The first two Riverworld novels are very close to being straightforward adventure novels, with episodic plots structured around a series of violent encounters. What maintains the reader's interest is the originality of the basic premise and the technique of using historical figures in the context of fiction. Farmer has devoted considerable energies to an assault on the distinction between history and fiction, revealing that they cannot be considered as mutually exclusive. His Wold Newton series, for example, places the products of fiction into "real" biographies. In The Riverworld Series, he reverses this process: all his characters are "real" people placed into fictional stories. Even Farmer himself is present as Peter Jairus Frigate, so that the author exists both outside and inside of his novels, looking out at us as we read them.

The remaining Riverworld novels are noticeably more complex in style and structure than the first two...