To Your Scattered Bodies Go

Most novels begin with the birth of a hero. To Your Scattered Bodies Go begins after everyone has already died. Philip José Farmer looked at the rather final inconvenience of mortality and calmly suggested that perhaps it wasn’t the end at all—merely the beginning of one of science fiction’s most gloriously bizarre adventures. It’s the sort of premise that makes you wonder whether somebody accidentally filed an epic fantasy, a philosophical treatise and a history textbook under "science fiction" and simply hoped nobody would notice.

The first book in the legendary Riverworld series introduces Sir Richard Francis Burton—the famous Victorian explorer—who awakens, very much alive, on the banks of an impossibly vast river. He quickly discovers that he is far from alone. Millions upon millions of human beings from every period of history have been resurrected together, from prehistoric hunter-gatherers to medieval kings, Roman soldiers, astronauts, poets, philosophers and people who probably still insist the queue was shorter in their own century.

The irony is magnificent. Humanity spends thousands of years wondering what happens after death, only to discover that the afterlife resembles the world’s most spectacularly overcrowded international conference. Every historical figure you ever wanted to meet is apparently here... along with every historical figure you were rather hoping to avoid. Eternity, it seems, has remarkably few admission standards.

Farmer revels in the endless possibilities of this extraordinary setting. What happens when ancient conquerors meet modern scientists? How do nineteenth-century explorers react to twentieth-century ideas? Can lifelong enemies learn to coexist when nobody can actually stay dead for very long? The novel delights in placing wildly incompatible personalities together and simply watching history begin all over again—with predictably unpredictable results.

What makes the book so enduring is that beneath its adventurous exterior lies an endless stream of fascinating questions. Who created Riverworld? Why has humanity been resurrected? Is this heaven, an experiment, a prison or something altogether stranger? Farmer refuses to hand over easy answers, preferring instead to build layer upon layer of mystery until the reader becomes every bit as determined as Burton to uncover the truth.

There is also a wonderfully mischievous sense of humour running through the novel. Imagine spending centuries building your historical reputation, only to wake up sharing breakfast with people who vividly remember your worst decisions. Legendary heroes discover they are less impressive than their biographies suggested, famous villains occasionally prove surprisingly reasonable, and everyone learns that death has done remarkably little to improve human nature.

Published long before sprawling shared universes became commonplace, To Your Scattered Bodies Go remains one of the boldest concepts in speculative fiction. Farmer combines historical adventure, philosophical speculation, mystery and science fiction with effortless confidence, creating a world unlike anything before or since. It is the sort of novel that doesn’t merely ask readers to suspend disbelief—it politely requests that they abandon it entirely for a few hundred pages.

This 1987 Grafton edition is a lovely reminder of the era when ambitious science fiction happily embraced enormous ideas without worrying whether they fitted neatly into a single genre. It remains a genuine classic whose influence can still be felt across modern speculative fiction, yet it has lost none of its power to surprise first-time readers.

This Near Fine copy, offered by Crappy Old Books, has survived the decades considerably better than most of Riverworld’s inhabitants survived their first lives. Beautifully preserved, it shows only the slightest signs of age and remains a superb addition to any science fiction collection. No resurrected emperors are concealed between the pages, no Viking longships are included with the purchase, and thankfully the only river you’ll be swept along by is the wonderfully imaginative current of Philip José Farmer’s extraordinary storytelling.

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