"To Your Scattered Bodies Go" by Philip José Farmer (1918-2009)

 

Publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons

Copyright: 1971

ISBN: 0425028097

The Hugo award winning novel"To Your Scattered Bodies Go" is the first book in Farmer's very popular River World series. In which every person who has ever lived on earth is resurrected from the dead and finds themselves naked on the banks of as immense river. There is no explanation as to why they are there, or what they are supposed to do.

The primary character in this novel is a Sir Richard Francis Burton. For those who don't know, Burton was a real person, and is the translator of One Thousand and One Nights (also known as the Tales of the Arabian Nights), he's the co-founder of the Royal Anthropological Society in Britain, the discoverer of Lake Tanganyika, and accomplished many other exploits during his life. Even with all these credits to his name he was an extremely controversial figure who was not well liked by many in the world, especially many religious leaders.

Burton is somewhat unique in the story, as he was one of very few characters that woke up prior to arrival on the shores of the river, and therefore was aware that other beings were manipulating them. Some of the other characters he meets are Alice Hargraves Little, Herman Goering both of whom play rather significant roles in Burton's quest to find out what is really going on.

This is a very entertaining read, and I would recommend it to anybody who likes essentially classic science fiction, although some have classified this more in the fantasy genre.