I read the first three books of the Riverworld series by Philip José Farmer. I picked up the Riverworld and Other Stories anthology and uh J.C. on the Dude Ranch quite destroyed my expectations. The Riverworld story from the collection was fine, so I figured that more of the same couldn’t be too bad.
The first book, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, was also fine. It was an adventure story, following Sir Richard Burton’s attempt to get to the mouth of the series’ titular river, in a world where a bamboo pick is the most sophisticated tool, and everyone has easy access to strong psychedelics.
The Fabulous Riverboat was not fine. It steampunked it up, basically so that Samuel Clemens could be a viable character to write about. At least it was short!
The third book, The Dark Design, was bad. I have an edition with an introduction which says:
so I bet you’re looking forward to the final book in the series! Well (heh) there’s actually at least one more book to go b/c I Mary Sue’d so much that the manuscript is unpublishable as a single volume! Stay tuned for the next great installment
The plotting and pacing are atrocious: the first part of the book is about Burton, who sits with his crew on an island. They go nowhere, at length. They get a bit suspicious of this Mary Sue guy, then the book stops mentioning them. There’s a short interlude on Mary Sue’s backstory, and then the book switches to Clemens: his technology’s advanced from wood age to radar, radio, and closed-circuit TVs. They send up a dirigible with Mary Sue aboard and fly around.
For whatever reason, Farmer is compelled to report all measurements in imperial and metric. So blimps fly at 9144m altitude, people estimate some mountains’ height as 3048m, etc.
The next giant 2nd-hand book sale is in a few weeks, I won’t be looking for the last two volumes in the series.
