It only has five short stories and not the novella, The Lovers. While these stories do have their own positive aspects, the lack of truly unprecedented life forms in the third and fifth stories left me feeling a bit let down.ĭespite my criticisms, Philip José Farmer is still an author that expands my horizons in the world of science fiction and is enjoyable to read. The only reason for this is the familiarity of this body type for us Earth bound readers. When put into the perspective of the entire galaxy, there is noting mandating that intelligent life forms have to take on human like forms. One thing that irked me was the introduction of humanoid aliens. While the latter part of the book was of interest, it was not as strong as the beginning. I was a bit confused with this book as I moved onto the third story and did not realize that the remaining tales had nothing to do with first part of the book. In addition to that, I appreciated how these two tales were about different generations of the extraterrestrial species that interacted with the human being and how he impacted their society. The first two stories were extremely strong since they featured living organisms that were not humanoid in the least bit and lived in a manner much different to mankind's way of life. Instead, it focuses on an individual human and their intimate relationship with an extremely exotic alien life form or sentient robot.įarmer's greatest strength in this book is he creativity of these bizarre yet fascinating worlds and creatures that he has dreamed up. Strange Relations is not your typical soft science fiction that looks at how technology or alien species would impact society. Strange Relations: Five novelettes of unbounded imagination telling of strange-and often deadly-encounters between human and alien.

and unless he could escape, he would be the guest of honor at a fertility rite which would conclude with his very unpleasant death.

He was crowned the “Sunhero,” which was a very dubious honor. But Yarrow’s lifelong conditioning was no match for his strange attraction to Jeanette.įlesh: The starship captain had been on a voyage lasting 800 years, and returned to find an Earth ruled by revived ancient pagan rituals. Unconsecrated contact with any female was forbidden to Yarrow-and love for an alien female was an unspeakable abomination. Sent by the religious tyranny of a future Earth to the planet Ozagen, Hal Yarrow met Jeanette, an apparently human fugitive, hiding in ancient ruins built by a long-vanished race. The Lovers: One of the most controversial and groundbreaking novels in science fiction. Two complete novels and five novelettes that broke new ground in science fiction and established Philip Jose Farmer as a master of the genre:

Strange relations philip josé farmer