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The Gods Of Riverworld (1998)

The Gods of Riverworld (1998)

Book Info

Series
Rating
3.57 of 5 Votes: 2
Your rating
ISBN
0345419715 (ISBN13: 9780345419712)
Language
English
Publisher
del rey

About book The Gods Of Riverworld (1998)

What a bleak view of humanity this book presents! The only semi-believable emotion portrayed is anger and there is a LOT of violence, especially since these are supposed to be the new & improved humans who finally made it to the mysterious tower on Riverworld. They soon prove themselves to be as self-involved and poor of judgement as Humanity 1.0.Good things about the book? Farmer’s version of Sam Clemens does not appear, nor does King John. He only gives measurements in metric (rather than metric & Imperial, as in previous books). And it really does finish the series.Bad things about the book? Still too much description of what people are wearing and eating which is completely unrelated to the plot. Too much fighting and too little cooperation. All the characters are cardboard cut-outs, very one dimensional and over the course of 5 books they have not grown or changed or deepened. Weird things about the book? A strange aside as Burton attempts to solve the Jack the Ripper mystery. And then all the people involved in that sad situation are mysteriously resurrected causing chaos and distrust. And a creepy party given by Alice (of Alice in Wonderland fame) with android versions of Lewis Carroll’s characters as party favours. There is no doubt that Farmer dealt with big issues in this series—the nature of the soul, the role of religion in society, the question of free will vs. determinism. Unfortunately, I didn’t think the quality of the writing did these big issues justice. Better characterization, tighter plotting, more realistic emotions—all these would have contributed to a much superior product.I am relieved to be finished this series—thankfully I’m not entirely unhappy to have read it, as it is one of the seminal science fiction works of the 20th century.

This series is not really a series of science fiction novels. It's more of a series of science fiction thought experiments. The plot is irrelevant--it's just about the question of how people would handle this theoretical situation, taking particular care to observe specific figures from history. As I noted before, the characters do not really sound like I think they would sound and the writing is repetitive (facts are repeated as though it were published episodically in a periodical, which might be how it was done--I really don't care enough to research it). I give it 2.5 stars, which could be raised to 3 stars if Farmer didn't do the annoying length conversion between meters and feet every time he mentioned a distance. Give it a rest. Anybody who can't convert meters and feet in their head can easily do it with a calculator, reference book, or the internet.

Do You like book The Gods Of Riverworld (1998)?

I read this because I enjoyed the rest of the series although it is fairly different. There is a decent amount of action adventure and some of the most tense writing in the series however there is also a large section of exploitative philosophy in the middle. This is hardly surprising from someone who has used Cyrano De Bergerac in his novels. The question of what would humans do with infinite power is explored but diverted enough to make it interesting before it got tedious. A pleasingly surprising ending as well in terms of character development and old school plot twists.
—Charles Harrison

When I decided to make another pass through the Riverworld series, I was excited to see what I thought was a new-to-me book, Gods of Riverworld. I could clearly recall four books from the first time I'd read the series, but couldn't remember whether or not I'd read the fifth. As it turns out, there was a good reason I couldn't remember.Reading the very first sentence, I got the feeling that I had, in fact, read this book at least once. I thought it was odd that I couldn't remember anything in advance, but could only recall passages as I read them ... but as I made my way through the book, I made a good guess as to why.Gods of Riverworld was, in a sense, an afterthought: Farmer had originally intended to write only four books, but ended up penning a fifth, and for good reason: there was so much more that could be told about the Tower. After all, we really only knew that the Ethicals had a computer, that it was dying, and that Alice saved it. Farmer hinted at some of the technology within the Tower, but not very much. What else could the Tower hold?As it turns out, what it could hold is clichés and poorly-tied-up plotlines. (view spoiler)[Yeah, all this happened on a backup computer that I just decided to make, and that was possible even though the existing computer is so massive and also organic. Of course it never occurred to us to make a backup computer, even though we've done this who knows how many times and prepared any number of planets this way ... and yet it was this simple. (hide spoiler)]
—Dave

Se confirma la caída en barrena de la serie. De una idea inicial tremenda y unos primeros momentos de exploración que mantienen el interés, ha ido degenerando hasta este añadido a la serie, una especie de cuento sobre el poder "ilimitado" con un toque de policiaca que no se sostiene. Añade unas pocas respuestas que no convencen e incluso estropean más el final seco y soso del cuarto volumen. Mejor quedarse solo con "A vuestros cuerpos dispersos", en las continuaciones hay cosas interesantes de leer pero la zanahoria con las explicaciones viene ya pocha, no merece la pena.
—David

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