Mark Twain's Fabulous Riverboat in England

In author Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld series, everyone who has ever lived on Earth (up to a certain date) is reborn on a vast planet constructed by a mysterious alien race. In every portion of this manufactured world, people from different ages, cultures, races, and beliefs mix freely. So aborigine cultures would mix with the most advanced peoples, and everyone in between. This allows people of great flexibility and willpower, such as Sir Richard Burton, the world famous explorer from Torquay, England, to shine in book one of the series. 

In The Fabulous Riverboat, the second Riverworld novel, Samuel Clemens opts not to spend this second life writing as a novelist under the pseudonym Mark Twain. Instead, he uses his humor and smarts to convince others to help him build a steamboat. This allows him to return to the love of his youth, that of piloting a steamboat on the Mississippi River. This early career had been taken from him, when river travel routes were cut short by the American Civil War. 

In Horning, England, you can step aboard a ship similar to the one Samuel Clemens built in Farmer's novel, and cruise the byways of the Norfolk broads. Like Riverworld, the area exhibits natural splendor. It's a scenic wonderland protected against development by the English government. 

Sitting in comfort aboard the Southern Comfort, you'll cruise along natural and manmade rivers. The ship's modern engine are far quieter than the primitive steam engines of Samuel Clemens' day. So you don't have to worry about the engine exploding, and setting the vessel on fire, such as in the accident that claimed his brother's life. Nor will you see workers digging new river channels for peat to keep their families warm in winter. But, depending upon when you visit, you might spy them harvesting the thatch lining these natural and manmade rivers, which they use to roof their houses.

A cruise aboard the Southern Comfort allows you to see how many people love to get out in the water, explore these tree-lined byways, and watch the swans, ducks, coots, and grebes swim past. As you cruise past the wide variety of nearby houses and villages, you can chat with those seated next to you. Most will hail from other regions of England, and happily tell you about the places they live.

The Mississippi River Boat Company calls their ship the Southern Comfort, but the way they service their customers is thoroughly English. So you can sit back, and watch the world go by, while sipping tea, and crunching a biscuit (that's English for cookie, mind you) with a proper cup and saucer. If you travel with a group, the leader may even purchase your tea for you, and bring it to your seat, as he did on our river cruise.

Who would have guessed that one could tour the famous Broads of England aboard a fabulous Mississippi riverboat? 

Samuel Clemens, take a bow.

Dragon Dave

Exploring Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld

Imagine waking up one morning on a grassy field along with a crowd of other people. Like everyone else, you are naked, and your only possession an empty tube-shaped container. Before you lies a river that divides a mountain-lined valley, and spaced along it, every mile or so, are large stone sculptures shaped like mushrooms. Oh, and one more thing: you remember your death. Vividly.

This is the situation in which Sir Richard Francis Burton finds himself in Philip Jose Farmer's novel To Your Scattered Bodies Go. This nineteenth century British explorer traveled widely, wrote prolifically, and spoke numerous languages. Given his extensive experience of other cultures and societies, he nonetheless feels a moment of panic at the thought that this must be the afterlife, and Judgment Day awaits. But then he remembers another dream he had, about waking up in a vast chamber, and discovering other naked bodies floating around him, some of them lacking skin, or with portions of their skeletons showing. Clearly some power brought all of them back to life, for some inexplicable purpose. This situation hardly resembles those described in the Biblical book of Revelations. For, just like everyone else here, despite having lived a long life, he is young again.

In this first day, he will discover that each person's canister fits into one of the many slots in the stone mushrooms. Three times each day, after electricity surges through these mushrooms, the people remove their canisters to find them filled with various food and drink items. It would seem that whoever placed them in this river valley intends to care for their basic needs. Some might view this situation as a return to Eden. Burton, given his understanding of human nature, commences a survey of available resources. He and another man, a hairy Neanderthal, gather suitable pieces of stone, and begin shaping them into stone axes. While he has no desire to hold power over others, he knows that some people will always seek to rule over or take advantage of others. And so he determines to assemble tools he can use to build a home for himself, and weapons he can use to defend himself, as well as what he has built. 

With this imaginative premise, Philip Jose Farmer ushers us into Riverworld, a planet containing every person who died after age five or so, from thousands of years BCE to the early twenty-first century, when an apocalyptic event occurred. (As proof that Humanity suffered a great cataclysm, Richard Burton meets a revived alien who landed on Earth in his future, only to find that nations soon fight over the right to the technology he has brought with him). Like a snake, this river winds its way around the planet, always surrounded by a grassy valley, and hemmed in by unscalable mountains. It's a planet of infinite possibilities, where people can begin again, and put all past mistakes behind them. In a world in which each person can remake his life in any way he or she pleases, Richard Francis Burton can feel no satisfaction in building a house or even founding a kingdom. His overwhelming ambition drives him to discover who resurrected Humanity, and why. To fulfill his quest, he vows to travel along the river and discover the beings who brought him here. For what is life without adventure, and the challenges that promise great rewards? 

To Your Scattered Bodies Go won the 1972 Hugo award for best novel, voted on by attendees of the World Science Fiction Convention. Its overwhelming popularity spurred Farmer to write numerous sequels. Eventually, Farmer invited other others to write their own stories about Riverworld. Riverworld games appeared, followed by TV programs set on this fantastic world. As yesterday marked the ninety-seventh anniversary of Philip Jose Farmer's birth, why not observe this occasion by exploring (or returning to) the fictional world for this great author is best known? In this timeless series, you may just find yourself carried away on one the greatest vicarious adventures of your life. 

That is, of this life, I mean.

Dragon Dave

One Year Later: Part 1

Time passes so quickly.  What seemed to happen only yesterday may have occurred months or years ago.  We spend our lives swimming in a stream of memories.  Like exhaled bubbles, most moments of our lives drift off into the stream, forgotten forever or rarely recalled.  Significant memories, which often include many we would rather forget, hug our bodies as we swim, refusing to float away with the current.  Memories may increase our buoyancy, lending us strength to swim to a distant, desired destination.  Or they may suck the breath from our lungs, and pull us beneath the surface.  We may not be able to forget those that embarrass or disgust us, but if we can learn from them, we may avoid repeating the mistakes that forged those memories.  On the other hand, we can strengthen and create positive memories if we concentrate upon those that will drive us onward.  Now and then, it’s beneficial to sit back, recall what we’ve done, and reflect on what such accomplishments have contributed to our lives.  It is with the latter in mind that I look back one year ago to when I started this blog.  

In “The Blogging Wars: My Hope,” I essentially asked three questions: 1) Why should I start a blog now?; 2) Why should you read my blog?; and 3) What am I passionate about?  For many years, part of me had yearned to write a blog, but I had no idea what I would do with one.  What would I write about?  What might I communicate that could benefit others?  And how could I justify spending the time away from working on my novels to write a blog?  Ultimately, I started the blog because of two factors: Condor and Depression.  

Every year, when Condor arrived, I would find myself at a loss as to how to engage with the convention’s Guest of Honor (G.O.H.).  An esteemed author walked in our midst, yet I had read little or nothing of his (or her) fiction.  Or perhaps I had read several of his novels, but many years previously, and thus lacked fresh reactions to his characters, settings, plots, and ideas to spark an interesting conversation regarding his work.  Last year, I determined that I would read as many stories by 2011’s G.O.H. as I could.  Both before and after Condor, I read most of the novels Dr. Gregory Benford wrote in the 1970s and early eighties.  But, as the blog evolved, I quickly realized that I wanted to do more than merely review those books.  I wanted to celebrate them.  This involved outlining the stories, studying aspects that fascinated me, and thinking about what they meant to me.  

Sometimes I grow depressed: I have written stories for so many years, but have yet to see any of them published.  It’s my fault: I often fail to finish the stories I start, or spend too much time rewriting, and never put the effort into the submission process that I should.  This lack of success drags me beneath the surface, where a subsequent lack of oxygen deprives me of the strength to swim onward.  Depression most often afflicts me during the shorter days of Winter, especially around the holidays.  I realized that everything I had tried before had not transformed me into the writer I wish to become, so I decided that I must adopt another approach.  Around this time, an issue of “Locus” slid into my letterbox.  It discussed the role that blogs play in fandom, and provided testimonials by published authors who found blogging beneficial to their careers.  I figured, why not start?  After so many years of swimming, I had not yet found the place I desired to inhabit.  Why not take the next tributary, strike off in a direction I’ve contemplated, and see where it took me?  

So, like Sam Clemens in Philip Jose Farmer’s The Fabulous Riverboat, or like Raul and company in Dan Simmons’ novel Endymion, I traveled into uncharted territory.  At the very least, I figured, it would be an adventure.

This essay will continue with One Year Later: Part 2.

Related Dragon Cache entries

The Blogging Wars: My Hope

The Fellowship of Condor

Three Shining Moments