Philip Jose Farmer - The Book of Philip Jose Farmer

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The Book of Philip José Farmer

Revised Edition (1982)

by Philip José Farmer

a.b.ebook v3.0 / Notes at EOF

Back Cover:

PHIL FARMER'S GREATEST HITS

From horror to space opera, from fantasy to visionary SF, the selections in this

volume cover the entire creative spectrum of one of the greatest talents in imaginative

literature. They were not only written, but personally selected and introduced by the

author Leslie Fiedler called "The greatest science fiction writer ever."

"His imagination is certainly of the first rank!" -- TIME

This Berkley book has been completely reset

in a type face designed for easy reading,

and was printed from new film.

THE BOOK OF PHILIP JOSE FARMER

A Berkley Book/published by arrangement with the author

PRINTING HISTORY

Daw edition/July 1973

Revised Berkley edition/February 1982

Reprinted by permission of the author and Berkley Publishing Corporation.

First published in Orbit 11.

Towards the Beloved City, From Signs and Wonders (Fleming H.

Revell), by permission of Roger Elwood, Editor.

Cover art by James Warhola.

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part,

by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.

For information address: Berkley Publishing Corporation,

200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

ISBN: 0-425-05298-2

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

To My Sister, Joan

Table of Contents

Preface

My Sister's Brother

Skinburn

The Alley Man

Father's in the Basement

Toward the Beloved City

Polytropical Paramyths

Don't Wash the Carats

The Sumerian Oath

Only Who Can Make a Tree?

The Last Rise of Nick Adams

The Freshman

Uproar in Acheron

An Exclusive Interview with Lord Greystoke

Sexual Implications of the Charge of the Light Brigade

The Obscure Life and Hard Times of Kilgore Trout

Thanks for the Feast

Notes on Philip José Farmer by Leslie A. Fiedler

Preface

This collection is a reprint of The Book of Philip José Farmer, published in

1973 in softcover in the States and in hardcover in England in 1976. However, for this

edition the forewords, where needing it, have been revised and updated. And since

three stories, "Totem and Taboo," "The Voice of the Sonar in My Vermiform

Appendix," and "Brass and Gold" have been recently reprinted in other collections, I

have replaced them with "The Last Rise of Nick Adams," "The Freshman," and a non-

science-fiction tale, "Uproar in Acheron."

The title of this book implies a broad spectrum of my works, samples from

each of the many fields of the vast genre of science-fiction in which I've worked.

(Played, rather.)

Unfortunately, I can't include every field. I've written stories in many:

adventure, space opera, parallel worlds, pocket universes, psychological, political,

sexual, biological, pastiche, parody, religious, horror, time travel, ESP, "biograph-

ical," Cthulhu mythos, metaphysical, ecological, and Marxian. The last term refers to

Groucho, Chico, and Harpo, not Karl, and could be applied to my polytropical

paramyths. To include one sample of each would make a book twice as long as this,

maybe three times as long. Also, some of the samples would have to be novels.

Thus, the stories and extracts herein are samples of the spectrum, not the

complete spectrum.

My Sister's Brother

Of all my shorter fiction, this is, after my "Riders of the Purple Wage," my favorite. A curious

story, it has a curious history. It first went to John Campbell, then editor of Astounding (now Analog).

He rejected it with the message that it made him nauseated, not because it was a bad story but because

of its vivid biological details and its premises. He believed that the readers of Astounding would react

as he did. I wasn't surprised; this wasn't the first story of mine that had sickened John.

Sadly, because I liked Astounding word rates, I mailed it out to a lesser-paying market. I

bypassed Horace Gold, editor of Galaxy, an equally good payer, because Horace's editorial stomach

was, I knew from experience, no stronger than John's. John was supposed to be a flaming reactionary,

and Horace was supposed to be a flaming liberal. Actually, both were individuals, proteans who would

wriggle out of the grasp of anyone who tried to hold them down while pinning a label on them. In this

case, the compelling reason for rejection was their fear of their readers' reactions.

Bob Mills, editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, also bounced it. He liked

it but thought it too strong for his readers. However, Leo Margulies was planning a new science fiction

magazine, Satellite, and, hearing of "My Sister's Brother," then titled "Open to Me, My Sister," asked

Bob if he could read it. He purchased it, and the story, retitled "The Strange Birth," was set up in galley

sheets and illustrated for the first issue. But Leo's plans collapsed; Satellite though, was canceled.

Bob Mills, meanwhile, had changed his mind. He would take a chance on it. He paid the

difference between Leo's check to me and his and published it with my original title. Most of the

readers were less queasy than any of the editors would have expected. This was in 1960, when the

gears of the Zeitgeist were shifting into overdrive. The makeup of the general readership had changed

somewhat; there were many more flexible-minded people than in the 1950's.

I'll note that the reactions of the editors who rejected this story, or, in the case of Gold, would

have, are similar to the reactions of the protagonist to the strange society of Mars and the even stranger

visitor to Mars, "Martia." This story is a hardcore science fiction tale, but it is also about an Earthman's

hangups, extraterrestrial ecosystems, sexobiological structures, and religion.

Also, when the story was written, Hawaii was not yet the fiftieth state. But it seemed likely.

Also, the reproductive-phallic system of Martia's people is an original concept, just as

Jeannette Rastignac's was in The Lovers. At the time I wrote the two stories, I was in my

sexobiological phase. Which may come again, no pun intended.

Come to think of it, the phase did descend upon me again briefly in the 60's when I wrote the

novels Image of the Beast and Blown.

The sixth night on Mars, Lane wept.

He sobbed loudly while tears ran down his cheeks. He smacked his right fist

into the palm of his left hand until the flesh burned. He howled with loneliness. He

swore the most obscene and blasphemous oaths he knew.

After a while, he quit weeping. He dried his eyes, downed a shot of Scotch,

and felt much better.

He wasn't ashamed because he had bawled like a woman. After all, there had

been a Man who had not been ashamed to weep. He could dissolve in tears the

grinding stones within; he was the reed that bent before the wind, not the oak that

toppled, roots and all.

Now, the weight and the ache in his breast gone, feeling almost cheerful, he

made his scheduled report over the transceiver to the circum-Martian vessel five

hundred and eight miles overhead. Then he did what men must do any place in the

universe. Afterward, he lay down in the bunk and opened the one personal book he

had been allowed to bring along, an anthology of the world's greatest poetry.

He read here and there, running, pausing for only a line or two, then

completing in his head the thousand-times murmured lines. Here and there he read,

like a bee tasting the best of the nectar --

It is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying,

Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove,

my undefiled. . .

We have a little sister,

And she hath no breasts;

What shall we do for our sister

In the day when she shall be spoken for?

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil for Thou art with me. . .

Come live with me and be my love

And we shall all the pleasures prove. . .

It lies not in our power to love or hate

For will in us is over-ruled by fate. . .

With thee conversing, I forget all time,

All seasons, and their change, all please alike. . .

He read on about love and man and woman until he had almost forgotten his

troubles. His lids drooped; the book fell from his hand. But he roused himself,

climbed out of the bunk, got down on his knees, and prayed that he be forgiven and

that his blasphemy and despair be understood. And he prayed that his four lost

comrades be found safe and sound. Then he climbed back into the bunk and fell

asleep. At dawn he woke reluctantly to the alarm clock's ringing. Nevertheless, he did

not fall back into sleep but rose, turned on the transceiver, filled a cup with water and

instant, and dropped in a heat pill. Just as he finished the coffee, he heard Captain

Stroyansky's voice from the 'ceiver. Stroyansky spoke with barely a trace of Slavic

accent. "Cardigan Lane? You awake?"

"More or less. How are you?"

"If we weren't worried about all of you down there, we'd be fine."

"I know. Well, what are your orders?"

"There is only one thing to do, Lane. You must go look for the others.

Otherwise, you cannot get back up to us. It takes at least two more men to pilot the

rocket.""Theoretically, one man can pilot the beast," replied Lane. "But it's uncertain.

However, that doesn't matter. I'm leaving at once to look for the others. I'd do that

even if you ordered otherwise."

Stroyansky chuckled. Then he barked like a seal. "The success of the

expedition is more important than the fate of four men. Theoretically, anyway. But if

I were in your shoes, and I'm glad I'm not, I would do the same. So, good luck, Lane."

"Thanks," said Lane. "I'll need more than luck. I'll also need God's help. I

suppose He's here, even if the place does look God forsaken."

He looked through the transparent double plastic walls of the dome.

"The wind's blowing about twenty-five miles an hour. The dust is covering the

tractor tracks. I have to get going before they're covered up entirely. My supplies are

all packed; I've enough food, air, and water to last me six days. It makes a big

package, the air tanks and the sleeping tent bulk large. It's over a hundred Earth

pounds, but here only about forty. I'm also taking a rope, a knife, a pickax, a flare

pistol, half a dozen flares. And a walkie-talkie.

"It should take me two days to walk the thirty miles to the spot where the tracs

last reported. Two days to look around. Two days to get back."

"You be back in five days!" shouted Stroyansky. "That's an order! It shouldn't

take you more than one day to scout around. Don't take chances. Five days!"

And then, in a softer voice, "Good luck, and, if there is a God, may He help

you!" Lane tried to think of things to say, things that might perhaps go down with

the Doctor Livingstone, I presume, category. But all he could say was, "So long."

Twenty minutes later, he closed behind him the door to the dome's pressure

lock. He strapped on the towering pack and began to walk. But when he was about

fifty yards from the base, he felt compelled to turn around for one long look at what

he might never see again. There, on the yellow-red felsite plain, stood the pressurized

bubble that was to have been the home of the five men for a year. Nearby squatted the

glider that had brought them down, its enormous wings spreading far, its skids

covered with the forever-blowing dust.

Straight ahead of him was the rocket, standing on its fins, pointing toward the

blue-black sky, glittering in the Martian sun, shining with promise of power, escape

from Mars, and return to the orbital ship. It had come down to the surface of Mars on

the back of the glider in a hundred-and-twenty-mile an hour landing. After it had

dropped the two six-ton caterpillar tractors it carried, it had been pulled off the glider

and tilted on end by winches pulled by those very tractors. Now it waited for him and

for the other four men.

"I'll be back," he murmured to it. "And if I have to, I'll take you up by myself."

He began to walk, following the broad double tracks left by the tank. The

tracks were faint, for they were two days old, and the blowing silicate dust had almost

filled them. The tracks made by the first tank, which had left three days ago, were

completely hidden.

The trail led northwest. It left the three-mile wide plain between two hills of

naked rock and entered the quarter-mile corridor between two rows of vegetation. The

rows ran straight and parallel from horizon to horizon, for miles behind him and miles

ahead. Lane, on the ground and close to one row, saw it for what it was. Its

foundation was an endless three-foot high tube, most of whose bulk, like an iceberg's,

lay buried in the ground. The curving sides were covered with blue-green lichenoids

that grew on every rock or projection. From the spine of the tube, separated at regular

intervals, grew the trunks of plants. The trunks were smooth shiny blue-green pillars

two feet thick and six feet high. Out of their tops spread radially many pencil-thin

branches, like bats' fingers. Between the fingers stretched a blue-green membrane, the

single tremendous leaf of the umbrella tree.

When Lane had first seen them from the glider as it hurtled over them, he had

thought they looked like an army of giant hands uplifted to catch the sun. Giant they

were, for each rib-supported leaf measured fifty feet across. And hands they were,

hands to beg for and catch the rare gold of the tiny sun. During the day, the ribs on the

side nearest the moving sun dipped toward the ground, and the furthest ribs tilted

upward. Obviously, the daylong maneuver was designed to expose the complete area

of the membrane to the light, to allow not an inch to remain in shadow.

It was to be expected that strange forms of plant life would be found here. But

structures built by animal life were not expected. Especially when they were so large

and covered an eighth of the planet.

These structures were the tubes from which rose the trunks of the umbrella

trees. Lane had tried to drill through the rocklike side of the tube. So hard was it, it

had blunted one drill and had done a second no good before he had chipped off a

small piece. Contented for the moment with that, he had taken it to the dome, there to

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TheBookofPhilipJoséFarmerRevisedEdition(1982)byPhilipJoséFarmera.b.ebookv3.0/NotesatEOFBackCover:PHILFARMER'SGREATESTHITSFromhorrortospaceopera,fromfantasytovisionarySF,theselectionsinthisvolumecovertheentirecreativespectrumofoneofthegreatesttalentsinimaginativeliterature.Theywerenotonlywritten,butp...

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