Farmer, Philip José

Entry updated 18 November 2024. Tagged: Author.

(1918-2009) US author whose active career extended over half a century, though he was a comparatively late starter as an author, and his first story, "O'Brien and Obrenov" for Adventure in March 1946, was nonfantastic and promised little. A part-time student at Bradley University, he gained a BA in English in 1950, and two years later burst onto the sf scene with his novella The Lovers (August 1952 Startling; exp 1961; rev 1979). Although originally rejected by John W Campbell Jr of Astounding Science-Fiction and H L Gold of Galaxy Science Fiction, it gained instant acclaim when it did appear, and won Farmer a 1953 Hugo for Most Promising New Author. It concerned Xenobiology, Parasitism and Sex, an explosive mixture, certainly for the Genre SF of that era; transgressive mixtures of this sort would feature repeatedly in Farmer's best work. After publishing such excellent short stories as "Sail On! Sail On!" (December 1952 Startling) (see Flat Earth) and "Mother" (April 1953 Thrilling Wonder), Farmer became a full-time writer. His second short novel, A Woman a Day (June 1953 Startling as "Moth and Rust"; rev 1960; vt The Day of Timestop 1968; vt Timestop! 1970), was billed as a sequel to The Lovers but bore little relation to the earlier story. "Rastignac the Devil" (May 1954 Fantastic Universe) was a further sequel. Farmer then produced two novels, both of which were accepted for publication but neither of which actually saw print at the time, the first due to the folding of Startling Stories (it eventually appeared as Dare [1965]). The second, «I Owe for the Flesh», won a contest held by Shasta Publishers and Pocket Books, but the prize money, which came from Pocket Books, was used by Shasta founder Erle Korshak to pay bills, which did not keep the firm from foundering; the manuscript was lost for decades, though its premise eventually formed the basis of the Riverworld series (see below), in whose first volume Farmer's alter ego Peter Jairus Frigate fondly recalls giving the "crooked publisher" Lem Sharkko a punch on the nose. This double disaster forced Farmer to abandon full-time authorship for a number of years; he did not become full-time again until 1969.

Nevertheless, he produced many interesting stories during this period, such as the Father Carmody series in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, published in book form as Night of Light (June 1957 F&SF; exp 1966) and Father to the Stars (coll of linked stories 1981), featuring a murderous priest who becomes ambiguously involved in various theological puzzles on several planets. The best of the sequence is Night of Light, the nightmarish story of a world where the figments of the unconscious become tangible. Other notable stories of this period include "The God Business" (March 1954 Beyond Fantasy Fiction), "The Alley Man" (June 1959 F&SF) and "Open to Me, My Sister" (May 1960 F&SF; vt "My Sister's Brother" in Strange Relations, coll 1960). The last named is the best of Farmer's biological fantasies (see Biology); like The Lovers, it was repeatedly rejected as "disgusting" before its acceptance by The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Farmer's first novel to actually gain book publication was The Green Odyssey (1957), in which an Earthman escapes from captivity in an alien planet; the intricately colourful medieval culture of this planet, the high libido of its women, the mysteries buried within the sands of the desert over which the hero must flee, and the admixture of rapture and disgust with which the hero treats the venue – all go to suggest that this novel, along with Jack Vance's Big Planet (September 1952 Startling; cut 1957; full text 1978), served as a bridge between the earlier flowering of the Planetary Romance in the hands of authors like Leigh Brackett and its 1960s efflorescence in the work of Roger Zelazny and, later, Gene Wolfe. It was the first of many entertainments Farmer wrote over the years, some of which share the narrative elation of this underrated tale. Later novels in a not dissimilar vein include The Gate of Time (1966; exp vt Two Hawks from Earth 1979), The Stone God Awakens (1970) and The Wind Whales of Ishmael (1971), the last-named being an sf sequel to Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851) (see Sequels by Other Hands).

In the late 1960s, Essex House, publishers of pornography, commissioned Farmer to write three erotic fantasy novels, taking full advantage of the new freedoms of the time. The Image of the Beast (1968), the first of the Exorcism/Herald Childe trilogy, is an effective Parody of the private eye and Gothic horror genres. It was followed by a perfunctory sequel, Blown, or Sketches Among the Ruins of my Mind (1969), both being run together into one novel as The Image of the Beast (omni 1979); the third Exorcism volume, Traitor to the Living (1973), was not published by Essex House. Flesh (1960; rev 1968) is more ambitious: a dramatization of the ideas which Robert Graves put forward in The White Goddess (1948), it presents a matriarchal, orgiastic society of the future (see Gender; Utopia). Rather heavy-handed in its humour, it was considered a "shocking" novel on first publication. Inside – Outside (1964), a novel about a scientifically sustained afterlife, also contains some extraordinary images and grotesque ideas which resonate in the mind, though the book suffers from a lack of resolution. The novella "Riders of the Purple Wage" (in Dangerous Visions, anth 1967, ed Harlan Ellison) – later collected in The Purple Book (coll 1982) and Riders of the Purple Wage (coll 1992) – won Farmer a 1968 Hugo; written in a wild and punning style, it is one of his most original works. It concerns the tribulations of a young artist in a Utopian society, and has a more explicit sexual and scatological content than anything Farmer had written before. "The Oögenesis of Bird City" (September 1970 Amazing) is a related story.

The novels assembled as The World of Tiers (omni 1981 2vols; vt World of Tiers #1 1986 UK and World of Tiers #2 1986) show Farmer in a lighter vein, though the architectural elaborateness of the universe in which they are set prefigures Riverworld. The original volumes are The Maker of Universes (1965; rev 1980), The Gates of Creation (1966; rev 1981), A Private Cosmos (1968; rev 1981), Behind the Walls of Terra (1970; rev 1982) and The Lavalite World (1977; rev 1983). The sequence unfolds within a series of Pocket Universes created as playgrounds for Godgames imposed on lesser beings by Secret Masters who may be deities, though originally humanoid, and whose technology is unimaginable. Access to and transport within their closed universes is provided by Matter Transmission "gates". The most notable character is the present-day Earthman Paul Janus Finnegan (his initials, PJF, reveal this ironic observer to be a stand-in for the author: a signal repeated often in later work; and, as in the puns of "Riders of the Purple Wage", the name also signals Farmer's debt to James Joyce); he is also called Kickaha, under which significantly Native American name he acts out the role of a Trickster hero indulging in merry, if bloodthirsty, exploits. The books sag in places, but have moments of high invention; and the Jungian models upon which the main characters are constructed supply one key to the understanding of Red Orc's Rage (1991), a novel which Recursively dramatizes the use of the previous titles in the series as tools in role-playing therapy for disturbed adolescents. In a late addition to the primary sequence, More Than Fire: A World of Tiers Novel (1993), some of the cosmological puzzles are resolved, and the conflict between Kickaha and Red Orc takes on an increasingly Jungian air, with each being seen as the other's shadow [for Trickster above, and Jungian Psychology and Shadow here, see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below].

An abiding concern (or game) that would occupy much of Farmer's later career was the tying together of his own fiction (and that of many other authors) into one vast, playful mythology, with some similarities to the evolving (but never explicit) World-as-Myth overstory Robert A Heinlein used to structure his own later work. Much of this is worked out in the loose conglomeration of works which has been termed the Wold Newton Family series, all united under the premise that a meteorite which landed near Wold Newton in eighteenth-century Yorkshire irradiated a number of pregnant women and thus gave rise to a family of mutant Supermen. The first books to be retrofitted into this sequence are A Feast Unknown: Volume IX of the Memoirs of Lord Grandrith (1969) the first volume of the Lord Grandrith/Doc Caliban series, followed by Lord of the Trees (1970 dos) and The Mad Goblin (1970; vt Keepers of the Secrets 1983), the latter two being assembled as The Empire of the Nine (omni 1988). A Feast Unknown is a brilliant exploration of the sado-masochistic fantasies latent in much heroic fiction, and succeeds as Satire, as sf, and as a tribute to the creations of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Lester Dent. A narrative tour de force, it concerns the struggle of Lord Grandrith (Tarzan) and Doc Caliban (Doc Savage) against the Nine, a secret society of immortals (see Immortality). Several other texts devoted to Tarzan – though excluding Lord Tyger (1970), which is about a millionaire's attempt to create his own ape-man and is possibly the best written of Farmer's novels (see Apes as Human) – are central to Wold Newton, in particular Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke (1972), which includes "Extracts from the Memoirs of 'Lord Greystoke'", a spoof biography in which Farmer uses the concept of the monomyth from The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) by Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) to explore the nature of the Hero's appeal. The appendices and genealogy, which link Tarzan with many other heroes of popular fiction, are at once a satire on scholarship and a serious exercise in "creative mythography".

Tarzan appears again in Time's Last Gift (1972; rev 1977), a preliminary novel for a subseries in the Wold Newton universe about Ancient Africa, employing settings from Burroughs and H Rider Haggard; Hadon of Ancient Opar (1974) and Flight to Opar (1976) continue the series. Other works which contain Wold Newton material include "Tarzan Lives: An Exclusive Interview with Lord Greystoke" (April 1972 Esquire), "The Obscure Life and Hard Times of Kilgore Trout" (December 1971 Moebius Trip; exp in The Book of Philip José Farmer, coll 1973), Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life [for full subtitle see Checklist] (1973; rev 1975), The Other Log of Phileas Fogg (1973), "After King Kong Fell" (in Omega, anth 1973, ed Roger Elwood) (see Apes as Human), The Adventure of the Peerless Peer by John H Watson, M D (1974; vt The Further Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes: The Peerless Peer 2011), a Sherlock Holmes Sequel by Other Hands, Ironcastle (1976), a liberally rewritten version of J-H Rosny aîné's L'étonnant voyage de Hareton Ironcastle (1922), and Doc Savage: Escape from Loki: Doc Savage's First Adventure (1991). Other characters incorporated into the sequence include Jack the Ripper, James Bond (see Ian Fleming) and Kilgore Trout, a Kurt Vonnegut character under whose name Farmer also published Venus on the Half-Shell (1975). As a whole, the series parlays its conventions of "explanation" into something close to chaos.

Besides the infamous Kilgore Trout, Farmer occasionally used other pseudonyms for short stories: those definitely identified with him are Paul Chapin, Charlotte Corday-Marat (see Bizarre! Mystery Magazine), Rod Keen, Harry Manders and Jonathan Swift Somers III. Some of these were taken with permission from the work of other authors: Paul Chapin, for example, is an author character in Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe detective novel The League of Frightened Men (1935). Kurt Vonnegut Jr later regretted allowing the use of Kilgore Trout after it was generally assumed that he himself had written Venus on the Half-Shell under this pseudonym.

Though the fractal Wold Newton set of sequences perhaps best express his playfully serious manipulations of popular material to express a sense of the Universe as chaotically fable-like, Farmer gained greatest popular acclaim with his Riverworld series, set on a planet where a godlike race has resurrected the whole of humanity along the banks of a multi-million-mile river, the background effect being that of a Planetary Romance set within a Pocket Universe. The series is made up of To Your Scattered Bodies Go (January 1965-March 1966 Worlds of Tomorrow; fixup 1971), The Fabulous Riverboat (July-August 1967 and June-August 1971 If as "The Felled Star" and "The Fabulous Riverboat"; fixup 1971), The Dark Design (1977), Riverworld: The Great Short Fiction of Philip José Farmer (coll 1979), The Magic Labyrinth (1980), Riverworld War: The Suppressed Fiction of Philip José Farmer (coll 1980), Gods of Riverworld (1983) and River of Eternity (1983), the last being a rediscovered rewrite of the lost «I Owe for the Flesh». The first of these won a 1972 Hugo. The Riverworld books share a river, along which places to stop are necklaced into a littoral Archipelago, and an Afterlife setting with the Houseboat on the Styx sequence by John Kendrick Bangs, though Farmer hugely intensifies the speculative content of his enterprise; and also shares a use (derived from the literary tradition of the Dialogue of the Dead) of such historical personages as Sir Richard Burton (1821-1890) (see Arabian Fantasy in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy), Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) and Jack London, who explore the terrain and conduct an ongoing conversazione with one another in their search to understand, in terms mundane and metaphysical, the new universe which has tied them together. As surviving characters begin to overdose on the freedoms (or powers) they have discovered in themselves, the plots of the later volumes become increasingly chaotic, perhaps deliberately, a tendency not reversed in two late anthologies of work by other authors set in the Riverworld universe: Tales of Riverworld (anth 1992) and Quest to Riverworld (anth 1993), both edited by Farmer.

After The Unreasoning Mask (1981), an extremely well constructed Space Opera about a search for God, an essential (and vulnerable) child whose accidents are the Universe, Farmer embarked on the Dayworld series, whose premise derives from "The Sliced-Crosswise Only-on-Tuesday World" (in New Dimensions I, anth 1971, ed Robert Silverberg): in a world plagued by Overpopulation, the whole of humanity is divided into seven cohorts, each spending one day of the week awake and the rest of the time in "stoned" immobility (see Suspended Animation). In Dayworld (1985), Dayworld Rebel (1987) and Dayworld Breakup (1990), this premise becomes increasingly peripheral in a tale whose complications invoke A E van Vogt.

Here, as in all his work, Farmer is governed by an instinct for extremity, sometimes impish, sometimes flat-footed, but in its most telling enactments arousingly transgressive. It is perhaps now a moot question whether or not Farmer would have been more successful in a world which simply appreciated his flings and intuitions, and which did not recoil at the polymorphic mutability of his depictions of Sex, which he treated as a ground-bass in the arias of human behaviour. As it now stands, an essentially amiable (though searching) writer spent much of his career enmeshed in what now (it is hoped) seem trivial censorships and strife. Two large late retrospective collections – The Best of Philip José Farmer (coll 2006), a definitive assembling of his best-known stories; and Pearls from Peoria (coll 2006), taken from the large amount of material obscurely or never-previously published – may signal an overdue assessment of his stature in the field. In 2001 he received both the SFWA Grand Master Award and the World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement. [JC/DP]

Philip José Farmer

born North Terre Haute, Indiana: 26 January 1918

died Peoria, Illinois: 25 February 2009

works

series

World of Tiers

The Maker of Universes (New York: Ace Books, 1965) [World of Tiers: pb/Jack Gaughan]
- The Maker of Universes (Huntingdon Woods, Michigan: Phantasia Press, 1980) [rev of the above: World of Tiers: hb/Doug Beekman]
The Gates of Creation (New York: Ace Books, 1966) [World of Tiers: pb/Gray Morrow]
- The Gates of Creation (Huntingdon Woods, Michigan: Phantasia Press, 1981) [rev of the above: World of Tiers: hb/George Barr]
A Private Cosmos (New York: Ace Books, 1968) [World of Tiers: pb/Jack Gaughan]
- A Private Cosmos (Huntingdon Woods, Michigan: Phantasia Press, 1981) [rev of the above: World of Tiers: hb/Eric Ladd]
Behind the Walls of Terra (New York: Ace Books, 1970) [World of Tiers: pb/Gray Morrow]
- Behind the Walls of Terra (Huntingdon Woods, Michigan: Phantasia Press, 1982) [rev of the above: World of Tiers: hb/Alex Abel]
The Lavalite World (New York: Ace Books, 1977) [World of Tiers: pb/Boris Vallejo]
- The World of Tiers (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1981) [omni of the above five: published in two volumes: World of Tiers: hb/Boris Vallejo]
  - World of Tiers 1 (London: Sphere Books, 1986) [omni: rev of the above: containing The Maker of Universes, The Gates of Creation and A Private Cosmos: World of Tiers: pb/Mark Harrison]
  - World of Tiers 2 (London: Sphere Books, 1986) [omni: rev of the above: containing Behind the Walls of Terra and The Lavalite World: World of Tiers: pb/Mark Harrison]
- The Lavalite World (Huntingdon Woods, Michigan: Phantasia Press, 1983) [rev of the above: World of Tiers: hb/Chris Miller]
Red Orc's Rage (New York: Tor, 1991) [World of Tiers: hb/Doug Beekman]
More Than Fire: A World of Tiers Novel (New York: Tor, 1993) [World of Tiers: hb/Boris Vallejo]

Father Carmody

Night of Light (New York: Berkley Medallion, 1966) [short version first appeared June 1957 F&SF: Father Carmody: pb/Paul Lehr]
Father to the Stars (New York: Tor, 1981) [coll of linked stories: Father Carmody: pb/Janny Wurts]

Riverworld

To Your Scattered Bodies Go (New York: G P Putnam's Sons, 1971) [fixup: original stories "Day of the Great Shout" (January 1965 Worlds of Tomorrow), "Riverworld" (January 1966 Worlds of Tomorrow) and "The Suicide Express" (March 1966 Worlds of Tomorrow): Riverworld: hb/Ira Cohen]
The Fabulous Riverboat (New York: G P Putnam's Sons, 1971) [Riverworld: hb/Richard Powers]
- Riverworld (New York: Tor, 2010) [omni of the above two: Riverworld: hb/]
The Dark Design (New York: Berkley Publishing Corp, 1977) [Riverworld: hb/Vincent Di Fate]
Riverworld: The Great Short Fiction of Philip José Farmer (New York: Berkley Books, 1979) [coll: Riverworld: pb/Don Ivan Punchatz]
- Riverworld and Other Stories (no place given: Open Road, 2017) [coll: ebook: vt with contents differing slightly from the above: na/]
The Magic Labyrinth (New York: Berkley Publishing Corp, 1980) [Riverworld: hb/Vincent Di Fate]
Riverworld War: The Suppressed Fiction of Philip José Farmer (Peoria, Illinois: Ellis Press, 1980) [coll: Riverworld: pb/Jean Janke Woods]
Gods of Riverworld (Huntingdon Woods, Michigan: Phantasia Press, 1983) [Riverworld: hb/Kevin Eugene Johnson]
River of Eternity (Huntingdon Woods, Michigan: Phantasia Press, 1983) [Riverworld: hb/John Pound]

Exorcism/Herald Childe

The Image of the Beast (North Hollywood, California: Essex House, 1968) [Exorcism/Herald Childe: pb/Peter Maxish]
Blown, or Sketches Among the Ruins of my Mind (North Hollywood, California: Essex House, 1969) [Exorcism/Herald Childe: pb/]
- The Image of the Beast (New York: Playboy Press, 1979) [omni of the above two: Exorcism/Herald Childe: pb/Enrich Torres as Enric]
  - Image of the Beast/Blown (New York: Creation Books, 2001) [omni: vt of the above: Exorcism/Herald Childe: pb/John Coulthart]
Traitor to the Living (New York: Ballantine Books, 1973) [Exorcism/Herald Childe: pb/Hans Ulrich and Ute Osterwalder]

Wold Newton

A Feast Unknown: Volume IX of the Memoirs of Lord Grandrith (North Hollywood, California: Essex House, 1968) [Wold Newton: Lord Grandrith/Doc Caliban: pb/]
Lord of the Trees (New York: Ace Books, 1970) [dos: with The Mad Goblin below: Wold Newton: Lord Grandrith/Doc Caliban: pb/Gray Morrow]
The Mad Goblin (New York: Ace Books, 1970) [dos: with Lord of the Trees above: Wold Newton: Lord Grandrith/Doc Caliban: pb/Gray Morrow]
- Keepers of the Secrets (London: Sphere, 1983) [vt of the above: Wold Newton: Lord Grandrith/Doc Caliban: pb/]
  - The Empire of the Nine (London: Sphere Books, 1988) [omni of the above vt plus Lord of the Trees: Wold Newton: Lord Grandrith/Doc Caliban: pb/Mark Salwowski]
Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1972) [Wold Newton: hb/Milton Glaser]
Time's Last Gift (New York: Ballantine Books, 1972) [Wold Newton: Ancient Africa: pb/Gene Szafran]
- Time's Last Gift (New York: Ballantine Books, 1977) [rev of the above: Wold Newton: Ancient Africa: pb/Darrell K Sweet]
Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, as the Archangel of Technopolis and Exotica, as the Golden-Eyed Hero of 181 Super-Sagas, as the Bronze Knight of the Running Board, Including his Final Battle Against the Forces of Hell Itself (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1973) [Wold Newton: hb/Walter Baumhofer]
- Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, as the Archangel of Technopolis and Exotica, as the Golden-Eyed Hero of 181 Super-Sagas, as the Bronze Knight of the Running Board, Including his Final Battle Against the Forces of Hell Itself (London: Panther Books, 1975) [rev of the above: Wold Newton: pb/Richard Clifton-Dey]
  - Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life (London Meteor House, 2013) [exp of the above as coll/anth: hb/Joe DeVito]
The Other Log of Phileas Fogg (New York: DAW Books, 1973) [Wold Newton: pb/Jack Gaughan]
The Adventure of the Peerless Peer by John H Watson, M D (Boulder, Colorado: Aspen Press, 1974) [Wold Newton: hb/Enid Schantz]
- The Further Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes: The Peerless Peer (London: Titan Book, 2011) [vt of the above: Sherlock Holmes: pb/Clinton Pettee]
Hadon of Ancient Opar (New York: DAW Books, 1974) [Wold Newton: Ancient Africa: pb/Roy Krenkel]
Flight to Opar (New York: DAW Books, 1976) [Wold Newton: Ancient Africa: pb/Roy Krenkel]
Ironcastle (New York: DAW Books, 1976) [adapted from L'Étonnante aventure de Hareton Ironcastle by J-H Rosny aîné: Wold Newton: pb/Roy Krenkel]
Doc Savage: Escape from Loki: Doc Savage's First Adventure (New York: Bantam Books, 1991) [Wold Newton: pb/Steve Assel]

Wold Newton: Ancient Africa

Hadon of Ancient Opar (New York: DAW Books, 1974) [Wold Newton: Ancient Africa: pb/Roy Krenkel]
Flight to Opar (New York: DAW Books, 1976) [Wold Newton: Ancient Africa: pb/Roy Krenkel]
- Gods of Opar: Tales of Lost Khokarsa (Burton, Michigan: Subterranean Press, 2012) [omni of the two above plus The Song of Kwasin, started by Farmer and completed by Christopher Paul Carey: hb/Bob Eggleton]

Dayworld

Dayworld (New York: G P Putnam's Sons, 1985) [Dayworld: hb/Don Ivan Punchatz]
Dayworld Rebel (New York: Putnam, 1987) [Dayworld: hb/Don Ivan Punchatz]
Dayworld Breakup (New York: Tor, 1990) [Dayworld: hb/Vincent Di Fate]
Dayworld: A Hole in Wednesday (London: Meteor House, 2016) [started by Farmer and completed by Danny Adams: Dayworld: hb/Keith Howell]

individual titles

The Green Odyssey (New York: Ballantine Books, 1957) [hb/Richard Powers]
Flesh (New York: Galaxy Magazine Prize Selection for Beacon Books, 1960) [pb/Gerald McConnel]
- Flesh (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1968) [rev of the above: hb/Ellen Raskin]
A Woman a Day (New York: Galaxy Magazine Prize Selection for Beacon Books, 1960) [first appeared 1953 Startling Stories as "Moth and Rust": pb/Gerald McConnel]
- The Day of Timestop (New York: Lancer Books, 1968) [rev vt of the above: pb/Kelly Freas]
  - Timestop! (New York: Lancer Books, 1970) [vt of the above: pb/Gene Szafran]
The Lovers (New York: Ballantine Books, 1961) [first appeared August 1952 Startling Stories: pb/Richard Powers]
- The Lovers (New York: Ballantine Books, 1979) [rev of the above: hb/David Myers and Les Katz]
Cache from Outer Space (New York: Ace Books, 1962) [dos: with The Celestial Blueprint below: pb/Ed Emshwiller]
- The Cache: Includes Two Bonus Stories: They Twinkled Like Jewels and Rastignac the Devil (New York: Tor, 1981) [coll: rev of the above with stories as per subtitle: pb/David Mattingly]
Fire and the Night (Chicago, Illinois: Regency Books, 1962) [pb/Diane and Leo Dillon]
Tongues of the Moon (New York: Pyramid Books, 1964) [pb/Ed Emshwiller]
Inside – Outside (New York: Ballantine Books, 1964) [pb/]
Dare (New York: Ballantine Books, 1965) [pb/Robert Abbett]
The Gate of Time (New York: Belmont Books, 1966) [pb/]
- Two Hawks from Earth (New York: Ace Books, 1979) [rev of the above: pb/Boris Vallejo]
Love Song (North Hollywood, California: Brandon House, 1970) [pb/]
The Stone God Awakens (New York: Ace Books, 1970) [pb/Josh Kirby]
Lord Tyger (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1970) [hb/Seymour Chwast]
- Flesh; and, Lord Tyger (New York: New American Library/Signet Books, 1981) [omni of the above plus Flesh: pb/Pepper]
The Wind Whales of Ishmael (New York: Ace Books, 1971) [pb/Kelly Freas]
Venus on the Half-Shell (New York: Dell Books, 1975) as by Kilgore Trout [written as though by the character created by Kurt Vonnegut: pb/Gadino]
Dark is the Sun (New York: Ballantine Books, 1979) [hb/Darrell K Sweet]
Jesus on Mars (Los Angeles, California: Pinnacle Books, 1979) [pb/Paul Stinson]
- The Other in the Mirror (Burton, Michigan: Subterranean Press, 2009) [omni of the above plus Fire and the Night and Night of Light: hb/Bob Eggleton]
The Unreasoning Mask (New York: G P Putnam's Sons, 1981) [hb/Val and John Lakey]
- SF Gateway Omnibus: The Maker of Universes, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, The Unreasoning Mask (London: Orion Gollancz, 2014) [omni of the three titles: in the publisher's SF Gateway Omnibus series: pb/]
A Barnstormer in Oz; Or, a Rationalization and Extrapolation of the Split-Level Continuum (Huntingdon Woods, Michigan: Phantasia Press, 1982) [linked to L Frank Baum's Oz books: hb/Alex Ebel]
Greatheart Silver (New York: Tor, 1982) [fixup: illus/Nick Cuti: pb/Howard Chaykin]
The Caterpillar's Question (New York: Ace Books, 1992) with Piers Anthony [hb/Romas Kukalis]
Nothing Burns in Hell (New York: Tor/Forge Books, 1998) [hb/Thomas Canty]
The Dark Heart of Time (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 1999) [Tarzan: pb/Heather Kern]
- Tarzan and the Dark Heart of Time (London: Meteor House, 2018) [vt of the above: Tarzan: hb/Mark Wheatley]
The City Beyond Play (Hornsea, East Yorkshire: PS Publishing, 2007) with Danny Adams [Farmer manuscript completed by his grand-nephew: hb/Dominic Harman]
Some Fabulous Yonder (Medford, Oregon: Armchair Fiction, 2012) [dos: first appeared April 1963 Fantastic Stories: pb/Frank Bruno]
Strange Compulsion (Medford, Oregon: Armchair Fiction, 2013) [dos: first appeared October 1953 Science-Fiction Plus: pb/Ed Emshwiller]
The God Business (Medford, Oregon: Armchair Fiction, 2017) [dos: first appeared March 1954 Beyond Fantasy Fiction: pb/Scott Templar]

collections

Strange Relations (New York: Ballantine Books, 1960) [coll: pb/Blanchard]
- Strange Relations (New York: Baen Books, 2006) [omni of the above plus Flesh and The Lovers (see above): pb/Clyde Caldwell]
The Alley God (New York: Ballantine Books, 1962) [coll: pb/Richard Powers]
The Celestial Blueprint and Other Stories (New York: Ace Books, 1962) [coll: dos: with Cache from Outer Space above: pb/Ed Emshwiller]
Down in the Black Gang, and Others: A Story Collection (Garden City, New York: Nelson Doubleday, 1971) [coll: hb/Viskupic]
The Book of Philip José Farmer, or The Wares of Simple Simon's Custard Pie and Space Man (New York: DAW Books, 1973) [coll: pb/Jack Gaughan]
- The Book of Philip José Farmer, or The Wares of Simple Simon's Custard Pie and Space Man (New York: Berkley Books, 1982) [rev of the above: pb/James Warhola]
The Purple Book (New York: Tor, 1982) [coll: pb/Howard Chaykin]
Stations of the Nightmare (New York: Tor, 1982) [coll of linked stories: pb/Greg Theakston]
The Classic Philip José Farmer, 1952-1964 (New York: Crown SF Classics, 1984) [coll: hb/Michael Booth]
The Classic Philip José Farmer, 1964-1973 (New York: Crown SF Classics, 1984) [coll: hb/Michael Booth]
The Grand Adventure (New York: Berkley Books, 1984) [coll: pb/Michael W Kaluta]
Riders of the Purple Wage (New York: Tor, 1992) [coll: pb/David Hardy]
- The Lovers / Dark is the Sun / Riders of the Purple Wage (no place given: Open Road, 2017) [omni of the three titles: ebook: na/]
The Best of Philip José Farmer (Burton, Michigan: Subterranean Press, 2006) [coll: hb/Michael Komark]
Pearls from Peoria (Burton, Michigan: Subterranean Press, 2006) [coll: hb/Keith Howell and Charles Berlin]
Up from the Bottomless Pit and Other Stories (Burton, Michigan: Subterranean Press, 2007) [coll: hb/Keith Howell and Charles Berlin]
Venus on the Half-Shell and Others (Burton, Michigan: Subterranean Press, 2008) [coll: hb/Bob Eggleton]
They Twinkled Like Jewels (no place given: Project Gutenberg, 2009) [story: ebook: first appeared January 1954 Fantastic Universe: na/]
The Evil in Pemberley House (Burton, Michigan: Subterranean Press, 2009) with Win Scott Eckert [novelette: chap: hb/Glen Orbik]
Rastignac the Devil (Rockville, Maryland: Wildside Press, 2010) [novella: chap: dos: first appeared May 1954 Fantastic Universe: hb/Catmando]
Up the Bright River (Burton, Michigan: Subterranean Press, 2011) [coll: hb/Bob Eggleton]
The Philip José Farmer Centennial Collection (London: Meteor House, 2018) [coll: hb/Mark Wheatley]
Greatheart Silver and Other Pulp Heroes (London: Meteor House, 2019) [coll: hb/Keith Howell]

nonfiction

Reap: The Baycon Guest-of-Honor Speech (Los Angeles, California: Philip José Farmer, 1968) [nonfiction: chap: pb/]
A Rough Knight for the Queen (London: Meteor House, 2020) [nonfiction: biography of the explorer Sir Richard Burton: hb/Charles Berlin]
The Man Who Met Tarzan (Old Orchard Beach, Maine: Meteor House, 2021) [nonfiction: coll: hb/John Solie]

works as editor

Mother Was a Lovely Beast: A Feral Man Anthology: Fiction and Fact about Humans Raised by Animals (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Chilton Book Company, 1974) [anth: hb/Don Dyen]
Tales of Riverworld (New York: Warner Questar, 1992) [anth: tie: Riverworld: pb/Don Ivan Punchatz]
Quest to Riverworld (New York: Warner Questar, 1993) [anth: tie: Riverworld: pb/Don Ivan Punchatz]

about the author

Sam Moskowitz. "Philip José Farmer" in Seekers of Tomorrow: Masters of Modern Science Fiction (Cleveland, Ohio: World Publishing Co, 1966) [nonfiction: coll: hb/]
Leslie A Fiedler. "Thanks for the Feast" in The Book of Philip José Farmer (New York: DAW Books, 1973) [coll: as listed above: pb/]
Mary A Turzillo as Mary T Brizzi. Philip José Farmer (Mercer Island, Washington: Starmont House, 1980) [nonfiction: in the publisher's Starmont Reader's Guides to Contemporary Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors series: pb/Stephen E Fabian Sr and Stephen Fabian]
Edgar L Chapman. The Magic Labyrinth of Philip José Farmer (San Bernardino, California: The Borgo Press, 1984) [nonfiction: chap: pb/nonpictorial]
Gordon Benson Jr and Phil Stephensen-Payne. Philip José Farmer: Good-Natured Ground Breaker: A Working Bibliography (Leeds, West Yorkshire: Galactic Central Publications, 1990) [bibliography: chap: second edition: in the publisher's Bibliographies for the Avid Reader series: pb/nonpictorial]
The Best of Farmerphile: The Magazine of Philip José Farmer (London: Meteor House, 2017) [coll/anth: fiction and nonfiction: hb/]

further reading

Christopher Paul Carey and Win Scott Eckert, editors. Tales of the Wold Newton Universe (New York: Titan Books, 2013) [anth: Wold Newton: pb/Shutterstock]

links

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