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Philip José Farmer: Difference between revisions
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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 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 -- prefiguring ''[[
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* [[Apocalypse How]]: ''Dark Is The Sun'' takes place on Earth billions of years in the future. At one point, humankind's civilization was so advanced that they found a way to move the Earth to avoid being burned away by the Sun when it eventually expanded into a red giant star. When the book starts, civilization has reverted to a primitive level, and eventually the group of protagonists discover that the universe itself is coming to an end via the Big Crunch. Their new goal is to find a way to enter another universe to avoid being crushed into a singularity along with everything else in their universe.
* [[Author Avatar]]: Farmer often put himself into his books, always with characters that share his initials - for example, Peter Jairus Frigate in ''[[Riverworld]]'' and Paul Janus Finnegan in ''[[World of Tiers]]''.
* [[Badass Family]]: The Wold Newton Family is a mixture of this and [[Massive Multiplayer Crossover]]. The family tree includes: [[Solomon Kane]]; [[Rafael Sabatini|Captain Blood]]; [[The Scarlet Pimpernel (
* [[Catgirl]]: Kilgore Trout's ''Venus On The Half Shell'' (ghostwritten by Philip José Farmer instead of Kurt Vonnegut <ref>Farmer was mistaken for Vonnegut by critics, which pissed Vonnegut off no end.</ref>) has a cat-like alien queen who makes love to the hero and grants him immortality.
* [[Deconstruction Crossover]]: This trope, combined with the [[Literary Agent Hypothesis]], is the main premise of many works taking place in Farmer's Wold Newton Universe.
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* [[Meta Origin]]: The Wold Newton Family concept posited the Wold Newton meteorite as a source of mutation, which, while generally not producing metahumans, produced an extended family including Tarzan, Doc Savage et al.
* [[Perspective Flip]]: ''The Other Log of Phileas Fogg'' and ''A Barnstormer in Oz''. In the latter, Glinda the Good assassinates U.S. President [[Warren Harding|Warren G. Harding]].
* [[Powered
* [[Significant Anagram]]: In ''Venus on the Half-Shell'' many names are anagrams, for example {{spoiler|1=Chworktap = Patchwork, Gviirl = Virgil, Tunc = Cunt, Angavi = Vagina, Utapal = Laputa}}.
* [[Silicon
* [[Spy Satellites]]: Found in several novels. In the ''Dayworld'' series they are a weapon of a future <s>police state</s> sharing caring one-world government. Interestingly, even though the articles were written in the 70's/ early 80's Farmer has the satellites hooked up to gait-analysing computers. It adds to the paranoid atmosphere: once the characters become fugitives they have to wear widebrim hats and spend every moment on the street walking in a deliberately different pattern.
* [[The Von Trope Family]]: Ralph von Wau Wau from several stories including "A Scarletin Study," "The Doge Whose Barque Was Worse Than His Bight" (Via the [[Literary Agent Hypothesis]] framing device of it being written by Jonathan Swift Somers III.)
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