THE WORKS OF PJF

Articles

The following list contains all of the articles that Farmer has written that I have been able to collect any information on. I have listed the title, where the article was published and a description if I have read it.

Here is a newspaper article Phil wrote for his college school newspaper after his trip to New York to present Fred Warring with a headdress on his radio program, to thank him for writing the school's fight song. You can see three more pictures about this event on the Photo Gallery page (the third, fourth and fifth pictures from the top).

A very interesting article by Farmer about writing The Lovers and trying to get it published.

An essay by Farmer describing how much the world of Oz meant to him as child. As he grew up however, the stories began to lose their magic as compared to some of the other worlds he had been introduced to. Later on he rediscovered Oz and a greater appreciation for its magic. That's my boring version of it, Farmer's way of putting it is much, much, better.

An interesting editorial, where Farmer gives his definition of good fictionand illustrates how science-fantasy can meet these standards. In the much longer Skyhook version of the article, Phil first goes off on a tangent discussing good and evil. He then gives many examples of science fiction writers capable of writing literature, and conversely many great literary writers who have written science fiction or fantasy, although the mainstream critics do not consider it to be so.

An article by Farmer where he discusses his early reading and his mythological heroes who were all put in the dust when he discovered Edgar Rice Burroughs. This was his Golden Age. He then laments that his son, ignoring his father's collection of fantastic reading, is only interested in comic books. What Farmer calls Brass as compared to his Gold.

In 1960 Earl Kemp sent out a questionnaire to 108 people in science fiction. 71 replied to these five questions under the heading "Who Killed Science Fiction?"; 1) Do you feel that magazine science fiction is dead? 2) Do you feel that any single person, action, incident, etc., is responsible for the present situation? 3) What can we do to correct it? 4) Should we look to the original paperback as a point of salvation? 5) What additional remarks, pertinent to the study, would you like to contribute? This appeared in his fanzine, Safari, and went on to win the 1961 Hugo award for best fanzine.

  • The First Safari Annual, April 15, 1960 (First appearance)
  • eI , Vol. 5 No. 6, December, 2006 (click on the link to read it online)

A tale from Farmer about his experiences mountain climbing in Arizona. When he reached the top of a mountain he did a hand-stand to get a different perspective of the surrounding scenery.

An article about Farmer's economy of abundance.

  • Knight, July 1967 (First appearance)

This is Farmer's famous (or infamous) speech which was given at Baycon in 1968. He talked about science fiction's failure as an "early warning" system to today's problems. He also talked about the Triple Revolution Document.

  • Science Fiction Review #28, November 1968 (First appearance)
  • Mimeographed limited edition for the Science Fiction Writers of America, 1968

Solar Pons is a Sherlock Holmes type character, created by August Derleth. In this brief essay Farmer compares Pons to Holmes and Derleth to Doyle and wishes that Derleth would continue to write about Pons.

The original answers to this questionaire by 72 science fiction authors and editors were printed in three issues of the fanzine Double:Bill; #7 (October 1963), #8 (January 1964) and #9 (June 1964). In 1969 when they decided to collect all the answers in one book, they sent the questionaire out again and were able to add another 22 for a total of 94 respondents. Phil Farmer is in this group of 1969 authors so his answers do not appear in any of the three fanzines. The questionaire contained eleven questions about writing science fiction. Most authors answered eight or nine questions, Phil answered all eleven.

Farmer wrote a report on the Second International Film Festival, Rio de Janeiro, March 23-31, 1969. The article begins as Phil and and fellow scifi authors; Alfred Bester, Arthur C. Clarke, Harlan Ellison, Harry Harrison, Sam Moskowitz, and A. E. von Vogt, are getting on the plane to come home. Most of the report, which he calls a travelog of the mind, takes place on the plane ride home.

Farmer discusses the state of the world and what affect science fiction can have on the future.

Farmer goes to great pains to explain the items that he placed on the coat of arms.

A longtime Tarzan fan, Farmer designed the Greystoke coat of arms. This also appears in Tarzan Alive.

Farmer has fun linking a Lord Rufton from a Sherlock Holmes story (The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax), and a Lord Rufton written about by the famous Napleonic soldier Brigadier Étienne Gerard.

One of Farmer's first biographies of a fictional person. He of course took it a step further and later wrote a book by Trout.

Farmer discusses and article that appeared in issue #27 about discrepancies in Tarzan's and Korak's age. He refers to his biography of Tarzan which is coming out in April but gives the title as THE PRIVATE LIFE OF TARZAN.

Farmer gets a brief interview with John Clayton.

The book SON OF TARZAN has sparked much debate among ERB fans. Without going into great detail the problem is that the dates in "Son" don't line up with the rest of the Tarzan novels. At the end of The Beasts of Tarzan, Jane is breast feeding their son, when "Son" came out 2 years later he was much too old. Farmer's theory is that Korak is actually Tarzan's nephew and since ERB wrote about him as Tarzan's son, he could not write about Tarzan's real son's exploits later. It's all rather complicated. Farmer also has some comments about his interview with Lord Greystoke that just appeared in Esquire magazine.

Farmer writes about where the world of Tarzan and the world of Allan Quatermain intersect. The parents of ERB's Lord Mountford appear in the 1917 Quatermain novel, FINISHED.

Farmer talks about writing DOC SAVAGE: HIS APOCALYPTIC LIFE and dealing with publishers.

Farmer traces Edgar Rice Burroughs geneology all the way back to the Norse god Ygg. Just how far back he should be taken seriously is hard to say.

Forrest J Ackerman was the guest of honor and the convention program contained tributes about Forry from several authors. Farmer's tribute talked about (and reprinted) a letter a young Forry wrote to Amazing Stories in 1932 and about the fact that he has an actual yellow brick road in his backyard.

After Farmer interviewed Lord Greystoke, Greystoke promised him he would send him some portions of his memoirs which he could publish.

An essay by Farmer on the possibily of human babies being raised by animals and the probable outcome of such unusual parentage.

Farmer wrote in to Locus because he didn't want Charles Tanner's death to go unnoticed. He talks about Tanner's career, reading him when he was twelve and meeting him in 1953.

A very good example of Farmer, the scholar and linguist, playing with his favorite material, Tarzan. In The Return of Tarzan, Tarzan has been captured by La in Opar. Farmer goes to great pains to show how they could possibly know a common language (ERB glosses over these things).

This is in reply to Randall Hagan's article in the same issue, The Possible Subconscious Source of Philip José Farmer's Riverworld. Farmer states that while he cannot recall exactly what all the sources for his Riverworld idea were, the main one being John Kendrick Bang's A HOUSEBOAT ON THE STYX, he does admit that he was reading Burton and studying sufism at the time.

This fanzine posed that question and many science fiction luminaries of the day responded. Phil's short answer gives two possible solutions. One very logical solution that was probably suggested by many others. And one funny suggestion involving a third intermediary party that was probably one of the more unique responses.

A short, and hard to read, article on phonemic spelling and the difficulties that dialects would cause in any (or eny or iny) attempts to convert our printed works to this system.

A short biographical essay about Farmer's introduction to science fiction and pulp magazines. He also mentions his rediscovery of Doc Savage when Bantam began reprinting them and his desire to write ESCAPE FROM LOKI, which he finally did, 15 years later.

Here's the story: Back in the 1930s a wealthy collector paid Maxwell Grant (author of The Shadow) and Kenneth Robeson (author of Doc Savage, The Avengers) large sums of money to write stories just for him. Since the two authors were friends they decided to make each other the heroes or antiheroes of their tales. Sixteen such stories were written and have fallen into the hands of Philip José Farmer. See Savage Shadow on the short story page for the first of these stories.

Farmer wrote the introduction to the section on religion and myth for the encyclopedia.

Farmer writes a detailed biography of Jonathon Swift Somers III, describing his lineage (he is related to Kilgore Trout) and his childhood. You can read this article online here at Carl Bennet's Publications page.

This article is a speech given by Farmer at Facts about SF:The Writers Speak, ten week series of SF lectures, April 5 - June 7 1978. Farmer takes his novel TWO HAWKS FROM EARTH as an example and explains what research and extrapolating he did about the world (an Earth where North and South America never rose from the oceans) where the story takes place. All this had to be done for background details before he began writing the story itself.

A very interesting 37 page autobiography which takes us up to 1952.

In his one page essay Farmer discusses the enduring characters in The Wizard Of Oz and how public demand kept Baum writing Oz books after he had tired of them.

  • 20TH CENTURY FICTION, 1985 (First appearance)
  • Also appeared as Witches and Gnomes and Talking Animals, Oh My in: PEARLS FROM PEORIA, Subterranean Press, 2006 hardcover

In this short essay Farmer talks about Burroughs early career and how his writing style is only suited to works of fantasy. He also discusses Burroughs' most important character, Tarzan, at length.

  • 20TH CENTURY FICTION, 1985 (First appearance)
  • PEARLS FROM PEORIA, Subterranean Press, 2006 hardcover

In this article about the demise of the science fiction digest If Farmer talks about Fredrick Pohl's urging him to expand his Riverworld idea into a series of novelettes as well as a some of the other stories that appeared in If.

Phil writes about his long time friend, and fellow ERB enthusiast, Vern Coriell. (Vern was also the publisher of the Fokker D-LXIX Press edition of A FEAST UNKNOWN)

This introduction accompanies the first edition of VENUS ON THE HALF-SHELL to published under Phil's name instead, of under "Kilgore Trout." He tells the history of writing the book.

In this long entry Phil discussed "the journey" as a story setting both in science fiction as well as in ancient and classical literature. Often the story is not about what happens when the characters arrive at their destination, but about their adventures just trying to get there, that journeys are learning and testing experiences. The article then discusses many of the forms of space travel that have been used in both science fiction novels and "proto-SF," books written before Gernsback, from Francis Bacon to Cyrano de Bergerac to Edgar Alan Poe and many others. This book also has an entry about Farmer.

Phil once again tackles one of his favorite topics; humans raised by animals. Here he puts forth that feral-men stories have been with us since the dawn of man. Though many of these are based on myths or legends there are literary examples, not supposed to be based on real events, that date back a thousand years. The author of this story, Abu ibn Tufayl, was a Sufi, another topic that Farmer is particularly interested in.

Phil wrote one of many remembrances of his long time close friend Robert Bloch. There is also and interesting long career restrospective.

One of many remembrances of Dede Weil, wife of Gary K. Wolfe and a close personal friend of the Farmer's. There is also a picture of Bette Farmer with Dede Weil.

This speech was Phil's keynote address to the "Normal Beans" at the 75th anniversary dinner of the publication of TARZAN OF THE APES.

Phil was the Guest of Honor at the 1992 Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts where he delivered this speech. The original version of it appeared in a French magazine which asked that question of 400 authors.

Several quotes by Phil talking about his life.

A letter to the editor of the local newspaper, from Phil, but signed "Kilgore Trout," where he suggests the city convert the abandoned Pabst brewery to a brothel. He then elaborates on the economic benefits of his plan.

This is a speech Phil gave to a chapter of the Baker Street Irregulars (most probably the El Paso, Texas, based Mexborough Lodgers) in 1975. In it he speculates on Holmes' adventures during "the great hiatus."

This article contains three detailed proposals for books Phil wanted to write. One on the lives of great fictional detectives, one on fictional heroes and villians and their real life counterparts and the third based on the memoirs of Sir William Clayton, "a very adventurous and horny Englishman who lived from 1799 to 1902."

Phil gave this speech as the Guest of Honor at Balticon II in 1977. He discussed his plan to write a novel about life in the science fiction world.

In the 1970s, after designing Lord Greystoke's coat of arms, Phil began one for Doc Wildman but never completed it. After months of studying Phil's notes, Win Scott Eckert conveyed the design to artist Keith Howell who produced a stunning finished product.

This speech was given sometime in the second half of 1981. Phil begins by saying that science fiction takes in all fields of human thought and activity, but then he ends up with a theory proving that God is not omnipotent.

Four handwritten pages of notes (along with a typed transcription) from the late 1930s where Phil first describes the character Kickaha, who happens to be an "Amerindleocentaur," and a World of Tiers called Myadz.

A long prayer that asks not for the impossible, just the necessary, please no more computer glitches!

This tribute to Robert Bloch was found in Farmer's files. It may have been written for a convention program, but to date this has not been verified.