Alas, my favorite author has passed away. On February 25, 2009 Philip Jose Farmer died in his sleep. He will be sorely missed.
I first became a fan of his work when I was still a teenager. He took a completely different approach to writing. They called it science fiction because they just didn't know what else to call it, but he never wrote about Ray guns and rockets, or Jedi and Wookies, or Vulcans and Klingons. He wrote about people.
He always put people in the most incredible of situations, and then had them act like they were real people, not science fiction heroes. In fantasy worlds the likes of which I had never imagined, his characters struggled to survive the most incredible of situations while all the time being flawed and vulnerable humans.
Perhaps the thing I find most appealing about his books is the surrealism. He is, in my humble opinion, to science fiction writers what Salvador Dali was to painters. You have to look long and hard to really understand it, and even then you're not totally sure. He was the first science fiction writer to tackle the touchy subject of sexuality, and he did that in the fifties, well before most readers were ready for it. In his award winning book, "The Lovers", he has a human man have a sexual relationship with an alien, and in the fifties you just didn't write about stuff like that.
Over the years, I have endeavored to collect all of his science fiction books, and I will cherish them all the more now that he's gone. My greatest regret is that I have no new ones to look forward to in the future.
Among my favorites are;
- The Riverworld series
- The World of Tiers series
- Image of the Beast
- The Stone God Awakens
- The Unreasoning Mask
- The Dayworld Series
- Flesh
As I sit here looking at my collection of his books, I realize the there isn't a bad one in the lot. The man was truly a giant in his field, and his masterful books are his legacy. He lived to the age of 91, and his story had a happy ending. He fulfilled his destiny and did all that he was meant to do and then passed from this world peacefully. In his last days, what an immense sense of satisfaction he must have felt at all that he accomplished in just one short lifetime. And so, as I say farewell to Philip Jose Farmer, if feels strangely like saying goodbye to an old friend. May his spirit soar through the heavens.
