My Illinois homeboy, Philip Jose Farmer, died on Wednesday Feb 25. Please find linkage here: the obit in the New York Times and the announcement at his website. From the NYT:
Philip José Farmer, a prolific and popular science fiction writer who shocked readers in the 1950s by depicting sex with aliens and challenged conventional pieties of the genre with caustic fables set on bizarre worlds of his own devising, died Wednesday. He was 91 and lived in Peoria, Ill.
As a pre-adolescent sprout, I'd sneak out copies of my older brother's PJF paperbacks and devour them. The Riverworld series was my favorite, but New Riders of the Purple Wage made an impact, too. So passes a muscular imagination.
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91 years old. That was a pretty good run.
New Riders of the Purple Wage is the funniest story I have ever read. It's not just funny in places; it is uniformly and uproariously funny from beginning to end. Especially the scene with the glue on the can of pressurized spermicide!
His passing is a sad thing, but he has left a legacy that will entertain, inspire, anger and instruct readers for a long time to come.
Well done, Mr. Farmer. Well done.
Oh, I forgot. Nice title for this post, Dr. Joan. Very nice. Thank you.