A new afterlife with old problems
A flyby of To Your Scattered Bodies Go, the first of Farmer?s Riverworld series, focalizes through the renown Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton as the reader?s witness to the resurrection of nearly all humanity. However, ?this Resurrection Day was not one which any religion had stated would occur." Billions of human from every era of history have been brought back in their prime and deposited nude on either side of a planetary river valley flanked by impassible mountains. The reason for their mass revival are unknown as are their strange bodily details. Farmer?s stand-in, writer Peter Frigate (note the initials), says, ?I don?t know why all the hairs were shaven off or why men?s facial hairs don?t grow or why men were circumcised and women made virgins again. Or why we were resurrected.". Most of all, humanity, including several quite notable personages, is left to speculate just who is responsible for these actions and the thrice-daily delivery of foodstuffs through the plentiful ?grailstones? deposited all along the river.
Farmer's critique of society, both the 1970's culture and mankind at large, lies in his scaliwag protagonist's accurate fears. Burton expects the worst from humankind: ?He did not have the slightest idea what was on the agenda for humanity, but if it was left unsupervised or uncontrolled, it would soon be reverting to its normal state. Once the shock was over, the people would be looking out for themselves, and that meant some would be bullying others." True to his prediction, violence soon breaks out and tribes are formed, with Burton?s including the Cro-Magnon Kazz and full-grown Alice Pleasance Liddell, the childhood basis for Alice of Wonderland fame. They join Burton in his instinctive quest to navigate the river; he says, ?I tell you that we are setting sail because the Unknown exists and we would make it the Known." Thus, Burton and his crew of the The Hadji seek to source of their revitalized existences.
Whereas the subsequent books will complicate matters greatly, this first introduction to the Riverworld is the most compelling and comparable to other Afterlife engagements such as Dante's Inferno. Burton, ?the eternal pilgrim," is a challenging touchstone for readers to gel, but that -- and the tantalizing lack of answers delivered by the book -- is part of the charm and allure of what otherwise could have been an empty, fantastic genre romp. Don't come looking for answers; read it for a new take on old questions.
