The Dark Design (Gateway Essentials Book 275)

Très déçue par ce livre. A part le début il ne s'agit pour son auteur que de faire une énumération de tous les grands hommes de l'histoire. c'est prétentieux et ennuyant, pas d'imagination, il ne fait que se faire plaisir en énumérant ce qu'il sait de leur histoire et ça n'a rien à voir avec de la science fiction, à part le fait évidemment qu'ils sont de nouveau vivants!

Philip José Farmer originally intended his "Riverworld" series to be a trilogy, but if it had been published as such it would have been a very unbalanced one, with the third volume more than twice as long as the other two put together. Farmer therefore divided his final instalment into two to form the books we now know as "The Dark Design" and "The Magic Labyrinth", and eventually decided to add a fifth volume, "The Gods of Riverworld", to form a pentalogy.I won't set out the basic concept behind the Riverworld books; anyone reading a review of the third volume in the series is probably familiar with it already. Whereas the two previous volumes concentrated upon a single protagonist, Sir Richard Francis Burton in "To Your Scattered Bodies Go" and Sam Clemens alias Mark Twain in "The Fabulous Riverboat", "The Dark Design" weaves together three plotlines. One involves Farmer's alter ego Peter Jairus Frigate and his adventures on the river with the writer Jack London and the silent film star Tom Mix, both of whom are for some reason travelling under false identities.The other two plotlines involve attempts by separate parties to reach the headwaters of the river near Riverworld's North Pole; they believe that it is there, and particularly inside a mysterious tower, that they may find the solution to the riddle of why Riverworld has been created. (It appears that those responsible are a group known as the "Ethicals", but exactly who these people are, and what their motives are, remains obscure both to the inhabitants of Riverworld and to the reader). One of these groups is led by Burton, the other by Milton Firebrass who has succeeded Clemens as president of Parolando and has ordered the construction of an airship, which he believes will be able to reach the Pole more quickly than a boat.Whereas apart from Frigate most of the main characters in the earlier instalments were real historical individuals, in "The Dark Design" there is more emphasis on purely fictional characters. Firebrass is one of these; another is the Australian airship pilot Jill Gulbirra. The book was published in 1977 and Farmer lived long enough to see that his predictions of how technology might develop in the late twentieth century were not always accurate. He foresaw, for example, a major revival of the airship in the 1980s and we learn that Fairbrass, during his terrestrial existence in the 1990s, was an American astronaut involved in manned space flights to Mars and Jupiter.Jill seems to have been created to answer criticisms that in the earlier volumes the female characters were too weak, but here Farmer seems to have gone to the opposite extreme, making Jill so strident and aggressive that she comes across like a caricature of a seventies feminist.The title is derived from "The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi", a poem by Burton which contains the following lines, quoted at the beginning of the book:-"And still the Weaver plies his loom, whose warp and woof is wretched ManWeaving th' unpattern'd dark design, so dark we doubt it owns a plan".The significance of these lines is twofold. The words "dark design" can be taken as referring to the unfathomable plans of the Ethicals in creating Riverworld. Burton's "Kasidah", however, has been seen as reflecting his interest in Sufism, a mystical form of Islam, an interest which Farmer may have shared. Certainly, some passages in "The Dark Design" have a markedly mystical tone, and two characters, Frigate's Arab companion Nur ed Din and a Japanese airship pilot who calls himself Piscator (Latin for "fisherman"), are both practising Sufis.I must admit that I did not enjoy this book as much as its two predecessors. While the basic Riverworld concept is still an entertaining one, the structure of "The Dark Design", jumping from one plot-line to another without warning is an over-complicated and confusing one, especially as the timescale is not always made clear. At around twice the length of either "To Your Scattered Bodies Go" or "The Fabulous Riverboat", the novel is overlong and at times Farmer's prose becomes ponderous and heavy-going. That quote from Burton is perhaps, unfortunately, appropriate in a way the author did not intend. "The Dark Design" can seem unpatterned and I found myself doubting whether it owned a plan.

The suspense continues to build as characters from the first two books continue to try to become capable enough to reach the end/beginning of the great river and discover why Riverworld was created, Through three books now, the only things that date the material are the slight racism of depicting Black Power and the condescending view of Women's Lib, both huge topics in america at the time the books were written, Otherwise, Farmer has built a fully fleshed out, rational world which is the primary goal of every science fiction writer. The world is believable and the mystery is compelling. I first read the series in college (almost forty years ago!) at a time when I was also absorbing every Vonnegut novel I could find. Of course, now I have the time to reread it at a more leisurely pace rather than rush through it. It's a brilliant concept that allows the author to bring any great figure in human history into the story with sometimes funny results. I certainly find it worth reading again and I may reread Larry Niven's Ringworld next.

The " Riverworld: Including To Your Scattered Bodies Go & The Fabulous Riverboat " series has fascinated me ever since the first book was published while I was in high school. I have read them all, more than once. " The Dark Design (Riverworld Saga) " does not reach the literary heights of the first book, but then, follow up books seldom do. As in any long-running, multi-book series by a modern author, the prose in this one needs a good copy editor. There are a number of useless scenes and meaningless dialogues. Still, for someone who loves River World and wants to spend as much time as possible exploring it's landscape, The Dark Design will provide the exhausting immersion they are looking for. The Dark Design is well worth reading, but only a true fan will have the patience for it. Riverworld: Including To Your Scattered Bodies Go & The Fabulous RiverboatThe Dark Design (Riverworld Saga)

You feel you're going to get some really revelatory answers but they're just not that amazing. I still enjoyed this book, and continued to buy the next in the series but I was starting to tire. I feel you have to approach these books in the context of the world/time they were written. Today we are bombarded with ideas and TV programmes/films. Perhaps we expect more as a result. This is good but maybe not so cutting edge?