One Of My Favorite Books

Back in my misspent youth, at the height of my pulp-science fiction phase, renowned SF writer Philip Jose Farmer, himself a fan of the pulps since they first were published, wrote a cool Ace Double novel.

The Ace doubles were a lot of fun. You would read one novel, then flip the book over to read another. Many were single author books. Others had different writers for each side. I have many of them -- SF and Western -- stuffed away on shelves, but my favorite is this one:



And on the flip side:


Farmer's versions of Doc Savage and Tarzan, granted immortality by a sinister group called The Nine, battled each other before reluctantly becoming allies. Sweet, sweet stuff.

That wasn't the fist meeting between Farmer's "Doc Caliban" and "Lord Grandrith". In 1969, the two teamed up for A Feast Unknown, an wild romp filled with a lot of sex and massive bronze, uh, body parts.


Later on, Farmer would finally get to do the real Doc Savage:


And Tarzan:


And his love for the characters really shines though.

Farmer was the first author who made me want to write, and his Riverworld series remains one of the great classics of SF.

Thanks, Phil.

You can find more Farmer here.