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The Green Odyssey

First edition. Cover art by Richard M. Powers.

The Green Odyssey is an American science fiction novel written by Philip José Farmer. It was Farmer's first book-length publication, originally released by Ballantine in 1957. Unlike Farmer's most prolific earlier short story work, this book contains no sexual themes, though his next book Flesh returned to these motifs. The novel also appeared in the background of the first episode of The Twilight Zone.[citation needed]

Plot summary

[edit]

The Green Odyssey is an adventure story, involving an astronaut named Alan Green stranded on a primitive planet, where he is claimed as a gigolo by a duchess and is married to a slave woman. Upon hearing of two other stranded astronauts, he escapes from the duchess, and sets sail to find them. However, because of the peculiar geography of the planet, there is a vast expansive plain, instead of an ocean to cross. Green uses a ship equipped with large rolling pin-like wheels along the bottom to traverse the plains of this world.

After his escape from the duchess he is followed by his slave woman wife and her children (one is his). There follow several fairly standard adventure plots with cannibals, pirates, floating islands (that turn out to be giant lawnmowers), and the deus ex machina, a female black cat named Lady Luck.

Reaction and analysis

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Floyd C. Gale wrote that The Green Odyssey seemed "a routine space opera" and that Farmer "almost makes a mishmash of the ending, but doesn't".[1] Other reviews were also mixed. Many were disappointed by this new work after Farmer's widely praised "The Lovers". While that story was almost universally regarded as unique and excellently written, The Green Odyssey was frequently criticised for being clichéd and generic. For instance, author and critic Damon Knight said in the November 1957 issue of Infinity that the book was a "pastel pastiche, superficial and generic, of Tarzan, Conan [...] and heaven knows what else". However, in hindsight, The Green Odyssey was perhaps a deliberate pastiche of pulp novels, similar to Farmer's later A Feast Unknown and, to a lesser extent, his fictional biographies Tarzan Alive and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life.

References

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  1. ^ Gale, Floyd C. (January 1958). "Galaxy's 5 Star Shelf". Galaxy. pp. 104–107. Retrieved 13 June 2014.
[edit]
Novels
series
Other
novels
Story
collections
  • Strange Relations (1960)
  • The Alley God (1962)
  • The Celestial Blueprint: And Other Stories (1962)
  • Down in the Black Gang (1971)
  • The Book of Philip José Farmer, or the Wares of Simple Simon’s Custard Pie and Space Man (1973)
  • Riverworld and Other Stories (1979)
  • Riverworld War: The Suppressed Fiction of Philip José Farmer (1980)
  • The Cache (1981)
  • Father to the Stars (1981)
  • Stations of the Nightmare (1982)
  • The Purple Book (1982)
  • The Classic Philip José Farmer, 1952-1964 (1984)
  • The Classic Philip José Farmer, 1964-1973 (1984)
  • The Grand Adventure (1984)
  • Riders of the Purple Wage (1992)
  • Myths for the Modern Age: Philip José Farmer's Wold Newton Universe (2005)
  • The Best of Philip José Farmer (2006)
  • Strange Relations (2006)
  • Pearls from Peoria (2006)
  • Up from the Bottomless Pit and Other Stories (2007)
  • Venus on the Half-Shell and Others (2008)
  • The Other in the Mirror (2009)
  • The Worlds of Philip Jose Farmer: Protean Dimensions (2010)
  • Up the Bright River (2010)
  • The Worlds of Philip José Farmer 2: Of Dust and Soul (2011)
  • The Worlds of Philip José Farmer 3: Portraits of a Trickster (2012)
  • Tales of the World Newton Universe (2013)
Stories
  • "O'Brien and Obrenov" (1946)
  • "Duo Miaule" (anii 1950)
  • The Lovers (1952)
  • "Sail On! Sail On!" (1952)
  • "The Biological Revolt" (1953)
  • "Mother" (1953)
  • "Moth and Rust" (1953)
  • "Attitudes" (1953)
  • "Strange Compulsion" (1953)
  • "They Twinkled Like Jewels" (1954)
  • "Daughter" (1954)
  • "Queen of the Deep" (1954)
  • "The God Business" (1954)
  • "Rastignac the Devil" (1954)
  • "The Celestial Blueprint" (1954)
  • "The Wounded" (1954)
  • "Totem and Taboo" (1954)
  • "Father" (1955)
  • "The Night of Light" (1957)
  • "The Alley Man" (1959)
  • "Heel" (1960)
  • "My Sister's Brother" (1960)
  • "A Few Miles" (1960)
  • "Prometheus" (1961)
  • "Tongues of the Moon" (1961)
  • "Uproar in Acheron" (1962)
  • "How Deep the Grooves" (1963)
  • "Some Fabulous Yonder" (1963)
  • "The Blasphemers" (1964)
  • "The King of the Beasts" (1964)
  • "Day of the Great Shout" (1965)
  • "Riverworld" (1966)
  • "The Suicide Express" (1966)
  • "The Blind Rowers" (1967)
  • "A Bowl Bigger than Earth" (1967)
  • "The Felled Star" (1967)
  • "The Shadow of Space" (1967)
  • "Riders of the Purple Wage” (1967)
  • "Don't Wash the Carats" (1968)
  • "The Jungle Rot Kid on the Nod" (1968)
  • "Down in the Black Gang" (1969)
  • "The Oogenesis of Bird City" (1970)
  • "The Voice of the Sonar in my Vermiform Appendix" (1971)
  • "Brass and Gold" (1971)
  • "The Fabulous Riverboat" (1971)
  • "Only Who Can Make a Tree?" (1971)
  • "The Sliced-Crosswise Only-On-Tuesday World” (1971)
  • "Seventy Years of Decpop" (1972)
  • "Skinburn" (1972)
  • "The Sumerian Oath" (1972)
  • "Father's in the Basement" (1972)
  • "Toward the Beloved City" (1972)
  • "Mother Earth Wants You" (1972)
  • "Sketches Among the Ruins of My Mind" (1973)
  • "Monolog" (1973)
  • "After King Kong Fell" (1973)
  • "Opening the Door" (1973)
  • "The Two-Edged Gift" (1974)
  • "The Startouched" (1974)
  • "The Evolution of Paul Eyre" (1974)
  • "Passing On" (1975)
  • "A Scarletin Study, as Jonathan Swift Somers III" (1975)
  • "The Problem of the Sore Bridge - Among Others, as Harry Manders" (1975)
  • "Greatheart Silver" (1975)
  • "The Return of Greatheart Silver" (1975)
  • "Osiris on Crutches, as Leo Queequeg Tincrowder" (1976)
  • "The Volcano, as Paul Chapin" (1976)
  • "The Doge Whose Barque Was Worse Than His Bight, as Jonathan Swift Somers III" (1976)
  • "Fundamental Issue" (1976)
  • "The Henry Miller Dawn Patrol" (1977)
  • "Greatheart Silver in the First Command" (1977)
  • "Savage Shadow as Maxwell Grant" (1977)
  • "The Impotency of Bad Karma as Cordwainer Bird" (1977)
  • "It's the Queen of Darkness, Pal, as Rod Keen" (1978)
  • "Freshman" (1979)
  • "The Leaser of Two Evils" (1979)
  • "J.C. on the Dude Ranch" (1979)
  • "Spiders of the Purple Mage" (1980)
  • "The Making of Revelation, Part I" (1980)
  • "The Long Wet Dream of Rip Van Winkle" (1981)
  • "The Adventure of the Three Madmen" (1984)
  • "UFO vs IRS" (1985)
  • "St. Francis Kisses His Ass Goodbye" (1989)
  • "One Down, One to Go" (1990)
  • "Evil, Be My Good" (1990)
  • "Nobody's Perfect" (1991)
  • "Wolf, Iron and Moth" (1991)
  • "Crossing the Dark River" (1992)
  • "A Hole in Hell" (1992)
  • "Up the Bright River" (1993)
  • "Coda" (1993)
  • "The Good of the Land" (2002)
  • "The Face that Launched a Thousand Eggs" (2005)
  • "The Unnaturals" (2005)
  • "Who Stole Stonehenge?" (2005)
  • "That Great Spanish Author, Ernesto" (2006)
  • "The Essence of the Poison" (2006)
  • "The Doll Game" (2006)
  • "Keep Your Mouth Shut" (2006)
  • "The Frames" (2007)
  • "A Spy in the U.S. of Gonococcia" (2007)
  • "A Peoria Night" (2007)
  • "The First Robot" (2008)
  • "Getting Ready to Write" (2008)
  • "My Summer Husband" (2010)
  • "What I Thought I Heard" (2011)
  • "Kwasin and the Bear God" (2011)


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The Green Odyssey
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