Up the Bright River

Riverworld

by Philip José Farmer, Gary K. Wolfe (Editor)

This first posthumous collection of the short fiction of Philip Jose Farmer is a celebration of the impressive variety of his prodigious output, from the space adventures he published in the science fiction magazines of the 1950s through the 1970s, to his acerbic satires of religion and medicine, to his fictional biographies and memoirs, to his beloved Riverworld.

Appearing for the first time in a Philip Jose Farmer collection are his last three “Riverworld” stories—featuring characters from his own family history--as well as the “memoir” of Lord Greystoke which he claimed to have merely edited. Other highlights include “Attitudes,” the first of the Father Carmody stories; “The Two-Edged Gift,” which introduces the fictional science fiction writer Leo Queequeg Tincrowdor; “Toward the Beloved City” (about which its original editor said he had never before really understood the Book of Revelations); and “Father’s in the Basement,” a little-known Gothic horror tale which is also a satire of the writing profession.

Farmer created some of the most famous worlds in science fiction, but he also wrote in many worlds, and readers familiar only with his best-known classics may find a few surprises among these tales.

Genres: Science Fiction

336 pages, Hardcover

First published December 31, 2010

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

[Durval Menezes · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an anthology of short stories from Farmer, with a special focus on his Riverworld universe.

Nice, but not great, reading -- the best stories I had already read as part of other anthologies.

My rating for this book as a whole is 3/5 -- could have been 3.5 and then I would have rounded it up to 4, but a couple of specially bad stories kinda soured it for me.

I will copy/paste below my progress notes, with comments for each story in case you can't see them:

December 30, 2024 – page 0https://archive.org/details/isbn_9781..., and creating a simple account is enough to read the book online (in a browser). From the ToC I can see I've read most of the stories already, so I'm gonna read only the ones new to me (or at least that I can't remember having read already) ."

December 30, 2024 – page 43
12.8% "- "Introduction": great write-up by Gary Wolfe; 4/5
- "Attitudes": good tale with Father Carmody, not terrible but the supposed twists could be seen a mile coming; 3/5

- "The Blasphemers": fancy take on the subject of Determinism and what it would mean for a totalitarian state; 4/5"

December 30, 2024 – page 43
12.8% "oops: in my previous notes, instead of "The Blasphemers", I meant "How Deep There Grooves"."

December 31, 2024 – page 69
20.54% "-"The Blasphemers": centauroid aliens who built their own God in their own image, then a group of sceptics from within a "deep state" starts to work against that, and a surprising twist turns the story around. Rating 4.5/5."

December 31, 2024 – page 87
25.89% "- "A Bowl Bigger Than Earth": read it before, so just skyping it here"

January 1, 2025 – page 107
31.85% "- "Down in the Black Gang": proof positive that even great writers like Farmer can produce an unintelligible, unreadable bomb every now and then. Rating 1/5."

January 1, 2025 – page 115
34.23% "- "Voice of the Sonar in my Vermiform Appendix": funny story in an absurdist way. Not very interesting. Rating 2/5."

January 1, 2025 – page 124
36.9% ""Father's in the Basement": a little girl helping his dad leave his mark on the world. The little "preface" is actually more interesting than the story itself. Neither are good. Rating 2/5."

January 1, 2025 – page 144
42.86% "- "To the Beloved City": extraterrestrials and the Gospel of John in a post-apocalyptic tale. Still not great, but better than the last few in this book. Rating 3/5."

January 1, 2025 – page 157
46.73% "- "Skinburn": like a cold-war spy tale with unrequited love and crazy accidents throw in, and then things get *really* weird. Rating 3/5."

January 2, 2025 – page 164
48.81% "- "The Sumerian Oath": the first 2 pages are quite ridiculous, but the last 4 are much better. I suspect that, if it got widely read today, a lot of people would end up believing the conspiracy theory it jokes about..."

January 2, 2025 – page 177
52.68% "- "Extracts from the Memoirs of Lord Greystoke": didn't finish, abandoned after obligatory one-third (I always try and give a story a chance to recover from a bad beginning, but never more than about 30% of its total length -- and in this case I've gone to the max, but it continued being totally boring). Maybe because it's one of Farmer's Tarzan/Wold Newton stories, only one I liked was Heart of Darkness. Rate 1/5."

January 4, 2025 – page 229
68.15% "- "The Two-Edged Gift": the best story in this collection so far. The main tale is not that great (and has a subtle, abrupt ending), but the parts where Leo Tincrowdor speaks his mind on a number of subjects are excellent. Rating 3.5/5."

January 4, 2025 – page 288
85.71% "- "Saint Frances Kisses His Ass Goodbye": Archive.org's copy was missing a page (p.233) but it did not greatly compromise my reading. Interesting story about time travel and a saint and an ass, but not his -- some other man's instead. And he gets another ass to replace the one he lost. Oh well, that's Farmer when he's writing funny. Rating 3/5.

- "Crossing the Dark River": read it already, so skipping it now."

January 4, 2025 – page 320
95.24% "- "Up the Bright River": another story I've already read in some other anthology, so I'm skipping it too."

January 5, 2025 – page 336
100.0% "- "Coda": the story of a mystic turned a skeptical, then back into a mystic; interesting when the person is Dr.Faustroll himself, a character in many of Farmer's other Riverworld stories."
January 5, 2025 – Finished Reading

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not bad

[Raimund · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the best I've read from Farmer but his stories are always interesting. I especially liked his autobiography of Tarzan.

[Stuart Pike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read all the stories so may as well rate it.