pg. 1 2

    After reading a collection of Phillip Jose' Farmer's short stories, I was in the mood for more and decided to check out a couple of novels to see if he could hold up in long form. And for the most part he does, in both 1961's The Lovers (Del Rey) and '71's To Your Scattered Bodies Go (Del Rey), the first book of his famous Riverworld series.

    As usual, it's not Farmer's plots that really make it work, but how it's played out character-wise. While The Lovers was definitely racy for its time, the story is comic and pretty simple: In the future, Earth becomes puritanical in its morality, and the church is the state. Even thinking unclean thoughts is illegal. Linguist Hal Yarrow, a man loyal to Earth but struggling to keep himself morally pure, is given a chance to "escape" and increase his "moral status" by going to the newly-found planet of Ozagen and spying on the native, insectoid Wogglebugs. Unfortunately, he is escorted by a Guardian Angel agent (hilariously named Pornsen) to observe his duties.

    As Yarrow goes amidst the ruins of ancient humanoid cultures supposedly long-thought extinct on Ozagen, he finds a "not-quite human" fugitive named Jeanette. While she looks like an Earth female, she is genetically part Wogglebug. Separated from Earthly morals and his estranged, neurotically moral wife, he falls in love with Jeanette; while unconsecrated female contact is illegal, unconsecrated alien contact is even more abominable. Though his mission is to undermine the friendly, "unknowing" Wogglebugs until they are exterminated and the planet exploited by Earth, he befriends Fobo, a Wogglebug who will keep his carnal secret. Yet Fobo is not so ignorant of the Earthlings plans, and, with Wogglebug-innate hyper-empathy (got that one from Octavia Butler), knows that Ozagen's only hope is to help Yarrow come to terms with his moral struggles and find for himelf what, and who, he really loves.