip Jose Farmer's "World of Tiers" novels, and has issues the long-awaited The Lavalite World. I loved the series, particularly The Make of Universes and A Private Cosmos. The cockeyed universe and the rogue-hero Kickaha were delightful inventions. Unfortunately, this latest novel, about a world where nothing at all is stable, seems to lack any enthusiasm. It reads as if the writer had grown weary of it all, and was typing words to fill a contract, no more. Everything is there—characters and events—but nothing seems to matter. I had trouble finishing it. That's a pity, because there was a freshness and enthusiasm about the earlier books that made them unique. And there is still a lot about Kickaha that we don't know, and want to discover. Ah well, maybe someday Farmer will recapture his enthusiasm and give us another book to equal the earlier ones. I sincerly hope so. (Lester del Rey)

Science Fiction Review #24, February 1978

(Ace, $1.50, Dec. 1977) COMMENT: This is the first of these World of Tiers books I've read, and it is the last of the series. There are five in all.
    The basic premise of this series is that Lords have created worlds of their own design in pocket universes, where they rule in superb grandeur in a savage, solipsist manner, and these lords also battle among each other, having devices for communication and instant travel to each other's domain.
    Earth, it seems, in this schema, is also a creation of one of the Lords.
    An Earthman, Paul Janus Finnegan, has become embroiled in these affairs, fallen in love with a renegade woman Lord, taken the name of Kickaha, and battles the Lords on virtually every level and world of the Tiers...
    In this final novel, THE LAVALITE WORLD, he is battling the Lord Urthona, and battling the landscape of the planet which is in constant turmoil --- mountains rise in hours, lakes disappear - or form in minutes.... Every year a huge segment of the planet is torn loose and becomes a moon for a while, and then returns to the planet --- with the expected gargantuan upheavals that would entail.
    The flora and fauna are varied; the most interesting being varieties of walking trees that have intriguing ways of defending and attacking. The peoples are savages imported thousands of years before from Earth, and who have adapted to the strange, plastic geography.
    In the end, Kickaha triumphs over the world's dangers and gets his woman and defeats the Lords.
    Interesting series of Wonders and amazes for the reader. In my Sated Reader Mode I suspected that Phil was conscientiously running through all the Dangers inherent on the planet (and the moon) and then wrapped it all up nicely with a happy ending. Struck me as rather mechanical. But wotthehell, I enjoyed it (but didn't believe it for a minute). (Richard E. Geis)

Publishers Weekly, February 4 1983

(Phantasia 21-2, 1983) With this fifth (and most recent) volume of Farmer's World of Tiers series, Phantasia continues its program of rescuing popular SF from the limbo of crumbling paperbacks. In the introduction especially written for this collector's edition, Farmer tells us that he has begun and has yet to finish 15 series, ample evidence that the wealth of imagination displayed here is no fluke, but the hallmark of his work. Faithful fans of this series since its inception in 1965 will be relieved at his declaration here that he has every intention of writing two more installments to bring the set to a proper end. This novel continues the adventures of the wily Earthman, Kickaha, in the artificial "pocket universes" of the superhuman Lords. It's a straight-ahead tale of survival in a world where mountains rise and fall in a day, where trees walk and whole chunks of the planet can be pinched off like the globs of stuff in a Lavalite to float away as temporary moons. Although not the best of the series, or of Farmer, this is good fun and epitomizes his skill with wild ideas.

Publishers Weekly, July 9 1979

(Del Rey) As is obvious from his two popular but unfinished Riverworld and World of Tiers series, Farmer loves grand landscapes. This time he has restricted himself to "merely" the whole Earth of the far future, when the universe is collapsing - a setting which allows him to write SF with a fantasy feel, a fashionable combination. The story is the odyssey of Deyv, whose hunt for his stolen Soul Egg (a jewel he believes holds his spirit) becomes a rambling and dangerous search for a way to escape the end of the universe. Along the way he is joined by brave Vana, whom he marries, Sloosh, the erudite plant-man, and the ancient Shemibob, who helps them to their goal. The book suffers for being a shapeless string of interesting incidents which fail to build cumulative excitement. Nevertheless, Farmer's unflagging energy guarantees some diversion for everyone and at least, unlike his other epics, this is self-contained.

Kirkus Reviews, August 1 1979

(Del Rey) A big episodic quest-novel, featuring one of those end-of-the-universe scripts and motley human-and-alien casts that require an awful lot of invention to be halfway tolerable. And Farmer, in rather good form here, provides much (if not all) of what's needed. His protagonists are Deyv and Vana, a pair of semi-savage humans on a sunless Earth nearing the day of final gravitational collapse in the surrounding galaxy. Searching for their stolen "soul eggs" (records of individual electrical potential) with the aid of the mighty plant-centauroid Sloosh, they encounter and find themselves linking forces with a succession of parties responsible for the theft, finally coming to the domain of the alien Shemibob. Eventually Deyv and Vana are able to shed their tribal mentality and join the two aliens in an attempt to help humanity escape to a younger universe. The plot is little more than a peg for exotic landscapes with attendant interesting flora and fauna, and Farmer's writing is undistinguished; but this is one of his more enjoyable recent ventures, with enough pizazz to carry one and all along.

Library Journal, August 1979

(Del Rey) The Earth 15 billion years in the future is the setting of Philip José Farmer's Dark Is the Sun. A well-crafted narrative follows Deyv and Vana through incredible adventures in search of their stolen soul-eggs - mere stones, but essential to primitive man's well-being. Aided by Slooch , a plant-creature, our paleolithic pair transcend their background and ultimately lead mankind from a fast-disintegrating Earth to a new homeland. Farmer's brilliant imagination and narrative skill hold the reader's attention - almost to the end. Recommended.(Rosemary Herbert)

Science Fiction Collector #8, October 1979

(del Rey, 0-345-27684-1 September 1979, $9.95) An epic adventure by this major talent, which, unlike the long-awaited THE DARK DESIGN, does not disappoint. It is at once a trek novel, a commentary, and a novel with intriguingly different concepts. Farmer is as inventive as ever, and it is a joy to sit down with a book which is this much fun, and know that it is 405 pages long. Highly recommended. (Grant Thiessen)

Booklist, November 1 1979

(Del Rey) The quest for their stolen soul eggs leads two primitive humans who inhabit a fantastic and violent future earth to humankind's ultimate salvation through a gateway to a new world. Suggested for older, advanced fans. See also p. 430.

On an earth so far in the future that the universe is dying, Diyv the young tribesman finds his adventures beginning when a Yawtl steals his soul egg. They end only after he and Vana, his mate, save humanity with the aid of an immortal from another star. Farmer's plot technique is identical with that of his popular Riverworlds series; the story proceeds briskly, with fresh inventions on every page, while the characters' original quest grows increasingly complex. The particularly exotic settings and earthlike flora and fauna lend an atmospheric touch. (Algis Budrys)

Locus #236, August 1980

Books Received: (Ballantine/Del Rey, $2.25 407pp, pb) Reprint novel (Ballantine/Del Rey hc 1979). Despite the packaging, this is not a "Riverworld" novel. It's a fast-moving adventure trek story set in a barbarian future. The writing is colorful, but sloppy. (CNB)

Megavore #10, August 1980

(Del Rey, paperback, July 1980) The fan press has been unfavorable to this epic adventure by Farmer. I have read it, and I don't know why. It is a well-handled adventure, satisfyingly long, and wonderfully imaginative. Recommended. (J. Grant Thiessen)

Voice of Youth Advocates, August 1980

(Del Rey) Deyv, of the Turtle Tribe, sets out on a ritual journey to find a mate, but encounters instead a Yawtl who steals Devy's "soul egg" and forces the youth to undertake a journey beyond anything he imagined. Despite the presence of such characters as Sloosh, an enormous, centaur-like, sentient plant; Ferrsh, a blind "witch"; Vana, the feisty young woman who becomes Deyv's mate; and assorted other bizarre life-forms which inhabit the dying Earth and imploding universe, this 405 page novel drags on and on and on - it took me five weeks to slog through it!     There are too many characters thrown in for no apparent reason, and too many "adventures" which really do nothing to advance the plot. Also, the character of Sloosh, who tends to examine and explain everything, becomes quite tiresome after the first 200 or so pages. Deyv and Vana develop very little from their original selves, and every step is explained as if the reader could not figure it out unaided. The creatures who are killed off are all eliminated in the last 50 or so pages, so the remaining characters, and the reader, arrive in the "new world" out of breath, and completely unprepared for that particular turn of plot. (Charlotte Moslander Newman)

Science Fiction Chronicle, March 1981

(Del Rey Books, $2.25 405pp.)This longish quest novel by Farmer is going to disappoint some of his fans, and delight others. Although written as science fiction, set in the dying days of our Earth, the effect is that of a quest fantasy. Mutations and evolution have led to such a disparity of lifeforms, and so much arcane technology has been left in ruins, virtually anything is possible, often verging on the magical.
    Deyv is a young man sent by his tribe to find a wife. Shortly after he sets out, his soul egg is stoeln, a jewel worn by almost any sapient being, which interacts with and reflects that person's personality. Deyv sets off in pursuit of the thief, accompanied by his two animal friends, a beautiful girl named Vana, and an animate vegetable giant named sloosh.
    This is just the beginning of a grand tour of the world, intelligent sea creatures, virus colonies that from into schooners of the skies, aliens from other worlds marooned on our own, and the quest for the gateway between universes. The reader doesn't have to work hard at this one, just sit back while Farmer parades one wonder after another into view.
    This is not a novel of character, but one of adventure. Everyone knows that the good guys will win out in the end, and the menaces are slightly less menacing because of that. Nevertheless, it is a book of boisterous fun and inventiveness, that moves fluidly from one scene to another. (Don D'Ammassa)

Science Fiction Review #33, November 1979

(Pinnacle, 1979, 256 pp., $1.95) Whenever I tell anybody about this book they usually break up laughing, not because it is a bad novel, or a deliberately funny one, but because of the hilarious circumstance of JESUS ON MARS, one of the silliest-sounding titles of all time and a book about exactly what it sounds like it's about, being written for Roger Elwood. I may be wrong, but I believe this was written for the short-lived Futorian series Elwood edited for Pinnacle right before he left the SF field. Obviously Farmer, someone suggested, was having his little joke.
    Yes, I suspect he is, and it's a very subtle, deadpan one, and the result is a book of medium quality, a lot better than DARE, which I reviewed last issue. It has the usual Farmer failing of being a rather routine execution of a superior idea, but it certainly keeps you reading.
    An Earth expedition discovers a human civilization on Mars. When the astronauts break open a tin of rations they discover much to their shock that the Martians are orthodox Jews and recoil at anything unkosher. It transpires that these folks are descendants of a random sampling of humanity picked up by aliens in the First Century A.D. among whom were the apostle Matthias and some followers, who proceeded to convert everybody to pre-Pauline Christianity.
    Oh, yes, it seems they have the messiah in residence among them.
    All jokes and gags (a spaceship called Barsoom and a character named John Carter) aside, Farmer carries this outrageous and intriguing situation through 256 pages with the standard lecture tour the earthman/explorer always gets when he comes upon the aliens/lost race, and, as usual, our hero discovers dissent in what looks like a utopian society and promptly gets drawn into it. But the plot isn't one of revolution. That can't happen because Jesus is real and has superhuman powers. The climax and the crisis of the hero's own faith (he is a Jew) come when Jesus decides to return to Earth. Along the way it is suggested, as the cover blurb tells us, that Jesus might be (1) the genuine article (2) a spirit of some sort (3) a Martian (4) an energy creature from a distant star. By allowing some doubt and a possible rational explanation, Farmer keeps the story within the realm of science fiction. It isn't straight religious fantasy. Those that avoid such might still want to read this.
    I think you will remember the basic situation and the enigmatic figure of Christ, but none of the human characters. They never manage to quite come alive. One wishes that Farmer would apply himself and write the first class novel he is capable of, but he hasn't, so JESUS ON MARS is fun, but no great shakes. (Darrell Schweitzer)

Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Review - Vol.1 No.11 - December 1979

(Pinnacle, Los Angeles, 1979, 256p, $1.95 ISBN 0-523-40184-1) Baptist astronaut Richard Orme and three other members of the Mars expedition discover that Jesus Christ is alive and well on the red planet. He rules a subterranean utopia composed of humanoid Krsh and descendants of humans kidnapped from Earth around 50 A.D. All Martians profess Judaism and recognize Jesus as their Messiah. With the arrival of the astronauts, Jesus decides to return to Earth and establish a theocracy. Immortality and resurrection of the dead are promised--to be accomplished through Krsh science. Orme's problem: is this Jesus the Christ or the Antichrist?
    Farmer has made a brilliant career out of thrusting men into fantastic realities and showing us how they come to terms with their situations. This novel follows a pattern set in Flesh (1960), carried through The Maker of Universes (1965), to the Riverworld series of the 70's; unfortunately, it falls short of these standards. The pacing is uneven: sandwiched between a rapidly developing beginning and end is a static middle in which the astronauts have the Martian culture explained to them. Since this is Orme's story, Jesus does not appear until two-thirds of the way through; suspense turns to boredom long before. The conflict is almost all interior, and is carried on in long ruminations filled with rhetorical questions and endless rehashing of what the characters--and readers--already know. Farmer has assembled all the raw materials for a good novel; he just has not finished the product. (James Patrick Kelly)

A SECOND OPINION If there is a single thread running through much of Farmer's work, it is the theme or character of the Trickster. Here Farmer the Trickster gives us Jesus, the most subtle in a long line of Tricksters, and no one's beliefs will remain quite the same because of him. Farmer is at his narrative and philosophical best in a novel which is destined for a Hugo Award. Highly recommended. (George H. Scheetz)

Future Life #17, March 1980

($2.25 in paperback from Berkley). R-Rated Farmer
Science fiction readers are as obsessive as the genre’s writers, and lately one of the biggest obsessions has been Philip José Farmer’s Riverworld. Ever since Farmer introduced readers to a reborn Sir Richard Burton on a world where the entire human race has been resurrected along the banks of a million-mile-long river in the Hugo award-winning To Your Scattered Bodies Go, SF’s aficionados have been clamoring for the next book and the next. Now, while we’re waiting for The Magic Labyrinth, the climactic fourth volume of the Riverworld series, Farmer has taken pity and put out a balm for the seriously addicted – Riverworld and Other Stories
     “Riverworld,” the title story, follows Tom Mix, one of the greatest American cowboys, as he cruises downriver with his latest crew – a Jewish woman who came out of Egypt with Moses (a story she tells much differently than Cecil B.) and Yeshua, the man we call Jesus. This most unlikely trio demonstrates that resurrection doesn’t make all that much difference in the way some people behave, while giving us a chance for a look at a new part of the River. This is one of Farmer’s “side-stream” stories, and he promises that even after the fourth volume (due out next August), he has a lot more he wants to say about Riverworld.
     The other stories in this collection demonstrate that Farmer is no Johnny-one-note. These are SF at its salacious best. In “J.C. on the Dude Ranch,” he makes a divine mess of a legendary home on the range, and “The Henry Miller Dawn Patrol” will have you looking askance at your grandparents.
     When Farmer stops his irreverent battering of our saintly elders and their saintly saint, he gets serious about his heresy, taking on our mythical pulp heroes. “The Jungle Rot Kid on the Nod” is Farmer’s answer to the question: What if William Burroughs had written the Tarzan stories instead of dear old Edgar Rice? Then he has Raffles, the famous thief and master cricketeer of the English pulps, save the world right under the nose of Sherlock Holmes in “The Problem of the Sore Bridge – Among Others.” Then there’s the story of the man with the secrets of the universe hidden in his appendix, and much more.
    The book is fun, funny and full of enough sex, death and strangeness to keep you happy until the gentleman wraps up Riverworld. (Bob Mecoy)

Publishers Weekly, May 9 1980

Beginning in 1971 with the Hugo Award-winning "To Your Scattered Bodies Go" and then continuing with "The Fabulous Riverboat" and "The Dark Design," Farmer created one of the true epics of science fiction, the Riverworld series, a saga of tremendous scope and conceptual audacity. Although its expansive, discursive plot can't be easily summarized, its essence is the grand enigma of mankind's resurrection along a multimillion-mile river. Here, in this fourth and final volume, Farmer finally explains the mysteries with which he has fascinated and tantalized so many readers over the years. Here, too, is endless adventure and the marvelous mix of protagonists (like Cyrano de Bergerac, Tom Mix and Sam Clemens) that fans of the series have come to expect. Reaching even into the realm of metaphysics for his final surprises, Farmer has brought his series to a satisfying conclusion. Although the characters and the philosophy are not really very deep, this book, like the series as a whole, offers delight to the sense of wonder and a storytelling flow as irresistible as the river itself.

Kirkus Reviews, May 15 1980

Farmer's "Riverworld" series embodies one of the most original ideas in current sf: the resurrection of nearly the entire human race - cavemen to astronauts - on a world apparently consisting of nothing but a single river valley about 15 million miles long. Like its predecessors, this fourth and concluding volume merrily entangles the fates of Sam Clemens, Richard Burton the explorer, Lewis Carroll's original Alice, Cyrano de Bergerac, a repentant Hermann Goering, an sf writer named Peter Jairus Frigate, and anybody else that Farmer (who also provides the fictional PJF with a mysterious double) can squeeze in. Unfortunately the squeezing process involves giving everybody something to do, and here the series has become mired down in a lot of argle-bargle about the shadowy and perhaps sinister custodians or makers of the Riverworld. Clemens, Burton, and others have been pursuing the mystery long enough to have built a whole edifice of theory and jargon that - like the rivalry between Clemens and King John - merely clutters up the story of the adventurers' repeated attempts to fly, sail, or crawl to the source of things at the near-inaccessible north pole. For what it's worth, Burton and Alice do get there this time, are let in on the extraterrestrial plans that produced the Riverworld, and confront the threatened destruction of the whole scheme. But Farmer's writing is as careless as ever, and the sf revelations are infinitely duller than the unknowns with which the series began.

Booklist, July 15 1980

This fourth volume of the Riverworld series concludes one of the largest, most ambitious, and least conventional works of modern science fiction. In it Farmer brings his large and bizarre cast of characters (including King John Lackland of England, Samuel Clemens, Sir Richard Burton, Hermann Goering, and Alice Liddell, who inspired Alice in Wonderland) to the end of their quest and reveals the secret of the Riverworld. For readers prepared to accept it on its own terms, this book will be rewarding, even exciting. Farmer's imagination does not flag from beginning to end. The already large following of the series justifies including this book in any respectable sf collection. (Roland Green)

Farmer winds up his complex Riverworld series with a metaphysical slant in this fourth volume that, like its predecessors, is filled with action and drama. For mature readers already caught up in the series. (Sally Estes)

Library Journal, August 1980

This final volume of Farmer's "Riverworld" series shows the same weaknesses that were apparent in the three previous volumes. Again, a wild combination of historical figures - including, for instance, Mark Twain, Jack London, Richard Burton (the translator of The 1001 Arabian Nights), and Alice Liddell (the original of Alice in Wonderland) - meets in an amazing "afterlife." Quests, battles, and sexual encounters are the order of the day as the characters try to find out why the place exists. Again the author fails to do justice to the fascinating mix of personages he brings together; none has a distinctive voice (each very readily uses 20th-Century American lingo). Farmer relies on fast changes of battle-dominated action to keep the book moving. (Rosemary Herbert)

Science Fiction Review #36, August 1980

(Berkley/Putnam, $11.95) This is the fourth, and final book in the Riverworld saga, and it answers all the questions and settles all the hash---at great cost to a lot of people.
    Famous people die, famous people live.
    As you may know, the Riverworld is a giant planet upon which runs a giant river valley. In the valley on the banks of the giant river that is tens of thousands of miles long, live teeming billions of humans---resurrected humans who had died previously on Earth.
    They are fed by huge Grail Stones which thunder and flash three times a day and provide billions of meals and drinks and other small necessaries.
    Among these billions are the famous and infamous of Earth's past: Samuel Clemens, Sir Richard Burton, Cyrano de Bergerac...kings, queens, soldiers....
    The Riverworld saga is the story of groups of men and women who must attempt a journey to the headwaters of the immense river and discover the secrets---the answers to their questions about this world, about their new lives.
    Several attempts are made to penetrate the vast physical and mechanical obstacles.
    There are civil wars, "agents" of the creators working at cross-purposes, terrible rivalries and hatreds...
    But still a few determined people persist---and in this book a handful penetrate the final tower and find...
    Before that, however, there is an all-out naval battle between two huge modern warships...there is the slaughter of half the human population when the Grail Stones on one side of the river fail to produce food.
    And in the final chapters there are wonders, vast structures, horrible revelations...monstrous cunning.
    The final book seemed a bit misshapen to me, but it pays off and is a fitting conclusion to this series. Phil Farmer delivers.
    The first three books in this very popular series were: TO YOUR SCATTERED BODIES GO, THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT, and THE DARK DESIGN. (Richard E. Geis)

Future Life #21, September 1980

($11.95 Berkley/Putnam) Of course, as soon as other SF writers started playing with death, Philip Jose Farmer moved on to resurrection. The Magic Labyrinth is the fourth and final volume of the Riverworld saga and the book that all real paper junkies have been waiting for.
    For those of you who haven't read the Riverworld series, Farmer started down the river with To Your Scattered Bodies Go, a tale that opened with the resurrection of everyone who ever lived on Earth along the banks of a multi-million-mile-long river. In the and the two books that followed-The Fabulous Riverboat and The Dark Design- Farmer traced the picaresque adventures of such historical luminaries as Sir Richard Francis Burton, Mark Twain, Evil King John, a lisping Neanderthal, Hermann Goering, Cyrano de Bergerac and literally dozens of others.
    The quest for the secret of the Riverworld began almost a decade ago and now that it's over it seems almost anticlimatic. Famrer gives us a very big and entertaining battle between the two great riverboats of Mark Twain and King John, and thins the cast down to a final few who make the last trek up to the source of the river and the heart of the mystery. There they manange to save the world. If this summary seems a little cursory, it's because the book seems so in several instances. But this is the climax of the bestselling series in science fiction and it does answer most of the questions that Farmer posed in earlier volumes; and so you do have to say-thanks. Mr. Farmer it was lots of fun, but now that you have the mainstream stories of the Riverworld in print, when do we see the tributary tales you promised us? You have created a lot of addicts out here. (Bob Mecoy)

School Library Journal, September 1980

In this long-awaited conclusion to his landmark series, Farmer's all-star cast, led by the explorer Sir Richard Burton, desperately battles its way upstream in a last-ditch effort to reach the control center of the Riverworld's creators. Burton and his cohorts are now driven by more than their curiosity about mankind's mysterious mass resurrection on the singular world confined to the banks of the multi-million-mile-long river. Something has gone drastically wrong in the River Valley - the once common resurrections have ceased, and the sustenance providing "grails" have partially malfunctioned causing mass starvation and wholesale rioting among the surviving population. Farmer has a light touch with his charmingly perverse characters, but tedious description, overly complex plotting, and the necessity of tying up the bundles of loose ends from three previous installments get out of hand early on and clutter up a good portion of the story. Still, the lively and winning characterizations and some tightly written episodic interludes shine through, and fans who have travelled this far will eagerly slog their way through this even if journey's end is a less-than-satisfying conclusion. (K. Sue Hurwitz)

Analog, December 1980

(Berkley/Putnam, 339 pp., $11.95) I have not been following the Riverworld series. I hate continued stories of any kind, and I can imagine nothing more frustrating and intrinsically self-defeating than trying to enjoy a continued story whose installments come along once every couple of years. I resolved to wait until the series was complete, and then assault it frontally, from start to finish.
    So The Magic Labyrinth just arrived, the concluding chapter in the mainstream saga (although there are two more sidestream books coming), and I took the plunge. And came away disappointed.
    P.G. Wodehouse was the undisputed master of the deliberately, intensively recomplicated plot: just as you were totally confused and all seemed in perfect chaos, he would tug gently on his Magic String in the last chapter and everything would fall into place at once, the hidden pattern of the tapestry revealed, dozens of interlocking dilemmas resolved happily in a single stroke. He invariably did this in single, rather short books. For my money there is no other way to do it: if the plot recomplicates for more than about two hundred pages, I tend to say the hell with it and skip ahead to the ending. There is an optimum size for any puzzle. This is why I gave up on Zelazny's Nine Princes In Amber series: complicatory overkill.
    What I think happened here is a case of the setting metastasizing until it takes over the whole work. As I reconstruct it, Phil started out with about enough plot to fill a single pretty-good-but-not-great novel. But Jesus, the setting! A multimillion mile river, circling an entire planet! Jesus, the cast! Every human being who has ever lived, plus a race of gods! How could you possibly avoid an immensely complicated story, with that many powerful individuals influencing events? Especially since even killing them off does not take them out of the story? Phil happens to be very well read in history, anthropology and biography - before he knew it he had a saga on his hands, and who could blame him? The idea is too damned big. No writer that ever lived could manipulate forces that large satisfactorily; it's like an artist trying to paint a mural on the face of the moon. The central story, Richard Burton's quest to reach the head of the River and find out What The Hell Is Going On Here, is drowned in an immense floodtide of essentially pointless anecdotes, about dozens of people who (with the single exception of Göring) live endless sequential lifetimes without seeming to learn or accomplish anything of significance.
    Then there's the redundancy factor. In designing a step-rocket, you reach a point of diminishing returns. In Book I Phil sets 100 plates spinning atop broomsticks. In Book II he must give his attention to each of these, bearing in mind that many readers will have missed the first volume, while adding 50 new plates. By Book III he barely has time to introduce 25 more, and by Book IV some of the older plates have grooves on their bottoms.
    But the worst part is at the end. The author's foreword to The Magic Labyrinth specifically promises: "Now ends the Riverworld Series, all loose ends tied together into a sword-resisting Gordian knot, all the human mysteries revealed …" I am not about to give away the ending that thousands and thousands of people have waited nine years to read - but I must say that in my opinion when Phil tugs on his Magic String, about half of the loose ends get tangled into an impenetrable snarl, from which sprout at least an equal number of new loose ends - with a last sentence that hints that everything we have learned may be wrong. The promised explanation/resolution turns out to be a lot of flashy sleight of hand that boils down to, "There are some things beyond man's comprehension."
    I have spoken entirely negatively so far. But like anyone who feels bamboozled, I must admit that the deed was done with my full knowledge and consent. I could have stopped reading at any time, and chose not to. Individual pieces of the mammoth mosaic were often delightful, and many of the inner, subordinate patterns they formed were immensely fascinating. David Pringle, discussing another Farmer novel in The Science Fiction Encyclopedia, says that it "contains some extraordinary images and grotesque ideas which suffer from a lack of resolution but nevertheless resonate in the mind." This very perceptive remark could well be applied to most of the Farmer I've read; perhaps I should have remembered that going in.
    I will never forget the Riverworld. It did indeed invoke, and sustain for an unreasonably long time, the sense of wonder. I think Phil set himself a challenge so ambitious that a less courageous - or more prudent - man might never have attempted it; since he is a very good writer, the failure is magnificent. If you just relax and cut loose of the idea that it's all going to come together in the end, perhaps you'll have a better time than I did. (Spider Robinson)

Publishers Weekly, May 9 1980

This is the fourth and final volume in Farmer's Riverworld series, which began in 1971 with the Hugo Award-winning "To Your Scattered Bodies Go." PW noted that Farmer "brings his series to a satisfying conclusion. Although the characters and the philosophy are not very deep, this book, like the series as a whole, offers delight to the sense of wonder and a storytelling flow as irresistible as the river itself." Major ad/promo.

Library Journal, August 1980

The title of this work may suggest that its contents were intentionally censored for political or other reasons; such is not the case. The title story is merely a large piece of battle scene cut from The Magic Labyrinth by Farmer himself, who agreed with his editor that that book was too long. While it does describe in detail the demise of several Riverworld personalities, it is valuable only as a curiosity for Farmer fans. The lead piece, "Jesus on Mars," never appeared before in its original form due to accidental conflicts in publishing schedules. It is a rather interesting story of a black Canadian's encounter with the "Messiah" of Mars. Appropriate to large sf collections only. (Rosemary Herbert)

Locus #238, October 1980

Books Received (Ellis Press, $6.95, 112pp, pb) Booklet containing a cut section from THE MAGIC LABYRINTH and a short version of JESUS ON MARS which never appeared in IASFM because of the early appearance of the book. "Suppressed" isn't quite true. (CNB)

Analog, May 1982

(Tor, $2.75 319pp.) When Jim Bean left Ace, he joined a new outfit, TOR Books. Tor's first products are now available, distributed by Pinnacle. They seem to be mostly reprints, but that's not neccessarily a bad sign at all. Among them is P.J. Farmer's Father to the Stars, a collection of tales from 1953-1961 concerning one John Carmody, a sociopath who becomes a priest. Father Carmody's model seems to be a blend of G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown and his nemesis, Flambeau, the master criminal who became a detective. The parallels are not pronounced, but Chesterton's characters did come to my mind as I read. If you know them, that's all the recommendation you need.
    But let's go on for a moment anyway. SF stories often seem to find roots in non-SF. We have, perhaps, one example here. Laurence Janifer says his Gerald Knave stories are based on Charteris's Simon Templer (the Saint). My own Howie and the Mayor series begins from Authur Macdougall's Dud Dean tales. There are more, with Dracula and Holmes prominent among them. The roots are not always obvious, but they are there, and they demonstrate that for all the talk of a SF ghetto, SF does not exist in isolation. (There is plenty of other evidence of that as well, of course.) I only wish I knew of a case or two where the modelling goes the other way; that would show that the cracks in the walls around SF do not open in only one direction. (Tom Easton)

Booklist, October 1 1981

(Pinnacle/Tor 48504-2) A collection of five novelettes featuring John Carmody, murderer and psychopath turned interstellar adventurer and priest. One is Farmer's classic "Night of Light;" the others (seeing book publication for the first time) are "A Few Miles," "Prometheus," "Father," and "Attitudes." A welcome feast for Farmer fans and recommended for any collection where the author is popular. (Roland Green)

Publishers Weekly, July 30 1982

One beautiful spring day in 1923, Hank Stover flies his Curtiss biplane through a strange green cloud and finds himself in a land populated by small people where animals talk and magic works. Hank knows right away that he is in Oz because his mother, Dorothy, had been here 33 years before and later told him (and L. Frank Baum) of her experiences. Hank falls in love with Glinda the Good who rules over Munchkinland, one of the four lands of Oz, and helps her fight the war against Erakna the Uneatable, who has recently become the Witch of the North. Farmer introduces all sorts of material Baum neglected to include in his book, but except for some amusing passages involving the giant, Sharts the Shirtless, it's all done with almost no whimsy or humor. The literal approach does not work well here, and Farmer's latest embroidery on literary myths, though ambitious, is not one of his better books. Don Ivan Punchatz has contributed a wonderful cover.

The Baum Bugle #76, Spring 1983

Editor's Note:
In the few months since its publication, Philip Jose' Farmer's A Barnstormer in Oz has achieved controversial status among members of the International Wizard of Oz Club. The two reviews published below represent con­trasting opinions of this work by a well-known science fiction writer, but, as always, the reader is urged to make up his or her own mind. The Bugle is also pleased to present Michael Korolenko and Katherine Neville's interview with Mr. Farmer, and Daniel Smith's interview with Michael Hague, illustrator of Holt, Rinehart and Winston's newly released The Wizard of Oz.
    A BARNSTORMER IN OZ, by Philip Jose' Farmer, New York: Berkeley Books, 1982. Paper. Pp 278. $5.95. Also available in a limited edition from Phantasia Press, cloth, with cover as pictured, $40.00.

"What I have to explain is that
an Earthman, an American, wrote
a book about Dorothy's adventures
here . . . But it was fiction or
purported to be. Actually much
of it was fiction. And the parts
that were true were bowdlerized.
They had to be because he was
writing a book for children."

Hank Stover to Glinda
the Sorceress in Philip Jose' Farmer's
A Barnstormer in Oz

    Aspects of the Land of Oz and various Oz motifs have appeared in a variety of adult science fiction and fantasy novels. In his The Annotated Wizard of Oz, Michael Patrick Hearn noted Keith Laumer's novel The Otherside of Time (1968) (where, in an alternate reality, the hero discovers a red-leather bound book entitled The Sorceress of Oz) as well as Ray Bradbury's short story The Exiles (1951) (where the Emerald City has re-located itself on Mars to escape the book burning and stifling of imagina­tion on a future, Orwellian earth). Robert Heinlein has his heroes follow a road of yellow brick through various alternate and parallel worlds in Glory Road (1964). Recently, in David R. Palmer's powerful short story "Emergence" (Analog Magazine, Jan. 1981) the pro­tagonist, an eleven-year-old girl genius, expresses hap­piness that a complete set of Oz books has been preserved in her shelter in a post-nuclear holocaust world.
    Perhaps the most beautiful yet frightening and hor­ribly sad Ozian image is to be found in Poul Anderson's short story The Visitor (1974), where the hero finds him self inside the mind of a comatose girl (much like the Doc Phoenix hero in Marv Wolfman's pulp-like comic book Oz Encounter in Weird Heroes, Vol.5, 1977). The dream-world of the girl in The Visitor includes a road of yellow brick that leads not to Oz, but to a shadowy realm representing death and destruction.
    Recently, the "actual" land of Oz has appeared in two science fiction novels. In Robert Heinlein's massive (at times, too massive) novel of alternate worlds The Number of The Beast (1980) the four heroic and sensual heroes and heroines find themselves on a world where Oz exists much like Baum described it. As a matter of fact, much to the chargrin of one male member of the paratime travellers, Glinda makes sure her guests from an alternate earth do not engage in sexual activities of any kind. She does, however, put a little bit of Oz into the paratime-travelling machine, and Heinlein's description of the Art Nouveau, somewhat Edwardian decor of this added "dressing room and bath compartment" is delightfuL However, Heinlein's characters: Deety, Zeb, Jake, and Hilda, spend very little time in Oz.
    Such is not the case with Philip Jose' Farmer's hero in A Barnstormer In Oz (1982), where a very different Oz from either Baum's or Heinlein's is presented. Indeed, sensuality and sexuality play important roles in Farmer's Oz.
    Philip Jose' Farmer has been an important name in science fiction for over thirty years. He is probably best known for his seminal short story (later a novel) The Lovers (1952). The Lovers, perhaps for the first time in the history of science fiction, brought honest and realisti­cally portrayed sexual motives to the genre. A powerful and tragic story, The Lovers concerns a young man from a future, church-dominated earth, who falls in love and mates with a female who is actually an advanced form of alien insect-like life.
    Farmer continued his exploration of the formerly taboo subject of sex in sensitively written works such as Flesh (1960) and Strange Relations (1960). Farmer has also written a number of books "factualizing" such fictional characters as Tarzan, Doc Savage, and Phineas Fogg. In the early 1970's, Farmer began his wonderfully imaginative though sometimes brutal Riverworld Series: tales of a gigantic planet made up of one endless river upon the banks of which reside every single human being who ever lived.
    That Philip Jose' Farmer would tackle the subject of Oz and finally write an Oz book should come as no surprise to people who know the man and his works. A variety of Oz motifs appear throughout his short stories and novels, sometimes symbolically, always subfly. Fanner's most striking utilization of such Ozian sites as the Emerald City and the Road of Yellow Brick are found in his Stations of The Nightmare (1982). This illustrated tale of a simple, honest man who slowly turns into an alien being contains very dream-like images of a field covered with red flowers and "at the other side, which seemed to be miles away... a glittering green city." (The cover for the TOR paperback edition has one of the most beautifully rendered Emerald City rising into the clouds you're likely to see).
    Philip Farmer began reading the Oz books in 1925 when he was seven years old. Thus, like Dorothy Gale, and most of us for that matter, he discovered Oz when he was a child. In A Barnstormer In Oz however, it is not a child but a twenty-two-year old aeroplane pilot and ace of the Great War who finds Oz. Hank Stover, who happens to be Dorothy's son, takes off in his aeroplane "Jenny" in April of 1923. Upon entering a strange green cloud he flies into a parallel continuum of fertile green lands, cool blue streams, meadows, and farms: Oz.
    The details of the land are many, but this is not the story-book Oz Baum presented. This is a strange, alien, gothic land peopled by small but Nordic-looking men and women. This Oz lies not in a completely 'different alternate world as Heinlein (among others) had proposed, nor is it on our earth. It is part of what Farmer calls a "split-level continuum" with Earth. Though the planet where Farmer's Oz exists shares the same "extra-atmos­pheric space" or solar system as our world, the worlds themselves are walled off from each other like "two different floors in the same planetary building." On our floor, Earth. On the next, Ertha where Oz lies. An original concept to say the least.
    According to Farmer, this is the real Oz: as different from Baum's Oz as Baum's Dorothy is different from the mother of Hank Stover. Farmer contends that the real Dorothy came from South Dakota not Kansas. She was a "whizbang at picking up foreign tongues" (as she did when she landed in the country of the Munchkins). She became a dancer in a chorus line, and later married Lincoln Stover, only child of a wealthy stockbroker. From this union came Farmer's hero, Hank.
    Farmer has always liked to put Americans in other­worldly places, giving them an opportunity to re-analyze American society through the alien society they visit. This is essentially what he does with Hank Stover and the device works well in A Barnstormer in Oz. Hank is one of Farmer's best heroes; both strong and sympathetic. The pilot is a little too modern in the idiom of his speech, at times sounding more like a '70's or '80's man than a man of the 1920's. There are some other problems with Hank: his knowledge at times borders on the incredible. Would a young pilot in the early 1920's understand or be familiar with theories of genetic engineering (to which he attributes the flying monkeys)?
    A number of times Hank is told that he is indeed his mother's son... Yet he seems very different from Baum's young Dorothy Gale. Where Dorothy accepted the wonder of Oz, Hank has to have it explained. Dorothy accepted the Scarecrow for what he was. Hank, upon seeing the man of straw, immediately begins to wonder how "it" can exist, why the other scarecrows of Oz aren't sentient, and how its soul or essence is maintained even when it is completely restuffed. His trouble is also particularly evident in his detailed questioning of the Tin Woodman, whose lack of manhood is presented in a somewhat horrifying way. Then, after much theorizing by Hank, the Baumian touch of a cow 5 remark to "cut the chatter; you keep waking me up. Do you want to sour my milk?" is more startling and eerie than cute or funny.
    In A Barnstormer in Oz Glinda is presented as a fascinating character: a strong, sexy, mysterious, and supremely confident woman, a natural leader. However, she is not the soft, gentle, fairy-godmother figure Baum wrote about. Farmer's Glinda is a calculating, scheming, and none-too-gentle ruler. (She is also only 4 feet tall, a fact which might make sense logically in his Oz, but still just doesn't seem right). The story concerns two invasions: that of the U.S. Government into the continuum of Oz, and that of Erakna, the tattooed new "red" witch of the North. Both invasions must be warded off by Glinda.
    While Erakna's plotted invasion covers the text like a deathly shadow, the U.S. Government's Project Thor, to gain entrance into an alternate continuum, is handled in such a way as to be frighteningly real. Perhaps Farmer meant it to be a satire of U.S. and European imperialism, but his talent for making an absolutely fantastic situatiQn seem real through fine characterization, as well as his detailed, almost text-book descriptions, makes this part of the book particularly suspenseful and harrowing.
    The concentration on Glinda might be at the root of Farmer's decision to "fictionalize" almost all the other Oz books and thus unceremoniously get rid of Ozma, for she surely would have been competition as a major female character. In fact, Farmer calls The Marvelous Land of Oz almost entirely fictional, while pointing out that the rest of the series is completely untrue. Disap­pointment was keenly felt upon reading that Baum had "created" Jack Pumpkinhe ad, the Sawhorse, the Woggle bug, and (no! a thousand times, no!) Ozma.
    This brings us to the Land of Oz itself. Certain aspects of Farmer's Oz disappoint us almost immediately: Ozland as flat as Kansas? This certainly puts a crimp into the image of Dorothy escaping from the flat Kansas prairie to the rolling green hills of .... . It is interesting to find out that, though Farmer's Oz is a healthy land, there is cancer, heart failure, stroke: in other words, people die Also, there are children, and the inhabitants obviously engage in sexual intercourse (a change from Baum 5 as well as Heinlein's portrayals of Oz.) Indeed, where Baum4s Oz is almost sexless, there seems to be a preoccupation with the sexual habits of the inhabitants in Farmer's Oz.
    Farmer's Oz is indeed a strange, alien world, part early Renaissance, part Old Stone Age, and part advanced futuristic society, particularly when it comes to certain aspects of "technology" and social customs. Farmer investigates both political and social systems at some length, and descriptions of birth control, contraceptives, and alien religiqus and social rituals are gone into vividly perhaps too vividly for some tastes.
    Problems arise when scientific explanations for magic are proposed. This in itself is not necessarily objec tionable. In fact, for some (especially, one would guess, Hank), this makes the magic seem more 'real." Yet, once magic is explained, it is no longer magic, but simply another science. In tales, magic has always been the use of personal power (or the personal channeling of external powers) to accomplish things which science cannot. Once Farmer takes the reader on a search for logical explanations of Glinda's magic, the sense of wonder begins to disappear Hank's (and Farmer's) scientific inquiries are at their best when exploring lapses of logic in Baum's first Oz book, pointing out particularly how out of place seemed the chapter about the city of living china people Of course, problems are inherent when attempting to wnte an adult Oz book. Hank himself admits .... . he could turn off his critical faculties and enjoy the (Oz) books as he had when a child. Become, during the reading a child'again Time and again, however, Farmer lets the reader know that this is not Baum's Oz, not the "simplified, childlike land with simplified, childlike people. And, of course, as Baum's books were fairy tales, Farmer's book is science fiction.
    Where Baum describes violence quickly (when at all) Farmer is explicit, powerful, and incredibly exciting Scenes like that in which sentient hawks attack Hank the Woodman, and the Scarecrow are bloody and more in the style of an old pulp adventure tale than a child's fable But if Farmer's book has its share of violence, it is also filled with wonderful imagery. There is Hank in his '20's barnstorming outfit among the populace of Oz. There is the Wizard's palace in the Emerald City, which has been built to look like a gigantic reconstruction of the United States Capitol Building. And there is the landing of American planes and soldiers in Glinda's domain, digging latrines and singing "Toot Toot Tootsie Goodbye" while golden chariots wait nearby. Such scenes are unforgettable; beautiful, glorious, and satiric at the same time, exhibiting that very magic Farmer sometimes loses during Hank's scientific inquiries. He is at his best when writing such eerie but wondrous scenes. And he doesn't disappoint when it comes to action scenes either; particularly in those sequences describing attacks by the shooting fireballs or firefoxes. In fact, these objects and their reason for existence are perhaps the single most dis­quieting and frightening aspect of Farmer's Oz.
    In the final analysis, though Farmer's vision of Oz is definitely not ours, A Barnstormer in Oz is a very good science fiction novel and, as pure science ficfion adventure, it is perhaps one of the past year's best: fast-paced, exciting and full of social comment. (Michael Korolenko and Katherine Neville)

Reprinted from:
The Intergalactic Reporter, a publication of The New Jersey Science Fiction Society
    The Oz books are recalled with affection by many of today's noted science fiction and fantasy authors. Many author biographies say something like "I began by reading all the Oz books." Two years ago Robert E. Heinlein included a pleasant little visit to Oz in his otherwise undistinguished Number of the Beast.
    Now Philip Jose' Farmer, who has recently written books further exploring Burroughs' Mars and Opar, tells about an adult, science-fiction version of Baum's wonder- land. According to Farmer, Dorothy and her visit to Oz were real," she was hurled by that cyclone across an interdimensional gap to another continuum, and returned to tell Baum her adventure. But all the other Oz books were "fictions," Dorothy never went back, instead grew up to marry wealthy New Yorker "Linc" Stover, (probably Dink Stover, hero of Owen Johnson's turn-of-the-century novels The Varmint and Stover at Yale) and in due course they had a son, Hank, who has served as a combat pilot in World War I and has become a "barnstormer" flier after- wards.
    In 1923, in the skies over Kansas, Hank Stover flies his "Jenny" biplane through a strange green cloud, across the interdimensional gap to the Quadling Country of Oz. Soon he encounters not only the little people and talking animals of Baum's Wizard, but also such "adult" aspects (which Stover says his mother overlooked or Baum deliberately omitted) as liquor, tobacco and sex. Hank becomes infatuated with Glinda the Good Witch, ruler of the Quadlings, and aids her in an all-out war against a wicked Gillikin witch, Erakna, and also against an at- tempted interdimensional invasion by the United States Army. He mounts machine guns on his b