Monday, January 26, 2009

The Fabulous Farmer

Science Fiction author Philip Jose Farmer was born on this day in 1918. He's probably best known for his Riverworld series which posits that everyone is reborn after death and in the same place at the same time - on a planet completely encircled by a river. Hence the whole Riverworld thing. You meet Samuel Clemens, Alice Liddell Hargreaves (the model for Wonderland's Alice), and Cyrano de Bergerac! Farmer solves the language problem by having everyone speak Esperanto - a convenience engineered by the same aliens who resurrected everyone. These may be the only books you ever read to feature that tongue. Although of course they're just written in regular English. You don't actually have to read in Esperanto. So, whew. The first 3 books in the series are considered essential, here they are in order:

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