Off to the valley

• Philip Jose Farmer, 1918-2009.

...Farmer's career mixed acclaim, and daring that courted infamy. With stories like "The Lovers," which won him a Hugo for "most promising new writer in 1953, and novels such as Flesh, Farmer made great strides toward bringing sexual frankness into science fiction.

Farmer also found fertile grounds in the margins of other creators' works, revisiting and revising characters such as Doc Samson and Tarzan, both of whom became subjects of Farmer's fictional biographies. He also published a novel under the name of "Kilgore Trout," borrowing the name from Kurt Vonnegut's fictional writer, reportedly much to Vonnegut's chagrin. Farmer found his greatest following with a pair of ongoing series: The Riverworld and World Of Tiers cycles.