Earlier this year on January 26 American SF author Philip Jose farmer died.
Like many others I started reading his books while at school and
enjoyed the mix of fiction and humour with historical fact and
literature. He was a prolific authour with well over 50 novells and
far more short stories to his credit and winning numerous awards in
recognition of his talent. Farmer often drew upon real characters and
never more so than in his Riverworld series where he uses figures such
as Richard Burton (the explorer not the actor), Alice Hagreaves (of
Alice in Wonderland), Cyrano De Bergerac and Samuel Clemens among
numerous others and places them in a “what would they do” situation
based upon their known characters.
In his 6 book “World of Tiers” series (seven if Red Orc’s Rage is
included) he indulges in what appears to be a love of pulp fiction
characters. The heros invariably are introduced as pretty much average individuals that go on, with mainly courage, to have extraordinary
adventures fuelled by an incredible amount of luck. In the series
Farmer created entire Universes with different natural laws to those
we are used to with creatures often based upon myths and legends. I
was dissappointed in the final book in the series “More than Fire”
published in 1993 which seemed to be a hurried attempt to tie up ends
and complete the series. The odd book “Red Orc’s Rage” on the other
hand was an original work using the idea that real people may be able
in psychiatric therapy to “become” characters from the World of Tiers
books as a form of emotional and mental healing.
I never had the facination Farmer did for Tarzan or nordic legends and
could not really get into many of his books but appreciated the
variety of his works. “Venus on the half shell” remains a favourite as
much for the idea of its coception as for its actual content. Farmer
wrote the book using the psuedonym of Kilgour Trout. Kilgoure Trout is
in fact a fictional author who is a character in many novels by Kurt
Vonnegut and when Farmer had the book published the photo on the back
even has Farmer dressed to look like how Trout may have looked,
complete with fake beard and sun glasses.
For those who enjoy a bit of simple SF escapism I recommend trying a
few of his books, or even a bit of a laugh reading some of the titles
of his writings such as “Bradley Brave Sees New York With Observing
Injun Eyes—And with Knocking Knees” or “The Face that Launched a
Thousand Eggs” and “St. Francis Kisses His Ass Goodbye”.
Much more information can be gained from websites such as Wikipedia or
the official website www.pjfarmer.com

David