Anybody remember Philip Jose Framer’s Riverworld series?
(For those unfamiliar with it, the premise is that all of humanity, from early cavemen to the last days of man in the future, have been reincarnated on one planet, randomly distributed and put next to a huge river, which is the only distinguishing feature of the planet)
My question is, how did the series end? I thought in one of the last books they might have been on the verge of discovering who reincarnated them, but I can’t recall it’s been so long.
Chris W
They made it to the head of the river and into the building at the end. And found something to the tune that there was this alien race were giving souls to people and something like that. This giving of the souls began with the neanderthals I think which is why there were no people from before then. I think it even tied in with “in the beginning” kind of stuff.
Sorry I can’t be more complete but it’s been awhile for me too. I think they got the end and it was empty but they got everything that they wanted. I remember the aliens were really disappointed that they didn’t bring the neanderthal guy back to life.
Didn’t this series have one of the coolest beginnings? The guy wakes up in this room full of bodies floating. There were also some books written by other authors in this world, but they all seemed kind of cheesy. I really wanted the John Lennon one to be cool, but it wasn’t. Didn’t he hook up with Jimi Hendrix?
At the end, they break into the main control room in the north, and if I recall correctly, it’s empty. They never see who put them here. Richard Burton gives a Ulysses kind of speech, and they go off exploring the universe in a starship.
Philip Jose Farmer wrote five Riverworld books. He claimed that he had the whole idea when he wrote the first part of it, but I’m inclined to doubt that. It rambles on a fair bit. In order, they are:
To your Scattered Bodies Go
The Fabulous Riverboat
The Dark Design
The Magic Labyrinth
These complete the original story, but later he added
The Gods of Riverworld
In addition, he wrote some Riverworld short stories. Two of these appear in
Riverworld and Other Stories
He also endorsed two collections of stories written by others, but based oon his conception. Each has one Farmer story in it:
Tales of Riverworld
Quest for Riverworld
I like his concept, and anyone who makes Sir Richard Burton and Mark Twain his heroes gets my vote. The ending of the initial teralogy does peter out, though, and reminds me of Jack Chalker’s Midnight at the Well of Souls (which it supposedly predated, if we believe PJF, but didn’t see print until much later.)