Philip José Farmer

Philip José Farmer (January 26, 1918 – February 25, 2009) was an American author known for his science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories. He is best known to Doc Savage fans for his biography of The Man of Bronze: Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life and the novel Escape from Loki.

Philip José Farmer (January 26, 1918 – February 25, 2009) was an American author known for his science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories. He has often written about the pulp heroes Tarzan and Doc Savage, or pastiches thereof: In his novel The Adventure of the Peerless Peer, Tarzan and Sherlock Holmes team up. Farmer’s Lord Grandrith and Doc Caliban series portrays analogues of Tarzan and Doc Savage. It consists of A Feast Unknown (1969), Lord of the Trees (1970) and The Mad Goblin (1970). Farmer has also written two mock biographies of both characters, Tarzan Alive (1972) and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life (1973), which adopt the premise that the two were based on real people fictionalized by their original chroniclers, and connect them genealogically with a large number of other well-known fictional characters in a schema now known as the “Wold Newton family.” Further, Farmer wrote both an authorized Doc Savage novel, Escape from Loki — Wikipedia & the official Philip José Farmer website.

5 thoughts on “Philip José Farmer

  1. PJF also wrote “Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life” a pseudo biography of Doc in which his family tree is traced to numerous fictional heroes and adventurers.

  2. Farmer has to be the worst of the “Robesons!” He seems to think it’s his calling in life to make readers believe that somehow Doc is nothing without him and he must take it upon himself to explain what everything means for us ignorant readers. Escape From Loki is not a Doc Savage novel. Pure and simple. It breaks every rule. Sometimes this is a good thing but not with Doc. The various Robesons all have one common goal, that’s to be inseparable from the original Robeson, Lester Dent. It’s not up to them to put their personal stamp on the characters or the series. They’re supposed to be telling a rip-snorting good story. Period. Farmer has to give us Doc the way he sees him and not the way he actually is. Personally I have no interest in reading Farmer’s interpretaion of Doc. I hope we shan’t see any more contributions from Mr. Farmer to the Doc canon.

  3. I remember as a kid picking up a copy of Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life. I was coming off an adrenaline rush from reading The Polar Treasure and The Lost Oasis, among others, and I was looking forward to something simialar. Boy was I in for a shock. I think I got about three pages into it and my mind was reeling… “This maybe called Doc Savage’s biography, but it has absolutely NOTHING to do with the real Doc.” Trying to unravel Doc’s mystery is like trying to disect your best friend in order to understand him/her better… you may learn some interesting facts, but your best friend gets killed in the process. I may just be stubborn and prejudiced, but I refuse to even try reading that book again, and I won’t read Escape From Loki, either, Hummph!

  4. Escape is actually of one the better Docs, showing Doc as a three-dimensional character, something we do get glimpses of in the original stories, though not enough. I don’t think Farmer has a secret agenda when it comes to Doc; he’s merely having great fun and sharing it.

Leave a Reply to Andrew Salmon Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *