The World of Tiers, by Philip José Farmer

Download The Maker of Universes by Philip José Farmer






Download The Gates of Creation by Philip José Farmer






Download A Private Cosmos






Download Behind The Walls of Terra






Download The Lavalite World



The above five novels were collected into this two volume set:







Download Red Orc's Rage
(I wrote the Wikipedia entry for this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Orc%27s_Rage )





Download More Than Fire

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This post is waaaay overdue as it was August 8th that I uploaded The Maker of Universes and I promised myself then that the sequel wouldn't be too far behind. The best laid plains of mice and men oft go awry, but I think it's safe to say that I had become a little too slavish when it came to uploading certain artists' body of work. I have decided not to be like that with future posts, but I will eventually upload all of it— and this time out I already have all the scans I need to get the job done.

To make up for uploading The Gates of Creation so tardily, I am going to simply upload all seven novels instead of going with my one-a-day routine.

The World of Tiers is a series of science fiction novels by American writer Philip José Farmer. They are set within a series of artificially-constructed universes, created and ruled by decadent beings who are genetically identical to humans, but who regard themselves as superior, the inheritors of an advanced technology they no longer understand. This technology enables the "Lords" (or Thoans, in their own language) to create novel lifeforms, and also to prevent aging or disease, making them effectively immortal. Their technology also allows them to create small artificial universes, and the planets and stars within them, and modify the physical laws (e.g. changing the behavior of gravity) to create unusual or interesting phenomena within these universes. Instantaneous travel within and between these universes is achieved by the use of gates which seem to function as teleportation devices, or as a means of creating wormholes between different regions of spacetime.

The overall series title comes from the main 'pocket universe' featured in the books. This consists of a single planet with a green sky, shaped in the form of a huge stepped pyramid on five stages, with each stage being a disk or squat cylinder. A small sun and a single moon orbit around this planet. There are no other stars or astronomical bodies. This world was created by a Lord named Jadawin.

The overall storyline of the series follows the adventures of two people from Earth who independently discover gates into the World of Tiers. The earlier books focus on the character of Robert Wolff as he explores this world and tries to discover its secrets. From the third book onwards the action shifts to Paul Janus Finnegan (known as Kickaha, along with many other aliases), who is drawn into a battle between an ancient enemy of the Thoans, and ultimately into the feuds between rival Thoans as they try to take over each other's universes.

The Maker of Universes, by Philip José Farmer

Download The Maker of Universes by Philip José Farmer

Click here to go to all seven novels





I am playing a bit of catch-up with this Web log as I was entertaining company over the weekend and I experienced some blogger technical difficulties, which have since cleared up on their own as mysteriously as they arrived. I thought I'd digress just a bit from comic books to my favorite novels, which are from Philip José Farmer's World of Tiers series. I discovered this series of books thanks to my sister Annette, who is also a die hard Farmer fan, and her membership in the Science Fiction Book Club. While Farmer receives a lot of attention for his Riverworld series, I think those are greatly overrated and I would not reread them if I was paid to do so. On the other hand, I have read the entire World of Tiers novels over again and again and never tire of them. I felt knowledgeable enough about the series that I wrote Wikipedia's entry for Red Orc's Rage, which was the only sequel we had after the fifth book until More Than Fire hit the stores. If you loved Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber, you'll love this as I think that Zelazny swiped much of the plot setting and incorporated it into his Amber novels and not as well as Farmer.

SF Review provides a pretty good plot breakdown:

The protagonist is Robert Wolff, a 66-year-old World War II veteran who has never been able to recall his childhood. Dissatisfied with the mundanity of his later life, and married to a woman with whom he hasn't gotten along in years, Wolff seems resigned to a mundane fate as he and his wife find themselves house-hunting in Arizona.

In a basement closet of one house, Wolff thinks he hears the improbable sound of a trumpet call; his surprise is only compounded when, upon opening the closet, he finds himself gazing not at musty old coats but into another world entirely. Wolff sees the mysterious figure with the horn, and the man, who seems not only to know Wolff but is expecting him, throws Wolff the horn before the portal between worlds closes.

Wolff — not surprisingly — decides then and there he wants to buy that house, but his wife remains stubborn and intractable, and so Wolff makes the fateful decision to return that night. He breaks in to the basement, blows the horn, and leaves this Earth forever.

....and all that is in the first, albeit brief, chapter! This is a must read!