The Black Tower

Philip José Farmer's The Dungeon #1

by Philip José Farmer, Richard A. Lupoff, Robert Gould (Illustrator)

The return of a classic shared world fantasy series created by Philip Jose Farmer, award-winning author of the Riverworld saga! Plunging into a vast prison that spans a planet, Clive Foliott faces a fantastic world of dwarves, cyborgs, and aliens unlike anything he has ever imagined. It is a multi-leveled collection of beings from the hidden folds of time and space. Trapped somewhere inside is Neville Foliott, Clive's twin brother, and no creature in the Dungeon will stop Clive from finding him...

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Adventure

339 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published July 1, 1988

About the author

Philip José Farmer was an American author, principally known for his science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories. He was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, but spent much of his life in Peoria, Illinois.

Farmer is best known for his Riverworld series and the earlier World of Tiers series. He is noted for his use of sexual and religious themes in his work, his fascination for and reworking of the lore of legendary pulp heroes, and occasional tongue-in-cheek pseudonymous works written as if by fictional characters.

Reviews

[S.E. Lindberg · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Black Tower (1988) is full of forced action and lost opportunity. In any event, I thank the Goodreads Sword & Sorcery groupread that enabled me to revisit a series I thought I missed out on. If you like to be constantly bait-n-switched without reason, then this book is for you. Since it is the anchor for the series, I don't plan on reading more.

The Concept: Set ~1870, the aristocratic Englishman Major Clive Folliot goes exploring across the world for his missing brother Neville. The premise has a "lost world" pulp vibe (i.e., an alien world in which the protagonist is teleported/transported to and cannot return to earth) and that world is essentially a hostile prison for beings across time & space. A few instances, the book evoked emotions I last felt while watching the 1967 TV series The Prisoner or the 2004-2010 TV series The Lost. As the introduction explains, Byron Preiss had asked Philip José Farmer to edit and oversee the Dungeon series. Richard A. Lupoff was chosen to lead this (but it is unclear if Farmer selected him) with Volume 1: The Black Tower (1988).

What worked:
-Farmer's introduction to the series & the concept of the "Dungeon"
-The pull of the mysterious disappearance of Neville; this premise kept me in the book the duration.
-Bonus sketches/illustrations ostensibly drawn by the protagonist
-Occasional, brief scenes that deserved more than a paragraph (i.e., the plight of enthralled giants, and the impregnation of spider eggs into human bodies)
-User Annie's futuristic (~1999) language (which mention motherboards, and downloading); for a 1988 novel, this take on future vocabulary was entertaining and fairly accurate.

What did not work:
(1) The promise behind the cover and title: The cover by Robert Gould is awesome. It has stuck in my head for 30+ yrs. However, it promises a Heroic Fantasy or Sword & Sorcery story, and the book is Sci-Fi adventure. My initial, ignorant impression was that the book may be like the 1984 Deathtrap Dungeon experience in which a hero is trapped a grim prison and must fight his way out (at least that cover matched the milieu).I don't think Major Clive Folliot ever wears a cape while wielding a sword either. The first third of this book is set in ~1870; then it's a mix of modern and futuristic elements. "The Black Tower" title seems off too; there is a black tower which is termed the City of Q'oorna, run by a khalif who spares the explorer's crew and puts them into a dungeon of sexy women! (exclamation used to mirror the author's style) ... but we do not return to this tower or khalif, so...whatever.

(2) Embarrassing Sexism: Clive's constant desire to have sex with every woman undermines his deep feelings for Annabella Leighton, his love interest (stuck on earth as he explores the Dungeon). It is laughable to read chapter after chapter with him observing women as sex objects; expect descriptions of boobs, hips, and lips. Clive even has carnal desires for his relatives stuck in the dungeon! Cripes. Here's my favorite as Clive meets an alien lady with alabaster white skin:

"The magnificent woman touched the emerald that lay against her bosom, and Clive found himself wondering at the likely color of the areolae of her breasts." (p310)

(3) The conflict is "Clive vs.... ??? ". Maybe the conflict is against the Q'oornans (which are labels for people/things that might be ruling the strange Dungeon) but Clive fights people/things that are not Q'oornan constantly. Several prisons and military outpost exist, but they are all run by other prisoners. The final climax is not at the original Black Tower (i.e., the center of Q'oorna, the first outpost we experience in The Dungeon proper, and the title of the book) but features some other random tower with other random antagonists.

(4) The cool stuff relating to the main mystery is sidelined. Beyond the Black Tower bait-n-switch, the few links to a real story are sparse. For example, Clive's brother's notebook appears abruptly (mysteriously providing communications), then disappears for a long time; when it eventually reappears, it is given scant attention. On the other hand, the book is full of random conflicts that don't matter from chapter-to-chapter. In short, the pretense of "mystery" allows Clive to randomly explore, attack, befriend, and wander without reason.

(5) The author seemed lost: The formula was clear for each chapter: introduce new ideas then toss them. Many times the main story arc was disregarded and we are treated to campy, fireside discussions amongst the characters echoing the author's lack of direction. Here is my own distillation of these silly discussions:

"Why are we banding together?"
[no answer since no ones knows why]
"What should we do now that we are stuck again?"
"Let me tell you, the plot calls for something, let's move dammit sah (~sir)!"

When first stumbling into the Dungeon, and climbing a mountain, the characters find themselves stuck (they can't descend). But wait, there is a mysterious coffin here...and it seems tall. Yes it is. In fact, there is a trap bottom under the body and inside are ropes to climb down. Perfect, let's take them and go! (That is actually a true spoiler of a minor scene) and it represents the constant pseudo-action. Essentially, the action has to keep going, and every few pages when the group is in a bind, a meaningless solution presents itself.

Conversely, in the middle of action sequences we are treated with forced sides, i.e., when Shriek is introduced and spearman threatens the group, Clive decides to calmly experiment with telepathy to someone back "home" (for a few pages of dialogue).

Instead of closing the loop on the key story arcs, the final chapter (named "Chang Guafe") even springs a new character on us. In Farmer's intro, he actually calls out Chang as being a great element (maybe, but it is poorly placed in the story, and poorly utilized).

[Space · Rating 3 out of 5]

When you read this book at age nineteen, amid the sound of a piano coming from another room, the warm sweet splash of cheap wine in your throat and the excitement of a fresh cigarette inside, safe from the rain, it's romantic. The book itself is full of romance, but it's the act of reading it - this story - that feels romantic. As an adolescent, at least. Here, as a grown-up, it didn't quite feel the same.

Back then all I thought about was getting laid and getting drunk. So of course I wanted to know what color 'Nrrc'Kth's areolae were. Of course I wanted Clive to hook up with User Annie and get his future on. Now I just want the story. I don't want the sappy romance. It was little things like this that lowered my score on the writing side of the author, Richard Lupoff. It just flat-out wasn't as magical as it was eighteen years ago.

But it was still good. I still enjoyed the nostalgiac feeling this gave me as I read it. I do have to say though - had I not read this before, I probably wouldn't have liked it now. It, to me, is like an A Wrinkle In Time. One of the best books you'll ever read as a child. But reading it as an adult just wasn't the same. It lost a lot of its luster.

Even still, if you've not read it, and you're looking for a gigantic adventure through many worlds and many times, with many different creatures, this is a neat little endeavor. I'd give it a go. I will still keep this on my Will-Read-Again list, and will probably read the series every ten years or so just to bring back that feeling of the first time I read it. This book made a lot of statements to me that changed my life in many ways back when I was still young and maleable. So it will always have a special place in my art.

[Daniel McGill · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's been about 20 years since I actually read these books but my impressions have really stuck with me so I'm going to review the first and the last and give my recollections of the series as a whole. This series has an unusual style, a shared world created by Philip José Farmer and 6 volumes written by 4 other authors.

This first volume and for the most part the next 4 are a great mix of pulp scifi, fantasy dungeon crawl and adventure mystery, as Clive Foliott 19th century minor English nobleman follows his older brother's trail through a multilayered inter-dimensional alien prison world just to find out what happened to the jerk so he can get on with his life.

Along the way he assembles a party of matronly psychic spiders, enthusiastic dog-boys(Rifts reference), alien cyborgs and humans from across time and space.

The series suffers a bit from having multiple authors of course. Some of the characters' voices change significantly from one book to the next and even their mannerisms and physical descriptions are not always consistent from one book the the next. The (mostly) alien cyborg, whose name I think is Chang Gaff (I can't believe I haven't been able to verify this on the F'ing Internet) goes from a guy with some metal bits showing to contently extruding tools, tendrils and mechadendrites to perform tasks from one book to the next and back again for example.

Overall I recommend this series with one caveat. The last book "The Final Battle" is awful, see my review of that volume for why. If you are the kind of person who unlike me can stop reading a six book series after 5 books then do that. Whatever your imagination comes up with will both make more sense and be immensely more satisfying then contents of book 6. If not then be warned and hopefully the last book wont sour the experience for you.

[Derek · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm a little bewildered at my four-star memories and my two-star present experience: it emulates the Scientific Romance Pulp tradition of a long preamble before "it starts", and even afterwards it is satisfied with throwing a lot of _mysterious_ stuff at you--plot arc stuff and recurring characters that figure into later parts of the series--rather than _exciting_ or _amazing_ stuff. For every lunatic anthropophagous hydra-thing battle on the Bridge of Doom, there's a sedate village encounter that doesn't amount to much, and also rather a lot of people acting on a mysterious agenda and not wanting to share on the subject. For every Chang Guafe amorphous Borg creature, there's an extended encounter with stereotypical World War II Japanese soldiers out of time and space (who inexplicably attach the title of "the Sacred" to a visiting Caucasian woman).

The shame of that woman--"User Annie"--is that for most of the story she's saddled with an unintelligible dialect based closely on then-current IT terminology which hasn't aged at all, which doesn't make sense in terms of 'yes, society would do this', and which calls her empowerment as a character into question. Until, for some reason, all the characters learn the 'local argot', indicating that even the author lost interest in pursuing it as a concept.

I didn't even get a good impression of what "The Dungeon" really _is_: immense physical chambers or physical layers? Dimensional pockets? Something else? The characters themselves don't speculate or discuss, and the explanation seems to shift. The idea of The Dungeon being something indescribable or a thing whose scope is continually expanded and unveiled over time ("Is it this underground structure? Is it this weird planet? Is it a set of dimensional pockets?") is teased but never exploited.

[Jason B. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this series in high school, and apparently loved it, because when I found it on the ol' Kindle, I gave it another go.

Richard A. Lupoff managed to perfectly capture the essence of his main character, to the point where his prose is stilted, unpleasant and voluminous, as you would find in the journal of a major in Her Majesty's army.

I found myself repeatedly backing up and re-reading passages because it was not immediately clear what had just happened, why the character went from scaling a cliff wall to running away from a bunch of people, or whatever the fuck. After I finished, I realized I absolutely did not care what happened to Major Clive Folliot and would rather he just died a quick and quiet death.

Pass.

[Roxanna I. · Rating 1 out of 5]

About as male power fantasy as you can get. Clive, busy frolicking with his lady decided to go on adventure, gets hit on by ladies, gets in and out of trouble, spirited away to a magical realm where he gets hit on by more ladies (one of whom, his granddaughter from the future who would be totally cool with it if he decided to get it on with her apparently), everyone looks to him automatically for guidance, basically everyone except him and his man crush are pathetic, he easily topples foes without breaking a sweat and woman fall all over him. A lot of dream logic and to many nonsensical mysteries that will never be solved.

[Patrick]

The Dungeon starts off well enough with an interesting concept — and then comes the casual racism. I’m not sure if the goal in 1988 was to write how a 19th century Englishman would have treated other cultures and religions, but regardless it doesn’t stand well with me in 2020.

[The Honest Book Reviewer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bought the six book series a while back at a used book store. Finally decided to pull the first from the shelf and give it a go. I liked it. It's not the usual fantasy fiction I enjoy, and definitely not my favourite, but I thought the story unique and entertaining.

It's easy to be put off by some of the things the characters say or how they react to other characters or situations, but then you need to remember the time period of each character. And there are plenty of different time periods to choose from. The journey our protagonist and his motley crew take is full of danger and mystery, but I found myself pleasantly dragged along for the ride for most of the time. There are a few surprises along the way, a few twists, plenty of danger and excitement, and moments of drama.

At times it felt like a dark and demented take on Alice in Wonderland, or maybe The Wizard of Oz. A powerful man in a castle - an army of minions to overthrow. Strange creatures and occurrences. I'm sure it plays homage to some of the classics.

I want to learn more about this dungeon world, and I guess the only way I'm going to is to read the rest of the series.

[Jennifer Linsky · Rating 3 out of 5]

This really does read very much like an early-20th century American or British pulp fiction, at least for the first half of the book, which covers the main character travelling from England to Africa. There are aspects of it I find disturbing, such as the main character declaring his undying love for his fiance back home and then popping a boner for every character with breasts for the rest of the book, but that's true to the genre.

Frankly, if the other books in the series were written by the same author, I'd probably stop reading here, but... Charles de Lint wrote book 3!

[Rob Mac · Rating 4 out of 5]

Take a stereotypical Victorian explorer and suddenly portal jump them to a unknown planet.

Problems: It still feels like it has Victorian attitudes toward other nations and races, and it has an unsatisfying ending that leads to the next book.

The Good: creative aliens, a ripping adventure, with a twist I never predicted. The mystery ending is almost enough to make me look into the next book.

[Xabi1990 · Rating 4 out of 5]

7/10.
Prefiero al Farmer de CF, pero esta saga de fantasía (6 libros) se llevo yb 7/10 en todas y cada uno de ellos. Entretenida, vamos.

[Shawn Turpin · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's OK

Just OK. Doubt I'll read the other books in the series. The characters and story lack depth and did not hold my interest.

[Thomas Chamberlain · Rating 3 out of 5]

it was very slow but the weirdness was very appreiciated.

[mono · Rating 4 out of 5]

A dungeon crawling book, how neat. Clive is a dick but the mysterious "tower" makes up for it.

[Brent Moffitt · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was such a slog just to get through this one, I'm giving up on the series. Farmer has a great imagination but I just can't appreciate the way he presents it.

[M.J. Schwer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hey it was a good read! Typical 1980’ fantasy and sci-fi Ill read the whole series.

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are some lines worthy of being quoted.
However, the buildup is so slow that 1/4 through the book, I wonder if this is worth my time.
Don't intend to finish.

[Robert Negut · Rating 4 out of 5]

The start of a very interesting writing experiment. Six books written by five different authors, the first and last written by the same author, with a sixth as supervisor and editor.
It passes through the "real" world of 1868 rather quickly and adds fantastic details to it even sooner, so you don't really have time to notice whether it's pictured realistically or not, but that's all good; it doesn't matter anyway.
Clive isn't the kind of character that I could like. A stuck-up 33 year old officer in the British army, position achieved more thanks to his father's influence and his brother's achievements than his own merit, quite uncertain about his view on life, thinks it's very important to please his father and is going into the unknown in search for his missing brother even though said brother bullied him since birth and his death would make Clive his father's heir. Still, he goes and ends up in another realm, a multi-layered world known as The Dungeon, filled with creatures kidnapped from a multitude of worlds and times.
The various shapes and sizes of the creatures make for an interesting array, but there are still way too many humans for it to seem likely.
That being said, the story is rather nicely done, for such an odd mix of creatures and places.

[Kirk Macleod · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Dungeon was a series conceived of by author Phillip José Farmer, and written by Richard A. Lupoff (vol. 1 & 6), Bruce Coville (vol. 2), Charles de Lint (vol 3 & 5), and Robin W. Bailey (vol. 4). As I’ve been working my way through the works of de Lint, and had come across used copies of various volumes for years, I finally decided to give the series a try this month, which was a pretty good decision as I was introduced to it’s protagonist (and this week’s genre character) Major Clive Folliott.

In the first book of the series, Clive travels from his home in 1869 England to find the location of his missing brother, the explorer Neville Folliott - his journey ends up taking him to another place entirely, a location (World, Level, Dimension?) called "The Dungeon".

What I like best about Clive is both his sense of honour (he searches for his brother mostly on principle - they were not close), and his willingness to step back and look at each new situation with a calm eye (a pretty great attribute for any leader to have). The story is filled with all sorts of characters out of place and time, and I'm really quite interest to see where the various authors will take it next.

[Joey Wardell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a series that stuck with me as well. I've read the entire series about 3 times now. I don't understand all the hate for book 6 (though it's very common among readers to dislike it), book 4 bothered me the most. The language of the spider, Shriek, changed drastically in that one, but the story line was strong enough to over come it, but because it's an easy world to dive into, to imagine yourself in the adventure (the time of book where you daydream off into the world and don't even realize you are reading it), it was bothersome to me.

It had enough of an impact and love for me that after reading it at 14 years old, I named my son Clive, after the main character in the book. Best sci-fi series I ever read.

[Jerjonji · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is not written by Philip Jose Farmer- now that you understand that, on to the book. It took me a bit to get over the fact that this is a series of books based on an idea of Farmer's written by different authors. By book 2, it feels like a cheap trick, but back to book 1. I loved the voice of the book- the 19th century characters thrown into a strange and ugly world without explanation or reason. The search for the missing twin feels lame after the hero suffers so much and still goes forward. Reads a little bit like an old H. Rider Haggard novel that I'd loved as a child, which explains the sense of familiarity and attraction.

[Renato Rodriguez · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my fourth time reading this book in 20 years or so. There are 5 other books in the series but for some reason or another i have never gotten around to read the others. The first time i couldn't find them and after i bought the rest it seems like once i read book one, something prevents me to getting back to the series.
I'd really recommend it if you're looking for a weird scifi tale about parallel worlds and time traveling adventures.
I have read that the other books in the series are not on the same quality level as this one. One reason for this is the fact the series was written by different authors, so i'd expect a change in tone and narrative style.

[Jose Vidal · Rating 3 out of 5]

La serie de la Mazmorra intenta ser un libro de Philip J. Farmer sin serlo, y se nota. Algunas ideas interesantes, un aire de aventura que recuerda por momentos al Mundo del Rio... pero sin llegar a alcanzarlo.

La sucesión de autores en la serie tampoco ayuda, de forma que la primera y la última pueden casi leerse de forma unitaria sin recurrir a las demás.

En la primera novela seguimos al bien definido protagonista, un héroe victoriano, en una enloquecida aventura a un lugar imposible. Se plantean un montón de preguntas, se abren un montón de interrogantes que sólo serán contestados (o olvidados) en el último tomo de la serie.

Una lectura entretenida.

[James Oden · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure I have ever felt so neutral towards a protagonist. On one hand you could see Clive Folliet had been handed some bad hands, but on the other being born to a well to do English family at the height of the British Empire, really wasn't such a bad thing (even if you were just the second born). Still I persevered through the book, and somehow towards the end, and in about the last 50 pages I really got into it. I've bought all six of them at a used book store, so I suppose I'll be on to the next soon.

See, completely lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I am with regard to this book.

[Topher · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this years and years ago, possibly pre-high school, and remembered enjoying it. I don't even remember where I saw it more recently - likely some used book store, but I've had it sitting on my shelves for about two years now. I figured it was time to read it.

There's a saying that you can never go home again. It may have been better if I had not picked this one back up, but, I did still enjoy it. I'll likely keep going - if only because book 2 is in the same volume I purchased.

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you like Jose Farmer's Riverworld and World of Tiers series (or Zelazny's Amber books) then this is a book that follows a very similar formula and style. Although the worlds created aren't quite as neatly connected and characters aren't quite as compelling it does feel like your reading a PJF novel and if like me you've read the others this is a welcome addition.

[Robert · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is one of the few books I've ever skimmed through to the end just so it would end. The author wrote as if he were writing in the mid-late 1800s, but not very well. I'm reading a book by H. Rider actually written in 1892, and it is a much better book.

[Abby · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a favorite of my husbands, and I hated it!!! It makes no sense, and I don't like the style of writing. The only character I liked was Finnbog. :)

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice tripped out series, really enjoyed it.

[Bodie · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was pretty good, some really classic, raw adventuring. Wasn't especially well written or clever but I liked how interesting and strange the world was. Very surreal.