Alternative futures

The news about Philip Jose Farmer's death almost passed me by. At one time, I was pretty obsessed with his Riverworld series, just because it presents so many possibilities. The premise is that every human who ever lived past the age of five has been resurrected on the banks of planet that is constructed of a gigantic, winding river. As with other tales of this type, there are a given set of circumstances and "rules" which help define the action. All kinds of historical figures are featured in the series, including Samuel Clemens, Sir Richard Francis Burton, Alice Hargreaves (the "Alice" of Alice in Wonderland), King John of England, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Tom Mix, and Hermann Goring. So the potential for "what ifs" are plentiful. Two other books, Tales of Riverworld (1992) and Quest to Riverworld (1993) even contain short stories based on the series written by other authors.

While I knew he was a long-time resident of Peoria (only about 90 miles from here), I didn't realize that he was a big-time supporter of the local public libraries. So, imagine my chagrin at discovering we only have one of his books here, Dayworld. Must do something about that.