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2/25/2009 11:26:30 AM
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R.Wilder
Posts 127
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One of my favorite writers from my early years of fandom.
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2/25/2009 11:34:57 AM
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jimbraiden
Posts 1943
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That is sad news.
One of my favourites too.
A great story teller with a wicked sense of humour.
Not unexpected but still sad.
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2/25/2009 11:39:04 AM
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Annie
Posts 460
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RIP
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2/25/2009 11:42:37 AM
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Bruce
Posts 108
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Sigh. I just re-read 'They Fell Like Wheat' by Michael Swanwick.
One of the last of the early giants. If there's any justice, there's a huge party happening at the Dark Tower on Riverworld.
Deepest condolences to PJF's family.
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2/25/2009 11:57:17 AM
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gdozois
Posts 3506
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Sad news.
One of the great "what ifs" of SF is how good the original one-volume RIVERWORLD novel, which he wrote and then (in the days before computers and easy access to xeroxing) lost, having to start all over again, would have been. I suspect it would have been better in that form than the series that eventually saw print, which, like many series, tended to sprawl.
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2/25/2009 12:06:22 PM
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pc
Posts 1664
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RIP 
--
If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us. -Herman Hesse
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2/25/2009 12:15:40 PM
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dolphintornsea
Posts 361
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A new waver, fifteen years too early. RIP, and long may he continue to be read.
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2/25/2009 12:28:44 PM
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Byron Bailey
Posts 2642
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Welcome to the river, my man.
--
Yes, I do weigh 800 pounds, but I'm not a gorilla. I'm just a grossly obese bonobo. Really.
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2/25/2009 12:47:05 PM
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Tom Purdom
Posts 675
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He wrote a number of good things but the Riverworld series was one of my greatest SF reading experiences. It's one of the few SF series I've followed all the way to the end. Whatever its flaws, it was a tremendous contribution-- a great concept developed with intelligence, flair, and a deep view of human life.
edited by Tom Purdom on 2/25/2009
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2/25/2009 1:33:26 PM
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gdozois
Posts 3506
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No doubt he'll be remembered for RIVERWORLD, one of the cornerstones of modern SF. I always had a sneaking fondness, though, for his eccentric--and VERY DIRTY--retelling of the Tarzan myth, LORD TYGER.
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2/25/2009 1:40:08 PM
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Bruce
Posts 108
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I read 'To Your Scattered Bodies Go' as a teenager in '72 and like thousands of other, waited for an interminable six years for 'The Dark Design'. The series wasn't completely successful by any means but who cares? One of the greatest ideas in the genre of ideas.
Haven't read 'Lord Tyger' but loved 'Tarzan Alive', 'Hadon of Ancient Opar' and 'The Jungle Rot Kid on the Nod'....alll indispensible contributions to the Tarzan canon.
Grateful thanks are due Subterranean Press for their terrific PJF books of the last few years.
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2/25/2009 2:02:25 PM
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Alex
Posts 1084
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I just re-read "Wind Whales of Ishael," last month.
"Night of Light" is one of my all-time favorite tales, ever. (which, allegedly, was some inspiriation to Hendrix' "Purple Haze.")
I Loved the "World of Tiers" immensely.
Riverworld, too. "Scattered Bodies" definitely best of the lot; but I enjoyed them all.
Actually, I never read a Farmer that I didn't enjoy, on some level. ("Wind Whales" is pretty pulpy, and an odd concept, but fun.)
--
"The man who laughs has not yet been told the terrible news."
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2/25/2009 3:40:34 PM
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Lee S
Posts 331
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I liked his Father Carmody stories best. Just my personal tastes.
This is awful news.
it was Father Carmody, I think, and not Father [Insert A Different Name Here]. Anyway, the stories that were collected in Father to the Stars.
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2/25/2009 6:17:11 PM
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jason
Posts 112
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The first Riverworld book, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, is one of my favorite SF novels, although I wasn't impressed with the following volumes. I also loved Dark Is the Sun, which I read in my early teens.
Gardner: Have you read River of Eternity? How does it compare to the other Riverworld books?
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2/25/2009 6:45:03 PM
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alastair_mayer
Posts 413
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World of Tiers, the Riverworld books, his intriguing weaving of the backstories of Tarzan, Doc Savage, and Sherlock Holmes (among others), all great stuff I enjoyed as a teenager. Lord Tyger was certainly a bit different -- I enjoyed it but my then girlfriend, who mostly shared my tastes in SF, hated it. Then there was Image of the Beast and Blown, which were just ... disturbing.
Still and all a wonderful writer, who'll be missed.
(SciFi Channel did a movie Riverworld that looked like it might be a pilot for a possible series. It had bits from To Your Scattered Bodies Go and The Fabulous Riverboat, but also threw in some extraneous gubbage that wasn't really necessary. It would make the basis for a wonderful series -- something along the lines of Lost perhaps.)
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- Alastair
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2/25/2009 7:37:58 PM
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gdozois
Posts 3506
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I thought that TO YOUR SCATTERED BODIES GO was by far the best volume of the Riverworld series, and each subsequent volume went a little further downhill, spinning the plot interminably out until I didn't really much care what the solution to the mystery was; which is why I wonder if the original one-volume novel, now lost, which apparently wrapped everything up in one book (although a large one) might not actually have been a superior creation. We'll never know, I guess. Don't even remember if I got to RIVER OF ETERNITY, or if I'd given up by then.
When I said that LORD TYGER was REALLY DIRTY, I meant it. It's drenched with explicit sex, much of it rather kinky and peverse sex at that, so maybe that was what put your girlfriend off it. I doubt it could have been published as anything other than an erotic novel from an erotic-novel publisher five or ten years earlier than it was, certainly not as just another regular trade publication.
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2/25/2009 8:15:23 PM
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jason
Posts 112
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Actually, River of Eternity was a one-volume version of the story which Farmer wrote after the original novel was lost. This second version was also lost for several decades, then someone found it and published it in the 1980s. Here's some info on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_of_Eternity
I haven't seen a copy of that version and wondered how it compared.
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2/26/2009 9:35:34 AM
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StevenLP
Posts 538
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gdozois wrote:
When I said that LORD TYGER was REALLY DIRTY, I meant it. It's drenched with explicit sex, much of it rather kinky and peverse sex at that, so maybe that was what put your girlfriend off it. I doubt it could have been published as anything other than an erotic novel from an erotic-novel publisher five or ten years earlier than it was, certainly not as just another regular trade publication.
I liked Lord Tyger too: though it featured a deeply unpleasant way of dying (having your intestines ripped out).
I also enjoyed "Inside Outside", which is another after-death novel.
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2/26/2009 11:06:23 AM
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Bill Moonroe
Posts 3587
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Sort of surprised how little mention the Dayworld books have gotten. I thought the first one was especially good, and keep wondering how long until someone in charge decides there's an idea in there that's worth looking into.
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2/26/2009 11:30:50 AM
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jimbraiden
Posts 1943
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My own personal favourite is The Unreasoning Mask but Farmer produced so much good stuff- not just novels.
No one has mentioned Riders of the Purple Wage for instance.
Gardner, he wrote two books which make Lord Tyger look like Jane Austen- Blown and The Image of the Beast- the latter featuring one Forry Ackerman as a sort of hero.
The great thing about Farmer- and indeed the same could be said of Poul Anderson- is that they both left you wanting to know more. Anderson had me pestering my local library for books on Persia and the Norse sagas and the Folk Migrations of the dark ages.
Farmer had me hunting up bios of Richard Burton and Mark Twain and led me on to Joseph Campbell and from there to Jung and so on.
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