Another Chance

Philip José Farmer, writer of science fiction, died yesterday at 91. The NYT quotes the critic Leslie Fiedler, who said that Farmer had a “gargantuan lust to swallow down the whole cosmos, past, present and to come, and to spew it out again.”

The NYT article ends with the following paragraphs: “An agnostic from the age of 14, Mr. Farmer was ambivalent about humanity’s hunger for life after death. ‘I can’t see any reason why such miserable, unhappy, vicious, stupid, conniving, greedy, narrow-minded, self-absorbed beings should have immortality,’ he said in Science Fiction Review in 1975.

“But he added, ‘When considering individuals, then I feel, yes, this person, that person, certainly deserves another chance. Life on this planet,’ he said ‘is too short, too crowded, too hurried, too beset.’"