''River of Eternity'' is a science fiction novel by American writer

Philip José Farmer Philip José Farmer (January 26, 1918 – February 25, 2009) was an American author known for his science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories. Obituary. Farmer is best known for his sequences of novels, especially the ''World of Tiers ...

(1918-2009). It is an early version of what became Farmer's popular ''

Riverworld Riverworld is a fictional planet and the setting for a series of science fiction books written by Philip José Farmer (1918–2009). Riverworld is an artificial "Super-Earth" environment where all humans (and pre-humans) are reconstructed. The b ...

'' series of novels (1971-83), in which all of humanity has been resurrected and resettled on an artificial "river planet". The original "Riverworld" story was a 150,000-word novel titled ''Owe for the Flesh'', which ended with a protagonist named Richard Black (based on the real-life British Arabist and explorer

Richard Francis Burton Sir Richard Francis Burton (; 19 March 1821 – 20 October 1890) was a British explorer, writer, orientalist scholar,and soldier. He was famed for his travels and explorations in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, as well as his extraordinary kn ...

) finding the tower at the end of the river. Farmer wrote it in a single month in 1952See Farmer's "Forward" in ''Riverworld and Other Stories'' (1979); New York: Berkley Books, pp 3-5. and promptly entered it in a science fiction novel contest run by

Shasta Publishers Shasta Publishers was a science fiction and fantasy small press specialty publishing house founded in 1947 by Erle Melvin Korshak, T. E. Dikty, and Mark Reinsberg, who were all science fiction fans from the Chicago area. The name of the press was ...

and subsidized by

Pocket Books Pocket Books is a division of Simon & Schuster that primarily publishes paperback books. History Pocket Books produced the first mass-market, pocket-sized paperback books in the United States in early 1939 and revolutionized the publishing in ...

. He won the contest but received no money. The work was never published and was lost in its original form. Farmer revised and retitled the book ''River of Eternity'', but that version remained unpublished as well and was thought lost. Farmer then reworked the material yet again into two separate novellas: ''The Day of the Great Shout'', which appeared in the January 1965 issue of ''

Worlds of Tomorrow ''Worlds of Tomorrow'' is an anthology of science fiction stories edited by American writer August Derleth. It was first published by Pellegrini & Cudahy in 1953. Many of the stories had originally appeared in the magazines '' Worlds Beyond'', ...

'', and ''The Suicide Express'', which appeared in the March 1966 issue of ''Worlds of Tomorrow.'' (By now the protagonist was out in the open as a fictionalized Burton.) The novellas were expanded and combined in 1971 as the novel ''

To Your Scattered Bodies Go ''To Your Scattered Bodies Go'' (1971) is a science fiction novel by American writer Philip José Farmer, the first book in the Riverworld series. It won a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1972 at the 30th Worldcon. The title is derived from the 7th ...

'' and three sequels constituting the ''Riverworld'' sequence of novels followed in 1977, '80 and '83. Then in 1983, a copy of the old ''River of Eternity'' manuscript was discovered in a garage and published by Phantasia Press. Farmer recounts the whole story in his introduction to the Phantasia edition of ''River of Eternity''.

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See also