Quark Cognition: Philip Jose Farmer

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Philip Jose Farmer

     I first heard of Farmer through my mom, when she mentioned Riverworld, back when I was a teenager. Riverworld is a series of 5 novels and several short stories about the afterlife. Every human that has ever lived and lived more than 5 years is resurrected on a large planet with a sinuous river 20,000,000 miles long. Those that died prior to age 5 are resurrected on Gardenworld, which Farmer never wrote, but briefly mentioned.
    Farmer is not afraid to write about sex and some of his material is extremely X-rated, far more perverted than anything I've read by Stephen King. Farmer was the first author to write about human/alien sex and Robert Heinlein dedicated Stranger in a Strange Land to him, for paving the way. (Reading material by Farmer will add the word satyriasis to your vocabulary.) I can see religious people banning his material, but not for the hardcore sex. They would ban it because he wrote a few stories about Jesus being an alien, and not the son of God. One novel in particular, Flesh, is similar to Planet of the Apes (the screenplay written by Rod Serling), except that the astronauts return to Earth and find a new religion, rather than a new dominant species. One Christian man is killed when he attempts proselytization of some locals because Christianity is no longer the dominant religion. This indicates to me that religions are transient and not the sources of absolute truth many believe. In other words, God may go out of style. This is the advantage of reading Farmer. He will expand your imagination.
     These are the books I have read by Philip Jose Farmer so far:

Besides Riverworld, the other notable series by Farmer is World of Tiers, which comprises seven novels. They are the last 7 scans above. It's about near-immortals (people that live roughly 30,000 to 50,000 years) and have the ability to make their own universes. Gates, like those in Stargate, are used to traverse the universes.

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About Me

I am made of particles, known as quarks and electrons, that are at least 13.72 billion years old. Although my body is very young, the constituents are very old and come and go as they please. It's astonishing that individuality exists when each one of us are made of the same basic parts. It's even more astonishing that self-awareness exists, since even objects as simple as paper clips are made of the same parts as human beings.

My body was here before I was born and it will be here after I die.

So while I am in this brief configuration known as life I try to learn as much as possible, since my personality enjoys it. My first fascination in this short life was dinosaurs; I won a Dinosaur Expert Award in kindergarten. For most of my childhood, I read about the Animal Kingdom. I also read more than 100 Choose Your Own Adventure books and numerous other young adult fiction from my school library. Since age 5, I have been reading at a sometimes voracious pace. I didn't start seriously reading science fiction until age 19, though.

My interest in politics is as great as my interest in professional sports and I drink alcohol as often as I get lung surgery. I am heterosexual, but I rarely date women and prefer to read a tale, rather than chase some tail.

Qool Quotes

"The brain, knowing that a person can't live forever in this world, rationalizes a future, or other-dimensional, world in which immortality is possible. In other words, religion is the earliest form of science fiction."
-Philip Jose Farmer (1977)

"Forget Jesus, the stars died so you could be born."
-Lawrence M. Krauss (2009)

"When you ask what are protons and electrons I ought to answer that this question is not a profitable one to ask and does not really have a meaning. The important thing about electrons and protons is not what they are but how they behave - how they move. I can describe the situation by comparing it to a game of chess. In chess, we have various chessmen, kings, knights, pawns and so on. If you ask what a chessmen is, the answer would be that it is a piece of wood, or a piece of ivory, or perhaps just a sign written on a paper, or anything whatever. It does not matter. Each chessmen has a characteristic way of moving and this is all that matters about it. The whole game of chess follows from this way of moving the various chessmen."
-Paul Dirac, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1933

"You will be astonished when I tell you what this curious play of carbon amounts to. A candle will burn some four, five, six, or seven hours. What, then, must be the daily amount of carbon going up into the air in the way of carbonic acid! What a quantity of carbon must go from each of us in respiration! What a wonderful change of carbon must take place under these circumstances of combustion or respiration! A man in twenty-four hours converts as much as seven ounces of carbon into carbonic acid; a milch cow will convert seventy ounces, and a horse seventy-nine ounces, solely by the act of respiration. That is, the horse in twenty-four hours burns seventy-nine ounces of charcoal, or carbon, in his organs of respiration to supply his natural warmth in this way, by the conversion of carbon, not in a free state, but in a state of combination. And what an extraordinary notion this gives us of the alterations going on in our atmosphere. As much as 5,000,000 pounds, or 548 tons, of carbonic acid is formed by respiration in London alone in twenty-four hours. And where does all this go? Up into the air."
-Michael Faraday (1860)

"In modern war, one individual can cause the destruction of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children. He could do so by pushing a button; he may not feel the emotional impact of what he is doing, since he does not see, does not know the people whom he kills; it is almost as if his act of pushing the button and their death had no real connection. The same man would probably be incapable of even slapping, not to speak of killing, a helpless person."
-Eric Fromm (1955)

“Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that people don’t have to experience it."
-Max Frisch

Quark Cognition

I may not seem like it, but I am a human.

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Philip Jose Farmer

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