"Philip Jose Farmer - Riverworld SS - Tales of Riverworld" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

and was published in 1971. This novel was called To Your Scattered Bodies Go.
The second, The Fabulous Riverboat, appeared the same year. Then came The Dark
Design, The Magic Labyrinth, and Gods of Riverworld. My novelet, River-world,
is part of the series but is not concerned with the main plot or main
characters.
The book at hand is a shared-world anthology. That is, each of its stories
takes place on the Riverworld but is by a different writer. These writers were
given carte blanche with their situations and characters but had to follow the
structure and strictures of the Riverworld as laid down by me. However, when
the action takes place on a planet where there is a river almost eighteen
million miles long, and which is populated by over thirty-six billion and six
hundred million human beings who lived and died on Earth from circa 100,000
B.C. to A.D. 1983, the writers are not very confined.
My "Crossing the Dark River" is the lead story. "A Hole in Hell," a very short
but powerful story, is by Dane Helstrom, a name appearing in print for the
first time. Jennings's "Blandings on Riverworld" is the first humorous
Riverworld story to be written. Betancourt's "The Merry Men of Riverworld" is
about a character who is well known in the Western world. Well, it is in a
way. "Fool's Paradise" is by Ed German, a well-known mystery writer, and is
his first science-fiction story. His protagonist, as might be expected, is a
detective-turned-writer well known in the twentieth century. Weinberg's
"Unfinished Business," Resnick's and Malzberg's "Every Man a God," and
Turtledove's "Two Thieves" exhibit the inventive virtues and high imagination
we have come to expect from these writers.
In fact, as one of the editors choosing these stories for inclusion in the
anthology, I was very pleased with their handling of another writer's basic
concept and of the historical characters they chose to write about.
I hope you enjoy these stories as much as I did.
Crossing the Dark River
Philip Jose Farmer
"What? You prescribed lemon juice to cure cholera?"
"What? You had a sure cure for infants who held their breaths until their
faces turned blue? And for young females in a hysterical seizure? You stuck
your little finger up their anuses? Presto! Changeo! They're rid forever of
infantile behavior and the tantrums of the body?"
"What? You're searching for the woman who's supposed to have given birth to a
baby somewhere along the River? A baby? In this world where all are sterile
and no woman has ever gotten pregnant? You believe that's true? How about
buying the Brooklyn Bridge?
' 'No? Then how about a splinter from the True Cross? Ho! Ho! Ho! And you
believe that this baby reproduced by parthenogenesis is Jesus Christ born
again to save us Valleydwellers? And you've been traveling up-River to find
the infant? Who do you think you are? One of the Three Wise Men? Ho! Ho! Ho!"
And so Doctor Andrew Paxton Davis had not stayed long any place until he had
been detained by Ivar the Boneless. He had wandered up the Valley, seldom
paus-
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2 Philip Jos<5 Farmer
ing, just as, on Earth, he had been the peripatetic's peripatetic. During the
late 1800s and early 1900s, he had traveled to many cities in the United