RIVERWORLD ODYSSEY Hardcover Signed

Clocking in at almost six hundred pages, Riverworld Odyssey is a journey through every piece of associated fiction, every pertinent essay, letter, article, and speech, every item of ephemera the editors at Meteor Press could gather, in one Brobdingnagian volume, to tell the story — the history — of one of science fiction’s greatest series! Included: The early history of Riverworld; the journey from Phillip Jose Farmer’s last-minute decision to enter the ill-fated Shasta Prize Novel contest in 1952, to the publication of To Your Scattered Bodies Go, almost twenty years later; and the series beyond the end of the fifth and concluding novel, Gods of Riverworld... much of it in Farmer’s own words. The odyssey through Riverworld is a riverboat tour with four stops: The Contest, The Relaunch, The Quest Completed, and Riverworld Revisited. At each stop along the "river," we are invited to go "ashore" to partake of the aforementioned fiction, essays, and speeches. Fiction by Farmer includes the novel River of Eternity, first written in 1952, but not published until 1983 by science fiction specialty publisher, Phantasia Press; the earliest published Riverworld stories, “The Day of the Great Shout,” and “Riverworld”; the excerpt “Riverworld War”; and the stories Farmer wrote for the two shared-world anthologies in the '90s: “Crossing the Dark River,” “A Hole in Hell,” “Up the Bright River,” and “Coda.” Introductions, essays, and speeches by Farmer provide significant historical insight to the series. Letters to luminaries such as Fredric Pohl, Ejler Jakobsson, Richard Posner, Phyllis Grann, and Roger Zelazny include four different outlines describing forthcoming Riverworld tales. Fellow "shipmates" on the riverboat odyssey have kindly supplied essays exploring different aspects of Farmer’s celebrated series and career, including Alex Berman, John Gregory Betancourt, Michael Croteau, Tracy Knight, Paul Spiteri, Bruce Sterling, and Mary Turzillo. The gorgeous wraparound cover painted by Mark Wheatley features Peter Jarius Frigate, Alice Hargraves, Sir Richard Frances Burton, and Joe Miller attempting a shortcut across Riverworld in a hot air balloon. Available in both a Softcover and a Signed Hardcover Limited Edition. Signed by Berman, Betancourt, Croteau, Knight, Spiteri, Sterling, Turzillo, and Wheatley, the hardcover features a leatherette cover with gold foil stamping and custom printed color endpapers. This is another high-quality collectible in the tradition of Meteor House’s prior limited-edition hardcovers.