Customer Reviews

Riverworld War (The Philip Jose Farmer Society series)

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This slender volume with its misleading title consists of the story "Jesus on Mars", and a fragment originally excised from the Riverworld series, here entitled "Riverworld War". "Jesus On Mars" is an abridgement of the novel of the same name, originally scheduled to be published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. Slow and plodding as this painful work is, one can only wonder how anyone manages to read the longer, novel version. An ominous pall hangs over this story about the exploration of Mars, with none of the rapture one might expect from an encounter with a being who may or may not be Jesus. Even though creating these grim, depressing moods is one of Farmer's specialties, the use of this tone in this context seriously undercuts the curiously equivocal ending, not to mention the sense of wonder that is the essence of good science fiction. On the other hand, the excerpt "Riverworld War" is a thrilling, action-packed depiction of the battle between the two riverboats captained by Sam Clemens and King John, all of which will be familiar (at least in general) to readers of Farmer's excellent Riverworld series. Good as it is, however, readers who are not familiar with these fine novels will find this fragment utterly confusing and ultimately pointless. Even for those who've grown to know and love these characters, the five chapters presented here, comprising about twenty pages, and all utterly bereft of context, are nothing more than an entertaining footnote to The Magic Labyrinth, from which it was originally cut due to space limitations. It's hard to see how even completists who want to read every word Farmer's ever written can find much merit in these superfluities.