R.I.P. Philip José Farmer

By Charlie Jane Anders,
One of science fiction's most original voices passed away today. Philip José Farmer, author of the Riverworld and World Of Tiers series, is also known for writing as Kurt Vonnegut's fictional author Kilgore Trout.

I read the Riverworld series as a teen and it still sticks with me - I was thinking about it the other day. It represents 1970s science fiction at its trippiest and most random. Everyone who has ever lived on Earth wakes up together on a huge planet with an endless, winding river. They're all naked and bald, and they discover at length that they cannot die - at least not at first. His second series, World Of Tiers, follows a group of humans traveling through a series of stacked artificial parallel universes.

Farmer is also known for his first published short story, 1952's "The Lovers," which broke the taboo on explicit sexuality in science fiction and won a Hugo for Most Promising New Writer. According to Christopher Paul Carey:.....................