It occurred to me this weekend that I ought to say something about Philip Jose Farmer's Hugo Award winning novella "Riders of the Purple Wage," as this is a blog aimed at readers, and sombunall of you would possibly be interested.
Published originally in Harlan Ellison's famous 1960s anthology, Dangerous Visions, "Riders of the Purple Wage" also has long been one of my favorite stories. RAW was a Farmer fan and Farmer was a RAW fan, as you can see here.
It is the earliest SF story I can think of that talks about a basic income guarantee (the "purple wage" of the story's title) and it contains many puns and explicitly name checks James Joyce's Finnegans Wake.
Aside from being found in Dangerous Visions, the story is reprinted in four Farmer collections, The Purple Book, Riders of the Purple Wage, The Best of Philip Jose Farmer and The Classic Philip Jose Farmer 1964-1973 and also is found in an early Hugo Awards anthology, the vol. 1 and 2 book edited by Isaac Asimov. For information about Farmer, go here.
1 comment:
I was hoping he would expand it into a huge Stand on Zanzibar-like book, but he didn’t.
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