[The Fabulous Riverboat] is the second volume of Philip José Farmer's "Riverworld" trilogy. Death is apparently only a temporary indisposition. Cadavers find themselves reincarnated as hale youngsters somewhere along the banks of The River, a giant stream twenty million miles long, and living cheek by jowl with a Neolithic caveman or John F. Kennedy, depending on the vagaries of chance or the plans of the Ethicals…. The hero of the story is Sam Clemens, alias Mark Twain, whose idea is to locate a fallen meteorite and, with this sole source of iron in a metal-less world, construct a gigantic Mississippi-style paddle-steamer in which to sail to the end of The River….

The book rolls slowly and majestically on between monotonous scenes of carnage, and as Swinburne (perhaps picnicking on the bank with Stevie Smith) might have said, even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to Volume 3.

"Roman-fleuve," in...