It is a very interesting concept: all of humanity resurrected at once, with renewed bodies, in a new world. But while food (and eventually, minimal clothing) is provided, it turns out that people are still people after all, and the violence begins on the very first day. It's a fairly dark look at humanity, and the chosen protagonist is as self-important and aggrandizing as they come. His quest to find out where they really are (because it certainly isn't the afterlife anyone expected) and who put them there is only partly satisfied; I would hope that more answers come in future volumes. Not my cup of tea.

Rereading this series; I first read it when I was in middle school (and perhaps into my early high school years), and it's probably the only series that I can partly remember with my teenage brain, so that will no doubt affect my reviews this time through (at least for the Riverworld books I read back then).

This book stands up pretty well as a sci-fi book, mostly because a) it takes place elsewhere and b) Farmer talks very little about the 21st century. The stuff about how grails work and how the people were resurrected is shaky, but then it is being told from the eyes of a 19th-century person, so a lot of "modern" technology would seem odd anyway, and the resurrection part is so far from what we can do now that it doesn't really matter how it's described.

The one issue I have with the book is that, well ... it jumps around like Burton does. Some chapters represent a single day; others skip over several years. Sometimes we hear a lot about the people around Burton, and other times, we barely know where they're from. It's almost as if the book is more of a prequel than a standalone novel.

It does the job, though. There's a bit too much "everything is set up for reasons you do not know" for me, but then that's the point of the whole book, so Farmer can be excused for writing certain parts of the plot that way! I'll be interested to see how the next books compare to what I recall from the old days.

2.5 rounded up reluctantly

--

Okay so, no one tell my dad about my Goodreads account. Okay? Okay.

While reading through the Hugo and Nebula winners book list, my dad frequently remarked his surprise that there was no Philip José Farmer on the list. I reassured him that Farmer had works that won one or the other, but just hadn't struck gold and won both. So when we came to the end of the list, my dad insisted that I give To Your Scattered Bodies Go a shot, insisting that it would hold up to time.

And, well. He was right and wrong. The premise of the book is interesting. A group of humans from all eras wake up together, Naked and Afraid, and the story follows the societies they make, the reactions, the humanity. I can see how this book influenced works that came after it, how waking up in vats very easily became that scene in the Matrix, how this was an interesting study in humanity.

But. For a book that should be an intense study of humanity, it falls short because it suffers from terminal cishetwhitemanbrain. It lacks all of the finesse and empathy that, say, Le Guin would have brought to such a work. Instead we follow a man who is controversial for his time period (for being racist and anti-semitic and espousing such beliefs in books because he had bad experiences traveling?) as he traverses the Riverworld and tries to "solve" it. Women are barely in the story, for which I was relieved, because when they were in it the writing of them was painful. They were mostly defined by their beauty (as it could be seen through their baldness), their hysterical reactions to the circumstances, and their rapeability. It also features a notorious Nazi war criminal, and his story arc is redemptive. Had this been done with any sort of flourish, artistry, or care I would maybe be interested, but it felt honestly like it was in here to just be edgy. I'm not sure what points the author wanted to make, but I doubt I agree with them. Farmer was not seasoned enough a writer to write the work that maybe this book should have been.

All of that said, it had enough of interest in it that I kept going. It didn't feel as painful as some of the other Hugo winners from this era did, and at least it tried to be substantive. Still, not a recommended read from me.

My thoughts on finishing this book: maybe... maybe I don't like books anymore?

Great premise, great first chapter, I want to know what happens next in Riverworld. The antisemitism seems to be purposeful and a critique, but poorly done. The sexism and racism though, no explaining that away..

Really really interesting read - deeply of its own time but also because of its premise directly confronting and commenting on the fact that it is of its time.

I think the premise and its various logics are so compelling that they carry the book almost single handedly - the premise is let down by the lack of imagination with which it's author depicts human society, human nature, etc. Still it has that compelling quality of old science fiction of a fantastical thought experiment married to a pulp adventure story. The execution may not be perfect but it gets the brain working and it's short and sweet.

DNF 25% just can’t with this

I wanted to rate this a 4 for it's boring and ephemeral nature. On my second deliberation I decided to rate this book a 5. Reasoning? It is the closest representation of how I expected the afterlife to be. This book isn't afraid to be ugly or unkind to the reader. Like most of farmer's work it is extremely brash and unapologetic. There is an element of horror as well that stems from rational insecurities the main protagonist faces. In a way you almost want them to fail. Compared to their work 'Venus on the Half Shell" this is far more serious and not comical in nature. I know this is the first in a series, but I am not eager to start the next book. Despite, in my own beliefs, it's extreme relevancy to life as we know it.

What if Lord of the Flies, Dante’s Inferno, and Star Trek: The Original series had a weird baby where the real girl that inspired Alice in Wonderland and the real historical figure Richard Francis Burton became a couple.

Just some real good science fiction.