To Your Scattered Bodies Go
Having a Victorian man be your protagonist, even an adventurous libertine of a Victorian, will allow an author to get away with a lot.
Riverworld is a fantastic idea. Stupendous. All who have ever lived and died on Earth have been simultaneously resurrected, including pre-humans, cured of disease, and disabilities, and all in the prime of life. All of their basic needs are provided for, but there are no explanations given for this strange miracle. I was introduced to it through the 2003 TV-movie (a failed pilot) and immediately ordered the first two books from the library.
And I liked them then, and I like 'To Your Scattered Bodies Go' now, except I just can't get past the huge gap between the great greatness of the idea and the basic adequacy of the plot. Richard Burton, explorer and translator of the 'Arabian Nights' is our compulsory hero, accompanied by a stand-in for Farmer himself, an alien who caused the supposed-end of humanity, a neanderthal, and an inter-changeable cast of female love-bots led by Alice Hargreaves (inspired 'Alice in Wonderland').
Sorry, that's not fair. Alice Hargreaves is a silly prude until later in the book after the group is captured, and she and the other women are raped over and over for an indeterminable time (which is just, fuuuuck, why?). The men are forced to mine with a bunch of other unfortunates, but Burton orchestrates an escape. Its never really explained how so many people are forced to do anything in a world where everybody is young and fit, starts on the same footing, and technology is at the sticks and stones level. Where does the power base come from?. Eventually Alice becomes the "hutmate" of Burton.
Herman Goring and a pre-Republic King of Rome are the primary human villains but there is the whole mystery of Riverworld to get to the bottom of, and Burton makes the attempt. The powerful beings who have created this new life might have sinister motives of their own. Or not. But maaaaybe....
What's great about the book is how Burton relentlessly deconstructs the Riverworld in his attempts to understand it. He challenges the logistics of such an undertaking just as the reader does. Farmer doesn't exploit the potential of having a huge cast of notable and famous people either. It should have left a lot of room for character development without worries of "accuracy". No unique characters fill that void though. What else is wrong is he doesn't even approach the possibilities of clashing cultures (the initial distribution of people resurrected large percentages of people who died in the same time/place in the same area). Burton is the only character who is given any real characterization in-book, and that is mostly in the form of strident defensive posturing along the lines of "I only wrote that polemic damning Jews because the moneylenders of Damascus blah blah blah". The book is hollow, with most of the cultures encountered being identical to each other except for their names and women having no bearing to the plot or any self-agency except when it comes to being sexual partners.
OK, when I actual write out my problems with the book it seems like there isn't much to like. It's a great idea, but Farmer turned it into something like a dead-end, because Book 2, 'The Fabulous Riverboat', only builds on the problems within the series instead of expanding the world's possibilities.
Riverworld
Next: 'The Fabulous Riverboat'
