Philip José Farmer: Difference between revisions

'''Philip José Farmer''' (January 26, 1918 – February 25, 2009) was a ground-breaking science fiction and fantasy writer. Farmer is best known for the ''[[World of Tiers]]'' and ''[[Riverworld]]'' series. He won three Hugo awards and had many nominations.

That said, farmer's graphic descriptions of truly out-there sex acts do not pull any punches. Readers who are only familiar with his later, more moderate, work may find his early work challenging in places -- particularlyplaces—particularly ''[[Lord Tyger]]'' and ''[[A Feast Unknown]]''. The controversy over these works stuck in the minds of reviewers and eulogy writers.

The ''[[Riverworld]]'' series is a good place to start reading. The series has an extraordinarily fertile conceit: in the distant future we are all (''all'') resurrected by the banks of a river. Everyone who ever lived. Historical figures such as Richard Burton, Samuel Clemens and Herman Goering appear as flesh and blood people and Farmer had the nerve to describe what he thought would happen when their paths collided. (Several of his other works, such as ''[[The Other Log Of Phileas Fogg]]'' are [[Pastiche|pastichespastiche]]s, pulling in characters and other elements from several genres -- makinggenres—making him a "meta" writer long before it became popular. It's also Steampunk -- fromSteampunk—from 1973!)

If you only looked at the early covers of his books he would appear to be nothing more that a pulp writer obsessed with grim-looking, violent and [[Rated "M" for Manly|highly muscular men]] -- which—which is not to say you can't find plenty of plenty meaty heroes in his work. Heroes who often get quite a kick out of a high-wire life of violent escapades.

''[[Riverworld]]'' addresses Big Ideas. Sex, politics, race, religion. Farmer loved messing with the divide between high and low culture. The deep problems of human life come up thick and fast in this series. Farmer broke new ground by having these themes coexist with fantasy action adventure -- prefiguringadventure—prefiguring ''[[Discworld]]'' and many other works.

=== {{examples|Works by Philip José Farmer with their own trope pages include: ===}}

* [[Footnote Fever]] : The [[Sherlock Holmes]]/Tarzan crossover, ''The Adventure of the Peerless Peer'', has an vast number of pseudo-scholarly footnotes. At one point Holmes asks Watson, isn't that a<nowiki>***</nowiki><nowiki>**</nowiki>e firing a machine gun?", and a footnote explores whether Watson in writing this adventure used the wrong number of asterisks, or whether Holmes actually used the seven-letter rather than the appropriately British eight-letter form because the a<nowiki>***</nowiki><nowiki>**</nowiki>e under discussion was American. <ref>A lot of Sherlock Holmes pastiche novels feature footnotes, for example Nicholas Meyer makes use of them in "The Seven Percent Solution". So it's a way of playing along with the whole "found manuscript" thing.</ref>

* [[Humans Are Bastardsthe Real Monsters]]: In ''Venus on the Half-Shell'' every alien race points out that humans smell awful. So humans create a huge industry of special deodorants. Wondering why humans smell so bad to other races, some of whom smell like a sewer, it is pointed out that human morals stink, so that makes our smell stink. Yes, it's a strange book.

* [[Literary Agent Hypothesis]]: In ''Tarzan Alive'' and ''Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life,'' Farmer claims that Edgar Rice Burroughs and Lester Dent were just the biographers of [[Tarzan]] and [[Doc Savage]]. He claims that their books were highly fictionalized and sensationalized and presents somewhat more mundane, but still sensational versions of the stories that correct various factual inaccuracies and continuity errors. For example, he explains that whenever Tarzan encountered a lion, a plains dwelling animal, in the jungle, it was actually a leopard and Burroughs exaggerated because lions were bigger and more dangerous looking.<br /><br />He also tries to explain away both characters' great strength and intelligence by claiming their [[wikipedia:Wold Newton family|ancestors were irradiated by a meteor]], and that other relatives of Tarzan and Savage whose ancestors were exposed to that radiation include [[Pride and Prejudice|Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy]], [[Sherlock Holmes]], [[Fu Manchu]], and [[Bulldog Drummond]]. Farmer is in a class of his own!

[[Category:PhilipAmerican Jose FarmerAuthors]]