Share for friends:

Read To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1998)

To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1998)

Online Book

Genre
Series
Rating
3.93 of 5 Votes: 3
Your rating
ISBN
0345419677 (ISBN13: 9780345419675)
Language
English
Publisher
del rey

To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1998) - Plot & Excerpts

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 various time periods. Give it a few minutes more and you'll probably start thinking about your personal interactions: folks you might want to settle a score with, or even people long dead who you'd like to take to task for some reason or another. Stop right there, and you know everything there is to know about this book.Of course, there are particulars. The main character (19th century explorer and ethnologist Richard Francis Burton) is a personal hero of Farmer's. A lot of the book is the two of them talking about Burton's life and character. There are several action sequences and some (slightly weird) love connections. There's also an over-arching plot about the creators of this experiment, but it was frankly incoherent. Farmer has a strange and (I think) not-entirely-intentional contradiction in his construction of themes, in that he has brashly declared his setting to be purely rational (no divine powers please), yet infused the execution with theological concerns. Most notable among these is Manichaeism, which rears its head about two thirds through the book and effectively subverts the possibility of viewing the novel as anything other than a theological thought-experiment.I have no problem with thought experiments, far less when they're theological or philosophical in nature. My complaints about the novel are not the issues it raises, but what it fails to consider. I hope a guided thought experiment will explore ideas in, if not an unexpected way, at least a way that is consistent and fruitful. Farmer doesn't lack for conclusions, actually he's pretty moralistic. But his morals are delivered anecdotally, with no connection to the thought experiment. He'll have someone from 2008 (his distant future) declare "of course, the only people in our enlightened times who still held to the nudity taboo were hopeless neurotics", or have all the admirable characters from a half dozen eras agree in a blase fashion to some principle. The actual thought experiment of people from different eras cohabiting goes nowhere. If anything it regresses, as inexplicable behaviors (everyone has enough food, all their needs are provided for, there's no such thing as luxury, so why is greed still so prevalent?) are accepted without a second thought and even the ramifications of his own explicit parameters are ignored (shouldn't they all be waist deep in corpses by the end of the first week? If they're constantly forced into other cultures, why do the ethnic barriers remain so rigid? What happens to all those children?)But the novel lurches along well enough until Farmer starts trying to explain the motivations of the creators. The final chapters are so nonsensical that I can only assume that he had gotten to the point of throwing ideas onto the page and seeing what would stick. Every explanation makes less sense than the one before, and I was left with the distinct impression that the author was hoping one of the characters would tell him what was happening in his own story.

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.After he died, the famous 19th century explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton wasn’t surprised to find that what the Christian priests had taught about the Resurrection wasn’t true. But he was totally bewildered by what actually happened. He woke up young, hairless, naked, and turning in midair (as if on a spit) in the middle of 37 billion other young, hairless, naked and rotating humans. Soon after waking, the bodies — all the people over the age of five who had ever lived — plunged to the ground and began their new lives together in a giant river valley... Is this Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, or is it some huge social experiment being run by aliens?Most of the humans, happy that their basic needs are being met, are content to just be living again. Some people see this as an opportunity to seize the power and wealth that they had, or never obtained, on Earth. But Sir Richard just wants to know what’s going on. He seems to be the only person who got a glimpse behind the scenes of their new home and, not only does he resent being manipulated, but his curiosity is insatiable. So, he and a few companions set out to explore the Riverworld and, they hope, to discover the source of the river and find some answers.Richard Francis Burton, a fascinating and scandalous man in real life, is the perfect character to explore the Riverworld. Philip Jose Farmer’s depiction of Burton, and several other real historical figures, is superb, though occasionally teachy when Farmer periodically interjects an encyclopedic-sounding aside about a character’s life (this minor bit of clumsiness is the reason for my 4.5 instead of 5-star rating). I won’t tell you who else shows up in the Riverworld, because I’d spoil the fun, but I’ll say that it’s hilarious to watch Burton learn about 20th-century history and interact with some of its denizens.The best aspect of To Your Scattered Bodies Go is its original premise — the idea of all of humanity spread out, generally in chronological order, along a giant river which can be traveled, like a human timeline. There is some “scattering” of bodies (hence the title) so that a 21st century American could end up in a tribe of Neanderthals. If someone dies in the Riverworld, they are resurrected at random somewhere along the river.To Your Scattered Bodies Go, written in 1971, is creative, exciting, fast-paced, and totally absorbing. I was completely enthralled from the first page to the last. I listened to Recorded Books’ version read by Paul Hecht and I had a hard time removing my earbuds for long enough to pay attention to my real-life duties. By the end of the story Burton has managed to get a few answers, but there are so many questions left and I can’t wait to learn more about Riverworld. Therefore, I’m already reading the next installment: The Fabulous Riverboat.

What do You think about To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1998)?

Imagine that you wake up and the last thing that you remember is dying. You're lying on a riverbank surrounded by strangers who are naked and hairless just as you are. As you explore your surroundings, you find that you are no longer on Earth and the people around you are all the people from the beginning of time who have lived and died on Earth. Furthermore, there are no animals or insects, but there are plenty of fish in a river that seems never never to end. Meals and wants like cigarettes, alcohol, and clothing are provided daily from unseen benefactors.The main character of the story is Richard Francis Burton, a famous British explorer from the last half of the 1800s. He's the perfect character to follow around in such a world because of his wide acquaintance with various cultures and ability to speak 29 different languages. Joining him (wanted or unwanted) are characters such as a caveman, an alien (responsible for the destruction of most of the human race in 21st century), the real life Alice who was the inspiration for the fictional Alice in Wonderland, Nazi leader Hermann Göring, and a well-read American.When my husband mentioned the premise of this series to me, I knew I had to read it. He also said that it's going to be a 4-hour movie event on the SyFy channel. Unfortunately, Richard Burton isn't going to be the main character because they were worried that Americans would think of the wrong Richard Burton -- the one that was an actor and Elizabeth Taylor's husband. Are we really so dumb that we couldn't differentiate between a little-known actor and a well-known explorer? Some other things that I bet won't make it into the series are people waking up naked and hairless, marijuana and hallucinates, lots of suicides, lots of love and war, and people's questioning of their religion since the afterlife is different than they were told. Oh, what am I talking about? I'm sure they'll show war. That at least is socially acceptable on television. *rolls eyes*I'm giving this 5 stars because I actually want to read the next book in the series when I'm usually not a reader of book series. The next book in the series The Fabulous Riverboat features Mark Twain as the main character rather than Richard Burton. While the first book gives a small idea of who created Riverworld and why everyone is there, it still leaves enough questions unanswered that I'm curious about. For one thing, there's the end/beginning of the river and a fabled Tower to reach. As for the television series, I'm not nearly as optimistic about it. I'm sure Philip José Farmer would roll over in his grave to see the changes they'll surely make.
—Amy

Famed 19th century explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton dies. When he awakes, he finds himself resurrected, lying naked on the banks of a seemingly endless river, along with every other human being (and non-human sentient) who has ever lived on Earth or ever will. The human race is provided with food that miraculously appears from strange machines, but little else. There are no buildings, no clothes and no instructions. It is clear that this is not the afterlife that most world religions promised. Burton gathers a collection of people from different eras, including Alice Hargreaves (of Alice in Wonderland fame), a Neanderthal, a Holocaust survivor and an alien being from the future and they set off to explore.What they find is that humans will be humans. Along the river, despite the strange dislocation that has occurred, people are setting up civilizations of various types, conflicts are breaking out and leaders both benign and dictatorial are taking charge of various groups. One of these dictators, Herman Goering of the Third Reich, becomes Burton's nemesis, capturing him and thwarting his plans.Burton's goal is to find the source of the river so that he can meet whatever entity or being sent all of humanity to this place and understand the "why" of it all. When this quest proves to be nearly impossible through conventional means (e.g. sailing a boat up the river), Burton comes up with another strategy - one that involves his own willingness to be subjected to death and resurrection, again and again.I haven't read Philip Jose Farmer in a long time, but I do recall that he generally writes a pretty good adventure story. This novel, a Hugo-award winner, has more than a touch of Heinlein in it (e.g. "Glory Road" or "The Number of the Beast"). But he is also a decent world builder, and Riverworld is a unique environment for him to play in. He can literally call up any character from any time in history and set them to work as protagonist or antagonist. I am still waiting for more details on certain aspects of Riverworld, but I assume that that will come as the series progresses.There are a lot of mysteries left unsolved here, and Farmer doesn't give us many clues as to where he is going with this. I had hoped that he would dole out a few more pieces of the puzzle before this first volume of the series was over, but perhaps that is just my impatience speaking. There are a few reveals near the very end of the book and he has done enough to pique my interest; I will likely pick up the next book in the series relatively soon.
—Mark Oppenlander

I feel like giving this a 3/5, but for the plot alone I have to give it an additional star.Even though it wasn't as interesting as it could have been, or written in a style I particularly love, the idea alone is amazing. It has endless possibilities.After reading it at long last, I'm so disappointed that it's television/film adaptations have been so poor. This story has limitless potential and I can't help wishing an amazing film or series would come out of this.Thirty six billion, six million, nine thousand, six hundred and thirty seven people throughout human history are resurrected simultaneously on another planet.Without any additional information, that should be enough of a story to interest anyone.How do these people co-exist, if at all.There were elements of this story that saddened me actually, by how realistic and logical they seemed. The warring and the slavery and the states that cropped up and the way societies began to organize themselves towards defense. The first introduction of Hermann Göring etc.Those aspects of human nature are so ingrained that even resurrected, given new life and apparent immortality --- even then, people would still degenerate into that kind of savagery at some point.
—A

Write Review

(Review will shown on site after approval)

Read books by author Philip José Farmer

Read books in series riverworld

Read books in category Fiction