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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 . . .… (more)
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Every person is provided with a "grail," a canister of metal which provides food, drink, cloth and luxury items like alcohol and marijuana. To be used, the grail must be placed at a "grailstone:" large mushroom-shaped rocks spaced at mile-long intervals along the river, which are powered three times daily (breakfast, lunch and dinner). Agriculture is impossible, since the only plants are grass, bamboo, and various types of tree, and the only animals are earthworms and fish. Therefore a grail is nearly essential to survival - though if a person dies, they are simply resurrected again elsewhere along the river, with a new grail.
Each area of the river initially contains three groups of people: a large group of people from one time and place (say, Meiji era Japanese), a smaller group of people from another time and place (say, 7th century Franks) and a tiny group of people from random times and places. Most people from the 20th century are part of the third group. There is nobody from a time later than 2008, apparently because the human race was wiped out in this year, which I of course find highly appropriate for my reading experience. Humanity - bewildered, frightened, and with all its religions disproved by the existence of this world - sets about recreating its earthly societies, with nation-states growing over time, war and trade both flourishing, and every form of government that ever existed set in place in various new nations lining the riverbank on both sides.
"We've passed a hundred new Prussias in the last ten thousand miles," Clemens said. "All so small you couldn't stand in the middle of one and heave a brick without it landing in the middle of the next."
Most people are content to spend their unexpected afterlife indulging in all of the race's old vices of drugs, sex and violence. Very few seek answers to the mysteries behind Riverworld - who created it? For what purpose? Where are they? How long has it been since 2008? One of these curious few is Richard Francis Burton, who travels up the river as far as he can with a motley crew of other resurrectees. When they are killed passing through territory controlled by Hermann Goring, he utilises the "Suicide Express" to travel randomly across the planet, hoping to eventually arrive at the source or mouth of the river, uncertain whether it has either. He is eventually commended by a mysterious stranger, who identifies himself as one of the "Ethicals" - the presumably alien faction responsible for the creation of Riverworld and the resurrection of humanity. He is attempting to subvert its purpose, and urges Burton to continue trying to reach his goal.
Rather than continuing Burton's story, The Fabulous Riverboat follows Samuel Clemens, who shares the same goal of finding the crafters of Riverworld and forcing them to explain their purpose. Like Burton, he also plans to reach the river's headwaters, though he intends to do so by building a great steam-powered riverboat, well-armed and invulnerable, to prevent the inevitable problem of being killed by somebody upriver and finding himself thousands of miles downstream again. Unfortunately, Riverworld was deliberately constructed bare of mineral resources - until a meteorite lands just upriver of Mark Twain and his band of Vikings, wiping out life in that area and allowing him to quickly set up a nation-state and mine the meteorite for iron. But others soon arrive, lured by the same lust for metal that Twain's followers have, and he faces a long struggle before he can ever build his riverboat and set off on the greatest voyage of all time.
These books are certainly imaginative. The concept is grandiose and Farmer deserves praise for coming up with it in the first place. Unfortunately, he's not quite the greatest writer of either his generation or even his genre, lacking any particular flair or style (especially after just reading Michael Chabon). While the Riverworld series gets five stars for concept, it can only manage two or three for execution. But it's still worth reading, and I'll certainly be buying the next few books.
As an aside, I found it a little unbelievable that so many recognisable historical figures would be rubbing shoulders. The Fabulous Riverboat alone features Mark Twain, John Lackland, Eric Bloodaxe, Lothar von Richtofen, Hermann Goring, Cyrano de Bergerac, Mozart, Oddyseus, Frederick Rolfe, Pedro Ansurez, Liver-Eating Johnson, Tokugawa Iyeyasu, Joseph von radowitz, and Cleomenes. And I don't think that's all of them. Obviously that's part of the appeal of a series like this, especially for someone with any basic knowledge of history, but c'mon. Seriously.
EDIT, November 2008: Having subsequently finished reading the rest of this awful, awful series, I would have to reccomend that you steer well clear. The first two are acceptable, but the next two are so unbearably appalling that I gnashed my teeth and wrung my hands while reading them (see both my review on the next two books, "The Dark Design" and "The Magic Labyrinth.")
But it is a concept I love. However arbitrary it seems, there's no denying this is one of the best ideas to come out of science fiction. There are innumerable directions to take such a premise.
Does Farmer's execution hold up? I had a few reservations about To Your Scattered Bodies Go, but for the most part, my answer was a resounding yes. In the Fabulous Riverboat, it is a much weaker yes.
The Fabulous Riverboat is almost a reboot. The main character from the first novel, Richard Burton, is nowhere to be seen. He is referenced a few times, but the focus of The Fabulous Riverboat is Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain. The problem with this is obvious. Richard Burton is a historical figure, but not widely known. Samuel Clemens however, is still famous and beloved by a great many people. As evidenced in other reviews, readers may be less than satisfied with Farmer's portrayal of Clemens.
Personally, I had no issue with Farmer's Clemens. This is a reincarnation of Clemens at the very end of his life. This is a reincarnation of a man, not one of his characters. Clemens acted the part of a tortured humorist to my satisfaction. All of the misery Clemens suffered was still apparent in this resurrected Clemens, and hints of his famous wit bleed through at several points. Farmer is not Clemens and he is not the same kind of writer as Clemens, so I felt he did an admirable job of representing him.
Where Farmer failed in my view, is with other characters like his pre-human Joe Miller, the Viking Bloodaxe and Cyrano de Bergerac. All felt like caricatures rather than characters. King John of Lackland is portrayed well as his Herman Goering, but Elwood and the other black nationalists were not. It was hit and miss, but the focus is on Samuel Clemens, and I felt Farmer presented a believable Mark Twain.
By the end of the novel, the characters are no closer than they were in the first novel to reaching the headwaters of the planet circling river and finding the identity of those who have reincarnated them. I have a bad feeling that will remain the case until the very last novel.
That said, this is still a quality series. Farmer has created such a brilliant concept, I can ignore the issues I listed here. Other readers less taken with the idea may not be able to.
His protagonist is an unfunny Mark Twain, whose occasional spoutings
The whole plot is moved along by a mysterious and literal deus ex machina, and despite the buildup of the first book, brings us no closer to the mystery itself. Though I was curious how Farmer meant to resolve the grand questions raised by his grandiose world, he revealed too little to titillate.
This, combined with the massive influx of minor characters to a busy and muddled plot did little to keep me reading. Perhaps I will get to the other books at some point, but with my current to-read pile, it doesn't seem likely.
There is also an entertaining throwaway character in this book, a huge pre-human giant. Farmer strains credibility by presenting this creature as being capable of learning human speech (impossible for adult humans who were not exposed as children, let alone a pre-human larynx). Beyond this, he also comes to quickly grasp abstract thought, humor, planning, rationality, and sarcasm. Perhaps Farmer is a hard-line Chomskyan.
Farmer's idea for this series was audacious, but his plotting and characterization are rather bland, and seem even moreso against the unbelievably grand backdrop of Riverworld. Like Feynman said of religion: "The stage is too big for the drama".
Really?
The only part of this that survived the decades well is the subplot about SamMark and his beloved, obsessed-over Livy. Be careful what you wish for in this life! (I actually mean "Riverworld life," though that hoary old saying is hoary and old because it never stops being true.) The
But DAYUM is the Fabulous Riverboat a spiffy Maguffin. I don't think it's too much to say the ride is worth the journey if only just.
A quick edit to note that SF&F books prior to the 1980s are notable for being short compared to now. This probably a good thing. The Fabulous Riverboat is no exception. It only runs to about 230 pages. If it had been written now Farmer would be expected to punch out 4 or 500 pages. A couple of hundred pages is easily more digestible and less intimidating that 500 page door stopper.
Nevertheless, the idea of humanity resurrected and the hunt for the reason is still intriguing to me and I guess I'll have to
I am happy to report that I liked it more than the first book of the series (doesn't it usually seem to work the other way?). Samuel Clemens is not particularly believable, but I found him more sympathetic as a protagonist than Richard Francis Burton. Indeed, while the characters here are often annoying, they are at least drawn in more realistic shades of gray than I remember from the first volume. And at least some of the billiions of women from the history of humanity seem to have some purpose higher than having carnal knowledge of the protagonist. The ending offers no sense of closure whatsoever.
By the end of this volume I can almost begrudingly admit that I have at least a moderate level of interest in finding out who created this world and why and which them is out to thwart their grand plans and why. But the moderately interesting meta story seems to me the limit of what the series has to offer.
Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld Saga is based on an interesting premise: all the people who ever lived on Earth, from all geographic locales and all times, are resurrected, young, naked and hairless, and
Farmer throws an interesting assortment of famous people into the 5-book Riverworld saga; "The Fabulous Riverboat" includes appearances by King John Lackland, Odysseus, Cyrano de Bergerac, and, in the role of protagonist, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain).
Unfortunately, Clemens' best friend and protector, a Neanderthal-looking 800 pound giant called Joe, speaks with such a pronounced lisp that the reader is drawn out of the story to decipher his words. Farmer is clubbing the reader on the head with a giant stick that reads, "Not everyone who looks and sounds dumb is actually dumb." Too bad he himself writes as if his readers would be too stupid to get the message if it had been presented subtly.
Further marring the read, Clemens is an entirely unlikeable "hero". He is a cowardly, complaining, pessimistic, self-centered, sniveling, morally conflicted man who is willing to do (or allow to happen) whatever it takes to get what he wants, a Riverboat he can captain to the headwaters of the 16.9 million mile River. His ultimate goal is the same as the protagonist in the first book: to find the Ethicals, the beings who are reported to be behind the mass resurrection of all Earth's people.
While the premise of a mass resurrection of all people from all times still makes for an interesting read, this book does nothing to move the Riverworld plot forward. We are no closer to knowing why it has occurred, who the Ethicals are, what they want, how they did it, or any other piece of the plot.
I will keep reading, placing my hope in the promise of the plot's forward momentum. Two down, three to go...
I will give book 3 a try. I am reading it right now and glad to be back with Richard F. Burton to be honest. Maybe that was another reason, so many new people and I did not really like Sam as much.
When recounting a story within the story of a boat traveling upRiver, Farmer says of the narrowing of the River, "[n}ow and then, the line of mountains curved in toward each other, and the boat shot through canyons where the narrow passage forced the current to boil through..." So, tacking against the current and wind, the boat "shot" through?
And then he has Sam Clemens say a brilliant thing now and the: "Of course, I'm only indulging in mankind's vice of trying to make a symbol out of coincidence" (Note to self: see if that shows up in any of Clemens's writings...stories or memoirs.)
And astute observation, also maybe the real Clemens wrote about: when recalling the Chinese of Nevada and California in the early 1860s, Farmer had Clemens thinking "But the Chinese believed in time; time was the Chinese ally." So true today (Martin Jacques wrote a book titled "When China Rules the World" and observes the same patience, in contrast to the Western immediacy.)
And on human nature: "Invincible ignorance always upset him [Clemens], even though he knew he should just laugh at it."
I need to get to the other reviews, and finish a couple in progress before moving on to a reread of the third book. Sure. That's what I'll tell myself!