Tales of Riverworld

326 pp. In this compilation of short stories, history meets the future as everyone who has ever lived awakens in Riverworld. Authors featured in the collection include Phillip C. Jennings, Harry Turtledove and Ed. Gorman. "Riverworld is a fictional universe and the setting for a series of science fiction books written by Philip José Farmer. Located at an indeterminate distance from the Sol system and millennia in the future, the Riverworld is an Earthlike planet whose surface has been terraformed to consist solely of one staggeringly long river-valley. The river's source is a small North Polar sea, from which it follows a course tightly zig-zagging across one hemisphere before flowing back up the other along an equally labyrinthine path to return to the same sea. The river has an average depth of 2.5 km, and is shallow near the shore but plunges to enormous depths towards the channel. The banks are generally smooth and gentle, expanding into wide plains on either side, then climbing into ever more jagged hills before leaping up into a sheerly impenetrable enclosing mountain range, taller than the Himalayas. The valley averages 15km in width, but variations on the basic geography exist, including narrows and occasional widenings into lakes with islands. From source to mouth, the river is 32 million kilometres (or 20 million miles) long (Books I , II, & III state the river is 16.09 million km long). The weather is absolutely controlled; there are no seasons, and daily variations are metronomic. The only animal life consists of fish and soil worms. The vegetation is lush and of great variety, including trees, flowering vines, several kinds of fast-growing bamboo and a resilient mat of grass which covers the plains and continues on along the riverbed for as far down as anyone has ever been able to reach. The Riverworld has no visible moon, but a great number of stellar objects in the sky, including gas sheets and stars which are close enough to see a visible disk. These objects provide enough light for 'valleydwellers' to see at night and have led to speculation, by valleydwellers and fans, that the Riverworld is located in the galactic core. The story of Riverworld begins when almost the whole of humanity, from the time of the first homo sapiens through to the early 21st century, is simultaneously resurrected along the banks of the river. The number of people is given as 'thirty-six billion, six million, nine thousand, six hundred and thirty-seven' (36,006,009,637). Of these, at least 20% are from the 20th century, due to the high levels of population in later centuries compared to earlier ones. There is also a cut-off point, as no one from the twenty-first century or later is resurrected. Originally the specific cut-off year was given as 1983 (which was still a speculative date when the novels were first published) but this has been somewhat stretched in later stories. The ostensible reason for the cut-off was that it indicated the point at which the entire human race had been accidentally annihilated during a catastrophic first contact with aliens visiting Earth. In each area, there are initially three groups of people: a large group from one time period and place, a smaller group from another time and place, and a very small group of people from random times and places (most of the twentieth and twenty-first century humans are spread across the river as part of this last group). Everyone awakens in a body equivalent to that of their twenty-five year old selves, except in perfect health and free of any previous genetic or acquired defects (for instance, all chemical addictions are gone). Over time it is further discovered that these bodies do not age and can regenerate nearly any non-fatal injury, including dismemberments and blindings. The new bodies are completely free of infection and seem resistant to it (though later it is discovered that this has as much to do with the fact that there are no hostile bacteria or viruses on