Saturday, January 26, 2008

Happy Birthday, Philip Jose Farmer

Farmer turns 90 today, and is a writer whose work I've been reading for around 50 years now. He wrote some of the most innovative SF of the '50s, and he's continued to delight and surprise for many years. Hat tip to Chris Roberson for the reminder.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Farmer is my favorite of all the writers who call themselves S.F. writers, and he was really as much a fantasy writer and literary writer when he was cooking. I went and spoke at Farmercon last year, and it was great to see Phil, who I had met briefly before. His health doesn't allow a lot of visting, but he is one talented and amazing and groudbreaking fella, and, like Philip K. Dick, he will have readers for a long time. The recognition he deserves hasn't quite happened yet, due to his being such a broad based writer, doing a lot of stuff to pay the bills, but he wrote some real works of genius. Joe

Anonymous said...

And are we sure Farmer didn't write the Cheetah bio? Of course, had he done so, he would've cast it as an autobio, and shown Cheetah's relations with GW Bush, John Collier, and whoever else it would've amused him to do so with...

This isn't quite Farmeresque, but it'll do:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qN3kC_4xURA&eurl=http://www.meandyouandablognamedboo.blogspot.com/

Unknown said...

Great link, Todd.

You're right. If Farmer had written that bio, it would have been a classic. I wish he'd thought of it.

Anonymous said...

If Phil had written the bio, there would be a lot of man and animal sex, is my guess. Joe

Unknown said...

This could lead to all sorts of idle speculation about Cheeta and Jane, but I'm not going there.

Anonymous said...

Huh. That sounds like an interesting novel, Cheeta and Jane, the Love Letters. Watch the anthologies, it just might happen. Joe

Randy Johnson said...

The World of Tiers and the Riverworld series are particular favorites of mine. Escape From Loki, his Doc Savage novel, and The Dark Heart of Time, his straight-up Tarzan novel, I'm also fond of.