“Technological Note:
Potassium nitrate is prepared on Riverworld by feeding a certain type of earthworm human excrement. The end product of this diet is crystallized potassium nitrate, which, when mixed with charcoal and sulfur, makes black gunpowder.”
The Fabulous Riverboat, Philip Jose Farmer
John Collup
Riverworld: Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip José Farmer
As I mentioned in my last post on this topic I have just started to read the first in Farmer’s Riverworld series. The book includes the first and the second novels in this series. The complete series includes these volumes:
To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971)For an overview of this series I found a useful article on Wikipedia and although I am not anywhere near ready to read other related stories about Riveworld I have found some Riverworld fan-fiction on the PJFamer site.
I recently watch the adaptation of Philip José Farmer’s Riverworld. I wouldn’t say that it was an extraordinary movie, but because of its use the Farmer’s text with its many well-known characters it was an enjoyable film. It wasn’t too long ago that I had completed reading through Farmers Grand Master and his Wold Newton Universe novels and was looking to start another one of Farmer’s series .Since all five of the Riverworld series are still available. I purchased the first and second volumes (they are combined into one volume) in this series.
“The door to the room had opened, and he had seen a giant, black, one-humped camel outside and had heard the tinkle of the bells on its harness as the hot desert wind touched them. Then a hug black face topped by a great black turban had appeared in the doorway. The black eunuch had come in through the door, moving like a cloud, with a giant scimitar in his hand. Death, the Destroyer of Delights and the Sunderer of Society had come at last.”
Riverworld: Your Scattered Bodies Go & The Fabulous Riverboat, Philip José Farmer
“The goblin has gone mad, and he is our enemy and the enemy of our enemies, his former friend. The goblin is holed up, but we are digging him out.”
Brass Bwona (Doc Caliban)
The Goblin probably refers to Iwaldi, the ancient dwarf and one of the nine. Iwaldi was at least ten thousand years old and possible could even be thirty thousand years old.
Lord of the Trees, Philip Jose Farmer
In his introduction to Philip Jose Farmers “Lord of the Trees”, Scott Eckert has made more than few observations about Farmer’s work and his characters. There is much I will not comment on, however there are a few points of his introduction I would like to share.
Farmer wrote three novels about the nine and as is usually the case I did not read them in succession, I read them in the order I was able to obtain them. They are:
“A Feast Unknown”I have read the other two, with “The Mad Goblin” being my first introduction to the “Nine”, and then “A Feast Unknown”, which was the most disturbing of Farmer’s work I had read up to the point, and now I start second of the series as my last read from the series.
“The Nine are a secret sect of immortals (those who have partaken of immortality elixir that extends one’s life up to 30,000 years) bent on amassing power and manipulating the course of events.”V
There are always mentions of other texts. Texts that are meant to fill-in-the blanks as to the history of the Wold Newton Family, like Farmer’s “Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke”, and “Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life”, both fictional biographies. Both are on my Farmer reading list.
Farmer's "other" worlds novel's Flesh front cover.
“Farmer is no moralist and is not concerned with character arcs. He is a scientist and explorer mixing civilizations and ideas and observing the results.”
Some other topics covered in his short discussion on Farmer’s “Flesh” novel.
Millennium, John Varley; Dune, Frank Hubert; The Sheep Look Up, John Brunner
Seventy Years of Decpop, Farmer
I Am a Legend, Richard Matheson
The Rise of Robert Heinlein
Highs and Lows of Robert Heinlein
Michael A. Boron, penned Flesh’s second afterward
“Man, is his blindness, greed, and arrogance, has fouled the God given earth. His ant-heap cities have emptied their filth into the rivers and the sea and turned them into vast sewers. He has poised the air with deadly fumes. These fumes, I suppose, were not only products of industry but of radioactivity…”
Dr. Calthop
Flesh, Philip José Farmer
I have just completed the last in Farmers Grand Master series.
Even though he gets little more than a cameo mention in Hadon of Ancient Opar, Sahhinder is a significant figure in Farmers, Hadon of Ancient Opar. He seems to have appeared in khokarsa over a period of two thousand years and taught the ancient Khokarsans peoples animal husbandry, how to grow certain cereal plants, how to mine copper and tin, and how to fashion weapons and farm implements from these materials. Since his presence was long known abound these peoples they referred to Sahhinder 1 as god. Please see Farmer’s Times Last Gift.
1 Of course we can assume that this character was referred as Sahhinder and may have other names.
I have been fascinated by maps since I was a child and this fascination has not abated since I have grown-up. I especially am fascinated with maps that pertain to the text I am studying at the time. Hadon of Ancient Opar, as the title of my post mentions includes three maps. These are located at the beginning of the book and include an ancient map of Africa, circa, 10,000 B. C. , a map of Island of Khokarsa, and a map of the central section of City of Khokarsa.
If you follow this link you will find four additional maps, three of which were originally created by Philip José Farmer.
I have read a few of Farmer’s Wold Newton Universe texts, although not necessarily in chronological order. I have read them as I have learned of them. Many of Farmer’s books are either out of print or, if they are available, they sell as collectors’ items.
So Hadon of Ancient Opar is the start of Khokarsa series, however through the Wold Newton Universe heredity there are so many other texts that have been written before this series was introduced that are relative the plot of this text.
So the full canon of the Khokarsa series can be considered:
“Time’s Last Gift,” Farmer (1972, reissued by Titan, 2012)This list was found on Pulp Net.
Another list:
“Welcome to the lost civilization of Khokarsa. You are about to embark on one of the most epic journeys of heroic advent in the annals of history. Philip Jose Farmers Hadon of Ancient Opar is a tale of nigh forgotten age of the earth, and when swordplay and prophesies were merely the stuff of legends, but rather the fact of everyday experience…”
Christopher Paul Carey
All of the work of Farmer’s I have read, up to this point, have been a real treat and has Carey has so enthusiastically asserted an “epic journey”. Hadon of Ancient Opar is the first in Farmer’s Khokarsa series, the first of three volumes.
Hadon of Ancient Opar is a 290-page story, and includes three maps, a description of the maps, and two addendums. In addition, there is Khokarsan language glossary. There is a lot of material to parse.
Having read just about all of Farmer’s Wold Newton series, I am looking for more of Farmer’s work. Here is a short list of titles listed by one of the A Feast Unknown’s biographers:
World of Tiers
Riverworld
The Lovers
Day World
Two Hawks from Earth
Khokarso
“…an Evolution strangeMary Swenson
Yes, the name of this novel was taken from a line from Mary Swenson’s poem. This novel was the first in Farmer’s Wold Newton Parallel Universe series. I didn’t have the benefit of reading this novel before reading the later texts in this series. This is the first of Farmer’s work that did not include footnotes. Farmers’ works is usually riddled with footnotes that often help by giving you the back story.
A Feast Unknown, like Farmers other work, takes the reader on an amazing adventure. The novel is written as it is the diary of Lord Grandrith, “the legendary Apeman, Lord of the Jungle and bastard son of Jack the Ripper.” There are many dark themes that unfold as the story progresses.
“The grass cats, big cheetah-like creatures with long slim legs built for running, were only a peril when the party left the yacht. Though fully capable of leaping aboard when the 'roller was in movement, they never did. Sometimes they might pace it for a mile or so, then they would contemptuously walk away.
Green wished he could say the same for the dire dogs. These were almost as large as the grass cats and ran in packs of from six to twelve. Sinister-looking with their gray-and-black spotted coats, pointed wolfish ears and massive jaws, they would run up to the very wheels, howling and snapping with their monstrous yellow fangs.”
The Green Odyssey, Philip José Farmer
Hoobers are an alien life form prevalent on the Planet Xurdimur. “Unable to go back to sleep, Green watched a herd of hoobers take to their hoofs at the approach of the Bird. These diminutive equines, beautiful with their orange bodies and black or white manes and fetlocks, sometimes formed immense herds that must have numbered in the hundreds of thousands. So thick were they that they looked like a bobbing sea of flashing heads and gleaming hoofs stretching clear to the horizon.”
The Green Odyssey, Philip José Farmer
"The Bird of Fortune sported a curving bow and a high foredeck. On this was fastened the many-spoked steering wheel. Two helmsmen always attended it, two men wearing hexagonal goggles and close-fitting leather helmets with high crests of curled wire. Behind them stood the captain and first mate, giving their attention alternately to the helmsmen and to the sailors on deck and aloft. The middeck was sunken, and the poopdeck, though raised, was not as high as the foredeck.
The four masts were tall, but not as tall as those of a marine craft of similar size. High masts would have given the 'roller a tendency to capsize in a very strong wind, despite the weight of the axles and wheels. Therefore, the yardarms, reaching far out beyond the sides of the hull, were comparatively longer than a seaship's. When the Bird carried a full weight of canvas she looked, to a mariner's eyes, squat and ungainly. Moreover, yards had been fixed at right angles to the top of the hull and to the keel itself. Extra canvas was hung between these spars. The sight of all that sail sticking from between the wheels was enough to drive an old sailor to drink.
Three masts were square-rigged. The aft mast was fore-and-aft rigged and was used to help the steering. There was no bowsprit.
Altogether, it was a strange-looking craft. But once one was accustomed to it, one saw it was as beautiful as a ship of the sea.
It was as formidable, too, for the Bird carried five large cannon on the middeck, six cannon on the second deck, a lighter swivel cannon on the steering deck, and two swivels on the poopdeck.
Hung from davits were two long liferollers and a gig, all wheeled and with folding masts. If the Bird was wrecked it could be abandoned and all the crew could scoot off in the little rollers."
The Green Odyssey, Philip José Farmer
Make friends fast.
—Handbook For The Shipwrecked
The wind-roller was the preferred method of travel on the Planet Xurdimur.
"The wind-roller itself was about two hundred feet long. Its beam was about thirty-four feet. The hull was boat-shaped, and the narrow keel rested on fourteen axles. Twenty-eight enormous solid rubber-tired wheels turned at the ends of these axles. Thick ropes of the tough rubber-like substance were tied to the ends of the axles and to the tops of the hull itself. These were to hold the body steady and keep it from going over when the 'roller reeled under too strong a side wind and also to provide some resiliency when the 'roller was making a turn. Being aboard at such times was almost like being on a water-sailing ship. As the front pair of wheels—the steering wheels—turned and the longitudinal axis of the craft slowly changed direction, the body of the vessel, thrust by the shifting impact of the winds, also tilted. Not too far, never as far as a boat in similar case, but enough to give one an uneasy feeling. The cables on the opposing side would stretch to a degree and then would stop the side-wise motion of the keel and there would be a slight and slow roll to the other direction. Then a shorter and slower motion back again. It was enough to make a novice green. 'Roller sickness wasn't uncommon at the beginning of a voyage or during a violent windstorm. Like its aqueous counterpart, it affected the sufferer so that he could only hang over the rail and wish he would die."
The Green Odyssey, Philip José Farmer
Westward laid the incredibly level stretch of the grassy ground of the Xurdimur. Ten thousand miles straight across, flat as a table top, broken only here and there by clumps of forests, ruins of cities, waterholes, the tents of the nomadic savages, herds of wild animals, packs of grass cats and dire dogs, and the mysterious and undoubtedly imaginary "roaming islands," great clumps of rock and dirt that legend said slid of their own volition over the plains. How like this planet, he thought, that the greatest peril to navigation should be one that existed only in the heads of the inhabitants.
