Book 2 of The Legendary Riverworld Saga

1967 and 1971, Del Rey, NY, 232 pages

What if every one of the tens of billions of people to have lived since 100,000 B.C. were brought back to life by a vast alien intelligence on a planet designed to study the human animal? Every human to have survived beyond five years of age is resurrected at 25 years old, with no facial hair, a set of white towels, and a rechargeable food grail. Riverworld is a world of plenty, and a world largely lacking the resources that man needs to make war—but where there is a will there is a way.

Farmer is an astute student of the human condition and a gifted novelist with a knack for authentic dialogue. One of the ‘ethicals’ is aghast at the experiment his kind has made of the human race. Indeed, with religions discredited and there being no escape from misery by way of suicide, as those killed are resurrected again on a different portion of the river, things are beginning to look pretty darned cruel twenty years on.

To Our Scattered Bodies Go, the first volume in the series, followed Richard Francis Burton on his quest to uncover the mystery of the river and its masters. Burton was the first of the 12 human heroes contacted by the apostate ethical in an attempt to undermine the grand human experiment. The story now picks up with Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, caustic 19th Century American humorist. Sam has a dream to build a fabulous riverboat out of a supply of meteoric iron and nickel. The book is partially the story of the boat and its construction and partially one of brutal race war and political intrigue as medieval warlords and ancient tyrants team up with Nazis and 20th Century engineers to enslave and conquer.

The Fabulous Riverboat is a taut adventure to be sure. The best aspect about Farmer’s resurrection series, is his choice [thus far] of two prolific authors for his protagonists. As a prolific author himself, Farmer had a handle on reading between a man’s lines and finding his inner self. His Burton was great. His Sam Clemons is compelling despite being a cowardly jerk. Three of the other 12 heroes are in play at this point: Cyrano de Bergerac, Odysseus, and my man, Liver-Eating Johnson!

As 1960s science fiction Farmer did better than most of his peers in developing characters, but was in agreement with the entire body of his colleagues that humanity would be on the moon and Mars and Titan by 2000. He also failed to predict the communication revolution, which his peers also failed to prophesy. He would surely be horrified that even the moon, walked on 4 years after he wrote this novel, has not been revisited in two generations.

What he totally nailed was the perpetual curse of race politics. The quest for the great paddle wheeler eventually devolves into a multifaceted race war, with Clemens, critic of slavery and champion of the black man’s humanity, derided as a racist by men from his future and laughed at as a sentimental fool by medieval kings.