Books: Riverworld Revisited

THE MAGIC LABYRINTH by Philip José Farmer; Berkley/Putnam; $11.95

The planet is about the size of earth. But there are a few differences: its only river is longer than the Nile, the Congo, the Niger, the Amazon, the Orinoco and the Mississippi—combined. And its inhabitants are not exactly the folks next door. For inexplicably resurrected on both banks of the mysterious river is every soul who ever lived, from hairy cave dwellers to modern Homo sapiens, from the totally unknown to such famous figures as Joan of Arc, Karl Marx and Hermann Göring.

Back in 1971, Philip José Farmer abandoned the sci-fi world of space opera with a book that introduced this “Riverworld,” titled To Your Scattered Bodies Go. In a tantalizing curtain raiser, Sir Richard Francis Burton, searcher for the source of the Nile, translator of The Arabian Nights, soldier, swordsman and linguist, dies in Trieste in 1890 (as did the historical Burton). Moments later—or is it millenniums?—he awakens, naked and bewildered, on the bank of the river. Burton’s reaction is entirely in character. While other resurrectees stagger about in shock, the world’s most intrepid traveler sets off to find the source of the river and to learn who is responsible for his situation.

The auspicious opening was a difficult act to follow, and many Farmerites wondered whether the Riverworld was wide enough to sustain a projected tetralogy. The author’s next works allayed all fears. The Fabulous Riverboat gives Burton some delightful traveling companions. He and the grownup Alice Liddell Hargreaves (child model for Lewis Carroll’s Alice) meet a cynical fellow named Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who constructs a side-wheel steamer to voyage upriver. The second volume also introduces Cyrano de Bergerac and England’s King John, who attempted to steal the throne from his brother Richard in real life and who hijacks Clemens’ boat on the Riverworld. But while these two books and the third volume, The Dark Design, drop some clues about the creators of the fantastic planet, none provides the solution to the mystery.

The final book of the tetralogy does, and in the process, insinuates strands of history and myth, philosophy and ribaldry. With a cast of characters that includes Viking Warrior Erik Bloodaxe, Cowboy Star Tom Mix and a deck of World War I Flying Aces, its plot twisted to provide a climactic battle between Clemens and King John, and a final confrontation between Burton and the strange Ethicals who control the Riverworld, The Magic Labyrinth charts a territory somewhere between Gulliver’s Travels and The Lord of the Rings. It also raises a few moral questions. Is Göring a villain or a political puritan who, “once having given his loyalty … did not withdraw it”? As for the agnostic Clemens, Farmer writes: “Sometimes, he thought that his belief in determinism was only an excuse to escape his guilt about certain matters. If this were true, then he was exercising free will in making up the explanation that he wasn’t responsible for anything, good or bad, that he did. On the other hand, one aspect of determinism was that it gave humans the illusion that they had free will.” Farmer does not resolve such dilemmas. He is too busy trying to get “all loose ends tied together into a sword-resisting Gordian knot.”

A few important ends manage to stay untied. But along the way, Farmer offers his audience a wide-screed adventure that never fails to provoke, amuse and educate. Students of religion will find an impressive comprehension of the Judaic, Christian and Islamic ideas of the after life. History buffs should be diverted by the author’s ability to mix notables, from Baron von Richthofen to U.S. Grant, like grains of sand in an hourglass. The greatest beneficiaries should be science fiction fans. For too long they have filled their shelves with charmless fantasies and technical jargon that talks to itself.

This is not to say that The Magic Labyrinth is quite the classic it might have been. Like many another puzzlemaker, Philip José Farmer has trouble with his ultimate revelation. The idea of a highly advanced society using its unearthly powers to redirect humanity is neither especially new (2001 hints at a similar solution) nor appropriate. Ten-year followers of the Riverworld are likely to feel that they have crossed deserts, scaled mountains and battled hostile tribesmen for a potty message: Farmer’s El Dorado looks suspiciously like Hoboken.

Even so, the author deserves close attention. If he is not quite the figure Critic Leslie Fiedler once described as “The greatest science fiction writer ever,” his imagination is certainly of the first rank. And if his prodigious saga falters, it is only after four volumes, when the journey has already provided a library’s worth of merriment and insight. “In skating over thin ice,” wrote Emerson, “our safety is in our speed.” Until the final stretch, Farmer’s velocity is breathtaking. —Peter Stoler