Summary

An outstanding and unique collection from an outstanding and unique talent. Philip José Farmer, three time Hugo winner and Nebula Grand Master in 2001, has written exciting and provocative fiction since his debut, the ground breaking “The Lovers,” stunned the SF community in 1952.

Pearls from Peoria assembles over sixty previously uncollected pieces of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and autobiography that demonstrate the extraordinary range and vitality of Philip José Farmer’s imagination.

Many of the pieces appear here for the first time anywhere, while others have previously appeared only in small run magazines that have remained elusive and avidly sought after by Farmer aficionados.

These tales and articles provide the reader with a grand tour of the literary pocket universes that make up Philip José Farmer’s private cosmos. The range is vast, from horror to pulp heroes, and autobiography with pieces on Tarzan and Edgar Rice Burroughs, Doc Savage and Sir Richard Burton, Riverworld and Oz, Sherlock Holmes and Ralph von Wau Wau.

Pearls from Peoria represents outstanding value for people who want access to this incredibly rare work without spending a fortune, and copious amounts of time and energy, tracking down the individual original publications.

Pearls from Peoria is available in three unique editions:

Trade: Deluxe cloth bound hardcover edition
Limited: 100 numbered copies, bound in leather, signed by author
Lettered: 26 copies, bound in leather, signed by author, housed in a custom traycase

Table of Contents

Myths and Paramyths

• Nobody’s Perfect
• Wolf, Iron, and Moth
• Evil, Be My Good
• Mother Earth Wants You
• Opening the Door
• The Wounded
• Heel

Ralph von Wau Wau

• A Scarletin Study
• The Doge Whose Barque Was Worse Than His Bight
• Jonathan Swift Somers III: Cosmic Traveller in a Wheelchair

Lost Futures

• Seventy Years of Decpop
• Fundamental Issue
• Some Fabulous Yonder
• Planet Pickers
• The Terminalization of J.G. Ballard

Psychological Tales

• The Blind Rowers
• Hunter’s Moon
• The Rise Gotten
• The Good of the Land
• O’Brien and Obrenov

Doc Savage

• Writing Doc’s Biography
• Savage Shadow
• Doc Savage and the Cult of the Blue God
• The Monster On Hold

Tarzan and Edgar Rice Burroughs

• The Princess of Terra
• The Golden Age and the Brass
• An Appreciation of Edgar Rice Burroughs
• The Arms of Tarzan
• The Two Lord Ruftons
• A Reply to "The Red Herring"
• The Great Lorak Time Discrepancy
• The Lord Mountford Mystery
• From ERB to YGG
• A Language for Opar
• The Purple Distance

PJF on SF

• The Source of the River
• A Rough Knight for the Queen
• The Journey as the Revelation of the Unknown
• The Josés from Rio
• Getting A-Long with Heinlein
• God’s Hat
• To Forry Ackerman, the Wizard of Sci-Fi
• Pornograms and Supercomputers
• A Review of the 1977 Anthology Chrysalis
• Review of The Prometheus Project
• Review of How the Wizard Came to Oz
• Oft Have I Travelled
• White Whales, Raintrees, Flying Saucers...
• IF R.I.P.
• The Tin Woodman Slams the Door
• Witches and Gnomes and Talking Animals, oh my
• Suffer A Witch to Live

Poems

• Imagination
• The Pterodactyl
• Sestina of the Space Rocket
• Beauty in This Iron Age
• In Common
• Black Squirrel on Cottonwood Limb’s tip
• Job’s Leviathan

PJF on PJF

• Maps and Spasms
• Religion and Myths
• Creating Artificial Worlds
• Phonemics
• Lovers and Otherwise
• A Fimbulwinter Introduction
• On A Mountain Upside Down

On PJF

• Mother of Pearl
• The Artwork
• Photo Montages