Philip Farmer
From Philosopedia
Philip José Farmer (26 January 1918 - 25 February 2009)
Farmer, a science fiction and fantasy novel writer, was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, the son of a civil engineer who was a supervisor for a power company. He lived much of his life in Peoria, Illinois, attending Peoria High School and Bradley University there. Although he had planned to study journalism at the University of Missouri, the family could not afford it - their Peoria home had an outdoor toilet, an indication of their financial situation.
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Personal Life
In 1941 he married girlfriend Bette in a secret ceremony, later enrolling as an aviation cadet in the Army Air Force. But he failed the flight training, was discharged from the Air Force, and was never drafted. For the next 11 1/2 years, he worked for the Keystone Steel & Wire company.
The Farmers had two children, Philip (1942) and Kristen (1945).
Science Fiction and Sex
Casual sex with alien species is common these days, Christopher Paul Carey has written, but in the early 1950s it was not. Farmer's The Lovers was a groundbreaker, written while he was a struggling author who was supporting his family by working overtime in a steel mill. It won him the Hugo Award for "most promising new writer" in 1953, was the work that broke the taboo on showing sex in science fiction, and brought him fame.
Strange Relations (1960), a short story collection, similarly included sexual themes. Fire and Night (1962), a novel with sociological and psychosexual twists, described a love affair between a white man and a black woman. Image of the Beast (1968) and the sequel Blown (1969) describe interplanetary travel and group sex.
Farmer treated sex seriously, not in a juvenile manner or for cheap thrills. "It wasn't pornography and it wasn't just about the sex of it," an editor, Jonathan Strahan, an editor of Locus said. "It was about the sexuality of people in an interesting and intelligent way."
Jesus on Mars (1979 has Jesus as a character. Night of Light (1966) shows a sinful Father Carmody in an odyssey to an alien world.
Obituaries
In his Riverworld series, Gerald Jonas wrote in Farmer's New York Times obituary,
- He imagines a distant planet with a river millions of miles long "where virtually everyone who has died on Earth is physically reborn, strong and vital, and given a second chance to make something of life.
Farmer, an agnostic from the age of 14, said in a 1975 Science Fiction Review article,
- I can't see any reason why such miserable, unhappy, vicious, stupid, conniving, greedy, narrow-minded, self-absorbed beings should have immortality.
- [but] when considering individuals, then I feel, yes, this person, that person, certainly deserves another chance. . . . Life on this planet is too short, too crowded, too hurried, too beset.
Farmer wrote roughly 75 books, including Venus on the Half Shell, which he penned under the pseudonym Kilgore Trout, to Kurt Vonnegut's consternation.
"Farmer was among the last of a generation who emerged from the revolutionary literature of science fiction. Along with contemporaries including Robert Heineken, Isaac Asimov, Philip Dick, and Kurt Vonnegut, Farmer dedicated his life to writing stories that forced their readers to confront and question many of their most basic assumptions about life, the world, and that slippery beast called reality," wrote Damien G. Walter in The Guardian.
Death
Farmer, at the age of 91, died in his sleep. He was not a member of any of the organized religions. "There is no funeral," said Bette Farmer, his wife of nearly 68 years, told the Peoria Journal Star. "Just a memorial service. That's what Phil wanted. We talked about it."
The Peoria newspaper included some "Farmer Facts":
- - Farmer co-founded the local Sherlock Holmes club in 1977.
- - Farmer was convinced he saw a UFO over Bartonville while working at Keystone Steel & Wire Co.
- - Farmer loved trickery and often wrote under pseudonyms. A favorite: Venus on the Half-Shell by Kilgore Trout - a Kurt Vonnegut character.
- - Farmer referred to himself as a "washed-out pilot" and once supported his family as a technical writer for the aerospace industry in California.
- - Farmer once acted as the Bradley University mascot, presenting a war bonnet to band leader Fred Waring.
