One of the
great aspects of video games is the reset button. A person may get mad when their brother
pushes it in the middle of game play, but generally it is a positive
option. Worked yourself into a corner:
push reset. Technical glitch: push
reset. Need a quick path to the start
menu: push reset. Can’t figure out what
to do next: push reset. Need the default settings: push reset.
Humanity in the middle of a great game (please suspend your groaning; I know
the metaphor’s bad, but you’ll see it fits the book), no reset button exists
for us, unfortunately. There is no
stopping Hitler in the middle of what he did, just as there’s no getting back
many of the natural resources we’re bleeding the planet dry of. Such situations only able to be manifested in
speculative fiction, in 1971 Philip Jose Farmer hit the reset button. To Your
Scattered Bodies Go is the start menu, and depending on genre perspective,
you may wish to push the reset button on the novel upon completion.
A man
awakens in an immense zero g cavern, floating amongst a seemingly infinite
flotilla of nude, hairless bodies.
Gradually gaining perspective, before him appears a vision. He realizes it is his old self, as he
appeared in real life, and he is the explorer Richard Burton. Like billions of raindrops, the bodies begin
falling, and before Burton knows it, he lies in a field, other bodies scattered
around him. Still entirely nude, he has
only a metal canister with him. Behind
him rise mountains, and before him a wide river. To either side he sees nothing but trees,
fields, and bodies. Each person slowly
awakening, they discover cultural and language barriers. Not everybody is from the same place, era,
even planet. A Tau Cetan named Monat amongst
the humans, Burton makes friends with a 20th century American man named
Frigate, a British woman Alice, a caveman Kazz, and others. Coming across strange metal mushrooms that
erratically shoot blue flames, they discover that by placing the canisters in
special indentations on the surface at certain times they are provided food and
drink, cigarettes and alcohol, even pleasure drugs. Building a solid group, Burton eventually
does what he was born to do: explore.
Building a sailing vessel with the others, they set out upriver to
investigate their strange river world.
