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To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip José Farmer
1972 Hugo
Award Winner
Got it
from: Bought the Kindle book
220 Pages
Sir
Richard Francis Burton died in 1890. He
was resurrected along with every other human being that ever lived, hairless
and naked in a vast river valley on an unknown planet in an unknown time. Burton eventually bands with an unlikely
group which includes a prehistoric Neanderthal, an adolescent girl, and alien
from Tau Ceti and a number of others from varying places and times. Armed each with a towel and “grail” (I
pictured a metal trash can that provides food and supplies when placed under a
mushroom shaped “grailstone”), the group sets out to find out what exactly is
going on.
Strange fruit
The best
way I can describe this first installment in Farmer’s Riverworld Saga is to say that it is ripe. With people from all times and places
resurrected in one place, an epic river adventure, mass promiscuity and some
gratuitous violence, what could possibly be off limits? Within just four short chapters of beginning
this book, the juice of possibility was dripping down my arm like an over-ripe
peach.
Leaning
heavily on all that is possible, the story eventually develops a good head of
steam which culminates in a river battle with a group of slaveholders led by none
other than Herman Göring. To that point,
there had been something Zelazny-esque about the journey that despite little
more than a vague conception of the goal or possible outcome, nonetheless moves
forward determinedly and is punctuated by alternating periods of despairing self-examination
and then of ultra-violence.
Like
Zelazny’s Hugo winners, the more that is uncovered along the way, the more
questions readers are left with, which creates a kind of slow building and
eventually snowballing tension which could have no other outlet than a violence
that would have you convinced that real people fought and died. The river battle with Göring’s minions is
sweaty, bloody, disturbing and represented the high-point in the book for me.
The fruit sours
I found
Burton’s incessant references to the breasts or beauty of every woman he comes
across or his many other brands of bigotry to be rather annoying and it sometimes
derailed my full enjoyment of the journey.
There is also a lot of attention given to what is generally thought of
as pretty sub-par and awkward writing as far as Hugo winners go (io9 said
something like “the worst since Fritz Leiber’s The Wanderer”). I was less bothered by this than by how
muddled Farmer’s conception of rights, responsibilities and basic human nature
become.
The River
begins with an unmistakably Hobbesian view of the human condition as “Nasty,
brutish and short” and central authority as the only escape from our “state of
nature.” It seemed within hours of resurrection,
the “lazuri,” degenerate into a warlike state that rivals any zombie thriller
for its portrayal of nothing short of abject fear of our neighbors. There was actually a time that I thought I’d
stumbled upon some sort of satire on social contract theory, but then Burton
walks himself through a rationalization for stealing a bow from a stranger that
(combined with a few similar experiences) just served to throw a wrench in any
cohesive sense of Farmers conception of human nature. I found myself scratching my head more than a
few times wondering what could he
possibly be trying to say here?
Recommendation
I had a
little trouble getting into this one.
The Riverworld had such great potential, but I found myself put off by
Burton and what struck me as a somewhat confusing world. Add to that the fact that anything the
narrative had going for it, comes completely unglued after the group is taken
captive and diverges from about 150 pages of steady pacing and leans heavily on
haphazardly dumping info on readers. In
the end, I guess it is a novel of extremes – of tremendous potential and occasionally
supreme disappointment.
HEP SCORE
Universe 2/5
Social/Political
Climate 5/5
Dialogue 3/5
Scientific
Wonders 3/5
Characters
3/5
Overall
16/25
This
week’s book is The Dispossessed by Ursula
K. Le Guin. Can she go 2 for 2? Probably.
Next
week’s book is The Forever War by Joe
Haldeman. Another one that comes to me
highly recommended and will allow me to cross another major author off my list
(though that could be said nearly every week).
I think this has an appealing premise, but fell a little flat in terms of plot. Calling up all of history's heroes is a good ploy, but I guess inevitably it will suffer from sparse characterizations. I still find that "The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack" by Mark Hodder had a stunning representation of Burton.
ReplyDeleteI did have fun when reading this for the first time many years ago, but a re-read later within the context of the Hugo winners, showed it up as very insular. I never read the complete series, which perhaps might have vindicated it. Until I do, I guess this may well be one of the weaker Hugo winners for me.
I agree. This is making me think I need a companion to the paragons for those winners that seem to be just astoundingly bad or strange now.
DeleteAlso, I hope that the fact that the fight scene was my favorite part demonstrates what I thought of this one. I'm not a real nut for fights in novels though they can be fun at times.
DeleteLike all good and evil stories, Paragons need their counter-balance ;)
DeleteI enjoyed reading your blog thanks.
ReplyDelete