![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickThe summer solstice has come and gone, and dragged along with it 88-degree temperatures. And it's supposed to stay pretty warm through Thursday (Friday it dips back down with some rain). I can't say I mind too much -- it may be hot, but I have new dresses and tops specifically for hot weather, so I think I'll survive. :) Wore one today, in fact -- my nice new fitted white dress. Everyone said I was very cute. :)
Not much to say about the day -- work was its usual kind-of-boring self; I got another chunk done on Chapter 14 (don't think it'll be ready in time for Friday, but I'll just keep at it); tumblr dashboards remain fairly quiet; I'm finally getting a Delirium dragon (I hope, anyway), just in time for Weyr Wednesday. But I did say I was gonna get my critique of To Your Scattered Bodies Go up today if I could, didn't I? Well I had the free time to draft it out, so here it is. Enjoy!
All right, last Friday I finished Philip Jose Farmer's To Your Scattered Bodies Go, the first in his Riverworld series. I stumbled across the concept in a wiki-walk some time ago, and found the idea very intriguing. Here's a sum-up:
Almost every human being on earth (the hold-outs being children under the age of 5), from the earliest pre-humans to those in the early 20th century (the cut-off point is roughly 2008), is resurrected on a world terraformed into a giant, zig-zagging river valley, in large groups mostly made up of people who died in roughly the same area and time, with a scattering of other people from other places and times (the first group we meet is largely late 19th-century Italians, for example, with some English-speakers from the appropriate period and some 21st-century people -- plus one Neanderthal and one alien). Everyone who died after age 25 ends up in a 25-year-old body; those who died before end up in appropriately-aged bodies and grow until they hit 25. If you die, you end up in a brand-new body somewhere else along the riverbank (some people actually use this to travel around -- the "Suicide Express"). Food and drink are taken care of through special containers called "grails," which, when paired with giant "grailstones" (mushroom-shaped objects with hundreds of depressions on their "caps" that thrice-daily get zapped with electricity), fill up with the appropriate meal, along with things like cigarettes, marijuana, and "dreamgum," which seems to be like a chewable form of LSD. The idea of the world, created by an alien race, is to help humanity, essentially, ascend to a higher plane of existence -- though it's hinted by a renegade from the main society that there's a time limit to this and any souls that haven't moved on by said limit are just going to be left to wander around the universe pointlessly. The main character is Richard Francis Burton, famous explorer, who, after the initial settling-in period, makes a boat and starts exploring the River (along with Alice Liddell Hargreaves and some other original characters, including PJF's self-insert Peter Jarius Frigate). He upsets a slave state run by Hermann Goring and proceeds to get mixed up in the doings of the aliens, eventually vowing to find the headwaters of the great River and get some answers. Later books bring in people like Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain (in fact, he's the main protag of the second book), Jack London, Cyrano de Bergerac, and Mozart to join in the adventures, but we're focusing on the first book for now.
Okay, so that's the basics. Sounds like a pretty cool idea, huh? Well, here's the thing -- this works a lot better in concept than in execution. I went into this book expecting an incredibly thrilling read -- and was absolutely shocked by how dull it is. PJF might have been an amazing author in his later years, but in 1971, the year this was published, he was making a lot of "13 year olds just starting out on FanFiction.net"-style mistakes. Allow me to give you the short list:
-->His sentence structure tends toward the short and choppy -- which works fine in some areas, but really slows down the action in others. He also has a nasty habit of repeating the same or similar words and phrases really close together, sometimes even in the same sentence. A little more variety in word choice would have really pepped up some of the duller passages.
-->He also chooses some weird spots for chapter breaks sometimes -- like right in the middle of a conversation -- but that's probably more just a personal pet peeve on my end. Stilll, doesn't do him any favors.
-->One of the characters, Monat the alien, feels less like an actual character and more like a way for PJF to provide quick exposition on some of the more complicated sci-fi bits of the stories (like how the grails get filled -- energy/matter converters, if you're curious). He doesn't appear much except to give speeches about "yeah I know all about [insert technobabble here] because we had it or something similar on my planet." A good contrast to his character is Doc Brown from Back To The Future -- Doc often gets the task of shoveling out the exposition to the audience about time travel and such, but he's also a person in his own right. You feel like Doc Brown's a guy you can sit down and chat about other stuff too. And his character is structured so that his giving long speeches about technical stuff feels right -- you can believe he'd do this. Not to mention he's generally not just standing or sitting in one place when he does it, like Monat. Doc draws diagrams, builds models, or at least walks around waving his hands in an amusing manner. When you've got such a good model of how to do exposition dumps well, it really sticks out when it's done badly.
-->There's also the matter of Monat technically being responsible for the death of much of the human race in 2008 in the book. The way it's described, it's largely a self-defense measure (though one prompted by his own idiotic mistake of stating "my race knows the secret to eternal youth but we're not going to share it or the reason it's actually a bad idea" DURING A LIVE INTERVIEW), and he's clearly remorseful, but still! We only explicitly meet two 21st-centurians in this novel, and both of them forgive Monat for basically EXTERMINATING THEIR SPECIES pretty damn quick. One of them, Lev Ruach, is actually more pissed at Burton for holding anti-Semetic views common to his time period (Burton argues frequently he was actually pretty liberal in that regard) than at Monat for killing almost all of humanity! It's mentioned that if Monat had been resurrected in a largely 21st-century population, he likely would have been lynched, but that statement doesn't hold a lot of weight when we never really meet anyone else to get angry at Monat. When you put something that huge into a character's backstory, it should have much more major consequences!
-->Women don't exactly get treated well in this novel either. Every major mover and shaker in this book is male -- typically white, though there's mention of darker-skinned people (using some, ah, outdated terminology -- 1971, people) and Lev appears to be ethnically as well as culturally Jewish. Women are honestly often described more as commodities than as actual people -- when talking about relationships, PJF very frequently focuses on the man, then uses the term "his woman" to introduce the woman. It's kind of treated as a given that the man will be the one to initiate the relationship, and that the man is the one in control within said relationship. Again, this is a book written and published in the late 60s/early 70s, but it can't help but rub one the wrong way. There's also a few mentions of rape (there's a dreamgum-fueled orgy on the first night, and not everyone was a willing participant -- and a few even went after the KIDS), and some of the female characters in the book go through a period of what is essentially sexual slavery while in Goring's little empire. There are a few moments of badassery on the parts of the female characters -- Alice Hargreaves is mentioned as the best archer they've got, and she skewers Goring when she gets the chance in the slave rebellion Burton helps start; another character, Wilfreda, manages to kill her captor (though she gets killed herself) -- but for the most part they really are just background, there to provide companionship to the males. Alice Hargreaves is the only truly important female character of the first book --
-->And HOO BOY, is her relationship with Richard Burton poorly written! They meet a couple of chapters in on the first day, Alice having noticed he's one of the few English-speaking people there and looking for help and protection from his forming group. They get along all right at first (though Alice has a naturally-horrified reaction to Kazz, the Neanderthal, practicing ritual cannibalism on one of the first people to be killed), but then. . .then comes the first use of dreamgum. In which Alice and Richard have sex while drugged up. And afterwards Alice reacts with shame and horror.
And Richard's response is to go, "Well, you wouldn't have done it while drugged if you hadn't really wanted it in the first place."
HE FUCKING RAPED HER AND TRIED TO MAKE IT HER FAULT.
Okay, yes, Richard himself was impaired at the time, but I would also like to point out that, after an initial "flirting" (Alice essentially just extends her arms and murmurs his name lovingly), Alice, while on the gum, goes "No! No!" and FLEES! Richard chases after her, and according to him she happily gives herself over when he catches her, but
a) she still ran at first, and her reaction afterwards was one of horror
b) can we really trust this guy's description of what happened, considering his attitudes and his own impairment?
Ugh, reading that, and Richard's continued attempts to "explain" things to Alice as "the drug just lowered your inhibitions, you really did want it, don't be ashamed," made me feel so dirty inside. Especially considering I'm a fan of American McGee's Alice games, where someone justifying a rape with "oh, she really did want it, she was just a tease" is a HUGE plot point and done by the VILLAIN. It's just not good.
The worst part? After rebuffing him for most of the first half of the book (she stays with the group out of fear another would be worse, and does her part, but remains cold to him in all their interactions), after the slave rebellion, she suddenly moves into his hut and announces that she loves him! This comes out of pretty much fucking nowhere, and -- actually has almost no effect on the story, because it's not long after that the aliens start hunting Richard and he ends up leaving the group via suicide to escape them. It's implied that she suffered much worse at the hands of Goring and his men, but this abrupt changing of her mind and feelings toward him isn't done well at all. It's made even creepier when we consider that:
a) when he couldn't have her, Richard rather obsessed about her (shades of Bumby again) and treated her poorly (deliberately telling crude stories, and telling her it's on her to hide when he uses the gum so he doesn't go after her)
b) after he does get her and is forced to leave the group -- doesn't even think about her. He ends up off-screen shacking up with other women during the periods where he's staying in one place for a bit. Yes, fine, he had no idea if he'd ever see her again, but when contrasted with his going-on in the first part about how he'd only ever loved one woman like he loved her and how he was determined to woo her and make her his. . . Did I mention this book was originally published as two separate novellas? I think this is where it shows the most, because Richard's trips on the "Suicide Express" feel like an entirely different animal than his initial awakening and travels along the River. Not that we see much of either. . .
-->Which brings me to my final point: SURPRISINGLY LITTLE HAPPENS ON-SCREEN.
No, I'm serious -- there is not a lot to this book. Most of the first half is taken up with descriptions of the first couple of days -- people having panic attacks and forming little groups; learning how the grails work and staking out territory; PJF proving himself a major fanboy and Stu (he seems to have all these curiously-appropriate skills for the moment. . .and fine, granted, the possible reason for this is revealed in later books, but we're focusing only on the first here); the dreamgum incident; a few minor scuffles with neighboring "tribes," and building houses. Now, you think this would be interesting, but PJF bogs everything down in numbers (he describes pretty much everything in terms of how long and wide and such it is; might be accurate to Burton's characterization, but it makes for dull reading) -- and worse, he glosses over a lot of incidents that might have given the book more character. For example, his insert meets the fictional version of the publisher that screwed him over on the first verison of the book (Riverworld was conceived as a manuscript submitted to win a prize; PJF won, but the money was used to promote another, unsuccessful book, and that original Riverworld novel never saw the light of day -- PJF was understandably bitter), and gets his revenge with a full-on beatdown. Problem? We only hear about this AFTER IT'S HAPPENED! Burton and a few others are GETTING DINNER at the time, which is not the most enthralling of activities! They come back to a slightly-bloodied PJF who eagerly tells them what happened -- but wouldn't it have been better if he'd showed it?
And this is a problem that infects the entire book. We see almost nothing of Burton building his boat; worse, when he does set off with his happy little crew, they're about 240,000 miles down the River before we check in on them again! There's mentions of all the people they've met and adventures they've had, including avoiding capture by other slave states before Goring's, but it's all treated like uninteresting background stuff. We never SEE Alice become the crew's best archer, or Burton learn how to best navigate the River, or relationships form or break up -- they're just stated as fact and we have to accept them! Even minor things, like discovering the grails only open at their owner's touch, or how many times Burton's used dreamgum, are covered in a couple of sentences of "oh yeah this happened" instead of being worked properly into the narrative. The best part of the book is the stay at Goring's slave state, and even THAT goes by way too quickly -- the mains are there for what feels like a week or so at most before the rebellion, and -- again -- most of it is glossed over. And when Burton hits the Suicide Express, only a handful of his first stops are noted, and then it just skips ahead to him having died 777 times. First of all, talk about an excessively large number; second of all -- you couldn't show anything else, PJF? Even mini-adventures here and there? The whole structure of the book is supremely frustrating in this regard. Everything truly interesting happens off-screen!
The kicker? THIS IS ALSO TRUE OF THE CLIMAX. Richard's finally captured by the aliens, taken to their secret headquarters, and is given a full explanation of how they did what they did and why -- AND MOST OF IT THE READER NEVER HEARS. Now, I understand that writing out most of this might have been boring and incomprehensible, but there are ways to skip over the technobabble and still make it interesting! Terry Pratchett knew this well -- in Going Postal, there's a scene where the Smoking Gnu is explaining how they disrupt the operations of the clacks (a internety version of the telegraph) to the main character, Moist. Terry doesn't write out how they actually do it -- instead, he milks some humor out of how the incredibly-complex explanation is going over Moist's head at the speed of light. PJF could have done something similar with nineteenth-century Burton trying to keep up with descriptions of tech far beyond his capabilities. But nope, it's just a couple of paragraphs of "he listened to how they did it and was creeped out by this one guy with a jewel for an eye." And then they dump him back with his friends on the River, he vows to build a new boat and reach the headwaters to interrogate them again -- and that's the end of the book.
Seriously. The climax and falling action occur in the last five or so pages. And it feels like our characters haven't grown or changed at all. Goring goes through a redemption arc, but we only see the very beginning of said arc, and then have to take another minor character's word for it that it concluded happily. Burton? Well, his goal at the end of the book is his same as his goal at the beginning, despite him supposedly getting the answers about the whys and wherefores of Riverworld just a few pages before. There's still some mysteries to be solved, true, like which of the aliens is the renegade who fears for humanity's safety, but still. Burton's still the asshole he was when this started, and that's not good. It truly is like a person's first effort on FF.net -- "Here's my super-awesome character and his super-awesome friends and this happened and this happened and oh yeah this happened back then but that's not important let's get to the KISSING!" Only in PJF's case it's more often "murder." Very violent book this -- most of the characters are mentioned having killed someone, if it's not shown on-screen. But I wouldn't mind that if PJF actually SHOWED it happening more often, and had it have more of an effect on those who did it. It's amazing how little these characters, who should be way larger than life, connect with you. Sometimes I'll drift off during a book to theorize what might happen next, or have imaginary arguments with my favorite characters -- in this one, I was zoning out like every couple of pages to have more interesting adventures with Victor and Alice and the rest in my head. That's how good this book was at keeping my attention.
Overall, this is a poor introduction to the Riverworld series, and a poor book in general. I'm honestly shocked it won a Hugo Award. There's some interesting moments, but not enough to sustain this reader's interest. I don't think I'll be bothering to move onto the next book in the series. And I can already tell you that, if I decide I want to play in this sandbox anyway, I'm going to make sure that I do things right. In fact, that's the best use I can think of for To Your Scattered Bodies Go -- as a guide of what NOT to do when writing sci-fi and fantasy. It's certainly stiffened my resolve to make my stories better in this regard!
Wow, that was a lot more ranting than I expected. . .time to wrap things up and hit the sheets. Night all!
Not much to say about the day -- work was its usual kind-of-boring self; I got another chunk done on Chapter 14 (don't think it'll be ready in time for Friday, but I'll just keep at it); tumblr dashboards remain fairly quiet; I'm finally getting a Delirium dragon (I hope, anyway), just in time for Weyr Wednesday. But I did say I was gonna get my critique of To Your Scattered Bodies Go up today if I could, didn't I? Well I had the free time to draft it out, so here it is. Enjoy!
All right, last Friday I finished Philip Jose Farmer's To Your Scattered Bodies Go, the first in his Riverworld series. I stumbled across the concept in a wiki-walk some time ago, and found the idea very intriguing. Here's a sum-up:
Almost every human being on earth (the hold-outs being children under the age of 5), from the earliest pre-humans to those in the early 20th century (the cut-off point is roughly 2008), is resurrected on a world terraformed into a giant, zig-zagging river valley, in large groups mostly made up of people who died in roughly the same area and time, with a scattering of other people from other places and times (the first group we meet is largely late 19th-century Italians, for example, with some English-speakers from the appropriate period and some 21st-century people -- plus one Neanderthal and one alien). Everyone who died after age 25 ends up in a 25-year-old body; those who died before end up in appropriately-aged bodies and grow until they hit 25. If you die, you end up in a brand-new body somewhere else along the riverbank (some people actually use this to travel around -- the "Suicide Express"). Food and drink are taken care of through special containers called "grails," which, when paired with giant "grailstones" (mushroom-shaped objects with hundreds of depressions on their "caps" that thrice-daily get zapped with electricity), fill up with the appropriate meal, along with things like cigarettes, marijuana, and "dreamgum," which seems to be like a chewable form of LSD. The idea of the world, created by an alien race, is to help humanity, essentially, ascend to a higher plane of existence -- though it's hinted by a renegade from the main society that there's a time limit to this and any souls that haven't moved on by said limit are just going to be left to wander around the universe pointlessly. The main character is Richard Francis Burton, famous explorer, who, after the initial settling-in period, makes a boat and starts exploring the River (along with Alice Liddell Hargreaves and some other original characters, including PJF's self-insert Peter Jarius Frigate). He upsets a slave state run by Hermann Goring and proceeds to get mixed up in the doings of the aliens, eventually vowing to find the headwaters of the great River and get some answers. Later books bring in people like Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain (in fact, he's the main protag of the second book), Jack London, Cyrano de Bergerac, and Mozart to join in the adventures, but we're focusing on the first book for now.
Okay, so that's the basics. Sounds like a pretty cool idea, huh? Well, here's the thing -- this works a lot better in concept than in execution. I went into this book expecting an incredibly thrilling read -- and was absolutely shocked by how dull it is. PJF might have been an amazing author in his later years, but in 1971, the year this was published, he was making a lot of "13 year olds just starting out on FanFiction.net"-style mistakes. Allow me to give you the short list:
-->His sentence structure tends toward the short and choppy -- which works fine in some areas, but really slows down the action in others. He also has a nasty habit of repeating the same or similar words and phrases really close together, sometimes even in the same sentence. A little more variety in word choice would have really pepped up some of the duller passages.
-->He also chooses some weird spots for chapter breaks sometimes -- like right in the middle of a conversation -- but that's probably more just a personal pet peeve on my end. Stilll, doesn't do him any favors.
-->One of the characters, Monat the alien, feels less like an actual character and more like a way for PJF to provide quick exposition on some of the more complicated sci-fi bits of the stories (like how the grails get filled -- energy/matter converters, if you're curious). He doesn't appear much except to give speeches about "yeah I know all about [insert technobabble here] because we had it or something similar on my planet." A good contrast to his character is Doc Brown from Back To The Future -- Doc often gets the task of shoveling out the exposition to the audience about time travel and such, but he's also a person in his own right. You feel like Doc Brown's a guy you can sit down and chat about other stuff too. And his character is structured so that his giving long speeches about technical stuff feels right -- you can believe he'd do this. Not to mention he's generally not just standing or sitting in one place when he does it, like Monat. Doc draws diagrams, builds models, or at least walks around waving his hands in an amusing manner. When you've got such a good model of how to do exposition dumps well, it really sticks out when it's done badly.
-->There's also the matter of Monat technically being responsible for the death of much of the human race in 2008 in the book. The way it's described, it's largely a self-defense measure (though one prompted by his own idiotic mistake of stating "my race knows the secret to eternal youth but we're not going to share it or the reason it's actually a bad idea" DURING A LIVE INTERVIEW), and he's clearly remorseful, but still! We only explicitly meet two 21st-centurians in this novel, and both of them forgive Monat for basically EXTERMINATING THEIR SPECIES pretty damn quick. One of them, Lev Ruach, is actually more pissed at Burton for holding anti-Semetic views common to his time period (Burton argues frequently he was actually pretty liberal in that regard) than at Monat for killing almost all of humanity! It's mentioned that if Monat had been resurrected in a largely 21st-century population, he likely would have been lynched, but that statement doesn't hold a lot of weight when we never really meet anyone else to get angry at Monat. When you put something that huge into a character's backstory, it should have much more major consequences!
-->Women don't exactly get treated well in this novel either. Every major mover and shaker in this book is male -- typically white, though there's mention of darker-skinned people (using some, ah, outdated terminology -- 1971, people) and Lev appears to be ethnically as well as culturally Jewish. Women are honestly often described more as commodities than as actual people -- when talking about relationships, PJF very frequently focuses on the man, then uses the term "his woman" to introduce the woman. It's kind of treated as a given that the man will be the one to initiate the relationship, and that the man is the one in control within said relationship. Again, this is a book written and published in the late 60s/early 70s, but it can't help but rub one the wrong way. There's also a few mentions of rape (there's a dreamgum-fueled orgy on the first night, and not everyone was a willing participant -- and a few even went after the KIDS), and some of the female characters in the book go through a period of what is essentially sexual slavery while in Goring's little empire. There are a few moments of badassery on the parts of the female characters -- Alice Hargreaves is mentioned as the best archer they've got, and she skewers Goring when she gets the chance in the slave rebellion Burton helps start; another character, Wilfreda, manages to kill her captor (though she gets killed herself) -- but for the most part they really are just background, there to provide companionship to the males. Alice Hargreaves is the only truly important female character of the first book --
-->And HOO BOY, is her relationship with Richard Burton poorly written! They meet a couple of chapters in on the first day, Alice having noticed he's one of the few English-speaking people there and looking for help and protection from his forming group. They get along all right at first (though Alice has a naturally-horrified reaction to Kazz, the Neanderthal, practicing ritual cannibalism on one of the first people to be killed), but then. . .then comes the first use of dreamgum. In which Alice and Richard have sex while drugged up. And afterwards Alice reacts with shame and horror.
And Richard's response is to go, "Well, you wouldn't have done it while drugged if you hadn't really wanted it in the first place."
HE FUCKING RAPED HER AND TRIED TO MAKE IT HER FAULT.
Okay, yes, Richard himself was impaired at the time, but I would also like to point out that, after an initial "flirting" (Alice essentially just extends her arms and murmurs his name lovingly), Alice, while on the gum, goes "No! No!" and FLEES! Richard chases after her, and according to him she happily gives herself over when he catches her, but
a) she still ran at first, and her reaction afterwards was one of horror
b) can we really trust this guy's description of what happened, considering his attitudes and his own impairment?
Ugh, reading that, and Richard's continued attempts to "explain" things to Alice as "the drug just lowered your inhibitions, you really did want it, don't be ashamed," made me feel so dirty inside. Especially considering I'm a fan of American McGee's Alice games, where someone justifying a rape with "oh, she really did want it, she was just a tease" is a HUGE plot point and done by the VILLAIN. It's just not good.
The worst part? After rebuffing him for most of the first half of the book (she stays with the group out of fear another would be worse, and does her part, but remains cold to him in all their interactions), after the slave rebellion, she suddenly moves into his hut and announces that she loves him! This comes out of pretty much fucking nowhere, and -- actually has almost no effect on the story, because it's not long after that the aliens start hunting Richard and he ends up leaving the group via suicide to escape them. It's implied that she suffered much worse at the hands of Goring and his men, but this abrupt changing of her mind and feelings toward him isn't done well at all. It's made even creepier when we consider that:
a) when he couldn't have her, Richard rather obsessed about her (shades of Bumby again) and treated her poorly (deliberately telling crude stories, and telling her it's on her to hide when he uses the gum so he doesn't go after her)
b) after he does get her and is forced to leave the group -- doesn't even think about her. He ends up off-screen shacking up with other women during the periods where he's staying in one place for a bit. Yes, fine, he had no idea if he'd ever see her again, but when contrasted with his going-on in the first part about how he'd only ever loved one woman like he loved her and how he was determined to woo her and make her his. . . Did I mention this book was originally published as two separate novellas? I think this is where it shows the most, because Richard's trips on the "Suicide Express" feel like an entirely different animal than his initial awakening and travels along the River. Not that we see much of either. . .
-->Which brings me to my final point: SURPRISINGLY LITTLE HAPPENS ON-SCREEN.
No, I'm serious -- there is not a lot to this book. Most of the first half is taken up with descriptions of the first couple of days -- people having panic attacks and forming little groups; learning how the grails work and staking out territory; PJF proving himself a major fanboy and Stu (he seems to have all these curiously-appropriate skills for the moment. . .and fine, granted, the possible reason for this is revealed in later books, but we're focusing only on the first here); the dreamgum incident; a few minor scuffles with neighboring "tribes," and building houses. Now, you think this would be interesting, but PJF bogs everything down in numbers (he describes pretty much everything in terms of how long and wide and such it is; might be accurate to Burton's characterization, but it makes for dull reading) -- and worse, he glosses over a lot of incidents that might have given the book more character. For example, his insert meets the fictional version of the publisher that screwed him over on the first verison of the book (Riverworld was conceived as a manuscript submitted to win a prize; PJF won, but the money was used to promote another, unsuccessful book, and that original Riverworld novel never saw the light of day -- PJF was understandably bitter), and gets his revenge with a full-on beatdown. Problem? We only hear about this AFTER IT'S HAPPENED! Burton and a few others are GETTING DINNER at the time, which is not the most enthralling of activities! They come back to a slightly-bloodied PJF who eagerly tells them what happened -- but wouldn't it have been better if he'd showed it?
And this is a problem that infects the entire book. We see almost nothing of Burton building his boat; worse, when he does set off with his happy little crew, they're about 240,000 miles down the River before we check in on them again! There's mentions of all the people they've met and adventures they've had, including avoiding capture by other slave states before Goring's, but it's all treated like uninteresting background stuff. We never SEE Alice become the crew's best archer, or Burton learn how to best navigate the River, or relationships form or break up -- they're just stated as fact and we have to accept them! Even minor things, like discovering the grails only open at their owner's touch, or how many times Burton's used dreamgum, are covered in a couple of sentences of "oh yeah this happened" instead of being worked properly into the narrative. The best part of the book is the stay at Goring's slave state, and even THAT goes by way too quickly -- the mains are there for what feels like a week or so at most before the rebellion, and -- again -- most of it is glossed over. And when Burton hits the Suicide Express, only a handful of his first stops are noted, and then it just skips ahead to him having died 777 times. First of all, talk about an excessively large number; second of all -- you couldn't show anything else, PJF? Even mini-adventures here and there? The whole structure of the book is supremely frustrating in this regard. Everything truly interesting happens off-screen!
The kicker? THIS IS ALSO TRUE OF THE CLIMAX. Richard's finally captured by the aliens, taken to their secret headquarters, and is given a full explanation of how they did what they did and why -- AND MOST OF IT THE READER NEVER HEARS. Now, I understand that writing out most of this might have been boring and incomprehensible, but there are ways to skip over the technobabble and still make it interesting! Terry Pratchett knew this well -- in Going Postal, there's a scene where the Smoking Gnu is explaining how they disrupt the operations of the clacks (a internety version of the telegraph) to the main character, Moist. Terry doesn't write out how they actually do it -- instead, he milks some humor out of how the incredibly-complex explanation is going over Moist's head at the speed of light. PJF could have done something similar with nineteenth-century Burton trying to keep up with descriptions of tech far beyond his capabilities. But nope, it's just a couple of paragraphs of "he listened to how they did it and was creeped out by this one guy with a jewel for an eye." And then they dump him back with his friends on the River, he vows to build a new boat and reach the headwaters to interrogate them again -- and that's the end of the book.
Seriously. The climax and falling action occur in the last five or so pages. And it feels like our characters haven't grown or changed at all. Goring goes through a redemption arc, but we only see the very beginning of said arc, and then have to take another minor character's word for it that it concluded happily. Burton? Well, his goal at the end of the book is his same as his goal at the beginning, despite him supposedly getting the answers about the whys and wherefores of Riverworld just a few pages before. There's still some mysteries to be solved, true, like which of the aliens is the renegade who fears for humanity's safety, but still. Burton's still the asshole he was when this started, and that's not good. It truly is like a person's first effort on FF.net -- "Here's my super-awesome character and his super-awesome friends and this happened and this happened and oh yeah this happened back then but that's not important let's get to the KISSING!" Only in PJF's case it's more often "murder." Very violent book this -- most of the characters are mentioned having killed someone, if it's not shown on-screen. But I wouldn't mind that if PJF actually SHOWED it happening more often, and had it have more of an effect on those who did it. It's amazing how little these characters, who should be way larger than life, connect with you. Sometimes I'll drift off during a book to theorize what might happen next, or have imaginary arguments with my favorite characters -- in this one, I was zoning out like every couple of pages to have more interesting adventures with Victor and Alice and the rest in my head. That's how good this book was at keeping my attention.
Overall, this is a poor introduction to the Riverworld series, and a poor book in general. I'm honestly shocked it won a Hugo Award. There's some interesting moments, but not enough to sustain this reader's interest. I don't think I'll be bothering to move onto the next book in the series. And I can already tell you that, if I decide I want to play in this sandbox anyway, I'm going to make sure that I do things right. In fact, that's the best use I can think of for To Your Scattered Bodies Go -- as a guide of what NOT to do when writing sci-fi and fantasy. It's certainly stiffened my resolve to make my stories better in this regard!
Wow, that was a lot more ranting than I expected. . .time to wrap things up and hit the sheets. Night all!
