What's New First Year Archive


September 9th 2002:
We have made a lot of additions to the page this month but so far we have not had the time to add to the Lovers Celebration Page. We should have lots of pictures online soon, but in the mean time you should check out this page by by Lee J Barrie and this page at the International Bibliography.

Here is some really, really big news: One of Phil's previously unpublished stories is set to appear in a magazine in Bermuda (birthplace of Kilgore Trout) at the end of September, along with a PJF collector's confessional and reminiscence of Peoria. By the middle of October we should have copies, signed by Phil, available here at the site to buy. Check back here for details.

Artist Jason Robert Bell brought a series of pictures based on The Lovers to the event to display. We have pictures of them on our new Lovers Art Page. Jason still has a few of them left if you are interested in buying one. He was nice enough to let me choose one as a gift and I picked "The End".

More big news, if you are a Farmer completist. Craig Kimber, a long time contributor to the web page has a found an article by Philip Jos Farmer that we never new existed! "Report" appeared in Luna 6, 1969. The description of the article can be found on the Articles Page. If you have ever wanted to see your name right here on the index page, this is a great way to do it. Find something written by Phil that we don't have listed here on the page. Send me a scan of the cover and a copy of the article and I will forever be in your debt.

We also have two new items on the Fan Articles page. The first one, Swift with a Ray Gun: Gulliver Travels to The World of Tiers, by Stephen F. McCann is the type of article I wish I had the time (and talent) to write. Someone could spend the rest of their life researching all of the books that have influenced Farmer's career. The second article, Who Inhabits Riverworld?, is infact by me and will show you what kind of article I can write. Not nearly as indepth as Stephen's but as I was rereading the Riverworld anthologies these things just jumped out at me.

We have also had some time to add some more content to the site. What used to be the Convention Programs page is now the Conventions and Events page. It may not sound like a big difference but the old page only had scans of convention programs that I (Mike) had in my collection. The page now lists any convention or event that Phil attended. It is by no means complete and we will continue to add to it as we find new information. One interesting addition to this page is a listing for Riders of the Purple Wage which was adapted as a play in 1989. Phil attended the premier and we have a photo of him with the cast.

Back in the June update we said that if you did not already own a hardcover first printing of TO YOUR SCATTERED BODIES GO, you have probably missed your chance. At the time non-ex-lib copies had jumped to $1625, $1000, $900, $900, $850 and $750 at www.abebooks.com. Since then the prices have jumped again to $1875, $1625, $1500, $1000, $900, $850 and $750. Also the prices of THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT with three copies at $400 and higher, have also jumped. Back in June I think $350 was the highest price being asked for the hardcover first printing of the second book in the Riverworld series. I wouldn't be surprised if in a few months copies of THE DARK DESIGN start selling for $150.

Oh yea, the hit counter says had 22,170 hits by the afternoon of the 9th.
August 14th 2002:
**This just in - An Oz flag was stolen from the Farmer's front yard over the weekend, check out the PJF Forum for more details.**

If the attendees are to be believed, the 50th Anniversary Celebration of The Lovers, held Saturday in Peoria, was a success. Things started off slowly with only four people showing up Friday afternoon to play disc golf. In a complete turn around there was a pretty full crowd of over 25 who got together for an informal dinner at Perkin's Friday night. I'm sure they are all glad they did come as Phil & Bette Farmer showed up with relatives Danny & Laurie Adams and author/friend Gary Wolfe.

Saturday at 2:00 Maggie Nelson, Head of Public Relations for the Peoria Public Library, introduced Rick Beaulieu who began the festivities by presenting Phil with a plaque commemorating the day, from the International Philip Jos Farmer Fan Club. This fan club has previously only existed in a few pocket universes but is considering opening a branch here. Rick then introduced Shannon Robicheaux who presented Phil and Bette with a drawing of them as The Lovers, done from a 1954 newspaper clipping. This drawing was also used as the cover for booklets which were handed out later at the end of the book signing. Shannon also did a great sketch of a typical PJF book signing which was used in the center of the booklet. 15 poster-sized copies of the drawing, signed by Phil and Shan were nearly sold out Friday night sight unseen for $25 each.

Maggie next introduced Michael Croteau who read a speech about how big a deal The Lovers was when it first appeared in the August 1952 issue of Startling Stories. He also talked about the number of letters that poured into both Startling Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories mentioning the story. Michael ended his talk with the question "How well has The Lovers stood up after all these years?" and then introduced Tracy Knight who answered that question by reading letters from other science fiction authors, sent to Phil to help celebrate the anniversary. The letters came from; Gene Wolfe, Jane Yolen, Joe Haldeman, Piers Anthony, Robert Sheckley, Bruce Sterling, David Brin, Ed Gorman, Joe L. Hensley, David Drake, Jean M. Auel, Julian May, Frederik Pohl, Michael Bishop, Andre Norton, Kim Stanley Robinson, Michael Moorcock, James Gunn, Howard V. Hendrix, Larry Niven, Michael Swanwick, Gary Wolfe and Kilgore Trout. Apologies to Michael Toman who's letter arrived too late to be used.

Next followed a book signing session that Phil, now 84, cut short around 3:30 because he was feeling tired. Mike and Rick then passed out booklets (we like to think of them as little convention programs) which contained letters that appeared in SS and TWS in the 1950's about The Lovers, most of the letters from the above authors and reprinted a really wonderful piece by Harlan Ellison that he wrote when Phil won the Nebula Grand Master Award last year.

We also introduced a few
new items that you can buy on the web page.

Over the next week or so we will be creating a page for The 50th Anniversary of The Lovers and adding pictures, so check back daily. To those authors who contributed a letter for the event, thank you very much for sharing your memories with us. We will be sending you a copy of the booklet in the next few days.

Oh yea, the hit counter says we broke the 20,000 mark by racking up 20,098 hits (to the index page) by this morning's update.
July 13th 2002:
Special Update: After the celebration at the library, Phil and Bette Farmer, and about 30 of Phil's fans, will be having dinner together. If want to join us you need to go to the bottom of the Upcoming Appearances page for full details.
July 9th 2002:
Another month has flown by with not too many additions to the web page. The hits keep coming in as the hit counter now says that we have had 17598 hits to the index page. The first 6 months or so after we became the official web site, we concentrated on adding a lot of large picture files. Since then we have been working on adding text to the site. Unfortunately, the timeline that I (Mike) have been promising for months is not done because I have decided to greatly expand it. I promise it will be worth the wait.

A few people have sent emails saying they are disappointed that the Reviews page only contains scans of magazine covers and a brief description of the review. After seeing several other web pages that reprinted old reviews in full we decided to do it as well. Having recently purchased a large lot of old Locus magazines the first bunch of reviews are all from the pages of that great fanzine. We will be adding more reviews as we can.

Here is some big news on the movie front; A Dayworld film titled Tuesday World is being filmed in Argentina! Check out the movies link for some still shots from the set.

Once again the big news here is the 50th Anniversary Celebration of The Lovers, to be held August 10th in Peoria Illinois. We hope to have lots of surprises at the event so please try to come! As we stated before, the library will have a table set up selling copies of Phil's books that are still in print. The exciting news is that there will be a second table set up for selling used books. The items that we are selling for Phil here on the page will be available at the event. There should be room at that table for one or two book dealers. So, if you have a large selection of really good Farmer books, can travel to Peoria, and are willing to make a donation to the library, please contact us soon as space is limited!

Here are the few picture files we have added this month; A Review slip for the reprint of THE GATES OF CREATION with the Boris cover. The variant cover from the 17th and 18th printing of THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT. Edited by the legandary Forest J. Ackerman, BEST SCIENCE FICTION FOR 1973 contains the only reprint of Seventy Years of Decpop.

Next month's update will be a few days late. The big event is on the Saturday the 10th, so expect the next update to be on either Monday the 12th or Tuesday the 13th.

June 10th 2002:
Since this became the Official PJF site on October 9th 2001, I have been updating this page on the 9th of the month (and sometimes more often). This month I was away for the weekend so the update is one day late, I doubt anyone would have noticed if I hadn't mentioned it. As I type this, the hit counter (which only counts hits to the index page) says 15,376 hits since October 9th.

The biggest news and additions to the web page over the last month have centered around the Upcoming Appearances page. We hope this event will be even bigger than last year's Living Legend Reception. Phil is making fewer appearances every year, this could be your last chance to meet him. I have read a lot of books and articles about science fiction authors. One thing I find when reading about Phil, more than any other author, is how everyone says what a really nice and truly great human being he is. It is like everyone who meets him, comes away with the same feeling of awe. From the rawest fanzine interviewer to the harshest critic, to all the other science fiction writers who have spent time with Phil, they all agree that they have never met anyone more gracious. This is your last warning, don't miss this opportunity to meet him, and honor him with your presence. Saturday August 10th should be something special. If you intend to go to The Lovers Celebration, please email Mike so I can add your name to the list.

There is a new entry on the Fan Fiction page. A well written story that feels like the original Riverworld stories. As an aside here, I am currently re-reading TALES OF RIVERWORLD and while most of the stories are well done, and have interesting characters from history interacting, you have to wonder if some of these authors have ever read a Riverworld novel. It's almost like someone just gave them the premise for Riverworld and that was enough, they didn't read the books to get the feel of life on the River. I have to say the Every Man A God by Mike Resnick and Barry Malzberg has one of the greatest resurectees in Caligula. Him telling people that he is a god and ordering them to carry him on his back (among other things) is too much. But getting back to the new story, My Love, by John Thompson; he has obviously read the riverworld books and is familiar with daily life there. I can't really say much about the story and what I liked about it without spoiling it for those who have not read it yet. Perhaps in a couple of days I will post a message about it on the PJF Forum.

If you collect Farmer and you do not yet own a hardcover 1st printing of TO YOUR SCATTERED BODIES GO you may have missed your chance. Apparently the Riverworld TV series (no news at this time) has caused book dealers to raise their prices for the first book in the series. Just a couple of years ago you could find Very Good copies (not ex-lib) for $300 - $400. If you search www.abebooks.com for this title and sort by "Highest Price" you will find copies selling for; $1625, $1000, $900, $900, $850 and $750. If you are willing to take an ex-library copy you can find them for $250, $175, $135 and $42. You could decide to just go with the Easton Press leatherbound reprint, prices for them range between $25 and $90, and there are 19 copies available right now on ABE. You could buy the Gregg Press hardcover reprint (rarer than the Easton Press), there is one copy right now for $40. You might consider buying the British hardcover 1st printing, but right now on ABE there are only 3 copies. The only one in the US is an ex-lib and the best looking copy, well just how much do you think it would cost to have the book shipped from South Africa? On second thought, if you collect Farmer and you don't already have the hardcover 1st printing (and you don't have very deep pockets) you might just want to give up now. One less collector out there is less competition for me and I'd be happy to let you list what you have collected so far for sale on the PJF Forum. :-)
May 9th 2002:
If you have not been checking the PJF Forum lately you will have missed the big news about DAYWORLD. On April 3rd Matthew Beermann posted a message alerting us to a proposed tv show called On the Seventh Day. It's description at scifi.com sounded remarkably similar to the story line of DAYWORLD. Phil's agent became involved and the results of that, so far, were posted at the Locus Online website.

As for additions to the web page, we have added thumbnail pages for all of the books on the Short Story Collections and Books Edited pages. We've also redone the Publisher's Materials, and the Fan Art, pages as thumbnail pages. Speaking of Fan Art, there is one new piece from Philippe Pastor, a French fan who recently gave a talk about Farmer at a French scifi convention. If you can read French and are interested, you can email him and he will send you a copy of his speech, a 41 page rich text document.

I have removed the "PJF Book of the Month" link from the navagation bar for two reasons. (1), it was difficult to keep track of and extract the messages from the Forum that related to the books being discussed, even though (2), everyone seems to have abandoned the discussions! Perhaps the problem is that many people didn't want to re-read the Riverworld series and would rather read something else. I would like to see the Book of the Month discussions continue so I would like to nominate the following books for dicsussion: FLESH, THE STONE GOD AWAKENS, TARZAN ALIVE, THE ADVENTURES OF THE PEERLESS PEER, ESCAPE FROM LOKI or perhaps a book that all Farmer fans must read, STRANGE RELATIONS. If anyone would like to second any of these, please post a message on the PJF Forum.

The Calendar of Events link at the Peoria Public Library has only been updated through July, but if you live in the Peoria area and can get your hands on a copy of the library's newsletter you will find the following announcement:
Philip Jos Farmer August 10 2:00 p.m. Lakeview Branch Library
"A Lovers Celebration: The 50th Anniversary of Philip Jos Farmer's Hugo Award Winning Novel The Lovers." The PJF International Fan Club comes to Peoria for the 50th Anniversary Celebration of Farmer's groundbreaking Science Fiction Novel The Lovers. Tributes from other Science Fiction Grand Masters will be read. Books available for sale and signing. Reception sponsored by Friends of Peoria Public Library.

We are actually celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the novella (or is it a novelet) which was printed in the August 1952 issue of Startling Stories and not the novel which was an expansion of the original novella and published in 1961. Also, the story didn't win the Hugo award (an easy mistake to make as I made the same mistake when I first created this web page, and that was only the first of many errors Phil pointed out to me when I first showed him the site), but Phil did win the Hugo for Most Promising New Talent based mostly on the strength of The Lovers. Not that I am trying to criticize the Library! We are very grateful for their enthusiasm and all they are doing, and have done in the past, to honor Phil.

For those of us who care about such things, the web counter hit 13012 today.

April 9th 2002:
Yet another month has flown by with much less work getting done on the web page than hoped. I could just say that we finally finished adding thumbnail pages to every entry on the Books page and not list all the new thumbnail pages, but since we have listed them all individualy to this point we might as well continue. Here they are: A BARNSTORMER IN OZ, GODS OF RIVERWORLD, RIVER OF ETERNITY, DAYWORLD, DAYWORLD REBEL, DAYWORLD BREAKUP, RED ORC'S RAGE, ESCAPE FROM LOKI, THE CATERPILLAR'S QUESTION, MORE THAN FIRE, NOTHING BURNS IN HELL, NAKED CAME THE FARMER and THE DARK HEART OF TIME.

We will begin doing thumbnail pages for the books on the Short Story Collections page next, but since we already had the large scans of most of them done, I went ahead and made a thumbnail page for the uncorrected proofs. This is my new favorite page on the site. Those of you who are book collectors know that having your books all lined up on a shelf is sometimes not enough. You want to take them and spread them all out across the table/bed/floor so you can look at them all at once. That's what I am getting from the new Uncorrected Proofs page.

Keep an eye on the Upcoming Appearances page. We will be adding details about the 50th Anniversary of The Lovers Celebration as they come in.

In this past month, fans posting messages on the PJF Forum have made real contributions to this page. John Angelo posted two sketches that are now in the Fan Art section of the Site Index page (the fan art section may be the most logical place for the next thumbnail page). Christopher Carey mentioned that the new book, Nebula Awards Showcase 2002, features an essay, "Philip Jose Farmer: An Appreciation" by Robert Silverberg, as well as a transcription of Phil's acceptance speech for the SFWA Grand Master Award. I ran out an bought it yesterday. The biggest splash of all was the post by Matthew Beermann who noticed a description of an upcoming tv show titled On the Seventh Day that sounds an awful lot like DAYWORLD. We notified Phil, who immediately contacted his agent to look into this. As of today, April 9th, Phil had not heard back from his agent.

Once again Rick, the mostly silent partner of the PJF Home Page, managed to do something that I have had near the top of my todo list for a couple of years. On the left side of this screen you will notice that we now have the ability to search the Official PJF Home Page. We have excluded the Forum pages from the search because they registered nearly half the hits and made searching through the search results rather tedious. We have however included the other PJF sites hosted here, so a search will find documents in the Wold Newton Universe and Secret History of the WNU pages as well as the main PJF pages.

In the last week we have sold four signed copies of WORLD OF TIERS Volume 1 for Phil. Make sure you get your copy before they are all gone! Once again this is just for posterity, as of today the hit counter says we have had 10946 visitors.

March 9th 2002:
The first change to the page this month is the menu of links on the left side of the screen. For those of you new to the page, the Site Index link will take you to the bulk of the links for this web site; lists of Farmer's books, stories, articles and much much more. The list of 'Other PJF sites hosted here' is just the beginning of Farmer related web pages by his fans that we hope to add the site. If you have been thinking about doing a web page about Phil now is a good time to get it online. This month we have added Dennis E. Power's Secret History of the Wold Newton Universe. Dennis has already contributed to this page in the past with an Article and two stories for the Fan Fiction page.

Rick and I have been very busy this month and have added the following thumbnail pages; HADON OF ANCIENT OPAR, VENUS ON THE HALF SHELL, IRONCASTLE, FLIGHT TO OPAR, THE DARK DESIGN, THE LAVALITE WORLD , DARK IS THE SUN, JESUS ON MARS, THE MAGIC LABYRINTH, RIVERWORLD WAR, and THE UNREASONING MASK. That only leaves 13 books on the Books page and then we move on the Short Story Collections page and who knows after that. This is one of those projects that may never end!

I don't normally point out individual scans that have been added to the page, but I have been looking for THE DIGITAL WRISTWATCH OF PHILIP K. DICK by Richard A. Lupoff, Canyon Press, 1985, for so long that I thought it warranted mention here. This title is listed on the Forewords page and many of the items shown on this page are very hard to come by. While we are on the Forewords page, I'd also like to mention that THE ASTONISHED EYE by Tracy Knight, PS Publishing, 2001, has been nominated by the International Horror Guild in the category Best First Novel. Tracy had this to say about it "It was quite a surprise not only because I had no expectation it'd be recognized for anything, but that it was recognized as horror. Life is interesting". Let's keep our fingers crossed that the publicity will help get Tracy a US paperback publisher so the book will be more easily available and affordable.

I have created a new page to keep track of the messages left on the PJF Forum regarding the PJF Book of the Month. Hopefully putting the link here on the main page will make it more visable and get more people involved in the discussions. The book for March is THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT.

I have not spoken to Phil since I mailed him the birthday emails but I did speak with Bette. She said they really appreciated the well wishes and enjoyed reading them very much. She started to say "We really like that one..." but she didn't finish her thought. So if you are one of the people who sent Phil a birthday wish, I'm sure it was your's she was talking about.

Don't forget we are selling signed copies of WORLD OF TIERS Volume 1 for Phil. Get yours while they last!

As of Saturday March 9th the web counter says we have had an even 8900 visitors.
February 9th 2002:
Thanks to all of you who sent Phil a birthday greeting! I will print and mail them on Monday the 11th, so you have until then to send your happy birthday wishes to Phil via mike@pjfarmer.com. I hate to sound too crass or commercial but if you would like to get Phil a nice present, you could buy yourself a signed copy of WORLD OF TIERS Volume 1 so I can send him a nice big check.

Rick and I managed to add six new thumbnail pages between January 9th and the 26th, but we have only added three more since then; DOC SAVAGE: HIS APOCALYPTIC LIFE, TRAITOR TO THE LIVING and THE ADVENTURES OF THE PEERLESS PEER. We also made an addition to TARZAN ALIVE, thanks to Zacharias pointing out the second Popular Library printing.

Big News! Win Eckert's Wold Newton Universe site is reprinting online some of the more obscure articles by Farmer that are about Wold Newton related topics. He has four articles online now; The Arms of Tarzan, A Reply to the "Red Herring", The Two Lord Ruftons and The Great Korak-Time Discrepancy. And there are more to come!

Speaking of Wold Newton, and original texts being reproduced online, you may want to check out Mark Brown's Wold Newton Chronicles which, besides containing many interesting fan articles, reproduces the articles from all of the original issues of Wold Newton Atlas.

Hopefully all of the above reading won't keep you too busy to read TO YOUR SCATTERED BODIES GO this month and join in on the discussion on the PJF Forum. In my opening post to the Forum I suggested a "PJF Book of the Month Club" where we can read and discuss a different book each month. In honor of the Riverworld TV series that is now in production I suggested that we start with TO YOUR SCATTERED BODIES GO. I asked if we should then read the entire Riverworld series but many of you have emailed me suggesting we read some of Farmer's lesser known books. Choosing the next book could be as much fun as reading and discussing it.

And speaking of the Forum, we are very pleased with the amount of activity it has had in its first two weeks. We think that the Forum is what is bringing people back every day and has caused our hit counter to register 500 more hits than the last two months. As I type this at 1:52 am on the 9th, we have had 6947 visitors, that is 2200 since January 9th.
January 26th 2002:
Today is Philip Jos Farmer's 84th birthday! I probably should have done this a few weeks ago but it didn't occur to me. If you would like to send a birthday wish (something longer that "happy birthday" please!) send your message to mike@pjfarmer.com. I'll wait 2 weeks and then print them all out and mail them to Phil. I'd love to send him a real thick stack of messages so think of something nice and interesting to say to Phil and send it to me.

Rick and I have been busy adding thumbnail pages since the last update, take a look at these; THE FABULOUS RIVERBOAT, THE WIND WHALES OF ISHMAEL, TARZAN ALIVE, TIME'S LAST GIFT and THE OTHER LOG OF PHILEAS FOGG. We have also gone back and added more scans to many of the older thumbnail pages, so keep checking those.

For those of you who have not visited our items for sale page, now is a good time to take a look. Not only can you buy copies of unpublished manuscripts (I still can't get over that!) but we now have some of Farmer's file copies of WORLD OF TIERS Volume 1. These are the hardcovers published by Tor in 1996, not the book club versions and they are signed by Philip Jos Farmer!

Some of you have read elsewhere on the internet that Phil had a stroke a few weeks ago, and many of you emailed Rick and I to find out how he is doing. Phil is doing well and should recover completely. He has been a little depressed and tired since the stroke (mostly because of the medication he's taking) and I'm sure a bunch of birthday wishes from his fans would do a lot to cheer him up!

One final addition to the page to note here. We now have our own PJF Forum where we can discuss the works of Philip Jos Farmer. Click on the above link and post your thoughts!

January 9th 2002:
The holidays certainly cut into the time that Rick and I have been able to work on the web page, in the past month we have only added one new thumbnail page, and that was for TO YOUR SCATTERED BODIES GO. Also new to TO YOUR SCATTERED BODIES GO is an Unabridged Audio Book. For those of you who listen to books on tape as much as I do, this is exciting news!

We have added another scan for LOVE SONG as we discovered that the hardcover has two different dust jackets. We are trying to narrow down where the cut off is, so if you have a copy of this book, please email us and tell us which jacket you have and which number it is.

Win Eckert, has accepted Rick's offer of unlimited web space and moved his great web page, The Wold Newton Universe to this site. Click on the link and you will see it is now being hosted here at www.pjfarmer.com. Keep watching his page as I hear he is talking with Phil Farmer himself about some additions to the web site.

Another Farmer related site you need to keep an eye on is Riverworld: the unofficial home page. Jim Foreman already has five of the cast members listed with their bios. This site will only get more and more interesting as the airing of the TV pilot approaches.

And while we are talking about other Philip Jos Farmer web pages, I want to put in a plug for Zacharias's site, The International Bibliography. As I'm sure many of you have spent hours checking out all of the pages on this site, I find myself spending hours looking through his great web page. I have found items on this page that I didn't know about. If you have any non-English Farmer items that you don't see on his page, send him an email, he would probably love a scan.

This is just for posterity, the Official site is now three months old and the hit counter says we have had 4747 visitors.

December 9th 2001:
Here is something new for the techno-savvy Farmer fan, DAYWORLD is now out as an ebook. Hopefully we will see more of these soon.

If you have never gone to the Fan Articles page and read Christopher Carey's three articles about ESCAPE FROM LOKI, what are you waiting for? The first two articles were originally published in The Bronze Gazette and then reprinted here. The third article was originally printed here, but has just come out in The Bronze Gazette. You can email Howard Wright to order the November issue, if you would rather have the article in print instead of reading it online. These are the type of articles that I wish I could write!

We added a new page in the "Stuff only a Collector would care about" section. Take a look at the three Box Sets that have been put out by U.S. publishers (at least that we know of). Hopefully by the next update we will have scans of a British Riverworld box set.

We somehow found the time to add twelve new thumbnail pages; THE GATES OF CREATION, THE GATE OF TIME, NIGHT OF LIGHT, A PRIVATE COSMOS, IMAGE OF THE BEAST , A FEAST UNKNOWN, BLOWN, BEHIND THE WALLS OF TERRA, LORD OF THE TREES, THE MAD GOBLIN, LOVE SONG and THE STONE GOD AWAKENS.

I did not however, find the time to finish the Timeline page as I said I would do by this update. Maybe by the next one.

Don't forget, you can get your own email address ending in @pjfarmer.com for only $2.50 per year.

The Official site is now two months old and the hit counter says we have had 3043 visitors. That is 1701 hits for the second month compared to 1342 for the first month.

November 9th 2001:
Today we have been the Official site for one month, and as I begin to type this update we have had 1342 visitors. Not bad. Having the counter is kind of neat, but I have gotten into the habit of looking at it every day. I saw it hit 777 visitors (the number of times Richard Burton commited suicide before the Ethicals caught him) and 1000 visitors (but I forgot the date!).

2001 seems to be Phil's year for Awards. The 2001 World Fantasy Convention was just held in Montreal and Phil won the Life Achievement Award. Phil was unable to attend the convention, but I will try to get a picture of the award online as soon as he receives it.

As promised I have added a scan of an actual "Kilgore Trout" signature to the Signatures page.

Here is something you can buy yourself for Christmas. How would you like to have your very own email address that ends with @pjfarmer.com! I tried to tell Rick we could make people give us signed books for these, but he has decided to let them go for only $2.50 per year. Quick, get your email address before he comes to his senses!

We have added four new thumbnail pages; INSIDE OUTSIDE, TONGUES OF THE MOON, THE MAKER OF UNIVERSES and DARE. This process is taking a long time, but Rick and I are adding many different printings that weren't on the page before, so I hope they will be worth the wait. We've also added scans for Burroughs Bulletin, #12, The Pontine Dossier, April 1969, Erbania, #28 and DEN NEVERWHERE.

To those of you who sent me some of Phil's old addresses, thank you very much. I finally decided to call Bette Farmer and ask for her help and amazingly she ran right down the list, even remembering some house numbers, let alone streets. So that part of the timeline is done. I hope to have the timeline page completed before I update the index page again in a couple of weeks.

October 19th 2001:
The first 10 days of being the "Official" site have been a lot of fun as we have gotten congrats from dozens of people and had over 450 visitors. Work on the page has been slow, we have only added two more thumbnail pages; THE CACHE FROM OUTER SPACE and FIRE AND THE NIGHT. I have added a page that used to be on the site but some how got lost. In the Stuff only a Collector would care about: section you will find a link for Philip Jos Farmer's signature. Rick has told me that the Kilgore Trout signature that is in Collecting Philip Jos Farmer, The Illustrated Guide, Volume 1 has been a big help to him so I will add that to the page soon. One other update is the addition of the October 2001 issue of Firsts to the Articles about Farmer page.

I have been working almost every day on the Timeline page so keep checking back for that. For some unknown reason, I am interested in tracking all the addresses where Phil has lived in Peoria (this is to help support my theory that Phil is part Gypsy). If you know of an address and have an idea of when he moved there please let me know.

Near the bottom of this page you will see the What's New Archive link. When I used to update this main page I would add a paragraph or two to the top of the page and remove about the same amount of text from the bottom. I decided to start saving these updates and changing all the text each time I update this page. Hopefully I will have enough news each time to fill it up.

Tracy Knight is one of the authors of NAKED CAME THE FARMER, a personal friend of the Farmer's and Bette Farmer's favorite new writer. As I mentioned on the last update to the Unofficial page, Phil has written an introduction to Tracy's new book THE ASTONISHED EYE. This book is already a collector's item as it is limited to 500 copies and they are all signed by Tracy, Phil and the cover artist Alan M. Clark. If you are thinking about getting the book, let me recommend it. I've bought it, read it, and really enjoyed it. In fact, like many of Farmer's books, it's one of those that you can't stop thinking about for days after you've finished it and are already half way through another book. But don't take my word for it, check out this review from Horror World.
October 9th 2001:
Welcome to the new "Official" Philip Jos Farmer Home Page! The "Unofficial" page had been coasting along quite nicely for five years now when I got an email from fellow Farmer collector Rick Beaulieu. He first asked me if I had ever contacted Phil about making the page official. The answer to that question is, yes I did, four and a half years ago, when the page really didn't deserve the "official stamp". A few weeks ago I called Phil and he gave the page his official blessing.

Rick's second question was, would I be willing to let him pay for a domain name and a web hosting deal with unlimited disk space. Since I had long ago filled up my 10 meg of web space I jumped at the chance. So here we are at www.pjfarmer.com and we are working on improvements and additions to the page.

The first addition to the page is an
Awards page with actual photos of all of Phil's Hugos and his 2001 Nebula Grand Master Award. We also have several pages with lots of photographs from the Living Legend Reception given for Phil by the Peoria Public Library in honor of Grand Master.

Due to the limited web space on the old page, the images were scanned at 72 dpi and reduced to 50% (thus making them 36 dpi). These pictures are nice and small so they load fast and don't eat up disk space, but it is hard to see much detail in them. One of the most exciting additions to the new web page will be thumbnail pages with links to larger images. The larger images will be scanned at 75 dpi making them a little more than twice the size of smaller images. These thumbnail page were Rick's idea and his first, of what I hope will be many, contribution to the page. Right now on the books page we have our first thumbnail pages for THE GREEN ODYSSEY, FLESH, A WOMAN A DAY, THE LOVERS and LORD TYGER. Since we have to rescan nearly every book on the web page, these thumbnail pages will be added slowly.

*** This just in! Phil called me and told me that he heard from his agent and filming for the Riverworld pilot will begin in November! The show should air on the scifi channel in April or May of 2002!