The Best of Farmerphile

Farmerphile: The Magazine of Philip Jose Farmer was a quarterly fanzine that ran fifteen issues from July 2005 to January 2009. Michael Croteau served as Publisher for all fifteen issues; Christopher Paul Carey and Paul Spiteri coedited the first ten issues, while Spiteri and Win Scott Eckert coedited the last five. Thanks to the generosity of Philip Jose Farmer and his Magic Filing Cabinet, Farmerphile published–for the first time anywhere–short stories (mostly not science fiction), excerpts, articles, speeches, and letters written by Farmer. Farmerphile also contained articles and appreciations from Farmer’s fans and from his fellow science fiction authors, from critiques of his work to stories of personal encounters, and everything between.

Now the hard part: narrowing down so much content into one Best of collection. This was much harder than it sounds, as nearly all the content was worthy of inclusion. So, we focused on broadly covering as much ground as possible, as well as including pieces that touched on Farmer’s personal life. Assembled here is a wealth of information about one of the greatest science fiction writers of all time along, with some of his earliest writing.

Included are essays by

Christopher Paul Carey, Win Scott Eckert, Paul Spiteri, Danny Adams, Art Sippo, Bob Zeuschner, Gary K. Wolfe, Robert R. Barrett, Will Murray, Tracy Knight, Steve Mattsson, Allen Steele, Alan Hanson, George H, Scheetz, Rhys Hughes, Spider Robinson, Joe R. Lansdale, Steve Mattsson, Heidi Ruby Miller, Tom Wode Bellman, Leo Queequeg Tincrowdor, and Bette Farmer.