Re: World of Tiers question

On 2025-07-24, Bice <eichler2@comcast.net> wrote:

A while back I found hardcover copies of The World of Tiers volumes 1
and 2 in a local antique store for a couple bucks each, so I grabbed
them.  I just finished reading them.  Can't say I was too thrilled
with the five novels that made up those two collections.  Interesting
world building, but the characters were cardboard cut-outs and the
plot of every book was basically: Good guy meets villain and fights,
outsmarts or kills him. Good guy meets some sort of monster cobbled
together from various Earthly predators and fights or kills it. Rinse
and repeat. Over and over. Plus the actual writing was shockingly bad.

That's Philip José Farmer for you.  He had a highly fertile imagination
and conjured up all manners of phantasmagorical worlds, but the
characters are paper-thin, and he struggled with even producing a
coherent plot.  I mean, I don't know his process, but I always
assumed that we just started writing without knowing in advance
what story he wanted to tell.  The result can be interesting if
flawed... or utter dross.

I made it through all five books, although it was a slog.  I know
there were two more books written much later on, but despite the fact
that book five left so many threads dangling (including the
whereabouts and fate of the main character of books one and two!), I
have no plans to look for those last two books.

I read them once upon a time, but you won't miss much.  Book six
takes the vaguely interesting approach of treating the whole World
of Tiers story universe as fictional, but the result felt rather
meh, I remember thinking at the time.

But I'm wondering if one of them answers the following:

And I'm sorry, but I have no idea.

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy@mips.inka.de