Philip José Farmer

The real superhuman, man or woman, is the person who's rid himself of all prejudices, neuroses, and psychoses, who realizes his full potential as a human being, who acts naturally on the basis of gentleness, compassion, and love, who thinks for himself and refuses to follow the herd.

Philip José Farmer (January 26, 1918 – February 25, 2009) was an American author, principally known for his science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories, especially those of his Riverworld series.

Quotes

Eat rich strange fish, grow long bright feathers, press Form's flesh around thought's rib, and so derive From the act of beauty, beauty of the act.

Beauty in this Iron Age must turn From fluid living rainbow shapes to torn And sootened fragments...

The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.

Can imagination act
Perpendicular to fact?
Can it be a kite that flies
Till the Earth, umbrella-wise,
Folds and drops away from sight?
- "Imagination" in America Sings (1949); re-published in Pearls From Peoria (2006)

Miles above the Earth we know,
Fancy's rocket roars. Below,
Here and Now are needles which
Sew a pattern black as pitch,
Waiting for the rocket's light.
- "Imagination" in America Sings (1949)

“Perhaps you could tell me how many angels may stand on the point of a pin?”…
De Salcedo snorted. “I’ll tell you. Philosophically speaking, you may put as many angels on a pinhead as you want to. Actually speaking, you may put only as many as there is room for. Enough of that. I'm interested in facts, not fancies.”
- Sail On! Sail On! Originally published in the December 1952 issue of Startling Stories; reprinted in Harry Harrison (ed.), SF: Author’s Choice, (1968), p. 140. The ellipsis represents elision of one paragraph of description.

Sawbeaked epitome of bodiless
Idea, tossed by gusts of ether, dive
Through abstract mists and raid the sea of fact
Eat rich strange fish, grow long bright feathers, press
Form's flesh around thought's rib, and so derive
From the act of beauty, beauty of the act.
- "The Pterodactyl" in Sky Hook #16, (Winter 1952-53); re-published in Pearls From Peoria (2006)

Beauty in this Iron Age must turn
From fluid living rainbow shapes to torn
And sootened fragments, ashes in an urn
On whose gray surface runes are traced by a Norn
Who hopes to wake the Future to arise
In Phoenix-fashion, and to shine with rays
To blast the sight of modern men whose dyes
Of selfishness and lust have stained our days...
- "Beauty in This Iron Age" in Starlanes #11 (Fall 1953); re-published in Pearls From Peoria (2006)

Reader, pray that soon this Iron Age
Will crumble, and Beauty escape the rusting cage.
- "Beauty in This Iron Age" in Starlanes #11 (Fall 1953); re-published in Pearls From Peoria (2006)

Prometheus, I have no Titan's might,
Yet I, too, must each dusk renew my heart,
For daytime's vulture talons tear apart
The tender alcoves built by love at night.
- "In Common" in Starlanes #14 (April 1954); re-published in Pearls From Peoria (2006)

Oh, I'd reach beyond the comma of you
To the invisible phrase, the dangling Omega! No use. No act
Of mine or mind denies the ante-cerebellum fact
Of furry you, poised fleetingly, bright flex,
Black reflex, too leaping for me to ink and fix
As period to end what has no period, no, no
End...
- "Black Squirrel on Cottonwood Limb's Tip" in Skyhook #23 (Winter 1954-55); re-published in Pearls From Peoria (2006)

We too. No wisdom to utter.
You've beauty, flux, and terror
To tell. So've I. And they're
Very hard to mutter
Through so much chatter and stutter.
- "Black Squirrel on Cottonwood Limb's Tip" in Skyhook #23 (Winter 1954-55); re-published in Pearls From Peoria (2006)

Let those who think the soul is shallow rail,
They must be warned before they dare to leap
They'll plunge into the twilight depths where sweep
In ceaseless thirst great teeth too swift to fail.
- "Job's Leviathan" in JD Argassy #58 (1961); re-published in Pearls From Peoria (2006)

Drowned idols swirl like seeds in chaos' wine.
Look, Job! Caught Beauty, held to light, now apes
A good, now evil, thing — the shifting sign
And spectrum of archaic, psychic shapes.
- "Job's Leviathan" in JD Argassy #58 (1961); re-published in Pearls From Peoria (2006)

The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.
- Venus on the Half-Shell (December 1974); written using the pseudonym Kilgore Trout, with the permission of Kurt Vonnegut.

Though Melville omitted it, Captain Ahab said, "In one sense, Aleister Crowley is lower than whale shit. In another, he's as high as God's hat. The true shaman knows that God's hat is made out of dried whale shit."
- "Farmer on Wilson" an essay on Robert Anton Wilson in Heavy Metal #54 (September 1981)

Sestina of the Space Rocket (1953)

First published in Startling Stories (February 1953); re-published in Pearls From Peoria (2006)

One thing is sure, O comrades, that the love
That fights to keep us rooted in the earth,
But also urges us to dare the stars,
This irresistible, this ancient power
Wedged in the soul, unshakable, is the light
That burns our roots and leaves us free for Space.

The way is open, comrades, free as Space
Alone is free. The only gold is love,
A coin that we have minted from the light
Of others who have cared for us on Earth
And who have deposited in us the power
That nerves our nerves to seize the burning stars.

Eyes forward! Sing a paean to the light
That God gives us to net the distant stars
In eyes that once were blinded with black earth.
Man had no time for aught but toll, no space
For aught but war. Yet God, in His great love,
Has cleared our eyes and given a hint of Power.

Now we have lit a candle to the power
Of atoms; now we know we're heirs of light
Itself...

Yes, we hope to seed a new, rich earth.
We hope to breed a race of men whose power
Dwells in hearts as open as all Space
Itself, who ask for nothing but the light
That rinses the heart of hate so that the stars
Above will be below when man has Love.

God, Whose hand holds stars, as we lump earth
In our fingers, give us power, give us light
To hold all love within our breast's small space.

Riders of the Purple Wage (1967)

And there is another feeling, one which he shares with most of humankind. He knows he's screwed up his life, or something has twisted it. Every thinking man and woman knows this. Even the smug and dimwitted realize this unconsciously. But a baby, that beautiful being, that unsmirched blank tablet, unformed [[angel], represents a new hope. Perhaps it won't screw up. Perhaps it'll grow up to be a healthy confident reasonable good-humored unselfish loving man or woman. 'It won't be like me or my next-door neighbor,' the proud, but apprehensive, parent swears.
- Of Chib

Zeitgeist rides tonight, and the devil take the hindmost!

Yesterday's monomaniac is tomorrow's messiah…

Strong blasphemers thrive only when strong believers thrive.
- Grandpa Winnegan

The Riverworld series

Quotes from the Riverworld series of novels and stories, about nearly all of humanity finding themselves resurrected on an alien world, for such reasons or purposes as remains unclear.

To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971)

The title of this work is derived from 7th of the "Holy Sonnets" by John Donne:
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.

Won the 1972 Hugo Award. All page numbers from the trade paperback edition published by Del Rey Books, ISBN 0-345-41967-7

His wife had held him in her arms as if she could keep death away from him.
He had cried out, "My God, I am a dead man!"
- Chapter 1 (p. 1; first lines, depicting the death of Sir Richard Francis Burton).

Death, the Destroyer of Delights and the Sunderer of Society, had arrived at last.
Blackness. Nothingness. He did not even know that his heart had given out forever. Nothingness.
Then his eyes opened. His heart was beating strongly. He was strong, very strong! All the pain of the gout in his feet, the agony in his liver, the torture in his heart, all were gone.
It was so quiet he could hear the blood moving in his head. He was alone in a world of soundlessness.
A bright light of equal intensity was everywhere. He could see, yet he did not understand what he was seeing. What were these things above, beside, below him? Where was he?
- Chapter 1 (p. 1)

The world took a shape which he could grasp, though he could not comprehend it. Above him, on both sides, below him, as far as he could see, bodies floated. They were arranged in vertical and horizontal rows. The up-and-down ranks were separated by red rods, slender as broomsticks, one of which was twelve inches from the feet of the sleepers and the other twelve inches from their heads. Each body was spaced about six feet from the body above and below and on each side.
The rods came up from an abyss without bottom and soared into an abyss without ceiling. That grayness into which the rods and the bodies, up and down, right and left, disappeared was neither the sky nor the earth. There was nothing in the distance except the lackluster of infinity.
- Chapter 1 (p. 3)

It was like no hell or heaven of which he had ever heard or read, and he had thought that he was acquainted with every theory of the afterlife.
He had died. Now he was alive. He had scoffed all his life at a life-after-death. For once, he could not deny that he had been wrong. But there was no one present to say, "I told you so, you damned infidel!"
Of all the millions, he alone was awake.
- Chapter 1 (pp. 3-4)

In a frenzy, kicking his legs and moving his arms in a swimmer's breaststroke, he managed to fight toward the rod. The closer he got to it, the stronger the web of force became. He did not give up. If he did, he would be back where he had been and without enough strength to begin fighting again. It was not his nature to give up until all his strength had been expended.
- Chapter 1 (p. 4)

The aerial canoe had no visible means of support, he thought, and it was a measure of his terror that he did not even think about his pun. No visible means of support. Like a magical vessel out of The Thousand and One Nights.
- Chapter 1 (pp. 5-6)

All the human beings I met were either sure that there would be no afterlife or else that they would get preferential treatment in the hereafter.
- Chapter 4 (p. 17)

“I did it!” she said. “I...I! I wanted to! Oh, what a vile low whore I am!”
“I don’t remember offering you any money.”
- Chapter 8 (p. 54)

Burton did not believe in miracles. Nothing happened that could not be explained by physical principles — if you knew all the facts.
- Chapter 23 (p. 172)

Burton, though an infidel, made it his business to investigate thoroughly every religion. Know a man’s faith, and you knew at least half the man. Know his wife, and you knew the other half.
- Chapter 23 (p. 176)

Burton sighed, laughed loudly, and said, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” Another fairy tale to give men hope. The old religions have been discredited — although some refuse to face even that fact — so new ones must be invented.”
- Chapter 23 (p. 179)

The Fabulous Riverboat (1971)

All page numbers from the trade paperback edition published by Del Rey Books, ISBN 0-345-41968-5

Resurrection, like politics, makes strange bedfellows.
- Chapter 1 (p. 1; first line, spoken by Sam Clemens).

A miracle: a chance distribution of events, occurring one time in a billion.
- Chapter 3 (p. 18)

Of course, I’m only indulging in mankind’s vice of trying to make a symbol out of coincidence.
- Chapter 6 (p. 34)

But we may not be able to climb high enough. Look at those mountains. They go straight up, smooth as a politician denying he ever made a campaign promise.
- Chapter 8 (p. 44)

Where this area had been beautiful with its many trees and bright grass and the colored blooms of the vines that covered the trees, it was now like a battlefield. It had been necessary to create ugliness to build a beautiful boat.
- Chapter 15 (pp. 87-88)

“It’s a nice toy and makes a lot of noise and looks impressive and will kill a man. But it’s wasteful and inefficient.”
“You make it sound like a congressman,” Sam said.
- Chapter 17 (p. 109)

It was not that he was unintelligent. It was just that he was not emotionally able to comprehend democracy.
- Chapter 19 (p. 119)

Actors didn’t have to be politicians, but politicians had to be actors.
- Chapter 20 (p. 135)

His thinking wasn’t logical. But whatever the philosophers claimed, the main use of logic was to justify your emotions.
- Chapter 22 (p. 158)

I ought to arrest your assertions for vagrancy. They certainly are without any visible support.
- Chapter 22 (p. 160)

He was stiff and sometimes a little strange, which was what you’d expect from an engineer, but he had a moral backbone as inflexible as a fossilized dinosaur’s.
- Chapter 23 (p. 168)

Styles was an old Mississippi pilot, a handsome youth, no liar, though given to inflating facts.
- Chapter 28 (p. 222)

Actually, the situation was intolerable. But then it was surprising how much intolerableness a man could tolerate.
- Chapter 28 (p. 225)

The Dark Design (1977)

The title of this work derives from lines in Sir Richard Francis Burton's poem The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî:
And still the Weaver plies his loom, whose warp and woof is wretched Man
Weaving th' unpattern'd dark design, so dark we doubt it owns a plan.

All page numbers from the trade paperback edition published by Del Rey Books, ISBN 0-345-41969-3

Dreams haunted The Riverworld.
- Chapter 1 (p. 1; first line)

“Would you like to talk?”
“When I dream, I am talking.”
“But to yourself.”
“Who knows me better?” He laughed softly.
“And who can deceive you better,” she said a little tartly.
- Chapter 3 (p. 10)

Tell me, is this true or is it just one of those tales that people like to make up to worry others?
- Chapter 5 (p. 19)

Many attributed this to a supernatural agency. Many more, among whom was Burton, did not think that there was any agency except an advanced science which accounted for this. There was no need to call in the supernatural. “No ghosts need apply,”—to quote the immortal Sherlock Holmes. Physical explanations sufficed.
- Chapter 5 (p. 19)

Nightmare in paradise. Or what could have been paradise if so many human beings did not insist on make in a hell of it.
- Chapter 12 (p. 64)

Then she warned her self—for the ten thousandth time?—that she must not be as guilty of prejudice as others. Find the facts first and study them before judgment.
- Chapter 13 (p. 69)

“You must not stereotype!” Cyrano cried.
“And you are right,” she said. “That is a feeling I loathe, and yet I find myself doing it all the time. However, so often…well, most people are living stereotypes, aren’t they?”
- Chapter 14 (p. 73)

People who believed in Him were deluded. The believers in God might be intelligent, but they were mentally benighted. The gears in that part of the brain which dealt with religion had been put into neutral, and they were spinning. Or the circuit of religion had been disconnected from the main circuit of the intellect.
That was a bad analogy. People use their intellect to justify the nonintellective, emotionally based phenomenon called religion. Often brilliantly. But, as far as she was concerned, uselessly.
- Chapter 17 (p. 93)

Burton thought the man was crazy, though he was discreet enough not to say so. He and his crew had fallen into the hands of fanatics. Fortunately, the god had told Metusael that his worshipers must hurt no one unless it was in self-defense. However, he knew from experience that “self-defense” could mean whatever a person or group wanted it to mean.
- Chapter 19 (p. 104)

Kazz thought that putting a lump on Oskas’ head was very funny. He would have considered it to be even a better joke if the chief had drowned. Yet, among his crewmates, he was as sociable, tender, and compassionate a man as anyone could ask for. He was a primitive, and all primitives, civilized or preliterate, were tribal people. Only the tribe consisted of human beings and were treated as such. All outside the tribe though some might be considered friends, were not quite human. Therefore, they did not have to be treated as if they were completely human.
- Chapter 22 (p. 130)

“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know, but it sounds deep. I’ll think up an explanation later.”
- Chapter 24 (p. 144)

The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the stars but in our lousy genes. Or in the failure of one’s conquest of one’s self.
The fault, dear Brutus, is in our fear of knowing ourselves.
- Chapter 28 (p. 171)

TV, the worst thing that had happened to the twentieth century. After the atom bomb and overpopulation, of course.
- Chapter 30 (p. 186)

I do believe that man is a rope between animal and superman. But the superman I'm thinking of isn't Nietzsche's. The real superhuman, man or woman, is the person who's rid himself of all prejudices, neuroses, and psychoses, who realizes his full potential as a human being, who acts naturally on the basis of gentleness, compassion, and love, who thinks for himself and refuses to follow the herd. That's the genuine dyed-in-the-wool superman.
- Chapter 31 (p. 191)

He looks like he’d be a hellcat in a fight. Tom and I agreed that he was easily the best qualified. But he doesn’t know anything about books, and I need educated people around me. That may sound snobbish, but so what?
- Chapter 31 (p. 194)

I, who hated the fat, smug, oily, stinking, ignorant, hypocritical, parasitical priests! And their unfeeling, merciless, cruel God!
- Chapter 32 (p. 200)

You prize rank too highly.
- Chapter 37 (p. 231)

But he’s sincere. Which doesn’t mean he knows what he’s talking about.
- Chapter 40 (p. 256)

As for the Bible, it was a book, and all books told the truth in the sense that their authors believed they were writing a kind of truth.
- Chapter 41 (p. 265)

Chance, another word for destiny.
- Chapter 46 (p. 289)

Peter would find out that that was superstition, a reasoning from effect to cause, totally invalid. It was in a class with the belief that if you eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich while you were sitting in the outhouse, the devil would get you.
- Chapter 46 (p. 291)

Take St. Augustine, for instance. "Asshole” was the only word that fit him. A monster of ego and selfishness.
St. Francis was about as saintly as a person could be. But he was undoubtedly psychotic. Kissing a leper’s sores to demonstrate humility, indeed!
- Chapter 47 (p. 295)

The religions of Jesus, Paul, and Buddha had started to degenerate before their founders were cold in their graves. Just as St. Francis’ order had begun corrupting before its founder’s body was rotten.
- Chapter 47 (p. 296)

“The trouble with you, Peter—one of the troubles—is you worry too much about other people’s behavior. And you have too high ideals for them, ideals which you yourself don’t try to live up to.”
“I know I can’t live up to them, so I make a no pretense,” Frigate said.
“But it bothers me that others claim to have these ideals and to be living up to them. If I point out that they aren’t, they get angry.”
The little Moor chuckled. “Naturally. Your criticism threatens their self-image. If that were to be destroyed, they, too, would be destroyed. At least, they think so.”
- Chapter 47 (p. 297)

Was destiny anything but chance? Probably. But the odds against this happening on Earth were infinity to one.
- Chapter 48 (p. 302)

I had the honor to serve at the siege of Arras. Where I received a thrust through the throat, the second of the serious wounds that convinced me, along with all else I had seen of wars miseries and horrors, that Mars was the stupidest of the gods.
- Chapter 60 (p. 371)

“I thought that was just one of the wild tales those visionaries had invented,” Jill said. “I didn’t put any more credence in it than I did in the ravings of Earth prophets. Moses, Jesus, Zoroaster, Mohammed, Buddha, Smith, Eddy, the whole sick crew.”
- Chapter 61 (p. 375)

If you’ve read your history…then you’ll know that the medieval noblemen were notorious for treachery. Their god was Opportunity, no matter how many churches they built for the glory of Church and God. They had all the morals of a hyena.
- Chapter 63 (p. 391)

“At least, they tried,” Johnston said.
“So did the eunuch in the sheik’s harem.”
- Chapter 63 (p. 396)

“I don’t believe in women’s intuition,” Sam said. “They’re just culturally conditioned to observe different patterns of action and speech, different gestures and inflections from those men observe. They’re more sensitive to certain subtleties because of this conditioning.”
- Chapter 63 (p. 396)

Anyway, women are about as mysterious as a tin mine. All you have to do is carry a lantern into the dark places, and you see everything. But men like to think women are the eternally mysterious. That saves men the trouble of asking questions, taking a little time and effort.
- Chapter 64 (p. 398)

He seemed to get along with just about everybody. Which, in my book, makes him suspect.
- Chapter 64 (p. 400)

“We’re not that stupid!”
“No, but you’re that impulsive. Which is a form of stupidity.”
- Chapter 65 (p. 402)

Imagination was the great cozener of the past.
- Chapter 67 (p. 430)

Suddenly, he was weeping. The tears were for the good things that had been or might have been, for the bad things that had been but should not have been.
- Chapter 67 (p. 431)

Beauty is beautiful because it is doomed to perish!
- Chapter 70 (p. 448)

The Magic Labyrinth (1980)

*Soul* has too many incorrect meanings for humans, too many verbal reverberations, too many contrary definitions.

The title of this work derives from lines in Sir Richard Francis Burton's poem The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî:
Reason is Life's sole arbiter, the magic Laby'rinth's single clue:
Worlds lie above, beyond its ken; what crosses it can ne'er be true.

How strange and unforeseeable... Alice, had inspired the nonsense not really nonsense, and this in circuitous and spiralling fashion had inspired her to do what all others had failed to do...

All page numbers from the hardcover edition published by Berkley, Putnam, and the Science Fiction Book Club

Everybody should fear only one person, and that person should be himself.
- Chapter 1 (p. 1; first line)

Malory clung to his faith with fierce obliviousness to “facts”—in itself an indication that he had gone mad, if his critics were to be believed.
- Chapter 2 (p. 8)

I have been forced into this situation and may like it. To survive you must lie better than the liars, deceive more than the deceivers, and kill the killers first! To me it’s sheer necessity, though justified!
- Chapter 4 (p. 18)

I concluded that extreme mysticism was closely allied to madness.
- Chapter 5 (p. 94)

If you live very long time or are immortal, perhaps you learn everything about everything in order to pass the time.
- Chapter 16 (p. 102)

Sometimes you are arrogant, thinking you are better than others. More often you are humble. Too humble. I might even say, sickeningly humble. That is another form of arrogance. True humility is knowing your true place in the cosmic scale.
- Chapter 18 (p. 112)

Monasticism, retreat from the world, reclusivism, that’s a lot of crap.
- Chapter 18 (p. 112)

Sometimes I regret we are forbidden any violence whatsoever. Right now, I would like to kick you in the ass.
- Chapter 18 (p. 113)

By now you must have accepted the fact that your religion, in fact, none of the Earthly religions, truly knew what the afterlife would be. All made guesses, and then established these as articles of faith. Though, in a sense, some were near the mark, if you accept their revelations as symbolic.
- Chapter 19 (p. 124)

Now, this is what the visitor said the Ethicals had learned from the Ancients. The Creator, God, the One Spirit, call it what you will, forms all. It is the universe; the universe is it. But its body is formed of two essences. One is matter, the other, for lack of a better word, is nonmatter.
- Chapter 19 (p. 125)

Let's give this entity which you call soul another name. Soul has too many incorrect meanings for humans, too many verbal reverberations, too many contrary definitions.
- Chapter 20 (p. 127)

Clemens was afraid that he’d lose his temper and cuss out King John as no one else in the universe had ever been cussed out before.
- Chapter 26 (p. 171)

And how in God’s name did Santiago find out about the laser? Even Queen Victoria’s sex life wasn’t a better secret.
- Chapter 31 (p. 209)

By the Providence that did not exist, events had worked out perfectly.
- Chapter 36 (p. 247)

You should have waited to find out the true situation, madame. But then…scarcely anyone ever does.
- Chapter 38 (p. 273)

“Okay,” she said, “I’ll listen to the wise. Are you wise?”
“Wise enough,” he said, “and mighty experienced, which is the same thing if you’re not too stupid.”
- Chapter 41 (p. 290)

Burton sighed. She was, on the whole, sane. But she was also a religious fanatic who managed to ignore the facts of life and also the contradictory elements in her faith.
- Chapter 44 (p. 327)

“Perhaps God—if there is one—doesn’t care,” Burton said. “There is no evidence whatsoever that He does.”
- Chapter 46 (p. 339)

If the Creator has a plan for us, why doesn’t He tell us what it is? Are we so stupid that we can’t understand it? He should tell it to us directly! The books that the prophets, the revelators, and the revisionists wrote, claiming to have authority from God Himself, to have taken His dictations, these so-called revelations are false! They make no sense! Besides, they contradict each other! Does God make contradictory statements?
- Chapter 46 (p. 341)

How strange and unforeseeable! The world had been saved, not by great rulers and statesmen, not by mystics and saints and prophets and messiahs, not by any of the holy scriptures, but by an introverted eccentric writer of mathematical texts and children's books and by the child who'd inspired him.
The little girl become a woman, dream-ridden Alice, had inspired the nonsense not really nonsense, and this in circuitous and spiraling fashion had inspired her to do what all others had failed to do, to save eighteen billion souls and the world.
- Chapter 54 (p. 406)

Gods of Riverworld (1983)

The truth is that you can be immortal, relatively so, anyway. You won't last beyond the death of the universe and probably not nearly as long as the universe does. But you have the potentiality for living a million years, two, perhaps three or more. As long as you can find a Terrestrial-type planet with a hot core and have resurrection machinery available.
Unfortunately, not all can be permitted to possess immortality. Too many would make immortality miserable or hellish for the rest, and they would try to control others through their control of the resurrection machinery. Even so, everybody, without exception, is given a hundred years after his Earthly death to prove that he or she can live peacefully and in harmony with himself and the others, within the tolerable limits of human imperfections. Those who can do this will be immortal after the two projects are completed.

Quotes about Farmer

Excellent science fiction writer; in fact, a far more skillful writer than I am.
- Isaac Asimov, in I, Asimov (1994), p. 504

One of the most original, one of the most talented, and certainly one of the most fearless writers around.
- Theodore Sturgeon, as quoted in "Philip José Farmer : The Trickster as Artist", by Thomas Lee Wymer, in Voices for the Future, Vol. 2 (1979), edited by Thomas D. Clareson, p. 34

Farmer's greatest achievement, accomplished with brilliant understatement, is to make us gradually realize that our own situation here on Earth is just as mysterious as anything on Riverworld, or that the answer to the enigmas of Riverworld might also be the explanation of the paradoxes of our own peculiar existence here and now. Once again, in a brilliant climax, Farmer demonstrates my pet theory that sf is the only serious literature around these days, because it is the only literature that grapples with the ultimate questions of who or what we are and how we got here.
- Robert Anton Wilson, in "Wilson on Farmer" in Heavy Metal #54 (September 1981)

The critics seem like the legendary blind philosophers who each touching the creature in a different place, bring back conflicting reports of what an elephant is. … I would like to suggest, with no pretensions to being any less blind than the others, that a key to these contradictions may be found in what appears to be the image in terms which Farmer most often presents himself as an artist, the trickster god. … Farmer seems to have a special affinity for Trickster.
- Thomas Lee Wymer, in "Philip José Farmer : The Trickster as Artist", in Voices for the Future, Vol. 2 (1979), edited by Thomas D. Clareson, p. 35

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