The Dark Design
The Dark Design is a science fiction novel by Philip José Farmer published in 1977. The book is the third novel in the Riverworld series, the sequel to The Fabulous Riverboat, and was followed up by The Magic Labyrinth.
The story takes place 30 years after the resurrection day from the first book and follows the characters from the first two books. The citizens of Paralando are now working on a giant airship now that Twain has left on his second paddle boat, and Richard Burton's crew encounters the first paddle boat stolen by King John. However, the stakes are raised with death seeming to be permanent once more as automatic resurrection no longer seems to be in effect.
Personal
After finishing the first two books in the series, I was curious to see what was going to happen as it went on. However, I found this one to be less exciting, and even more sexist than the first two.
Review
— This section contains spoilers! —
Good
- It's nice that there is finally a strong female character in the series. Jill Gulbirra is witty and powerful, not afraid to tell the patriarchs where to stick it, but still has plenty of her own demons.
- I appreciate that Farmer points out that most of the people in Riverworld are non-white and how this angers the racists. However, this ends up being just lip service as most of his characters are still white.
Bad
- The way Burton's party robbed the Babylonians of their freebie grails was anti-climactic.
- Having the native Americans be a bunch of drunks wasn't a culturally sensitive choice.
- For a book that's supposed to be science fiction, a lot of stock is put into the Hollywood version of mesmerism and hypnosis. Farmer must not have done any research into how fake most of it really is, so this required a fair amount of suspension of disbelief.
- Having Monet and Peter both in league with the ethicals is another hard-to-believe scenario. They lived with Burton for 30 years, and never let anything slip?
- The discussion Peter Frigate has with Richard Burton about the definition of science fiction was a bit dull and self-serving. Farmer is welcome to his opinion, but it would make more sense to be written as a non-fiction article. It becomes self-congratulatory later when Frigate writes a letter about what a great idea Riverworld would be for a sci-fi novel.
- For some reason, the chapter breaks sometimes occur right in the middle of related prose. My guess is the editor wanted the chapters to have a uniform length. It's not too distracting, but it is a bit odd.
- Parolando being once again double-crossed by one of King John's men makes them seem less like heroes and more like saps. At some point they need to take responsibility for failing to properly vet people.
- Abruptly giving the ethicals super-human strength all of the sudden at the end of the book makes no sense.
Ugly
- There are several lengthy sections in the book that are really dull. Most of the ancillary characters get at least a chapter of backstory, none of which pertains to the story. I wouldn't mind this so much if it were about the historical characters, but backstory for unimportant fictional side-characters is a waste of time. Also, the story about a Bedouin who farted and lost his palace was too juvenile to be interesting.
- Farmer's sexism is even more blatant in this book. In the previous books, he didn't know how hymens worked and all women were relegated to ancillary characters, but, in addition to those faults, women are now described primarily by their sexual characteristics, he describes 15-year-old Eve being raped by her uncle as "not entirely unwilling," and he has Jill Gulbirra, a caricature of Feminism, photographed in the nude without her consent then violently raped and burned alive in a hallucination.
- Having PJF and his band build and operate an experimental balloon, when none of them have any skill in doing so, is just stupid.
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