Venus on the Half-Shell (35 page)
Read Venus on the Half-Shell Online
Authors: Philip Jose Farmer
“The Impotency of Bad Karma” as by Cordwainer Bird.
(Popular Culture
, First Preview Edition, ed. Brad Lang, June 1977; revised version published in
Chrysalis, Volume Two,
ed. Roy Torgeson, Zebra Books, 1978 as “The Last Rise of Nick Adams,” now under Farmer’s own name. Cordwainer Bird appears as a character in Harlan Ellison’s short story “The New York Review of Bird” and in Farmer’s “The Doge Whose Barque Was Worse Than His Bight.”)
“Savage Shadow” as by Maxwell Grant.
(Weird Heroes, Volume Eight,
ed. Byron Preiss, Jove/HBJ Books, November 1977. Maxwell Grant was the house pen name used by the authors of The Shadow pulp magazine and paperback stories.)
“It’s the Queen of Darkness, Pal” as by Rod Keen.
(The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction,
ed. Edward L. Ferman, August 1978; revised version published in
Riverworld and Other Stories,
Berkley Books, 1979 as “The Phantom of the Sewers.” Rod Keen is a fictional author from Richard Brautigan’s
The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966.)
“Who Stole Stonehenge?” as by Jonathan Swift Somers III.
(Farmerphile: The Magazine of Philip José Farmer,
no. 2, eds. Christopher Paul Carey and Paul Spiteri, October 2005. Although this one-page fragment of an unfinished Ralph von Wau Wau story was published under Farmer’s name, the original manuscript is attributed to Jonathan Swift Somers III; see the entry above for “A Scarletin Study.”)
* * *
Farmer has cited Paul Radin’s
The Trickster,
a book about the role of the mischievous archetype recurrent in mythology and folklore, as one of his influences; and among the stories at hand it is easy to see why. By assuming the role of a fictional author, Farmer dons a shamanic mask and enters the sublime creative world where fictional characters take on a life more real than our own.
A long-held theory goes that Farmer unconsciously hatched his fictional-author series, as well as penned his many pastiches, in an attempt to get over a period of writer’s block which had descended upon him during the early to mid-1970s. I do not doubt it; although, if true, I—doubtless along with all of Farmer’s readers—am grateful that his muse found such a scintillating, creative means to overcome its obstacle.
But there is another possibility, more fun to contemplate and more in tune with the spirit of the fictional-author concept: Perhaps Farmer’s muse did not merely find a clever mechanism to jumpstart itself. What if the fictional-author period was not a hoax after all, but instead Farmer, donning his shamanic mask, did indeed glimpse into another universe? One in which William S. Burroughs wrote
Tarzan of the Apes,
and John H. Watson hobnobbed at the same gentlemen’s club as A. J. Raffles and Edward Malone. Where Kurt Vonnegut may have asked Farmer’s Riverworld counterpart, Peter Jairus Frigate, for permission to write a World of Tiers novel. A universe in which you and I are merely fictional characters in the works of a Grand Master of Science Fiction.
Yes, paging through this new edition of
Venus on the Half-Shell
, I think I too am getting a glimpse through the doors of perception.
Thank you, Philip José Farmer, for opening them.
Christopher Paul Carey
Seattle, Washington
* * *
Christopher Paul Carey is the coauthor with Philip José Farmer of
The Song of Kwasin,
and the author of
Exiles of Kho,
a prelude to the Khokarsa series. His short fiction may be found in such anthologies as
The Worlds of Philip José Farmer 1: Protean Dimensions, The Worlds of Philip José Farmer 2: Of Dust and Soul, Tales of the Shadowmen: The Vampires of Paris, Tales of the Shadowmen: Grand Guignol
, and
The Avenger: The Justice, Inc. Files
. He is an editor with Paizo Publishing on the award-winning Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, and the editor of three collections of Farmer’s fiction. Visit him online at
www.cpcarey.com
.
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