Good news for any Phillip José Farmer fans: I just discovered today that his first two “Riverworld” novels are now available from Amazon in a single omnibus edition for $9.99. It has been many years since I read these, but they are now near the top of my TBR (to-be-read) list, soon after I finish reading the The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy omnibus. (I just like saying “omnibus”, plus I also like the way it saves me money.)

This edition contains the novels To Your Scattered Bodies Go and The Fabulous Riverboat. Also available separately (and not as highly recommended by me) are the follow-on novels The Dark Design, The Magic Labyrinth, and Gods of Riverworld, each separately priced at $9.99. From the Amazon blurb:

Imagine that every human who ever lived, from the earliest Neanderthals to the present, is resurrected after death on the banks of an astonishing and seemingly endless river on an unknown world. They are miraculously provided with food, but with not a clue to the possible meaning of this strange afterlife. And so billions of people from history, and before, must start living again.

Some set sail on the great river questing for the meaning of their resurrection, and to find and confront their mysterious benefactors. On this long journey, we meet Sir Richard Francis Burton, Mark Twain, Odysseus, Cyrano de Bergerac, and many others, most of whom embark upon searches of their own in this huge afterlife.