Riverworld Odyssey

Riverworld is a high concept series from Philip José Farmer, a world covered in a meandering river millions of miles long, on the shores of which every human being who ever lived has been resurrected…Samuel Clemens. Sir Richard Francis Burton. Alice Hargraves. Baron de Marbot. Tom Mix. Peter Jairus Frigate. King John of England. Jack London. Li Po. Hermann Göring. Cyrano de Bergerac. Lothar von Richthofen. Odysseus. Joe Miller.

Riverworld Odyssey is a collection of associated fiction, essays, letters, articles, speeches, and ephemera, totaling almost six hundred pages, documenting the history of the series.

What is not included:

• The main series proper: To Your Scattered Bodies Go, The Fabulous Riverboat, The Dark Design, The Magic Labyrinth, and Gods of Riverworld.
• The authorized short stories by authors other than Farmer in the shared-world anthologies Tales of Riverworld and Quest to Riverworld.

What IS included: everything else. The early history of Riverworld; the journey from Farmer’s last-minute decision to enter the Shasta Prize Novel contest in 1952, to the publication of To Your Scattered Bodies Go, almost twenty years later; and the series beyond the end of the fifth and concluding novel, Gods of Riverworld.

The book is organized into four sections: The Contest, The Relaunch, The Quest Completed, and Riverworld Revisited.

Fiction by Farmer includes the novel River of Eternity, first written in 1952; the earliest published Riverworld stories, “The Day of the Great Shout,” and “Riverworld”; the excerpt “Riverworld War”; and the stories Farmer wrote for the two shared-world anthologies in the 1990s, “Crossing the Dark River,” “A Hole in Hell,” “Up the Bright River,” and “Coda.”

Introductions, essays, and speeches by Farmer provide historical insight to the series. Letters to luminaries such as Fred Pohl, Ejler Jakobsson, Richard Posner, Phyllis Grann, and Roger Zelazny include four different outlines describing forthcoming Riverworld tales.

Outlines:

• “In The Valley”
• “The Boss”
• “The Storming”
• “Riverworld Dawn”

Essays and Speeches:

• River of Eternity Author’s Introduction
• “Riverworld” Introduction
• “Riverworld War” Introduction
• “This Is Your Afterlife”
• “The Source of the River”
• “Buddha Contemplates His Novel”
• “If I. P. ”
• Tales of Riverworld Introduction

Essays exploring different aspects of Farmer’s series and career are included by Alex Berman, John Gregory Betancourt, Michael Croteau, Tracy Knight, Paul Spiteri, Bruce Sterling, and Mary Turzillo.

The wraparound cover painted by Mark Wheatley features Peter Jarius Frigate, Alice Hargraves, Sir Richard Francis Burton, and Joe Miller attempting a shortcut across Riverworld in a hot air balloon.