The Magic Labyrinth
First edition
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| Author | Philip José Farmer |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Riverworld |
| Genre | Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Phantasia Press |
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Publication date
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1980 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 5946381 |
| Preceded by | The Dark Design, 1977 |
| Followed by | Gods of Riverworld, 1983 |
The Magic Labyrinth (1980) is a science fiction novel, the fourth in the series of Riverworld books by Philip José Farmer. The title is derived from lines in Sir Richard Francis Burton's poem The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî:
Reason is Life's sole arbiter, the magic Laby'rinth's single clue:
Worlds lie above, beyond its ken; what crosses it can ne'er be true.
Originally intended to be the final book in the series, this book continues the chronicles of the adventures of Sir Richard Burton, Cyrano de Bergerac, Alice Liddell, Tom Mix, and Samuel Clemens through a bizarre afterlife in which every human is simultaneously resurrected along a single river valley covering an entire planet. Many questions about the creation and purpose of the Riverworld are answered, but several are left unanswered, prompting Farmer to write a fifth and final novel, Gods of Riverworld, in 1983.
Edgar L. Chapman wrote a 1984 biography of Farmer entitled The Magic Labyrinth of Philip José Farmer.
The book begins with the Mysterious Stranger, known as X, the renegade Ethical (one of the Riverworld's creators) who posed as the engineer Barry Thorne on the airship Parseval and there murdered Milton Firebrass and several others, all of whom were fellow Ethicals. He is now posing as a Mayan named Ah Qaaq, in the company of the Chinese poet Li Po. Through his internal reverie he reveals that his identity was discovered by Monat Grrautut, the director of the Riverworld project, who recalled 'X' to the Dark Tower to be judged. Against this, 'X' used a remote command to kill all the inhabitants of the tower and stop the resurrections of Riverworld's inhabitants. His reverie when the left bank's 'grailstones' (supplying food and stimulants) fail to operate and are not mended by the Ethicals, who are either dead or confined (like 'X' himself) to the river. After the grailstones fail, the inhabitants of the left bank invade the right for resources, and half of humanity dies in the conflict.
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