To Your Scattered Bodies Go
- 221
- Pages
- about 4 h
- Reading time
- Hugo Award for Best Novel
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Our view
“To Your Scattered Bodies Go” starts from a premise of rare nerve: everyone who ever lived wakes from death at the same moment. Farmer uses it to set historical figures beside aliens and to debate religion, race, sex and what people are once society has been stripped away. The book is short, the first of the five “Riverworld” novels, and gives a reading group plenty to quarrel over.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971) is a science fiction novel by American writer Philip José Farmer, the first book in the Riverworld series. It won a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1972 at the 30th Worldcon. The title is derived from the 7th of the "Holy Sonnets" by English poet John Donne:At the round earth's imagin'd corners, blowYour trumpets, angels, and arise, ariseFrom death, you numberless infinitiesOf souls, and to your scattered bodies go
Reading order · Riverworld
Full order & progress →- To Your Scattered Bodies GoThis book
7.77.7 / 10 - The Fabulous Riverboat
7.67.6 / 10 - The Dark Design
–Not ranked yet - The Magic Labyrinth
–Not ranked yet - Gods of Riverworld
–Not ranked yet
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.4 across 179 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 55% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Science fiction average of 7.8. That is how 7.7 comes out. A further +0.10 comes from the small bonus for major awards.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.0 | 24 | 13% |
| Hardcover | 7.5 | 155 | 87% |
Frequently asked
How long is To Your Scattered Bodies Go?
It has 221 pages — shorter than 91% of the ranked books in Science fiction.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
The same shelf — Science fiction — and a score of 7.7, the closest to this book.
