The book itself is good. It's part of a series that is a single story, so the ending isn't the end, and therefore somewhat unsatisfying. I assume that will resolve itself as I finish the series. But I've been meaning to rant about 'introductions' for quite some time now, and the introduction t...
Every now and then I'm confronted by a novel that falls into a category I like to call the "What the fuck?!!?" books, and I recently read one that's still kicking me in the skull for a good number of reasons.Philip Jose farmer is an author who's had quite an impact on science-fiction thanks to be...
Here's the premise: all of mankind is reborn, all at once, on a planet custom made for the purpose. If you think about this for a few minutes, you'll probably come up with all sorts of possibilities: anthropological exploration, meeting famous historical figures, fights with savages from variou...
"Dayworld" by Philip Jose Farmer (1985) has elements that remind me of a lot of other classic sci-fi books. For example, some of the police procedural, hi-tech dystopian world elements and pulp sci-fi & action story tropes of "Dayworld" remind me of "Bladerunner", (the Ridley Scott movie more so ...
WARNING: This review contains spoilers! Read at your own risk!"This fourth book in the classic Riverworld series continues the adventures of Samuel Clemens and Sir Richard Francis Burton as they travel through Farmer's strange and wonderful Riverworld, a place where everyone who ever lived is si...
What a bleak view of humanity this book presents! The only semi-believable emotion portrayed is anger and there is a LOT of violence, especially since these are supposed to be the new & improved humans who finally made it to the mysterious tower on Riverworld. They soon prove themselves to be as ...
Years have passed on Riverworld. Entire nations have risen, and savage wars have been fought--all since the dead of Earth found themselves resurrected in their magnificent new homeworld. Yet the truth about the Ethicals, the powerful engineers of this mysterious "afterlife," remains unknown. But ...
As an exercise in world building, World of Tiers is very interesting. That's about it, though. I enjoyed it on a pulpy quick read level. However, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone looking for a deep involving novel. The PlotRobert Wolff is a retired linguistics professor looking at homes to b...
A collection of short science fiction takes readers on a voyage through time with St. Francis, into a brutal future city where sterilization is the only cure to poverty, and to a struggle between alien beings and the IRS. Original.
A machine that enables the living to communicate with the dead threatens to allow angry and vengeful ghosts to reenter the world of the living and enact cruel revenge. Reissue.
About a hundred years ago, a group of mutant supermen began playing a major role in our affairs. It is no accident that Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, Captain Nemo, and Doc Savage were (are?) contemporaries. Nor was it accidental that their biographers titillated their public with hints of their true n...
While reading The Unreasoning Mask by Philip Jose Farmer I was reminded of a science fiction novel from the preceding century, Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. In Verne's novel the powerful character of Captain Nemo and his mighty submarine, The Nautilus, develop a relationshi...
Dayworld Rebel (1987) 313 pages by Philip Jose FarmerThis novel picks up where Dayworld left off. Jeff Caird is in custody, but has created a new personae for himself. He is now completely William St. George Duncan, with no memory of Caird or the other six personae that had been him in Dayworld. ...
Dayworld Breakup (1990) 365 pages by Philip Jose FarmerThis book started with a synopsis by Caird's daughter of the first two volumes of the Dayworld trilogy. So I was thinking, "OK, sometime during this book he'll have a daughter, or we'll learn where she came from." About three quarters the way...
12,000 B.C.They were four trained scientists, each of them skilled in several disciplines - because this was an opportunity that would never occur again. There would never be another chance for men form the world of 2070 A.D. to examine in person the world of 12,000 B.C. What they learned and tap...
Private dick Herald Childe is sent a snuff movie of his partner being brutally murdered. His pursuit of her killers leads him into a waking nightmare of sexual brutality and supernatural bestiality, as he becomes entangled with sex-starved she-ghosts, snake-women and a filthy human sow.In "Image ...
A collection of stories by Philip José Farmer Contents: The long warpath -- Rastignac the Devil -- They twinkled like jewels. Notes: The long warpath was published in another form as The cache from outerspace. Rastignac the Devil, and They twinkled like jewels first published in They twinkl...
A scientist in the 1950s is rendered frozen at the molecular level, and is reanimated millennia later by a freak accident to a strange world populated by sentient, anthropomorphic animals, who take his awakening to be the fulfillment of prophecy. He accepts the mantle of godhood and sets about di...
Mary Casey said. “It’s very cumbersome and irritating. It chafes my skin so I can hardly walk. And it’s not very sanitary, either. It has two small outlets, but I have to pour water down it to clean myself.” “I know that,” Stagg said impatiently. “That’s not what’s bothering me.” Mary looked at h...
I hope my foreign readers will forgive me if I mention, with some pride, that it is the oldest airport in Europe. It also has some of the longest lines at the ticket counter in the world. Ralph stayed in the car while I waited by the counter and ascertained that Saugpumpe was indeed going to Veni...
But the knowledge of his love had been very fleeting and infrequent and it had not affected him. During the dreamgum nightmare, he had felt so horrified at the realization that love lay far beneath his hate that he had screamed. He awakened to find Wilfreda shaking him, demanding to know what had...
Cavalry because he loved horses. A short time later, he found himself driving a tank. He was with the Eighth Army and so eventually crossed the Rhine. One day, after having helped take a small town, he discovered an extraordinary object in the ruins of the local museum. It was a crescent of silve...
Though he called himself a rationalist, he believed, or claimed to believe, that each Earthly area had its unique psychic properties. Thus, Vigo County soil had absorbed the peculiar qualities of the Indians who had lived there and of the pioneers who had driven them away and settled there. His o...