Philip Jose Farmer

An author of many books and very short stories, Philip Jose Farmer was born in Indiana in 1918 to George and Lucile Jackson Farmer, but has called Peoria, Illinois, his home for the rest of his life. He transformed a science fiction novel with his short 1952 (later novel) novel entitled "The Lovers", the first science fiction novel to portray sex between a man and a non-human alien. Winner of three Hugo awards and was nominated by the Grand Master of Science-Fiction in 2001, his best-known series are made up of two TV movies: Riverworld (2003) and Riverworld (2010), both SyFy Channel. He is best known for writing novels around mythological characters such as Tarzan and Doc Savage - even writing a detailed biography of Tarzan - and his novel "Venus on the Half Shell" written under the names of Kilgore Trout, a character created by the novelist Kurt Vonnegut Jr.