Flesh

by Philip José Farmer

After 800 years of exploring the stars, Space Commander Stagg had returned to Earth. But Earth had become a new world. Where science and technology had reigned, now there were agriculture and tribal warfare. And mankind worshiped the Goddess and was content.

Into this New Earth came Peter Stagg. They named him "Sunhero" and worshipped him acoordingly. The secret rites were performed, and Stagg found himself setting out on a cross-country, orgiastic jaunt, with foot-high antlers throbbing on his head and endowed with the virility of a nation.

Yes, Space Commander Peter Stagg was the Sunhero, king of the Earth and all its willing women. But how long he would hold his throne, only the Goddess could say...

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Dark Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Post Apocalyptic

191 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1960

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

[Craig · Rating 2 out of 5]

Flesh is a novel from 1960 that was designed to be a shocking work because of its sexual content, and it reads very much like a product of its time. It's supposed to have been heavily influenced by Robert Graves' The White Goddess but overall, it just seems pretty dated now. It's the story of a group of twenty-first century astronauts who spend a long time in cryogenic suspension and return to a very different Earth inhabited by groups of strange sex cultists, and it explores how the different peoples from the different times react to each other. Main guy Stagg has antlers grafted onto his head and is renamed Sunhero. Everybody has a lot of sex a lot. There's not a whole lot more to it.

[Tim Pendry · Rating 2 out of 5]

Originally written in 1960 (though the publishers seem to do everything they can to hide this), this ancient Farmer science fiction fantasy is a rehash of Farmer's reading of Campbell, Frazer and Graves.

The story can be simply summarised as the arrival in a dystopian neo-pagan future of a space crew from the past. Neo-pagan memes are interwoven with a variety of religious myths.

It starts quite well with that wry satirical approach that a certain sort of American writer does well but almost exponentially degenerates into the ridiculous - both as theory and as sociology.

The writing is also a bit pedestrian. This condemnation is written by someone who greatly admires 'To Your Scattered Bodies Go' but, let's be frank, this is a potboiler trying to shock and it shows.

Farmer does not entirely fare well as time passes and not just because technology always tends to out-play all but the best of science fiction writers. The shock effect is just no longer there ...

In Farmer's case, technology is not the problem (we can overlook this) but an approach to religion and sexuality that derives from a peculiarly American, dare we say neurotic, context.

The book is helped by the Afterword of Dennis Power who places the work firmly in the context of Farmer's religious concerns and there might be much to be written about its meaning if it was a better book.

Here one's review falters - one could take the book seriously and produce an extensive analysis of Farmer's investigation of matriarchy and male violence or one could just move on.

Life is short, the psychology of the frustrated male writer of the 1960s is of minimal interest today and few take Campbell, Frazer and Graves wholly seriously now, so let us move on ...

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Following the literary kick in the skull provided by my recent reading of A FEAST UNKNOWN, I decided to check out some more of what crazed author Philip Jose Farmer had to offer, so I went back to FLESH, a novel I first read about thirty years ago. I remembered its basic premise, one that greatly appealed to a horny boy suffering through adolescence, but re-reading it three decades on allowed me to appreciate it from a far more experienced, "grownup" perspective, and what was once a fantasy now played out as downright nightmarish.

Upon returning to Earth after exploring deep space and assorted worlds for 800 years (suspended animation facilitated this), the crew of the starship Terra finds the planet radically changed by wars and an eerily-prescient case of climate change, and enough time has passed to allow the formation of several tribal territories within the former United States, most of which practice religions bearing much in common with ancient pagan fertility worship. The people of the Washington D.C. area, know as the Deecee, annually crown a "sunhero" who, like in times past, reigns for a determined period of time and is elevated to the staus of a living god who gets to go on tour and engage in ritual orgies whereby he impregnates armies of willing virgins, all in service of the Great White Mother. Captain Peter Stagg — a loaded name if ever I read one — is chosen to be the new sunhero and is given surgically-implanted deer horns that boost his physical capabilities to superhuman levels, something he'd certainly need if he were to successfully couple with scores of eager females each night. The downside of this is that the horns pump him full of hormones that turn him animalistic and nigh inexhaustible, a slave to the physical and sexual appetites required for his role, and when his time as sunhero is over he is to be ritually castrated and sacrificed.

While Stagg embarks on a tour of hedonistic excess, his crew must figure out how to fit in with a world very much not their own, and hopefully find some way back to their families' places of origin. No easy task considering that travel technology has regressed to roughly that of sailing vessels and horse and buggy, only with deer standing in for equines. The crew's efforts are quite interesting, but Stagg's journey/plight is the real focus of our attention, and as the tour progresses he tries in vain to retain his humanity as his chemically-spurred hyper-satyriasis rages ever further out of his control and his heart longs for Mary, a beautiful captive "mascot" from Caseyland, a country at perpetual war with the Deecee. As Stagg and Mary develop feelings for each other, the sunhero's uncontrollable need to rut places Mary in imminent danger of rape on the business end of a superhuman penis, so what's to become of her when Peter finally loses it? And how will they escape from a pack of homosexual "Pants-Elf (translation: "Pennsylvanian") warriors who intend to sacrifice them to their god and possibly get a taste of Peter's ultra-masculine charms? And even if everything works out for all involved, where could they go on this crazy, ravaged world to find a moment's peace?

The idea of being able to fuck a hundred eager women per night is quite appealing to a fourteen-year-old heterosexual male sensibility and I have to admit that upon reading FLESH for the first time I totally glossed over the ritual castration and sacrifice angle in hope of graphic depictions of Greek god-style orgiastic fornication (which I did not get). But now, at age forty-four, the idea of keeping both one's junk and life sound a hell of a lot better than having the unlimited opportunity to drink and feast like an ancient Sybarite and surf on an ocean of the fluid from the Bartholin's glands. Nonetheless, I was fascinated by the decidedly low-tech world Farmer presents, and it's one of the few such imaginary places that straddles the fine line between theoretical paradise, provided that inter-tribal war was not a factor, and an insane dystopia. I love how the return to pagan ways results in a blunt, matter-of-fact openness about nudity and sexuality, as well as how the various tribes are much more in touch with the natural world thanks to the hard lessons learned following the events leading to their societal change, and could definitely have read more about that world at large.

Though nowhere near as out-the-window-with-its-dick-in-its-hand insane as A FEAST UNKNOWN, FLESH does betray a manic energy and full-throttle madness that I'm beginning to think may be a hallmark of farmer's writing, and if that's the case then I can't wait to discover what else the guy has up his sleeve. I think I'll go for either IMAGE OF THE BEAST or STRANGE RELATIONS next...

[Tony · Rating 2 out of 5]

Starts terribly and makes little effort to pick itself up

[Peter Tillman]

Out-of-copyright (not renewed), nice ebook edition at https://archive.org/details/galaxy_no...
35c! Cover is a hoot! I can't recall if I read it or not, but I've never seen this wonderful tease cover art!

Review to read is Tim Pendry's: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... -- but really, as he says, best just to move on. Life is short, books are many!

[Chuck · Rating 3 out of 5]

The description would have you think this is some crazy teenage boy's wish-fulfillment fantasy but the novel is deceptively intellectual. Maybe not deep but there's a lot of food for thought regarding religion and cultural norms. Is this book dated? Sure but it was fun. It has a classic literature feel in that we can watch characters do otherwise unconscionable things, feel for them and still question or be repulsed or surprised by them. Take for example the sad tale of Mr. Nephi Sarvant. What becomes of him made me terribly sad but was powerful and thought-provoking about the roll of religion in regards to sexual mores and self control.

All in all a good combination of entertainment, adolescent boyish imagination and adventure with enough thought juggling between these features.

[Peter · Rating 1 out of 5]

By far the worst book I’ve ever read. It goes by quickly with the simplicity of the writing, but it’s an absolute structural headache, a tease, and lacks forethought.

[Angie · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of Farmer's least popular, but most entertaining works. A man is hailed as a god, given unlimited potency, and released to frolic among women. Clearly, this cannot end well.

[Alien · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nach 800 Jahren kehrt ein Erkundungsraumschiff zur Erde zurück. Die Besatzung muss feststellen, dass sich die Menschheit sehr stark verändert hat. Die USA ist in verfeindete Territorien aufgesplittet, in den bizarre religiöse Kulte herrschen. Und der Kapitän wird gegen seinen Willen zum neuen "Sun Hero" ernannt. Eine Art Halbgott, der unzählige Frauen begatten soll.

Ein recht seltsamer Roman, der mich aber doch fasziniert hat. Eigentlich folgt er trotz des bizarren Szenarios einer inneren Logik.
Am Schluss bringt Farmer eine Wendung, die mich im Zweifel zurücklässt, was der Autor mit seiner religiösen Symbolik letztendlich aussagen will.

[Diego Boucher · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was very random. And not in a good way, sadly.

[/Fitbrah/ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wacky nsfw fallout fanfic. Is good.

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poughkeepsie mentioned

[Duane Bindschadler · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting but seriously flawed attempt to speculate on a future American Dystopia. In in, an environmental catastrophe has wiped out much of Earth's population (and many plant and animal species as well), drastically altered the climate and geography, and a new order of civilization has begun to assert itself. The crew of a starship are delivered into this brave new world, courtesy of relativity and cryogenics, having been off scouring the galaxy for other potential homeworlds since the 21st century.

The new society is founded on the transformation of American historical figures and ideals into myth as the basis for religion, with a triune Goddess figure at the head. The stage seems to be set for the conflict between the all-male (but very internationally diverse) starship crew from the past, and a supposedly matriarchal society. Since the book was a product of the 1950's (published in 1960), it's hardly surprising that a great deal of it is utterly absurd to today's sensibilities. A starship sent off on a potentially generational journey - with a crew that includes no women! A matriarchal society in which the husband is still clearly the king of his castle. The female characters seems to rely on subterfuge and indirection, getting men to do what they want rather than openly wielding any power. In the end it felt like a stew of interesting ideas that had been thrown together without a clear understanding of how the flavors would complement one another (or not).

[Ella Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

It starts out like a hippie freakout movie so vividly written you see it play out in late-60s Technicolor, then slows down and becomes an exploration of a "warped" descendant Earth society worshiping new gods that are mythologized figures as extensions of our 18th-20th century political consciousness and named geography. The Great White Mother Columbia, her daughter Virginia and the crone goddess Alba, along with a host of other regional deities and variations on Protestantism are discussed.

I was surprised to find out that this was first released in 1960, because it felt so psychedelic and timely for the 1968 publish date that was on my paperback edition. The year the Hayes code was abandoned - There could have been an awesome film adaptation of this. Though there are undoubtedly others more suited to the role, my personal pick would have been Ken Russell as director, because he understood, quite literally, the "Flesh". The natural-appearing-as-supernatural by way of its alien nature and also the infusion of warped religious imagery would also benefit greatly from the kind of hallucinogenic atmosphere someone like him could create.

Regardless, I was incredibly satisfied with how in a compact, sub-200 page volume, something like this could deliver the blood and sex one expects from a pulp book while also being written with such deftness and economy. Having just read two Farmer books in a row, he's quickly becoming one of my favorites.

[Michelle F · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, this was an interesting read. My copy is the revised and expanded version of the original 1960 publication, which I think I’m thankful for.

A dystopian sf/fantasy, this feels very different from recent offerings. Modern-day (1968) space men return to earth 800 years later to find a regressed and paganistic civilization in the Washington DC area. The spaceship’s Captain (whose name is just a little too apropos) is crowned as the Sunhero, and physically altered to wear a crown of stag antlers and behave like a lust-maddened beast.

This book is not nearly as smutty as the title, cover and sensationalist tag lines suggest, but the general ideas are all in place for the imaginative. It’s satirical at it’s core, and intriguing enough. Although the goddess-worshipping society was clearly written by a man, so was the wacky, violent evolution of baseball, so the crap of one is canceled out by the brutal entertainment of the other.

I would recommend this more for fans of true SF dystopia, or perhaps those who like the kind of dystopia writing in, say, Stephen King’s The Stand, as opposed to fans of The Hunger Games.

[Ricky · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm kicking myself for waiting so long to read Philip Jose Farmer. Flesh comes with a lot of gossip about the sex in the book. I was expecting something entirely different than a well-written fantasy/scifi mashup where sex is definitely a big part of the plot, but not nearly as explicit as I had imagined.

The opening chapter is what will separate readers. The depiction of a community wide mythical sex ritual on the steps of a future White Hose will certainly challenge many readers to continue reading. But if you do, you will be rewarded with a tightly written story of a returning space explorers who find an earth that has become tribal. Farmer combines humor, horror, myth and engaging characters (some very strange) into a novel that is unique and quite weird.

This is one of my favorite 60's scifi novels out of the dozen I've read over the last few months. This cover of this vintage paperback is a perfect match for the story.

Highly recommended. But not for every reader.

[Joseph Carrabis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another book originally read in my pre-teen years. It was a fun read back then, it’s lost much of its hold on me since. I find that with much of Farmer’s writing. It’s a great juvenile read but lacks the depth for someone with some years behind them.

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite the description, this book isn't all that sexy. Indeed, compared to Farmer's later work, it isn't all that good.

[Jeffrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

More like 3.5 Stars.

I very quickly realized this was part dark comedy, part satire. If you read it from that perspective, it is an entertaining read.

[Mark White · Rating 4 out of 5]

Flesh is very much a product of its time. It's part satire and part rejecting (or playing with) the social and religious mores of the time, I think largely for the shock value. It also employs a premise popular at the time of interstellar travellers returning after centuries or millennia, thanks to time dilation or hibernation, to find the earth changed beyond recognition. It beat Planet of the Apes into print by 3 years so points for originality. In PotA the apes evolve intelligence and civilisation and take over from humanity. In Flesh humanity is physically unchanged but the USA has evolved a more sensible form of government and the rules of baseball have been changed to liven up the game.

The dominant religion in Flesh is a fertility cult and Peter Stagg (the ship's captain) is surgically altered to become the all powerful male symbol of fertility, whether he likes it or not. It's a great romp for the most part with lots of sexual activity implied but never graphically and with a rushed but otherwise OK winding up. Downsides are that it is pretty dated in the attitudes of the starship crew and tinged with PJ Farmer-isms like the super hero main character, wish fulfilment fantasies and a swathe of solutions "that he had prepared earlier". (I'm sure there must be a name for this trope.) That said it's far from the worst example of this in his works and it is on the whole one of the more entertaining novels by this author.

The writing is pretty solid and the characters pretty well drawn for such a short novel. However, it bears the marks of having been written pretty rapidly and never adequately edited. Inconsistencies, continuity errors and incorrect dimensions grate.

To sum up, it's probably more like 3.5 stars but I'm being generous. And as I said, one of Farmer's more entertaining and accessible efforts.

[Amy Walker - Trans-Scribe Reviews · Rating 3 out of 5]

Flesh tells the story of Peter Stagg, the commander of a group of astronauts that left earth in the late 21st century to explore distant star systems. Thanks to cryogenic technology he and his crew are able to return to Earth after more than 800 years. Unfortunately they find a world that has fallen into chaos. Large parts of the planet have been left as desolate wastelands, and new warring states have replaced the countries that he once knew.

After landing in what remains of Washington DC Stagg is hailed as the 'Sunhero' by the inhabitants, a ceremonial figure in their strange religion. Stagg is forced through surgery, where antlers are grafted to his skull. These strange additions to his body flood his system with chemicals and hormones that turn him into a sex crazed madman, enabling him to perform his duties as the Sunhero, to sleep with and impregnate thousands of women.

Flesh is very much a product of its time, and it becomes very clear that it's a pulpy sci-fi novel from the early 1970's. The plot, as flimsy as it is, makes a lot of jumps towards both the beginning and the end of the book, where author Philip Jose Farmer was clearly interested on the middle part of the story rather than the set up or conclusion.

Stagg and his crew go from orbiting Earth, seeing how the planet has changed over the eight centuries that they have been gone, to having already landed and Stagg crowned a king. Personally, this is something that I'd have been interested in seeing. I wanted to know how the inhabitants of this new Washington DC would react to a spaceship landing in the middle of the city, and what they'd have made of the people on board.

Farmer, instead, shifts the focus to the celebration of the winter solstice, where Stagg is taken and transformed into the 'Sunhero', having the strange antlers grafted to his skull. What follows is a series of orgies as Stagg is taken across the country from city to city. During this Stagg is aware that things aren't right, and that he has essentially become a slave to the animal impulses that swarm through his body, yet is unable to do anything about it himself. The story goes on like this for a long while, longer than is really entertaining, until Stagg and a number of others are captured by a rival nation state.

This change in the story is a lot more entertaining, as Stagg and one of the fellow prisoners, a young woman named Mary, must not only escape their captors, but find their way across the country to safe harbour. The journey is much more interesting, as the two of them have to sneak their way through dangerous territory, dealing with roving patrols and wild animals. The highlight of Stagg's story comes in this section, where he stands alone against a charging army of Washington soldiers, dying bringing their high priestess to an end doing so.

The story that I found most interesting, however, was that of the other members of Stagg's crew. Left adrift in this new world the members of his crew are given a month to adapt to this new civilisation or be put to death. Several of the crew who are from other countries outside of America want to find a way to get back to their homelands, the second in command finds a way to ingratiate himself with a wealthy family and eventually marries their daughter, whilst one member of the crew who is incredibly religious want to fight against the 'sins' of this new world.

Seeing the other members of the crew learn to navigate this new world is interesting, and it gives us both a wider look at this new world and their culture that Staggs story doesn't, and more engaging protagonists. The most interesting narrative is the journey of Nephi Sarvant, the man who wants to bring his religion to this new world. Sarvant gets a chapter of his own to showcase this quest, and it proves to be a complex and interesting journey.

Sarvant finds work at one of the local temples, where women who are unable to bear children come to in order to sleep with virile men in the hopes that they may bear children. Here Sarvant is forced to face the reality that this new world has a much more open view of sex and procreation, something that troubles him greatly. He also finds himself falling in love with one of the women that comes to the temple, yet is disgusted by all of the men that are having sex with her. He wants to save her from what he sees as a life of corruption, but also wants her himself. Finally giving in to his desires he tries to force himself upon her, whereupon he is badly beaten by a crowd of angry men and finally hung for being a rapist. It's a shocking turn of events, but one that highlights how what might be seen as disgusting and depraved by one culture is normal in the eyes of another, and that neither one is right or wrong.

Sadly, this secondary plot ends almost as quickly as Stagg's, where the rest of the crew go from being the captive of pirates to suddenly leading a raid against the inhabitants of Washington to regain control of their ship. From there they kidnap dozens of women and children, putting them in suspended animation, so that they can leave earth and colonise another planet. Much like the beginning of the book, this end seems to come out of nowhere, with events just having happened. There's so much detail that is missing here, events that deserve some focus and attention yet get none.

Whilst there's a lot of stuff in Flesh that is interesting the lack of focus on plot and characters lets the story down in a lot of ways. The end comes on quickly, and wraps up so neatly that it almost feels like the author became bored with his story and cut the ending down from a hundred pages to ten, telling what should have been a big plot point in a single chapter. Definitely a product of its time, Flesh isn't the greatest sci-fi story I've ever read, and probably won't be one that sticks in my memory for long.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, this book is pretty wild. There were moments when I imagined this book being adapted by Ken Russell or Alejandro Jodorowsky if that gives any idea. Admittedly there are many elements of this book that are problematic and/or dated, and many moments that are creepy and/or disturbing, but this novel certainly isn’t boring. It’s hard to believe this originally came out in 1960, I would imagine it would have been at least somewhat controversial, at least within science fiction circles. The version I read is the expanded and revised version published in the late 1960s (which I believe is the version used for all subsequent editions) and I imagine that was a better time for it to find an audience.

[Lucas Trevisiol · Rating 1 out of 5]

Simplemente, mal escrito.
La idea es buenísima, pero es que está todo terriblemente mal.
Los diálogos, infantiles. Irreales. Si alguien hablara como estos personajes, sufriría de bullying.
El espacio, mal dibujado. Es que si el personaje está en una habitación, no nos hacemos una idea de cómo es ni qué dimensiones tiene. En una parte, el "héroe solar" se encontraba en un campamento, uno que no tiene dimensiones porque la verdad es que hay 0 pistas de cómo es este lugar.
La sociedad primitiva... Qué desastre cómo fue presentada.
Las escenas de sexo y orgías... No existieron, casi. Todo se insinuaba o se cortaba la narración. El autor no se animo a más? Entonces cómo califican a esta obra como pornografica?

No pierdan el tiempo.

[Fredrick Danysh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Farmer explores the world of human sexuality. A starship and its crew return to Earth over 800 years after they left. Captain Stagg and his men find that the population has been almost destroyed and has been rebuilt in small nations with diverse pagan sex practices and cults cults with a wide spectrum of sexual practices. Sex is abundant throughout the work. In recent afterwords, two reviewers attempt to analyize Farmer's Flesh and the concentration on sex.

[Dan H · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a quick read and sometimes painfully hollow but entertaining.
It's a very simple and quick book: minimal character development or environment building.
It's more of a blueprint of his sci-fi idea that he was working with: future Earth's people return to naturalistic primitivism with advanced biotech.
It's also a very hyper-sexual novel; the main character is artificially pumped full of testosterone and is a part of ritualistic mating orgies throughout the novel.

[Steve Virgin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A ribald read from a maverick of science fiction and fantasy/adventure writing, probably not as outlandish now as it was when published. An entertaining tale of ten astronauts returning to Earth following an 800 year exploration in space only to find social mores and behaviours have drastically changed since they left in the 20th C. In particular, attitudes to sex and religion are far more 'pagan' than they used to be. An easy read and pleasantly humerous.

[Riju Ganguly · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book seemingly had been written as a dark and satirical take on degeneracy of technology and religion. The writing was then liberally laced with pagan myths AS America understands them. I, however, was left with only a severe sense of dissatisfaction upon its conclusion. Instead of a new myth, it appeared as a parody and inversion of Macbeth to me.
Nah! Wouldn’t recommend it.

[C.B. Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strange but bold

Farmer is unusual in his frank approach to sexuality in science fiction though one could argue he did not rise far above the prejudices of his time. Still his attempt to view a future pagan world is fresh compared to so the copycat techie dystopias now prevalent.

[Beth Winn · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book has its moments, but it has a weak plot, outlandish characters, and sex scenes that are more shocking than provocative. Not a terrible book, just didn't live up to Farmer's reputation or even other erotically themed works I've read.

[Andi Chorley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Philip José Farmer's second novel is a tale of a devolved or evolved earth in the thrall of a fertility religion that may spread even further. Luridly entertaining but also thought provoking and a leap forward from The Green Odyssey.