To Your Scattered Bodies Go

© 1971 by Philip Jose Farmer

Perhaps the most important and pressing question we will ever ask is, what happens when we die? Surprisingly, at least in my experience, this is a question that is rarely addressed in science fiction, the third-best suited genre to speculate on such a topic (the other two being theology and philosophy).

Anyway, To Your Scattered Bodies Go is Philip Jose Farmer’s attempt to wrestle that conundrum.

He does a good job. I liked it better than the past couple of his books I’ve read.

Our protagonist is Richard Burton, recently deceased, well, as of the first paragraph of the novel. Now it’s not the rheumy, alcoholic thespian with that awesome Welsh voice. It’s the 19th century explorer, militarist, traveler, imposter, writer, translator, adventurer, anti-Victorian chronicler of the erotic in non-Victorian cultures. A fascinating man and one of the best examples of a man of his time. It’s worth your time to google him; like T. E. Lawrence, imagine what our world could do with a hundred men like him!

Burton awakens afloat in the aether in a hairless, brand-new adult-sized body of 25 – quite different from the gout-riddled overweight one he’s had up to his 69th year. To his left is another such body, suspended inanimate. To his right, another, below and above him others. In fact, rows and rows vertical and horizontal, a veritable matrix of bodies floating in free-fall. Then – that’s it, he realizes, he’s freely falling. And somehow survives his landing on the banks of a river.

It’s The River, and this is Riverworld, a valley of lush plains on both shores of the great River, bounded by impenetrable mountains on either side. The River, it’s later determined, is millions of miles in length. And all along its banks are the Resurrected, men and women (and children, and – at least one alien) reborn into this world in these new bodies, but with the memories of a lifetime on earth.

What would you do in Burton’s place?

Of course: build a boat and find the source of the River.

Farmer takes ample time fleshing out the rules of the game – how the newly-resurrected get food, clothing, shelter, form groups and later weapons for protection (from other groups, for man is a warlike being) – but keeps everything moving at a nice clip. A nice mixture of famous personages and intriguing new characters are thrown together, such as …

Peter Jairus Frigate, an 20th century mid-Westerner (note those initials again)

Alice Hargreaves, known simply as “Alice” to Lewis Carroll

Monat Grrautut, an alien whose satellite’s “death ray” destroyed most of mankind in 2008

Hermann Goering, Hitler’s prime henchman and leader of the German Luftwaffe

“Kazz,” a Neanderthal

and many more representing various cultures and eras from this earth.

Who designed Riverworld? Why? And why were the Resurrected resurrected? How long do the Resurrected have in this world? What should they do? What should they believe?

Interesting hints are tossed out halfway to two-thirds in to the novel, but when PJF reveals his, er, Great Reveal, truth be told, I was a bit disappointed. However, like any good novelist with an eye for a good story (and guaranteed publication with a good series), he leaves plenty of openings for it to go one way or the other, plenty of plot to be traveled in follow-up works. I won’t spoil the Reveal, except to say that being a good science fiction writer, he’s not writing Biblical prophecy here.

I liked the setting, I liked the characters, I sort of liked Who was behind it all. I didn’t like how man’s-inhumanity-to-man was such a big part of it, though. Call me an idealist, but I’d like to believe that in the next world all that would be left behind. But maybe Farmer might not have a problem with that statement …

Grade: A-minus.