I got my favorite writer a gig. Talking with an editor of Star Trek novels,
I mentioned that Voyager was a lot like a script Philip Jose Farmer wrote
f or the original series. Rejected for being impossible to film --how do
you show the Enterprise stranded outside the universe on a TV budget?--the
story was rewritten without any Star Trek references as "The Shadow
of Space," to be found in Farmer's collection Down in the Black Gang.
This same editor contacted Farmer's agent and a deal was struck. So
far, no one know if the book will be in the Voyager series or on of the
other ST series, but Farmer will be the most prestigious science fiction
author to contribute to Star Trek. As it inevitably hits the best seller
list, maybe we'll see massive reissues of Farmer's 50 plus book. This article
should prepare you for that.
While Farmer is prestigious, his name is unfortunately not on everyone's
lips. Still, he has warranted the attention of noted literary critic Leslie
Fiedler. Fiedler once wrote that "Farmer wants to eat and regurgitate
himself...," in a 1972 Los Angeles Times Book review article entitled
"Getting Into the Task of the Now Pornography." I mention this
title only to remind you that at one time some of Farmer's best known works,
like Image of the Beast and Blown were considered pornographic filth. If
Farmer's readership has dwindled lately, it's because what he's best known
for, unbridled lust and sex, is commonplace today, remarked anthologist
and critic David Hartwell to me, in conversation .
In Red Orc's Rage, (Tor, $5.99) Farmer has finally succeeded in "regurgitation
himself." The novel is base on a form of therapy from the real world
that is, in turn, spun off from Farmer's World of Tiers series. In both
the therapy and the novel, a patient read the series and chooses a character
from it to identify with. It should suprise nobody that troubled 17-year-old
Jim Grimson (he's a grim son!) has chosen Red Orc as his character. To explain:
the World of Tiers books follows the adventures of an Earthman Paul J. Finnegan
(dig those initials) in "pocket universes" that are set at right
angles to our own. These universes were created millennia ago by the immortal
and decadent race called the Lords. Over time, they've lost most of their
technology and knowledge to create more pocket universes. Bored, the Lords
wage war on each other for control of all universes. Earth's universe,
also artificial, is caught in the middle of it all with only Finnegan--renamed
Kickaha--standing in the way. His previous adventures are recounted in
The Maker of Universes, The Gates of Creation, A Private Cosmos, Behind
the Wall of Terra and The Lavalite World. In these, Red Orc is the most
fearsome and vile of all the Lords.
Back to Red Orc's Rage: Young Jim is in therapy, and through real or
imagined trips into the mind of Red Orc, as an adolescent, is locked in
internecine struggle with his father Los. It becomes clear that Red Orc's
battles with Los have lead to his status as the evilest Lord. Through the
help of a Dr. Porsena, Jim learns that Red Orc's independence and high self-esteem
are what he needs to adapt to his own life. Jim is himself struggling with
his own abusive father. We see that if Red Orc had come to terms with his
father they could have avoided conflict that included crucifixion, disfigurement
and banishment. Kickaha doesn't even appear in the novel.
If Fiedler anticipated Farmer's moves by 20 years, so too has Farmer
pre-figured "men's work" guru Robert Bly by many decades. Virtually
all of the territory Bly mapped out in his non-fiction bestseller Iron
John was covered by Farmer from the start of his career in the ‘50's.
One of Bly's major points is that men must be in touch the Wild Man
but not become the Wild Man. Farmer is the perfect example of that. One
of his enduring obsessions; besides alien sex, messiahs, immortality, and
Sherlock Holmes, is Tarzan. So far, he has written five books that involve
the Lord of the Jungle, including a faux biography called Tarzan Alive.
Creator Edgar Rice Burroughs didn't see all of the possibilities inherent
in Tarzan. Farmer has posited, for example, that such a super man would
have a super sex drive.
Bly also has said that in order for the boy to become a man, the child
inside must first die. This is at odd with what Farmer wrote in his other
biography Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, "...the reprinting the
Doc Savage series by Bantam Books resurrected the buried 15 year old"
inside him. According to Farmer, Savage and Tarzan are cousins and he can
prove it (see what I mean about obsessions?). You can read Farmer's version
of the times they collaborated and fought in A Feast Unknown, The Mad Goblin
and Lord of the Trees ( Savage is also noteworthy for being pivotal in the
development of Superman, Batman, Indiana Jones and even Buckaroo Banzai
and The Rocketeer).
Another of Burroughs' heroes was John Carter, former Confederate cavalry
officer transported to a barbaric Mars (which the inhabitants call Barroom).
That Carter marries a human-like Barsoomian gives us the blueprint for
much of Farmer's science fiction: alien-human mating and larger than life
heroes involved in endless action. Still, Carter couldn't hold a candle
to Burroughs' other hero in Farmer's imagination. He told interviewer Charles
Platt that his childhood nickname was Tarzan. Obviously, Farmer spent as
much time climbing trees as reading.
With his latest novel, More Than Fire (Tor, 5.99), Farmer closes out
the World Of Tiers series. MTF has enough action, violence and imagination
on display for a dozen ordinary novels. Just in passing, Farmer throws in
clone warfare, duplicate Earth's, mind wipes, instantaneous travel to multiple
universes and limb regeneration. They may all be old hat in science fiction,
but Farmer doesn't linger on any of them too long. However, an eye being
knocked loose in hand-to-hand combat is nauseating, even if the victim has
the medical know-how to grow a new one. Yes, the final confrontation between
Red Orc and Kickaha is just plain brutal beyond belief. All the more reason
to read it, I suppose. It is a satisfying conclusion to a mind-boggling
series.
There's more to Farmer than the World of Tiers and the secret sex lives
of heroes. There's the Riverworld series: To Your Scattered Bodies Go, The
Fabulous Riverboat, The Dark Design and T he Gods of Riverworld in which
everyone who ever lived is revived along the banks of a million mile long
river. We know the length because Mark Twain made it up to the headwaters
in a riverboat. Messiahs and religion have always been fascinating to Farmer
since reading the Book of Revelations as a child. Night Of Light and Father
To The Stars feature a crook turned priest. Farmer has also written the
novels of fictional authors, which started out a way to cure writer's block,
and resulted in Farmer having written Kilgore Trout's Venus on the Half-Shell
and numerous short stories that appeared in science fiction magazines and
were never reprinted. This practice even inspired Harlan Ellison to write
a Cordwainer Bird (his alter ego) adventure in the hopelessly out-of --print
Weird Heros series, which has Farmer also well-represented. Farmer also
claims to have merely "edited" manuscripts like Dr. John Watson's
The Adventures Of The Peerless Peer, wherein Sherlock Holmes meets Tarzan
to battle Germans in Africa during World War I and The Other Log of Phineas
Fogg, in which Mr. Fogg's odd behavior is explained in astounding science
fiction terms (he was repelling an alien invasion) and is a wonderful sequel
to Verne's Around The World in 80 Days, as well. There are other unrelated
novels from Farmer that are all stunning and imaginative like Inside Out,
Dare, Traitor To The Living, A Woman A Day, all impossible to find in the
local bookstore.
Analyzing the work of Phillip Jose Farmer has raised more questions
than it has answered. For example, if American culture is obsessed with
the female breast, why aren't science fiction and its fans similarly obsessed?
What does it mean that there is a common thread of the weak or absent fathers
in Red Orc, Tarzan, Doc Savage and Robert Bly? Are the rockets, swords
and phasers of science fiction manifestations of the phallus?
Late word finds Farmer collaborating with
Piers Anthony for The Caterpillar's Question (Ace, $5.99) and contributing
text to the 1996 Boris Vallejo calendar (Vallejo, of course, painted covers
for some of Farmer's books) and the Star Trek novel that hopefully won't
involve that self-conscious Professor Moriarity hologram. That would be
too weird, ever for Farmer.