To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971)

It was not his nature to give up until all his strength had been expended.

The title of this work is derived from 7th of the "Holy Sonnets" by John Donne:
At the round earth's imagin'd corners, blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go.

Resurrection, like politics, makes strange bedfellows.

Won the 1972 Hugo Award. All page numbers from the trade paperback edition published by Del Rey Books

• His wife had held him in her arms as if she could keep death away from him.
  He had cried out, "My God, I am a dead man!"
  • Chapter 1 (p. 1; First lines, depicting the death of Sir Richard Francis Burton).

• Death, the Destroyer of Delights and the Sunderer of Society, had arrived at last.
  Blackness. Nothingness. He did not even know that his heart had given out forever. Nothingness.
  Then his eyes opened. His heart was beating strongly. He was strong, very strong! All the pain of the gout in his feet, the agony in his liver, the torture in his heart, all were gone.
  It was so quiet he could hear the blood moving in his head. He was alone in a world of soundlessness.
  A bright light of equal intensity was everywhere. He could see, yet he did not understand what he was seeing. What were these things above, beside, below him? Where was he?
  • Chapter 1 (p. 1)

• The world took a shape which he could grasp, though he could not comprehend it. Above him, on both sides, below him, as far as he could see, bodies floated. They were arranged in vertical and horizontal rows. The up-and-down ranks were separated by red rods, slender as broomsticks, one of which was twelve inches from the feet of the sleepers and the other twelve inches from their heads. Each body was spaced about six feet from the body above and below and on each side.
  The rods came up from an abyss without bottom and soared into an abyss without ceiling. That grayness into which the rods and the bodies, up and down, right and left, disappeared was neither the sky nor the earth. There was nothing in the distance except the lackluster of infinity.
  • Chapter 1 (p. 3)

• It was like no hell or heaven of which he had ever heard or read, and he had thought that he was acquainted with every theory of the afterlife.
  He had died. Now he was alive. He had scoffed all his life at a life-after-death. For once, he could not deny that he had been wrong. But there was no one present to say, "I told you so, you damned infidel!"
  Of all the millions, he alone was awake.
  • Chapter 1 (pp. 3-4)

• In a frenzy, kicking his legs and moving his arms in a swimmer's breaststroke, he managed to fight toward the rod. The closer he got to it, the stronger the web of force became. He did not give up. If he did, he would be back where he had been and without enough strength to begin fighting again. It was not his nature to give up until all his strength had been expended.
  • Chapter 1 (p. 4)

• The aerial canoe had no visible means of support, he thought, and it was a measure of his terror that he did not even think about his pun. No visible means of support. Like a magical vessel out of The Thousand and One Nights.
  • Chapter 1 (pp. 5-6)

• All the human beings I met were either sure that there would be no afterlife or else that they would get preferential treatment in the hereafter.
  • Chapter 4 (p. 17)

• “I did it!” she said. “I...I! I wanted to! Oh, what a vile low whore I am!”
  “I don’t remember offering you any money.”
  • Chapter 8 (p. 54)

• Burton did not believe in miracles. Nothing happened that could not be explained by physical principles — if you knew all the facts.
  • Chapter 23 (p. 172)

• Burton, though an infidel, made it his business to investigate thoroughly every religion. Know a man’s faith, and you knew at least half the man. Know his wife, and you knew the other half.
  • Chapter 23 (p. 176)

• Burton sighed, laughed loudly, and said, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” Another fairy tale to give men hope. The old religions have been discredited — although some refuse to face even that fact — so new ones must be invented.”
  • Chapter 23 (p. 179)

The Fabulous Riverboat (1971)

• Resurrection, like politics, makes strange bedfellows.
  • First line, spoken by Sam Clemens.

The Dark Design (1977)

Dreams haunted The Riverworld.

The title of this work derives from lines in Sir Richard Francis Burton's poem The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî:
And still the Weaver plies his loom, whose warp and woof is wretched Man
Weaving th' unpattern'd dark design, so dark we doubt it owns a plan.

• Dreams haunted The Riverworld.
  • First lines.

• I do believe that man is a rope between animal and superman. But the superman I'm thinking of isn't Nietzsche's. The real superhuman, man or woman, is the person who's rid himself of all prejudices, neuroses, and psychoses, who realizes his full potential as a human being, who acts naturally on the basis of gentleness, compassion, and love, who thinks for himself and refuses to follow the herd. That's the genuine dyed-in-the-wool superman.
  • Ch. 31

• Suddenly he was weeping. The tears were for the good things that had been or might have been, for the bad things that had been but should not have been.
  • Ch. 67

The Magic Labyrinth (1980)

Soul has too many incorrect meanings for humans, too many verbal reverberations, too many contrary definitions.
Speak the word soul, and unbelievers will automatically become deaf to what follows....

The title of this work derives from lines in Sir Richard Francis Burton's poem The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî:
Reason is Life's sole arbiter, the magic Laby'rinth's single clue:
Worlds lie above, beyond its ken; what crosses it can ne'er be true.

Ka. That is the old Egyptian word for one of the several souls in their religion. Except for the Egyptians this will have no special connotation. And they can adapt to it.

How strange and unforeseeable... Alice, had inspired the nonsense not really nonsense, and this in circuitous and spiralling fashion had inspired her to do what all others had failed to do...

• Everybody should fear only one person, and that person should be himself.
  • First lines.

• According to Burton, the Ethical who talked to him did not agree with his fellows. Apparently, there was dissension even among those beings who we could account as gods. Dispute or discord in Olympus, if I may draw such a parallel. Though I do not think that the so-called Ethicals are gods, angels, or demons. They are human beings like us but advanced to a higher ethical plane. What their disagreement is, I frankly do not know. Perhaps it is about the means used to achieve a goal.
  • Ch. 19

• "Call me Meier," Goring said, but he did not pause to explain the joke.
  • Ch. 19

• By now you must have accepted the fact that your religion, in fact, none of the Earthly religions, truly knew what the afterlife would be. All made guesses, and then established these as articles of faith. Though, in a sense, some were near the mark, if you accept their revelations as symbolic.
  • Message of "The Visitor" Ch. 19

• The visitor said that his kind called themselves the Ethicals, though they had other names for themselves. They were on a higher plane of ethical development than most Earthlings. Notice that he said most. This indicates that there have been some of us who have achieved the same level as the Ethicals.
  • Ch. 19

• This is what the visitor said the Ethicals had learned from the Ancients. The Creator, God, the One Spirit, call it what you will, forms all. It is the universe; the universe is it. But its body is formed of two essences. One is matter, the other, for lack of a better word, is nonmatter.
  • Ch. 19

• Let's give this entity which you call soul another name. Soul has too many incorrect meanings for humans, too many verbal reverberations, too many contrary definitions.
  Speak the word soul, and unbelievers will automatically become deaf to what follows. Those who believe in souls will always hear you through the mental constructs that they formed on Earth. Let us call this nonmatter twin the... ah... ka. That is the old Egyptian word for one of the several souls in their religion. Except for the Egyptians this will have no special connotation. And they can adapt to it.
  • Ch. 20

• How strange and unforeseeable! The world had been saved, not by great rulers and statesmen, not by mystics and saints and prophets and messiahs, not by any of the holy scriptures, but by an introverted eccentric writer of mathematical texts and children's books and by the child who'd inspired him.
  The little girl become a woman, dream-ridden Alice, had inspired the nonsense not really nonsense, and this in circuitous and spiralling fashion had inspired her to do what all others had failed to do, to save eighteen billion souls and the world.
  • Section 14 : "Three-Cornered Play : Caroll to Alice to Computer"

Gods of Riverworld (1983)

• The truth is that you can be immortal, relatively so, anyway. You won't last beyond the death of the universe and probably not nearly as long as the universe does. But you have the potentiality for living a million years, two, perhaps three or more. As long as you can find a Terrestrial-type planet with a hot core and have resurrection machinery available.
  Unfortunately, not all can be permitted to possess immortality. Too many would make immortality miserable or hellish for the rest, and they would try to control others through their control of the resurrection machinery. Even so, everybody, without exception, is given a hundred years after his Earthly death to prove that he or she can live peacefully and in harmony with himself and the others, within the tolerable limits of human imperfections. Those who can do this will be immortal after the two projects are completed.