The series is set on the planet Riverworld, where all of Earth's rivers are combined in one mammoth, serpentine river, along which live all the humans ever born, and a few of the species that preceded homo sapiens. This setting allows the author to create scenarios in which Mark Twain meets Cyrano de Bergerac, and the English King John interacts with Hitler's self-appointed successor, Hermann Goering, among others. In the first installment,
To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Sir Richard Burton, the Victorian explorer and Renaissance man, dies in 1890 and is transported to Riverworld, where he immediately sets off to find the source of the river and of his reincarnation. "The auspicious opening [of the series] was a difficult act to follow, and many Farmerites wondered whether the Riverworld was wide enough to sustain a projected tetralogy," remarked Peter Stoler in
Time magazine.
Farmer began the "Riverworld" series in 1952 when he entered a writing contest sponsored by two publishing companies. He won the contest with his first "Riverworld" novel but, before he could collect his $4,000 prize money, one of the publishers went bankrupt, taking his prize money with it.
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