Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to navigation
In the flesh ... Philip José Farmer, author of To Your Scattered Bodies Go.
In the flesh ... Philip José Farmer, author of To Your Scattered Bodies Go. Photograph: Lars-Olov Strandberg/Creation Books
In the flesh ... Philip José Farmer, author of To Your Scattered Bodies Go. Photograph: Lars-Olov Strandberg/Creation Books

Back to the Hugos: To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip José Farmer

This article is more than 13 years old
If you can forgive the clumsy exposition, overt sexism and attacks on personal enemies, this one is just about worth reading

When I got to Robert A Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress on my slow trawl through past Hugo award winners, I bombastically declared it "the greatest science fiction book title ever". I still stand by that, but Philip José Farmer's 1971 novel To Your Scattered Bodies Go has me wavering. Especially when taken in the full context of its source in Donne's Holy Sonnet 7:

At the round earth's imagin'd corners, blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go.

Yes! What's more, the title smartly encapsulates the central idea of the book – that every human in history is brought back to life in youthful bodies, scattered along the banks of a million-mile-long river. The reborn are all naked and confused (and hairless), but their needs are catered for. Meals are served up to them daily from seemingly magical "grails". They have no natural predators and shelter is easy to come by. They are also provided with hallucinogenic drugs that make them lose all their inhibitions about having sex with each other. Best of all, if something should go wrong and someone is killed, he or she simply brought back to life in another location along the river.

It's an idea that allows Farmer to get stuck into meaty questions about free will and what it means to be alive. Tastier still, it allows him to jam in any and every historical character that interests him. There's a colourful cast of extras including cavemen, ancient Romans and Victorian industrialists. The central character is the intriguing 19th-century solider, explorer, poet and spy Sir Richard Francis Burton, who has several run-ins with Nazi villain Hermann Göring. There's even an appearance from a wise American writer called Peter Jarius Frigate, who bears a striking resemblance to the renowned author Philip Jose Farmer.

Enjoyably picaresque as all that is, the most interesting thing about the book' is its casual acceptance that all these other people are likely to be hell. Humans use the gift of rebirth simply to be thoroughly unpleasant to each other. We are told, for instance, that one of Burton's first actions is to look around for a stick or club: "He had no idea what was on the agenda for humanity, but if it was left unsupervised or uncontrolled it would soon be reverting to its normal state. Once the shock was over, the people would be looking out for themselves, and that meant some would be bullying others."

Farmer's unswerving cynicism makes for bracing and provocative reading. And yet, as the more alert prose-hounds among you will have gathered from that quote, there are problems.

Some of Farmer's infelicities can be excused on the grounds that he's gone for a deliberately pulpy style. He's more concerned with cranking out a story at a furious pace than dwelling on technical and psychological details. His portrayal of Hermann Göring, for instance, is cartoonish at best, but that doesn't matter because we all know what Göring was like and anyway, look – he's naked and tripping his nuts off and murdering everyone!

More unforgivable is the bad prose, particularly the mounds of information dumping: "Burton looked closely at the man. Could he actually be the legendary king of ancient Rome? Of Rome when it was a small village threatened by other Italic tribes, the Sabines, the Aequi and Volsci? Who in turn were being pressed by the Umbrians, themselves pushed by the powerful Etruscans?"

Here's a typical conversation opener: "Sir Robert Smithson," Burton said. "If I remember correctly, he owned cotton mills and steelworks in Manchester. He was noted for his philanthropies and his good works among the heathens. Died in 1870 or thereabouts at the age of eighty." One can only be thankful Farmer didn't have access to Wikipedia.

Even when he isn't fact-bombing us, there are still problems. "She had a coarsely pretty face and sparkling blue eyes," Farmer writes. "Burton looked at her curiously and with appreciation of her splendid bust."

I'm guessing that quote has also made you think that this book is alarmingly sexist. You're right. Here's another choice excerpt: "He could not really blame Alice Hargreaves. She was a product of her society – like all women, she was what men had made her ... "

Alice Hargreaves, by the way, was more famous as Alice Liddell – the inspiration for Alice in Wonderland. In To Your Scattered Bodies Go she's the chief sex interest – and yes, that it as dubious as it sounds, even if she's now a fully grown woman and herself boasts a splendid bust.

On top of all that, the character of Peter Frigate is a creepy pain, a walking (and unfortunately talking) encyclopaedia entry on Richard Burton who also enacts bizarre revenge fantasies on publishers who seem to have wronged Farmer in the past. The pace is all out of whack and there are big problems with the expansion and contraction of time. The end, meanwhile, descends into utter farce and doesn't even bear describing, beyond the coining of the lovely word "chronoscope" for a device that looks back into time to record human histories and project them onto new bodies. Even at his worst, Farmer has great ideas. Which makes the book just about worth reading – even if doing so is pretty painful.

Next time: The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov

Comments (…)

Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion

Most viewed

Most viewed