To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip José Farmer

Another prominent figure is a man from “the future” of 2008 called Peter Jairus Frigate (and I realized after reading the Riverworld wiki that he has the same initials as Farmer and evidently is like him in several ways). The people around him are from all different periods and are people fairly well-known, such as Alice Liddell Hargreaves (the child Lewis Carroll interacted with as a child and probably based his books off of) and Hermann Göring (a Nazi War criminal). He and the others around him now inhabit 25 year old, hairless, unblemished bodies in the peak of health and vitality.

The book opens with Richard Burton dying as an old man and then waking up on a strange, other world. He spoke 29 languages, an ability that comes in useful. The main protagonist of the novel is Sir Richard Francis Burton, a fascinating historical figure who was a skilled linguist, explorer, and translator (he translated 1,000 Arabian Nights and the Kama Sutra, for example). Riverworld is a skilled novel that mingles history and science fiction. Although it has its faults and is dated, it’s still an excellent novel and essential reading for a science fiction fan.

Farmer went on to write several other novels set in the same Riverworld, a planet that has been terraformed into one extensive river valley. This science fiction novel was published in 1971 and won the Hugo award in 1972.

To Your Scattered Bodies Go - Philip Jose Farmer - 208 pages

To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip José Farmer