Université d’Avignon

Antoine RUIZ

Maîtrise d’Anglais

Septembre 1995

REDEMPTION

in Philip José FARMER’s

RIVERWORLD

SCHEDULE

INTRODUCTION

A) Redemption: precise meaning

B) The setting

C) The plot

1) Sidestream tales

2) Mainstream books

a) To Your Scattered Bodies Go

b) The Fabulous Riverboat

c) The Dark Design

d) The Magic Labyrinth

e) Gods of Riverworld

D) Inspiration sources

I) THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT

A) Christian vision of redemption

B) Other religious visions

1) Sufism

2) Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism and Taoism

a) Taoism

b) Buddhism

c) Hinduism

d) Confucianism

e) Zen

3) "Secondary" religions featured in Riverworld

C) Riverworld's native religion: the Second Chance

1) Foundation of the Church

2) Salvation

3) The "Wathan"

4) Faith

D) Paralells

1) The Riverplanet and the Garden of Eden

2) The Riverplanet and the Purgatory

3) The Ethicals and the antique gods

II) THE PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECT

A) Farmer as a Christian philosopher ?

1) Comparison

2) Sin

3) Evil

B) Philosophy versus metaphysics ?

C) Science as a religion

D) Who is "Man" ?

1) Redemption for all

2) A universal message ?

E) Is immortality liveable ?

F) Salvation, Faith and Truth

III) THE LITERARY ASPECT

A) Frank Baker and Richard Francis Burton

B) Samuel Langhorne Clemens, alias Mark Twain

C) Peter Jairus Frigate: a science fiction writer.

D) Jack London

E) Jules Verne

F) Alice in Wonderland

G) Philip Jose Farmer

IV) LIVING THE SECOND CHANCE

A) Individuals

1) Burton: Championing free will

2) Clemens: Running after dreams and chased by fate.

3) Loga: an example of regression

4) Goring: an example of convertion

B) Society

1) Political structures: break or continuity ?

2) New data

a) Geography

b) A new melting-pot

3) Parolando

4) Theleme

5) Virolando

6) Soul City

CONCLUSION

WORKS CITED

A LETTER FROM PHILIP JOSE FARMER

INTRODUCTION

A second chance...

What would you do if you were given a second chance ?

What would all men and women existing and having ever existed do if they were resurrected at the age of twenty-five, supplied with food and clothes, free from threats such as diseases, ageing, predators and... death ? Would they be better or worse ? Would they even change ?...

To these questions, Philip José Farmer proposes a two-thousand-page answer: The Riverworld Saga.

A) Redemption: precise meaning

The term of redemption in this essay will not be interpreted exclusively in the light of Christian theology but in a larger sense. It should be understood as "the capability of making different choices (better choices) the second time they occur". These are not simple choices made once in a while which have no actual influence over one's existence, but "life choices" which actually condition one's character and general behaviour. That is why they can only arise during a second life, an "action replay".

Redemption is also associated with other concepts: atonement, debt, price, and ransom which echo Owe For The Flesh, the former title of To Your Scattered Bodies Go. "Long past due to the payment of your debt. . . You owe for the flesh." says God to the main character, Richard Francis Burton (Scattered 11).

In fact, Burton is dreaming, but Farmer often uses dreams in Riverworld. In an interview he confessed: "I love my dreams. . . I even love my nightmares. I don't envy people who can't remember their dreams or who've never been frightened in a nightmare. To remember only your conscious world is to be only half-alive." (1)

Moreover, the You-owe-for-the-flesh dream is a recurrent dream, which underlines the importance of its message: there is a debt to pay in order to be saved, man will not be saved without giving up something.

"Make your Resurrection worth my while, you fool !" says God in the second dream (Scattered 148). "I have gone to great expense and even greater pains to give you, and all those other miserable and worthless wretches, a second chance."

Philip José Farmer once wrote: " I can't see any reason why such miserable, unhappy, vicious, stupid, conniving, greedy, narrow-minded, self-absorbed beings should have immortality. . . . When considering individuals, then I feel, yes, this person, that person certainly deserves another chance... life on this planet is too short, too crowded, too hurried, too beset." (2) God's second speech sounds much like Farmer's opinion. But is not that normal since Farmer is Riverworld's Creator ?

Twenty years later, he added: "... we only have one chance here. And, quite often, not even that. So, in a logical universe ... we're given a second chance." (3)

Here, "not even that" reminds us of a passage in The Fabulous Riverboat (p. 157): "Actually, the term of Second Chance is a misnomer. It is really our First Chance, because we never had a chance for salvation and eternal life while we were on Earth."

In other words, an afterlife must exist, because individuals need more time to carry out their salvation. Otherwise, most of them (if not all them) would be doomed to eternal death.

B) The setting

An ideal field for speculation (some call it "speculative fiction"), science fiction is different from classical literature because of the range of action with which it provides authors. In the Riverworld series, Philip José Farmer explores metaphysical questions, among others, such as: What is the soul ? Does God exist ? What happens after death ? Is reincarnation a myth ?... in a gigantic human and social laboratory.

The Riverworld is taken to be an unknown and distant planet on which a ten-million-mile river, arising and ending in the polar sea, hemmed in by very high cliffs snakes back and forth over the planet (forming a closed-circuit planet-sized labyrinth). In the middle of that sea stands an inaccessible tower called the Big Grail or the Misty Tower or just the Tower.

On each side of the mile-and-a-half-wide River was a

mile-and-a-half-wide grass-grown plain... Trees were

few on the plains, but the foothills were thick with

pine, oak, yew and the irontree. This was a thousand-

foot high plant with gray bark, enormous elephant-ear

leaves, hundreds on thick gnarly branches, roots so

deep and wood so hard that the tree could not be cut,

burned or dug out. Vines bearing large flowers of many

bright colors grew over their branches.

There was a mile or two of foothills, and then the

abruptness of smooth-sided mountains, towering from

20,000 to 30,000 feet, unscalable past the 10,000-foot

mark. (Riverboat 9)

There is no animal life on the planet (not even insects nor germs) except for the river which abounds in fish from various species: "...ranging from creatures six inches long to the sperm whale-sized fish, the 'riverdragon', which lived on the bottom of The River a thousand feet down." (Scattered 94) Originally designed to clean the water, these scavengers are also used to make food and clothes. Worms are also to be found in the ground, some of them eating waste matter and corpses, others serving as normal earthworms and used for fishing.

The vegetation is also composed of the strong rough-edged grass on the slopes on each side of the river, fast-growing bamboo on the hills and lichen at the bottom of the precipitous mountains.

The river is not always the same width, sometimes widening to form a lake, with islands, or narrowing down to a perilous, roaring bottle-neck canyon. On each bank, huge mushroom-shaped gray red-flecked stone structures are spaced a mile apart. These are called the grailstones, the use of which will be explained later.

Over 36 billion humans who lived on Earth between 100,000 B.C. and A.D. 1983 are resurrected on the grassy banks of the river, excepting only imbeciles and children who died before reaching age five. The distribution of these "lazari" does not take into account the time and the place they lived, the language they spoke, the religions and customs they practiced. In each area, the proportions are quite the same: about 60 % of the people are the same nationality and come from the same century, about 30 % come from one other time and place, and about 10 % come from many different times and places. All men have awakened circumcized, like Jews and Moslems, but, unlike them, beardless (4). All women have been resurrected as virgins. But both men and women have been sterilized. And everybody (including children when they have grown up) keeps a twenty-five-year-old body.

Food is not a problem. Although they awake hairless and naked, each lazarus finds a grayish metal cylinder tied to his wrist. Weighing less than a pound, it is nevertheless indestructible. Its diameter is a foot and a half an it is over two and a half feet tall. The resurrectees soon discover that this "grail" has to be put on the top of one of the giant muschroom-shaped stone structures lining the river. Each "grailstone" is about five feet high and its diameter is about fifty feet. The surface of its top contains about 700 round indentations designed to receive the base of a cylinder. Three times a day, electrical discharges, causing a high blue flame on every grailstone and a sound of thunder in the valley, supply the grails that have been set on it with energy converted into food and liquor and various goodies (tobacco or cigarettes, cigars, marihuana, lighters, "dreamgum", lipstick, combs, scissors, toilet paper, soap...). The only trouble is that the menus are not tailored for the individual owner: a Moslem or a Jew can get pork, a Hindu can get meat, and so on.

The twentieth day after resurrection (A.R.), the grails deliver towels of various sizes to be used as clothes and blankets, and Riverdwellers discover that anyone killed is resurrected the next day, again and again. And hair soon reappears everywhere on the body except on the face.

C) The plot

The "sidestream tales" (Riverworld, Crossing the Dark River, Up the Bright River and Coda) are stories mostly focussed on characters and the psychological consequences of their new life in the Riverworld.

Unlike the "Tales", the "mainstream books" tell a breathless epic nonetheless enhanced with deep psychological analyses of the characters and various anthropological and historical parentheses.

1) Sidestream tales

In Riverworld, a novelette written just after The Fabulous Riverboat, Tom Mix (a great cowboy movie star who died in 1940) and Yeshua (Jesus) are burnt on a great bamboo stake by Kramer "The Hammer" (a fanatical seventeenth-century witch hunter).

Crossing the Dark River and Up the Bright River feature Doctor Andrew Paxton Davis, a nineteenth-century osteopath at the service of the Viking-Age King Ivar the Boneless, who is in search of the woman who gave birth to a child in the Riverworld, persuaded she is Mary and that her child is a son. He meets Alfred Jarry, the French writer, calling himself Doctor Faustroll (after one of Jarry's literary characters), who decides to follow him. And Tom Mix appears at the very end of the second tale, when they all start sailing up-River to find the mother and the child.

Coda is a monologue by Alfred Jarry who leaves his companions to become a disciple of Rabi'a, a famous Sufi who lived in the eighth century A.D. .

None of these tales is related to the main plot which deals with the Ethicals, the extra-Terrestrial resurrectors and makers of the Riverplanet, but some characters will appear in the "mainstream books".

2) Mainstream books

a) To Your Scattered Bodies Go

Sir Richard Francis Burton, the nineteenth-century English explorer and translator of the Arabian Nights, is the central character. After his death, he wakes up in a gigantic place (later called "preresurrection bubble") where billions of people are sleeping, naked, lined up, all young and hairless. He is sent back to sleep by two "warders". Then he dreams of God, dressed in Victorian clothes and looking absolutely like Burton himself. God asks him to pay his debt. Finally, Burton awakes on a grassy plain in the Riverworld, with billions of fellow-resurrectees.

The "day of the great shout" is the beginning of a new calendar for mankind, on a new planet with new living conditions, primitive conditions in fact. Security compels humans to group. Burton and his band soon make tools and build a boat. After some 400 days sailing up-River, their boat is captured by "grail slavers", oppressors of a new sort, who enslave their own kind so as to take a part of their daily supplies. Their leaders are Tullius Hostilius, a warlike king of ancient Rome, and Hermann Göring, the famous World War I pilot and Nazi fieldmarshall.

But Burton participates in a slave rebellion, overthrows the tyrants and plays an important role in the foundation of a democratic state.

One day he discovers by accident that he is being looked for by the Ethicals, the mysterious authors of the Resurrection, because he should not have awoken in the pre-resurrection chamber. Something went wrong and They want to know why. In order to get away from Them, Burton uses a very peculiar means of transport: the "Suicide Express". Actually, each time someone is killed on the Riverplanet, he or she arises the next day near a grailstone but in a very distant part of the valley. The Ethicals seem somehow unable to predict the re-birth place. They have thus the greatest difficulty finding Burton.

Strangely, he has a "traveling companion" who resurrects with him at the same place each time he too dies: Hermann Göring, who is having hard times with his conscience and with dreamgum addiction.

One night however, Burton is visited by a mysterious stranger, who calls himself a renegade Ethical. He does not agree with the "monstrous lie about the purpose of the Resurrection... The truth is that... human beings have been given life again only to participate in a scientific experiment." (Scattered 185) So this renegade Ethical has chosen twelve "Elects" to sail up towards the headwaters, to the Tower, in order to enter it and help him take control.

After his seven hundred and seventy-seventh suicide, Burton is located by the Ethicals and questioned in the Tower by the Council of the Twelve, one of whom is the Renegade. They vainly "read" his memory: the Renegade cannot be identified. So, Burton is brainwashed and sent back in the Valley. But the brainwashing fails, thanks to the Renegade.

Fortunately, Burton is then resurrected near his group, which is mainly composed of Alice Pleasance Liddell Hargreaves, Peter Jairus Frigate, Monat Grrautut, Kazzintuitruaabemss ("Kazz"), Lev Ruach and John de Greystock.

Alice Hargreaves (1852-1934) is the daughter of Henry George Liddell, dean of Christ Church, co-editor of the famous Scott-Liddell "A Greek-English Lexicon" and she inspired Lewis Carroll to write "Alice in Wonderland".

Peter Frigate is not a single character: a first Frigate, an agent from the Ethicals, joins Burton at the very beginning and does not leave him until he is about to be unmasked (The Dark Design, ch. 26). Later, the second and true Frigate appears, first to the reader (Design 179) and then to Burton (Labyrinth 77). He is a science fiction writer born in 1918 in the USA (Farmer's perfect alter-ego).

Monat Grrautut is a key character. He is the very first to join Burton a few minutes after they all come back to life. He is visibly an extra-Terrestrial (though quite humanlike) and claims to have been obliged to destroy the Earth in 2008 to protect his own planet: Terrestrials got mad when they learnt that Monat's people had the secret of eternal youth. This story is a lie and a code: it allows Ethicals and their agents who have infiltrated the "lazari" to recognize each other since no one resurrected in the Riverworld ever lived after 1983; so everybody pretending to have died after this date is an Ethical. Monat is not a mere Ethical, he is the Operator, head of the project Riverworld. He chose to be resurrected near Burton so as to watch him closely, since he should not have awoken in the preresurrection bubble. He disappears with the fake Frigate.

Kazz is a Neanderthal man, short but very strong, useful to teach survival in primitive conditions, and absolutely faithful to Burton.

Lev Ruach is an agent from the Ethicals but leaves Burton's party long before being unmasked.

John de Greystock is an English Baron of the thirteenth century and the first "re-resurrected" man that Burton sees in the Riverworld but not the last one. He disappears during the slave rebellion.

Burton, Alice, Frigate, Monat and Kazz build a new boat and sail for the Tower.

b) The Fabulous Riverboat

Among the twelve Elects is Samuel Langhorne Clemens, alias Mark Twain, the famous American writer. He is traveling with Erik Bloodaxe, a tenth-century Viking using Clemens to find iron, when a fifty-foot-high wave, caused by the fall of a meteorite a few hundred miles away, wreaks havoc on the Rivervalley. Clemens, his friend Joe Miller, Bloodaxe and Lothar von Richtofen (who has lately joined them), mend their drakkar-like ship and head for the "felled star".

Joe Miller is a eight-hundred-pound prehistoric "titanthrop", a member of a pre-human race (invented by Farmer). He has got a long, protruding nose (like a proboscis monkey) and he lisps. He and Clemens are blood brothers. His unequalled strength will help Sam carry out his plans. Before meeting him, Joe had taken part in an expedition to the source of the River led by ancient Egyptians. They had reached the Polar Sea but Joe died just after making out the Misty Tower. He was then resurrected in the area where Sam Clemens was.

Lothar von Richtofen is not the great German pilot but his brother. He too fought in World War I and will get the captaincy of the air force on Clemens's boat: the Not For Hire.

But one night, the Renegade appears to Clemens and tells him the "truth" about the purpose of the Resurrection, that he deflected the meteorite from its orbit and caused it to crash on the Riverplanet not too far from Sam, so that he, Sam Clemens, would have enough iron and other minerals to build a Riverboat and sail up-River to the Polar Sea.

To achieve his dream, building a giant paddle-wheeled boat mightily armed and drawing energy from the electrical discharges of the grailstones, Sam betrays and murders Erik Bloodaxe (who will often come back for revenge in Sam's nightmares) and reluctantly goes into partnership with John of England, nicknamed "Lackland", brother to King Richard the Lion-Hearted.

An absolute master of intrigue and treachery, John eventually manages to steal the Riverboat (which took time, blood, sweat and tears to be built) and leaves and angry Sam Clemens behind, crying out for revenge. Sam promises to build a second boat, bigger and better armed, and to kill the traitor.

He will be helped by Joe Miller, Lothar von Richtofen and the faithfull friends who joined him during the long and perillous building of the vessel: Cyrano de Bergerac, Milton Firebrass and John Johnston.

Cyrano Savinien Hercule de Bergerac is the famous French soldier and writer. He is one of the twelve Elects and a fabulous swordsman, but Clemens can hardly feel happy at seeing him: Olivia Langdon Clemens,"Livy", his dear wife whom he has been desperately seeking since the resurrection, loves Cyrano now, and appears at his side.

Milton Firebrass claims to have been born in 1974 (which supposes he died long after 1983 and means he is another agent from the Ethicals). He also claims to be an engineer and astronaut who landed on Mars, and most of all to be one of the twelve chosen by the Renegade. His real aim is to reach the Tower before anyone else. Somehow, the Ethicals and their agents who are in the Rivervalley cannot return to their headquarters in spite of their high-technology devices. Something has gone wrong in the planetary mechanism as shown by the sudden halt in "lesser" resurrections (or "translations", when someone dies and is raised the next day).

John Johnston, nicknamed "Liver Eating" Johnston, is a nineteenth-century trapper in the Rocky Mountains. He has no main role but he is one of the Twelve.

c) The Dark Design

While Burton continues sailing up-River, Sam Clemens has completed his second Riverboat and is chasing King John aboard the stolen vessel.

But a party has remained in Parolando to build, thanks to the industrial complex already set up, a dirigible named "Parseval", the captain of which will be Firebrass, aided by Cyrano, Jill Gulbirra and Piscator.

Piscator, whose real name is Ohara, was a Japanese naval officer during World War I and a Sufi.

Jill Gulbirra was an Australian aeronautical engineer, a blimp pilot and instructor, and a hard-core feminist who died in 1983. She will be appointed first mate on the Parseval.

Meanwhile, Burton discovers who Monat and Frigate really are but they disappear at that very moment.

A third group appears in The Dark Design, composed of Peter Jairus Frigate (the true one), Jack London (the famous American writer), Tom Mix, Nur ed-Din el-Musafir (a thirteenth-century Moorish Sufi) and Umslopogaas (the great Swazi warrior). London, Mix and el-Musafir have all three met the Mysterious Stranger. They plan to board one of the paddle boats.

The Parseval reaches the Tower, as expected, but Firebrass is killed before entering it by the Renegade who had, in disguise, infiltrated the crew. Jill Gulbirra wants to cross the entrance dome on the top of the Tower. But it is protected by a "force field" which Piscator is the only one to get through. However, he does not come back. Gulbirra takes the blimp back to Clemens's boat to take the on-board laser: she needs it to cut the walls of the Tower. On the way, while they are in an area near the Rex Grandissimus, Cyrano leads a helicopter attack against King John which fails. However, during the assault, he fights Burton in a duel, without knowing who his adversary is.

Then the unexpected happens: an agent from the Ethicals bombs the Parseval which crashes in flames. Cyrano is the only survivor.

d) The Magic Labyrinth

While Monat and the fake Frigate board the Not For Hire, Burton and his crew manage to get enlisted on the Rex Grandissimus. He is soon appointed to the rank of sergeant.

Another sign of trouble in the Ethicals' systems is the sudden silence from the grailstones on the right bank. In the consequent bloodshed for the possession of the stones on the left bank, both the Not For Hire and the Rex have casualties. So they take shore leaves to enroll candidates. There Burton meets Peter Frigate, still traveling with London and his crew, but soon understands that Frigate is not the one he knew before.

A secret meeting takes place between Burton's and London's parties about the Mysterious Stranger and their mission.

At the same time, the Mysterious Stranger himself, in disguise, succeeds in being enlisted on board the Not For Hire. The very same night, Monat disappears and three days later, Cyrano manages to rejoin the boat, which does not cause Clemens a great delight.

Eventually, both boats sink each other during an astounding air and naval battle, in an area called Virolando (La Viro's country), the Second Chancers' sanctuary. Cyrano, King John and many others are killed. Clemens reaches the shore and meets... Erik Bloodaxe. The shock causes him a heart attack whereas in fact Bloodaxe has converted to the Second Chance and has long forgiven Clemens for his betrayal.

Burton, Alice, Frigate, Nur and Göring travel the last twenty thousand miles, enter the Tower and find Loga, the Mysterious Stranger. They are given a thorough explanation:

When the universe was young . . . evolution brought

about a people on one planet who differed from those

on other planets. . . . They were intelligent but had

no consciousness of self, no concept of the "I". . . .

all sentient beings throughout the universe were

without self-awareness. . . . The people who differed

did not differ in their lack of self-awareness in the

beginning of their history. They were like the others

in this respect. However, they did have science . . .

Nor did they have a concept of religion, of gods or

of a God. That comes only with an advanced stage of

self-awareness.(6)

Luckily for these people, called by those who

followed them The Firsts, one of their scientists had

accidentally formed a "wathan" during an experiment.

It was the first indication The Firsts had that

there was such a force as extraphysical energy . . .

The first wathans probably attached themselves to

the living beings in their proximity. . . .

The machine spat out billions of wathans during the

experiments. . . . It wasn't until twenty-five or so

years after . . . that the reason for self-awareness

was discovered. Then it became a matter of necessity

to keep producing wathans.

Centuries passed. . . Interstellar flight became

possible. . . By then The Firsts thought it was their

ethical duty to bring immortality and self-awareness

via the wathan to all other sentient people. . . .

The wathan generators and the wathan catchers were

buried far down . . . From that time on, the wathans

fixed themselves to or integrated with the human

zygotes. When a zygote or an embryo or any of any age

died, their wathans were attracted to the buried

machine and "caged". . . . the wathan furnishes all

the data we need to make a new body, and then it

attaches itself to the duplicate. . . .

The planet was re-formed into a Rivervalley many

millions of miles long. The tower and the underground

chambers were constructed at the same time. (440-449)

Loga rebelled against the other Ethicals because they wanted the project to last only one hundred and twenty years. He was obliged to get rid of them so that more human beings could be saved. He also lied many times in order to obtain aid from Burton, Clemens and all his "elects".

Then Loga explains that the biocomputer is dying for lack of maintenance and that when it dies," the wathans will be released ! And there is no means then to resurrect the dead. They are lost forever !" (461)

The biocomputer can be repaired but it is protected by a security system so difficult and dangerous that Göring dies. Alice eventually finds the solution and the wathans are saved.

The Riverworld series previously had four volumes. But Farmer left himself "a tiny escape hatch in the final paragraph" (Gods 7) and so wrote a fifth volume.

e) Gods of Riverworld

Loga mysteriously dies and leaves the huge powers of the Ethicals' technology in the hands of Burton and his mates locked up in the Tower. The whole story is about what they do with these powers. Finally, after a complicated adventure, Loga reappears and explains all that was a test. He also adds, when questioned about Going On:

...the sad truth is that no wathans ever disappear,

ever Go On ! Not as long as the bodies they've partnered

continue to be resurrected... The truth is that you can

be immortal, relatively so, anyway. You won't last beyond

the death of the universe and probably not nearly as

long as the universe does. But you have the potentiality

for living a million years, two, perhaps three or more.

As long as you can find a Terrestrial-type planet with

a hot core and have resurrection machinery available.

Unfortunately, not all can be permitted to possess

immortality. Too many would make immortality miserable

or hellish for the rest, and they would try to control

others through their control of the resurrection

machinery. Even so, everybody, without exception, is

given a hundred years after his Earthly death to prove

that he or she can live peacefully and in harmony with

himself and the others, within the tolerable limits of

human imperfections. Those who can do this will be

immortal after the two projects are completed." (Gods

348-9)

The usual proportion of resurrectees reaching the ethical standard is about forty per cent. The other sixty per cent are killed and their body-records destroyed so that they cannot be resurrected. But this "new truth" raises a new problem, exposed by Burton:

Loga... since you are finally telling the truth, tell

me this. Why did you turn renegade and pervert the

course of events that your fellow Ethicals had decided

upon ?... Did you cause all this blood struggle, this

overthrow of your comrades, just to give your parents

and siblings and cousins more time ?... I don't

understand how you... could have passed the test. If

the Ethical standards have any meaning, any value,

how did you escape being eliminated ? How could you

have become a criminal ? A criminal with a conscience,

but still a criminal. Or were you truly ethical, and

then, somehow, you became crazy, what's to prevent

others who've also passed from going insane ?...

Why didn't you just pick up your family and take them

with you [on one of the ships in the hangar to an

uninhabited planet] ?

- They wouldn't be ready. They wouldn't have passed

the test; the Computer would reject them. They'd be

doomed... They shouldn't be living then. They wouldn't

have Gone On. I couldn't take them until they had

attained the level that makes immortality bearable for

them." (Gods 350-53)

Loga is obviously insane and Burton locks him up in a cryogenics cylinder, so that he can be cured when the Ethicals send a party from their planet.

But Burton's travels are not over: he intends to take one of the spaceships in the Tower and leave... towards the stars.

D) Inspiration sources

"A man lives, he writes of his living, others read his writings, and their lives are in turn affected by the writing. And some of these affected ones write stuff which derives circuitously from the original writings. And these are read. And so on." (7) This is Farmer's own conception of the influence of literature upon life and of life upon literature. It applies to himself, especially to himself.

His works have thus been "affected" by others, which he lists at random (8): Twain, Swift, Stevenson, Doyle, Verne, Jack London, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Grimm, Andersen, Lang, H. Rider Haggard, Dumas, Cooper, Wells, Rabelais, Dostoyevsky, Miller, the Bible, Hugo Gernsback s-f magazines, the Oz books, Greek, Norse and American Indian mythologies.

Among these, a couple are first-rank influences.

A House Boat On The Styx (1895), by John Kendrick Bangs (an American humorist 1862-1922) tells the story of "a houseboat on the dark river Styx the occupants of which form a very elite club of spirits. Only the greatest are members, Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth I of England, Sir Walter Raleigh, Rabelais, and so on." (9) This Houseboat was obviously a model for the Fabulous Riverboat which carries a selected elite chosen by Samuel Clemens. And the Styx might have been a model for The River... Moreover "Mark Twain's 'diaries' were in the same vein, somewhat, as the House Boat books, but neither so good nor so popular" (10).

Another greatly influential work is Mark Twain's The Mysterious Stranger, the title of which is used by Farmer's Twain (and also by Burton) to name the Renegade Ethical. The original Mysterious Stranger is an angel (cf Part I, Chapter D) who visits a boy in Austria at the end of the sixteenth century. His opinion about mankind ("...dull and ignorant and trivial and conceited, and so diseased and rickety, and such a shabby, poor worthless lot all around." [11]) is much like Farmer's ("mean, miserable, petty, vicious, narrow-minded, exceedingly egotistic, generally disputing, and disgusting lot." Scattered 170).

Two important details are that the angel's name is Satan (named after his uncle, the Devil, who was an angel himself before the Fall) and that his conception of good and bad is different from ours. For instance, he easily lies in order to achieve his goal and make people behave as he wants them to.

So does Loga, the Renegade. No one can be sure of his being good or evil (an angel or a demon) and he uses lies to obtain Burton's help: "The truth is that you human beings have been given life again only to participate in a scientific experiment [wrong, it really is a second chance]... my people do not believe you are worth saving [wrong, they do not believe they are ALL worth saving]... you are our forefathers. For all I know, I may be your direct descendant [Loga was born during the twelfth century B.C. in Troy, a grandson of king Priamos]" (Scattered 185). But we shall analyse Loga's behaviour later, in part II.

(1) Paul Walker, Speaking of Science Fiction (Oradell, Luna Publications, 1978) 55.

(2) Science Fiction Review, August 1975.

(3) letter to A. Ruiz.

(4) in fact, the bodies of all men, women and children are completely hairless.

(5) Paul Walker, Speaking of Science Fiction (Oradell, Luna Publications, 1978) 50-51.

(6) This idea is also to be found in "Prometheus"; the Magazineof Fantasy and Science Fiction;

March 1961.

(7) Paul Walker, Speaking of Science Fiction (Oradell, Luna Publications, 1978) 47.

(8) from letter to A. Ruiz.

(9) letter to A. Ruiz.

(10) Stanley J. Kunitz & Howard Haycraft, Twentieth CenturyAuthors (New York, The H. W.

Wilson Company, 1955) 42.

(11) Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger (New-York: Dover Publications, 1992) 63.

I) THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT

When Brian Ash wrote The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, he asked Philip José Farmer to introduce the chapter entitled "Religion and Myths". He did so because Farmer is certainly the science fiction writer who explores religious themes the most thoroughly and deeply religious themes. Farmer's personnal quest much accounts for this inclination:

My basic religious education was in the church of

Christ. Scientist. . . As I grew older, I became an

agnostic, then an atheist. But I was only fooling

myself when I thought that I was truly indifferent

to religion. . .

Even when I was an atheist, I was powerfully attracted

by the Roman Catholic faith. But I still believed that

religion was only Homo sapiens' conscious expression

of the instinctive drive for survival in the unconscious

cells in humankind's bodies.

The brain, knowing that a person can't live for ever in

this world, rationalises a future, or other-dimensional,

world in which immortality is possible. In other words,

religion is the earliest form of science fiction.

Nevertheless, I had, and I have, a contradictory belief

that the possibility of immortality is not a fiction. . .

without immortality, there is no meaning in life. . .

Without a belief in eternal life for us, the terrestrial

existence is something to be gotten through with as

little pain and as much pleasure as possible.(1)

Here, Farmer displays the most important "vital issue", in his opinion, but he also adds that resurrection and immortality are not the ultimate end, which is in fact "our psychic evolution towards the ideal." (1)

To this particular question, religions bring various answers, that we shall briefly study.

A) Christian vision of redemption

As we said in the introduction, the Christian meaning of "redemption" is not a mere synonym with "second chance", it is far more significant. In Christian theology, salvation is only possible through the will and action of God who offers His son Jesus Christ for redemption. Redemption is salvation from sin, its remission and forgiveness. We thus notice the truly religious dimension of salvation from the Christian viewpoint: it is impossible without God and it is a free gift from Him, from His Grace.

But redemption is only possible through sacrifice: Jesus "deserves" men's salvation by his death on the Cross and each man can profit from it provided that he renounces all collusion with sin and evil. God will not save us against our will, He offers an alliance and He wants us to be responsible for the answer we give to His offer. This is not simply an inner answer, it must generate action. Thus, being saved means that inner changes have to be carried out, towards perfection, towards the

ideal which is outside, elsewhere, beyond, above. Salvation can only be carried out in the relation to Something or Someone beyond Man. That is what we said before about the truly religious dimension of redemption: it is not in the power of the one looking for it or expecting it who must surpass himself, because he, alone, is capable of nothing.

Salvation, which is thus only possible through redemption, gives a meaning to life, to man and mankind's destiny: we are not doomed to nonsense nor to vacuum nor to an endless repetition. Salvation also announces something absolutely unique in the history of religions, something that does not consist in a mere survival of souls nor in reincarnation: the resurrection of the body and eternal life.

In that respect, Riverworld could be read as a particular expression of Christian eschatology. The means of salvation are scientific, not supernatural, but the result is evident: men and women come back to life in their own body figures (which is different from reincarnation) and are resurrected each time they die in a twenty-five-year-old body, which gives them not only eternal life but also eternal youth.

Farmer's religious conceptions are however much different from Christian tenets and we shall consider them in part II, "The Philosophical Aspect".

B) Other religious visions

1) Sufism

In his metaphysical quest, Farmer encountered Sufism. If the fact had not been told by a few biographers, we could nevertheless have guessed it because of the important roles he gives to Sufis, and because the multiple facets of Farmer's works are a reflection of his culture and interest.

First of all, three characters are Sufis: Nur ed-Din el-Musafir (the Moor) and Piscator (the Japanese) in the mainstream novels, and Rabi'a (a woman) in Coda, a sidestream tale. Then, there is also the fact that Frigate (Farmer's alter-ego) wants to become Nur's disciple; we cannot help wondering if Farmer has ever thought of converting to Sufism.

Sufis are the ascetics of Islam. Their rules lay stress on behavioral modes: vigilance, control over their desires, inner retreat in spite of the surrounding world, unworldliness, struggle against vanity and vain passions, continuous awareness of God's omnipresence, obedience to the Koran and to their masters. Such rules, when applied, are likely to elevate one's ethical level.

As a Sufi, Piscator is ethical enough to enter the Tower. No one but him is able to walk (none too easily nevertheless) through the entrance dome protected by a "spiritual" force field: "Only a highly advanced ethical person could enter." (Labyrinth, 451) Later on, Nur does the same, for a test (Labyrinth, 493). In other words, Sufis are among the most ethically advanced human beings.

About the eschatological question in the Koran, even if Moslems believe in a final resurrection, a Last Judgment, Hell and Paradise, they differ from Christians with respect to Original Sin and Redemption.

2) Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism and Taoism

In referring to all at same time (Design 88), Farmer considers them as having "no eschatology of resurrection or immortality in the Western sense" and, indeed, he hardly gives them any importance. There are however a few interesting aspects to be dealt with.

a) Taoism

Taoism teaches that salvation happens under the form of the Long Life, the immortality or survival of the souls. By souls Taoism means universalized spirits of the dead which keep in themselves the print of their former body. This echoes Farmer's work in two ways: immortality (though taoists do not see it corporal) and the memory of body (contained in the wathans). Let us add that salvation can be found through moral, ethical and mystical efforts along with physical, alimentary, sexual and breathing practices.

b) Buddhism

Buddhism teaches that man can only be saved by joining the absolute, the Nirvana. But this Absolute cannot be reached by any human will: since it is the Absolute, it does not depend on anything. Buddhism only prepares the soul to Its coming by developing an attitude of readiness to transcendence. There are a few important conditions on the way to salvation: faith in the Buddha, obedience to a guru, struggle against egocentrism through kindness-compassion which leads to the awareness of universal solidarity. As for the Christian vision, Farmer opposes Buddhism about the ability for man to save himself. But a parallel can be made between the wathan "Going On"