Philip José Farmer

The fabulous riverboat

Fabulous Riverboat

John Balek

I read To Your Scattered Bodies Go at the beginning of the year and it was instantly my new favorite Sci Fi book. It perfectly encapsulates the absurdity of 70s Sci Fi while offering an interesting exploration of the ideas of the afterlife and living in a simulation while offering a great focus on history, linguistics, and anthropology. Ever since reading it I've been interesting in seeing what the rest of the Riverworld series has to offer.

Unfortunately, I didn't get the same level of immense enjoyment out of The Fabulous Riverboat that I did from To Your Scattered Bodies Go. Farmer takes a great risk in making the sequel quite different from the first book. The most obvious change is the change in protagonists. I really enjoyed reading about Richard Francis Burton in the first book. Beforehand I wasn't familiar with him and I went on to learn a lot more about him and his actual life on Earth. This book focuses on Sam Clemens (Mark Twain) who, while I was more familiar with initially, I was less interested in. A lot of the risk taking and adventure that came along with Burton are gone and overall Sam Clemens just makes a much less interesting character. On one hand he has a lot of leadership skills that help him along his way through the book but he is also not really a leadership personality, letting problems get bigger than they should and losing diplomatic battles.

The Fabulous Riverboat also centers the plot around building this fabulous riverboat that the title references. This is a long and arduous process has its ups and downs. While it is important to show that building a large boat with a working engine isn't an easy task that can just happen overnight, it was tedious to read about as I just wanted to them to start their adventure and start exploring again.

The biggest focus of this book is the showcasing of industrial society and how the ideas of one man, or a few, can spur progress and innovation. It was interesting to see this level of ingenuity but it also kind of lost the magic that riverworld initially had. The first book definitely had riverworld's inhabitants at the mercy of the ethicals but this book almost removes them completely. Of course they are still there, but they are definitely in the background and not the main focus. The societies of this book are much more organized and advanced than the first book which gives Farmer a chance to explore new concepts but it seems like he is really only focused on technological advancements and not the social aspects of these societies, aside from a surface level view.

I can respect the risks Farmer took in making such a departure from the first book but it really threw away so much of what I loved about the first one. The adventure, the mystery, and the absurdist Sci Fi elements. There are moments here and there but not enough for my liking. Many times this just feels like the only thing taken from the first book is the setting, and even that isn't fully taken advantage of. Many times I forgot that this was even set in riverworld. The world is taken for granted and not really explored much more than it was in the first book.

Even Farmer's prose seems to get more simplistic in this book. While the first book wasn't necessarily anything special in its writing, the plot at least distracted from any of its limits. In The Fabulous Riverboat the writing can feel dull and only as descriptive as it needs to be. That's not to say it was a complete slog. Farmer can write fast paced scenes with the energy they need but most of this book was not those moments. 

It is clear that this book is a transitionary one in the series, it helps paint the overall picture, but on its own it really doesn't offer much. While I'm not excited to read about them building yet another boat, I am interested in seeing where this series goes.

Sarah Sammis

Klaus Eck

Vladimir

Philip Jose Farmer

Resurrected on the lush, mysterious banks of Riverworld, along with the rest of humanity, Samuel Langhorne Clemens (a.k.a. Mark Twain) has a dream: to build a riverboat that will rival the most magnificent paddle-wheelers ever navigated on the mighty Mississippi. Then, to steer it up the endless waterway that dominates his new home planet - and at last discover its hidden source. But before he can carry out his plan, he first must undertake a dangerous voyage to unearth a fallen meteor. This mission would require striking an uneasy alliance with the bloodthirsty Viking Erik Bloodaxe, treacherous King John of England, legendary French swordsman Cyrano de Bergerac, Greek adventurer Odysseus, and the infamous Nazi Hermann Göring. All for the purpose of storming the ominous stone tower at the mouth of the river, where the all-powerful overseers of Riverworld - and their secrets - lie in wait . . .

The Fabulous Riverboat

Ian Mason

The fabulous riverboat

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