I’ve been a fan of Farmer’s work for a very long time. I’m a big fan of his World of Tiers series and the Riverworld as well, not to mention his many other tales. But I would have discovered him some time after the era covered in this anthology, offered up by George Kelley on Forgotten Fridays Books a while back. George gave a very nice review, read it if you haven’t, and caused me to hunt this one down.
Not hard to find, isn’t the internet wonderful for such a thing, I ordered it immediately and got a very nice copy soon after that.
These tales are representative of a writer that had a big influence on the field as it is today, right from the very beginning of his career. Some of these stories I’d read, others I knew of,and it’s nice to get them all in one small package. I like the idea of this series and most likely, if I can ever find the time to read them, trace some of the other volumes down. I believe there was another for farmer covering a later part of his career.
If you don’t have this one, George was on the money. Worth chasing down.
Not The Baseball Pitcher 
The books that really stand out from Farmer for me are the Hadon of Opar books and the World of Tiers series. great stuff.
Can you give me a few recommendations of his sci-fi works? I read the first Riverworld and enjoyed but did not love it However, I was unfortunate enough to procure the sequels and read most of those but was so off put that I haven’t picked up any of his works since then…
Joacim, his World of Tiers might be a good place to start. Seven volumes, though #6 isn’t technically part of the main story(hard to explain in a short comment).
The Dayworld trilogy is good as well. A world where overcrowding is so bad that most of the populace lives one day a week. Seven people share every apartment, frozen in a kind of suspended animation the other six. Longer lives in the general sense, but unsatisfying.in the larger. As usual with these things, there is a group that lives “regular” lives and then one day, one rebels at being frozen for six days out of the week. It stemmed from a shorter work titled Tuesday World.
A lot of Farmer’s works where connected with the pulps he loved as a child. Tarzan appears in a number of his works, both as Tarzan and as a character similar, as does Doc Savage. He did original novels with both characters and an two volume “Opar” series with one of the lost cities in the Tarzan universe. Even a book in the “Oz” universe.
The Dayworld trilogy sounds promising — I love reading any sci-fi about overpopulation. Thanks for the recommendation!
Thanks for the kind words, Randy. The second Philip Jose Farmer volume in this series is also worth reading (and owning).
note to Joachim: I agree with you about Riverworld, and found the other series tough slogging as well. I’d recommend a short story collection or something like this book rather then starting one of the long series.
Randy, I think I said before Farmer just isn’t my cuppa. Glad you enjoy him, though.
To each his own. That’s why there such a diversity of material in the SF field. It would likely be a dull world if everyone wrote the same type of stuff.
So true. Why, I’ve heard some people even read that sword and sorcery stuff!