To Your Scattered Bodies Go

To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip José Farmer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What would happen if all of humanity was inexplicably resurrected after death on a vast alien world?

A frequent daydream of mine is to imagine "If I was suddenly transported back in time..." Farmer's daydream has a fantastic variation on the theme of time travel: Every human being who ever lived (including Da Vinci, Genghis Khan, Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, Oscar Wilde, Cleopatra, Hitler, Elizabeth I - plus the billions of mere rank and filers from every era and region) suddenly wakes up in a vast world dominated by impassable mountains and a giant River. With every physical need provided for, obviously resurrected humanity starts over with new wars and slavery, just to keep things interesting.

The new world is a mystery that one man wants to solve: Sir Richard Francis Burton caught a glimpse behind the curtain of Riverworld before resurrection and is determined to interrogate the man behind the curtain. He explores the endless River with a small group of companions and slowly begins to understand that Riverworld is no supernaturally created afterlife. In fact, the designers may have dark plans for humanity. Half the fun of reading this book is learning more about the Riverworld, so I won't say more about the plot or specifics of the world.

In choosing historical figures, Farmer shows perfect taste: the talented polyglot explorer Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890), Nazi Reichsmarschall Herman Göring (1893–1946), and Alice Liddell Hargreaves (1852–1934). Burton is a fascinating character, full of contradictions, and Farmer obviously knows a lot about his eventful life. Göring, too, is given depth and interest beyond that of a Nazi sociopath. The only shortcoming is Hargreaves, who gets a fairly perfunctory treatment as a love interest (most of the women seem to be here merely to be admired for their figures). The women are frequently lumped in with the property (you know: food, tobacco, women), though you can tell Farmer attempts to give them some credit for action and independent thought. Sexism is a common problem of old-school science fiction, though Farmer is not as bad as some.

It's a fascinating book, and I highly recommend it to fans of classic science fiction. If you enjoyed Larry Nivens' Ringworld or Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination, you'll love To Your Scattered Bodies Go. It's not necessary to know about Sir Richard Burton's real life, but he's such a fascinating character you'll probably want to pick up one of the biographies about him by either Edward Rice or Byron Farwell.

Next up: Farmer's sequel, The Fabulous Riverboat, starring Samuel Clemens!

Quotable:

"Burton, despite the scoffings of his twentieth-century friends, believed steadfastly in most of the superstitions he had nourished on Earth. He often laughed at the superstitions of others, but he knew that some numbers held good fortune for him, that silver placed on his eyes would rejuvenate his body when it was tired and would help his second sight, the perception that warned him ahead of time of evil situations." - 199

The Stars My Destination

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

After being abandoned to die in space, Gulliver Foyle seeks his monstrous revenge on the people who wronged him.

Gully Foyle is a man of no talents and little worth to those around him: "Of all brutes in the world he was among the least valuable alive and most likely to survive." The actions of the Vorga, a ship that receives his distress signal but passes him by, give his life new meaning. He transforms himself into an instrument of revenge, driven only by a bottomless bloodlust.

The world Foyle inhabits is classic science fiction, vivid and strange: the galaxy is heavily populated, full of human half-telepaths and grotesques. Most of the population has a limited ability to teleport from place to place using psychic power (this is called "jaunting"), a leap in technology that has radically shifted culture and the economy. Women are considered property, values are Victorian, and organized religion is an outlawed perversion. There is war between Earth and the Outer Satellites.

In the tradition of sci-fi, the woman are gorgeous and often prey to instalove with the aggressive anti-hero (though they are still fuller characters than what you'll find in, say, Larry Nivens' Ringworld). There is Jisbella McQueen, a rebel that Foyle meets in a pitch-black prison designed to foil jaunting. Then there is Robin Wednesbury, an unfortunate 'telesend' (a half-telepath: she can only broadcast her thoughts, not receive those of others) who Foyle brutally misuses. And Lady Olivia Presteign, the blind daughter of a business tycoon who can only see the infrared spectrum of light.

Add to this an insane traveling circus, the atavistic 'Scientific People', a tigerish facial tattoo, a mysterious element known as PyrE, and weird visions of a burning man, and you have a perfect example of golden age science fiction at its wildest. It's got the retro appeal of the most outlandish original Star Trek episodes, and the reforged Foyle could easily be a rough-edged version of the irresistible Captain Kirk.

Just like this.

Bester is also known for his novel The Demolished Man (1953), the first-ever winner of the Hugo Award, but I think The Stars Our Destination is a better book. The Demolished Man relies too heavily on Freudian pseudo-psychology, though its story about an impossible murder committed in a society of "Peepers" (more telepaths!), has a great starting premise with plenty of noir appeal. (Some silliness with a love interest who undergoes an infant regression knocked The Demolished Man down from a loved-it to a shaky liked-it for me.)

There is a definite connection to be made between The Stars Our Destination and Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo. Both feature men on a quest for revenge who happen into large fortunes and a bit of reeducation.

For more excellent old-school sci-fi, don't miss The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham. After a mysterious meteor strikes everyone on Earth blind, giant man-eating plants engineered by the Soviets start taking over the world. It's a zombie apocalypse with walking asparagus. But awesome.

Quotable:
"He was Gully Foyle, the oiler, wiper, bunkerman; too easy for trouble, too slow for fun, too empty for friendship, too lazy for love." - 18

"Olivia Presteign was a glorious albino. Her hair was white silk, her skin was white satin, her nails, her lips, and her eyes were coral. She was beautiful and blind in a wonderful way, for she could see in the infrared only, from 7,500 angstroms to one millimeter wavelengths. She saw heat waves, magnetic fields, radio waves, radar, sonar, and electromagnetic fields." - 42