[The Facebook group Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Fiction is discussing one story a week from Dangerous Visions.]
First off, let me say that I believe “Riders of the Purple Wage” by Philip José Farmer is as complex and ambitious as John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar, which came out the year after Dangerous Visions. It’s not an easy story to read, and at 30,000 words it will feel overly bloated if you’re not in the mood for Farmer’s purple prose. It co-won the Hugo Award for best novella in 1968 and was up for a Nebula too. When I first read “Riders of the Purple Wage” back in the 1960s, I was still in high school, had not yet discovered James Joyce. I was clueless at what Farmer was attempting to do in the story. Still, it was my favorite story in the anthology.
When Dangerous Visions came out in audio a couple of months ago, I listened to “Riders of the Purple Wage.” It made all the difference at revealing Farmer’s literary ambitions and philosophical insights. Then before writing this review, I listened to the story again, and it was even more revealing. Unless you’re the kind of person who reads very slowly, working out all the intended voices, decoding all the allusions, I doubt you’ll get a fraction of what Farmer intended. I’ve listened to it twice now in two months, and I’ve hardly begun to comprehend everything Farmer is doing. To really understand “Riders of the Purple Wage” will require many close readings and listening, taking lots of notes. It’s easily worth a dissertation.
I highly recommend listening to “Riders of the Purple Wage.” Check your library. If you subscribe to Spotify for music, it’s there as part of your membership. I won’t recommend you buy Dangerous Visions at Audible just for one story unless you really want the whole anthology.
I also expect many people will read “Riders of the Purple Wage” and go “WTF is this crap!” I know that me liking something doesn’t mean others will like it.
Farmer is not working on the same literary level as James Joyce, but he’s trying his best to imitate the guy. Farmer was never a major science fiction writer despite Ellison’s introduction. His one major work, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, the first of his Riverworld series in 1971, shows tremendous imagination, but was a cheat in my book because he used Sir Richard Burton as his protagonist. I consider fiction that uses historical people for characters equal to doping a horse to win a race. And for much of his career after that, Farmer wrote pastiches based on famous real people and famous fictional people. In other words, I consider “Riders of the Purple Wage” the peak of Farmer’s creative efforts. (Although, Blown and Image of the Beast were very impressive.)
I don’t agree with Farmer in what he says in places, but I do admire his ambition.
Don’t let my enthusiasm for the story give you unfillable expectations. Farmer was born in 1918, and was almost fifty when he wrote “Riders of the Purple Wage.” His mid-1960s conservative views might offend some people, especially modern readers, but so will some of his liberal views. “Riders of the Purple Wage” is intentionally vulgar, gross, and punny. The setting is mid-22nd century, where most people live on a guaranteed income, the purple wage, and the government tries to eradicate wars by homogenizing the world’s population by forcing citizens to relocate to other countries. This story is both utopian and dystopian, and gives Farmer a chance to comment on politics, history, sexuality, psychology, literature, and anything else he can squeeze in.
“Riders of the Purple Wage” has a simple plot. Chibiabos Elgreco Winnegan, known as Chib, wants to win a grant for his artwork so he and his mother won’t be forced to emigrate to Egypt. He also wants to get away from his mother whom he had a sexual relationship with until adolescence, when she stop fulfilling his needs. Incest is accepted in this future society. Chib also hides his great grandfather from the authorities. Grandpa Winnegan is the philosopher of this story. He’s supposed to be dead, but the IRB thinks he’s still alive and sheltering a fortune. This plot description is just the skeleton. From just the bones, you won’t be able to imagine how big the full body of this story really is. Whether it’s all bloat will be up to you. Farmer does some furious tap dancing, but I can’t promise you’ll like his routine. I just marveled, thinking, “Look at that old man go!”
I wanted to describe everything in this novella and give my reaction, but I just don’t have the time, energy, or concentration. I’ve tried several times to collect appropriate quotes that would give a sense of the story, but that’s almost impossible. Taken out of context it makes them seem weird and confusing. Even listening to them in context requires a great deal of concentration. Farmer expects you to keep up.
To properly experience this story requires listening to it. Think of it as a one man show on Broadway. An intense experience that runs over two hours. But also imagine that one man one stage morphing between Jonathan Winters and Frank Zappa, to James Joyce and Bob Dylan, to R. A. Lafferty and Robert Sheckley, and at other times Robert A. Heinlein and Edgar Rice Burroughs doing imitations of Shakespeare, Dante, and Laurence Sterne. And if you can recognize them, several ancient Greeks, and Romans.
I get the feeling that Farmer was well educated and was bursting with ideas about how everything is interrelated. I’d love to see the letter Harlan Ellison sent Phil requesting he submit to the anthology. Farmer must have thought he had free rein to write anything. In his afterward, Farmer admits to originally producing 40,000 words, then cutting it to 20,000. Ellison says Farmer asked him if he could expand on that, which Ellison agreed, so Farmer built the story back to 30,000 words. Evidently, Farmer just ran with this story. I picture Farmer typing like a madman for days, just screaming and laughing manically at his own wittiness. I bet he loved writing this story. It runs 2 hours and 31 minutes on audio.
Farmer, in his afterword, also explains the story was inspired by an Ad Hoc Committee report to Lyndon B. Johnson. Farmer calls it the Triple Revolution document that covers (1) the Cybernetion Revolution, (2) the Weaponry Revolution, and (3) the Human Rights Revolution. And you can see all of that in “Riders of the Purple Wage.” The story does some major extrapolation, like I said, comparable to Stand on Zanzibar.
James Wallace Harris, 5/25/24