Opar is a fictional lost city in the Tarzan novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs and later the Khokarsa novels of Philip José Farmer and Christopher Paul Carey , as well as various derivative works in other media.
53-536: Opar or OPAR may refer to: Opar (fictional city) , a fictional lost city in Edgar Rice Burroughs's series of Tarzan novels Opar (state constituency) , a state constituency of Malaysia Opar, Albania OPAR L'Orientale Open Archive , the institutional repository of the University of Naples, Italy Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand ,
106-576: A "gargantuan lust to swallow down the whole cosmos, past, present and to come, and to spew it out again." Isaac Asimov praised Farmer as an "excellent science fiction writer; in fact, a far more skillful writer than I am...." But Christopher Lehmann-Haupt dismissed him in The New York Times in 1972 as "a humdrum toiler in the fields of science fiction." In 2001 Farmer won the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement and
159-493: A book by Leonard Peikoff GTRI Office of Policy Analysis and Research , a think tank at the Georgia Tech Research Institute See also [ edit ] All pages with titles containing Opar Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Opar . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change
212-530: A career as a technical writer . He spent the next 14 years working in that capacity for various defense contractors , from Syracuse, New York to Los Angeles, while writing science fiction in his spare time. Farmer won a second Hugo award in 1968, in the category Best Novella, for Riders of the Purple Wage , a pastiche of James Joyce 's Finnegans Wake as well as a satire on a futuristic, cradle-to-grave welfare state . Reinvigorated, Farmer became
265-651: A far-future sequel to Herman Melville 's Moby-Dick ; The Other Log of Phileas Fogg (1973), which fills in the missing time periods from Jules Verne 's Around the World in Eighty Days ; and A Barnstormer in Oz (1982), in which Dorothy's adult son, a pilot, flies to the Land of Oz by accident. He has often written about the pulp heroes Tarzan and Doc Savage , or pastiches thereof: In his novel The Adventure of
318-500: A full-time writer again in 1969. Upon moving back to Peoria in 1970, he entered his most prolific period, publishing 25 books in 10 years. His novel To Your Scattered Bodies Go (a reworking of the unpublished prize-winning first novel of 20 years before) won him a third Hugo in 1972, for Best Novel. A 1975 novel, Venus on the Half-Shell , created a stir in the larger literary community and media. It purported to be written in
371-561: A local steel mill. He later continued his education, however, earning a bachelor's degree in English from Bradley University in 1950 at the age of 32. Farmer had his first literary success when his novella The Lovers was published by Samuel Mines in Startling Stories , August 1952. It features a sexual relationship between a human and an extraterrestrial . He won a Hugo Award for Best New SF Author or Artist in 1953,
424-462: A number of pseudonymous "fictional author" stories, mostly for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction . These were stories whose "authors" are characters in other stories. The first such story was "by" Jonathan Swift Somers III (invented by Farmer himself in Venus on the Half-Shell but inspired by one of the dead voices of Spoon River Anthology ). Later Farmer used the "Cordwainer Bird" byline,
477-453: A real Tarzan by having a child kidnapped and then brought up subject to the same tragic events which shaped Tarzan in the original books. In his incomplete historical Khokarsa cycle — Hadon of Ancient Opar (1974) and Flight to Opar (1976) — Farmer portrayed the "lost city" of Opar , which plays an important part in the Tarzan saga, in the time of its glory as a colony city of
530-548: A small backwater in the Khokarsan realm. Farmer's novels mix in characters from the Tarzan series and H. Rider Haggard 's Allan Quatermain series. Specifically, he strongly hints that the character Sahhindar—alias of the time traveler John Gribardsun from his novel Time's Last Gift —is in fact Tarzan himself, while the characters Lalia and Paga are his versions of Haggard's Laleela and Pag. While Farmer wrote only two finished Opar novels, he originally planned to continue
583-454: A traditionally female middle name and wanted to lend color to what he felt was an otherwise rather drab name. Farmer grew up in Peoria, Illinois , where he attended Peoria High School . His father was a civil engineer and a supervisor for the local power company. A voracious reader as a boy, Farmer said he resolved to become a writer in the fourth grade. He underwent basic religious training in
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#1732776662007636-446: Is a lost colony of Atlantis located deep in the jungles of Africa , in which incredible riches have been stockpiled down through the ages. The city's population exhibits extreme sexual dimorphism caused by a combination of excessive inbreeding , cross-breeding with apes, and selective culling of offspring. Consequently, female Oparians appear perfectly human, while male Oparians are apelike brutes. The ruler and high priestess of
689-473: Is also much that is Jungian and Reichian in my works". Farmer's fiction frequently included religious themes; he once went so far as to muse that "religion is the earliest form of science fiction". Raised in the Christian Science church, he lost his religious faith in early youth. Nevertheless, he eventually found that he was not truly indifferent to religion, but was "powerfully attracted by
742-957: Is best known for two sequences of novels, the World of Tiers (1965–93) and Riverworld (1971–83) series. He is noted for the pioneering use of sexual and religious themes in his work, his fascination for, and reworking of, the lore of celebrated pulp heroes , and occasional tongue-in-cheek pseudonymous works written as if by fictional characters. Farmer often mixed real and classic fictional characters and worlds and real and fake authors as epitomized by his Wold Newton family books, which tie classic fictional characters together as real people and blood relatives resulting from an alien conspiracy. Such works as The Other Log of Phileas Fogg (1973) and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life (1973) are early examples of literary mashup novels . Literary critic Leslie Fiedler compared Farmer to Ray Bradbury , describing both as "provincial American eccentrics" who "strain at
795-612: Is condemned to be trapped inside a rat's body. The City of Opar was mentioned in passing in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen graphic novels. The City of Opak-Re in the Planetary comic-book series is a pastiche of the City of Opar. Philip Jos%C3%A9 Farmer Philip José Farmer (January 26, 1918 – February 25, 2009) was an American author known for his science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories . Farmer
848-720: Is not part of the series as such, it does include the second-published Riverworld story, which is free-standing rather than integrated into one of the novels. The first two Riverworld books were originally published as novellas, "The Day of the Great Shout" and "The Suicide Express," and as a two-part serial, "The Felled Star," in the science fiction magazines Worlds of Tomorrow and If between 1965 and 1967. The separate novelette "Riverworld" ran in Worlds of Tomorrow in January 1966. A final pair of linked novelettes appeared in
901-437: Is our gravest concern. Without a belief in eternal life for us, the terrestrial existence is something to be gotten through with as little pain and as much pleasure as possible. If this conclusion is the triumph of irrationality over logic, so be it." In his groundbreaking novella The Lovers (1952) he invented a fictional religion based on J. W. Dunne 's "Serialism" . The novel Night of Light (1957, expanded 1966) takes
954-718: Is revisited in the fifth, Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar (1916); the ninth, Tarzan and the Golden Lion (1923); and the fourteenth, Tarzan the Invincible (1930). Exiles from Opar also appear in Burroughs' 1936 juvenile story "Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins, with Jad-Bal-Ja, the Golden Lion" (later published as the second part of Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins in 1963). The events of this story occur between those of
1007-546: The Church of Christ, Scientist ( Christian Science ) as a child, which he later characterized as a "peculiar background" for a science fiction writer. He became an agnostic at the age of 14, and ultimately an atheist, though not, he said, indifferent to religion. At age 23, in 1941, he married Bette V. Andre and eventually fathered a son and a daughter. After washing out of flight training in World War II , he went to work in
1060-512: The Science Fiction Writers of America made him its 19th SFWA Grand Master in the same year. Farmer's output slowed, but he continued to be active, publishing one novel and co-authoring three others (as well as producing about 20 short stories) in his last decade. He died on February 25, 2009. He was survived by his wife Bette, two children, five grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. The Riverworld series follows
1113-626: The first person by one " Kilgore Trout ," a fictional character appearing as an underappreciated science fiction writer in several of Kurt Vonnegut 's novels. The escapade did not please Vonnegut when some reviewers not only concluded that it had been written by Vonnegut himself, but that it was a worthy addition to his works. Farmer did have permission from Vonnegut to write the book, although Vonnegut later said he regretted giving permission. Farmer had both critical champions and detractors. Leslie Fiedler proclaimed him "the greatest science fiction writer ever" and lauded his approach to storytelling as
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#17327766620071166-681: The 1990s: "Crossing the Dark River" (in Tales of Riverworld , 1992) and "Up the Bright River" (in Quest to Riverworld , 1993). Farmer introduced himself into the series as Peter Jairus Frigate (PJF). The Riverworld series originated in a novel, Owe for the Flesh , written in one month in 1952 as a contest entry. It won the contest, but the book was left unpublished and orphaned when the prize money
1219-502: The Beast and the sequel Blown from 1968 to 1969 explore group sex , interplanetary travel, and interplay between fictional figures like Herald Childe and real people like Forry Ackerman . In the World of Tiers series he explores Oedipal themes. In 1982, Farmer acknowledged that most of literary critic Leslie Fiedler 's "Freudian" analysis of his work is valid, but insisted that "there
1272-463: The Leopard Men (1935). When La's sceptre is destroyed, the Leopard Men revert into their original leopard forms, La disintegrates into dust and Opar crumbles into oblivion. Even after the release of the Leopard Men, La's spirit possesses Jane and she (briefly) revives the city and creates statue warriors until Tarzan and a native African shaman interfere. Opar is again destroyed and La's ghost
1325-521: The Peerless Peer , Tarzan and Sherlock Holmes team up. Farmer's Lord Grandrith and Doc Caliban series portray analogues of Tarzan and Doc Savage. It consists of A Feast Unknown (1969), Lord of the Trees (1970) and The Mad Goblin (1970). Farmer has also written two mock biographies of both characters, Tarzan Alive (1972) and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life (1973), which adopt
1378-525: The Roman Catholic faith". Immortality, the afterlife and soteriology were particular theological concerns for him. "The brain, knowing that a person can't live forever in this world, rationalizes a future, or other-dimensional, world in which immortality is possible.... For me, only those stories concerned with this one vital issue are serious stories. All others, no matter how moving or profound, are mere entertainments. They do not deal with that which
1431-403: The Tarzan books, including the ultimate fate of Opar. Tarzan himself returns to Opar, finds it empty or abandoned, tours the ruins, and (out of respect) decides to hide the city from modern curiosity by diverting a river to bury it in sediment. Opar is also the eponymous setting of Farmer's novels Hadon of Ancient Opar (1974) and Flight to Opar (1976), which focus on the ancient history of
1484-473: The Tarzan theme combined with time travel , using the transparently reverse-syllabled name of "Sahhindar" for his hero (and the book's initials, TLG, as code for "Tarzan, Lord Greystoke"). A short story on this theme is "The Jungle Rot Kid on the Nod" (1968): "if William S. rather than Edgar Rice [Burroughs] had written Tarzan," Farmer also wrote Lord Tyger (1970) about a ruthless millionaire who tries to create
1537-512: The adventures of such diverse characters as Richard Francis Burton , Hermann Göring , and Samuel Clemens through a bizarre afterlife in which every human ever to have lived is simultaneously resurrected along a single river valley that stretches over an entire planet. The series consists of To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971), The Fabulous Riverboat (1971), The Dark Design (1977), The Magic Labyrinth (1980) and Gods of Riverworld (1983). Although Riverworld and Other Stories (1979)
1590-804: The brief mention of his death early in The Magic Labyrinth ) and in the 1979 novel Jesus on Mars . Other examples of religious themes include the short stories "J.C. on the Dude Ranch", "The God Business", "The Making of Revelation, Part I", and the novels Inside, Outside (1964) — which may or may not be set in Hell — and Traitor to the Living (1973), among many others. Many of Farmer's works rework existing characters from fiction and history, as in The Wind Whales of Ishmael (1971),
1643-486: The city is Queen La , who on her first encounter with Tarzan falls in love with him, and subsequently carries a torch for him. Tarzan, already committed to Jane Porter , spurns her advances, thus endangering his own life, as the religion of Opar condones human sacrifice. Yet he returns to the lost city time and again to replenish his personal wealth from its hoarded treasure. After its initial appearance in Burroughs's second Tarzan novel, The Return of Tarzan (1913), Opar
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1696-403: The city some 10,000 years in the past. In Farmer's vision, the interior of Africa was then occupied by two huge linked inland seas , which were the cradle of a pre- Egyptian civilization called Khokarsa . This primeval empire was based on an island in the more northern sea, taken to be Atlantis in the Tarzan books; the city of Opar, located on the more southerly sea, is portrayed as having been
1749-531: The city's populace was on the verge of extinction at the time of the events in the original Tarzan novels. As Edgar Rice Burroughs made clear, there had been cross-breeding with the caveman-like " great ape " humanoids and the adoption of that animalistic language. Farmer continues the line of thinking, suggesting that a social desire for perfectly beautiful female babies and perfectly brutish male babies, perhaps coupled with infanticide, led to fatal decline of an already benighted city. The novel also relates events after
1802-471: The classic limits of the [science fiction] form," but found Farmer distinctive for his capacity "to be at once naive and sophisticated in his odd blending of theology, pornography, and adventure." Farmer was born in North Terre Haute, Indiana . His parents gave him the middle name "Josie", from his paternal grandmother Josephine, but Farmer later changed it himself to “José” as he resented having
1855-403: The details of how it all happened. The series is set within a number of artificially constructed parallel universes (of which Earth is one), created tens of thousands of years ago by a race of human beings not from Earth who had achieved an advanced level of technology which gave them almost godlike power and immortality. The principal universe in which these stories take place, and from which
1908-406: The empire of Khokarsa. One of the books mentions a mysterious grey-eyed traveller, clearly "Sahhindar"/Tarzan. Farmer wrote Venus on the Half-Shell (1975) under the name Kilgore Trout , a fictional author who appears in the works of Kurt Vonnegut . He had planned to write more of Trout's fictional books (notably Son of Jimmy Valentine ), but Vonnegut put an end to those plans. Farmer's use of
1961-482: The first of three Hugo awards he won in his career. Thus encouraged, he quit his job to become a full-time writer, entered a publisher's contest, and promptly won first prize for a novel, Owe for the Flesh , that contained the germ of his later Riverworld series. But the book was not published and Farmer did not get the $ 4,000 prize money that was supposed to go to the winner. Literary success did not translate into financial security, so he left Peoria in 1956 to launch
2014-638: The genre. He was one of three persons to whom Robert A. Heinlein dedicated Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), a novel which explored sexual freedom as one of its primary themes. Moreover, Fire and the Night (1962) is a mainstream novel about an interracial romance; it features sociological and psychosexual twists. In Night of Light (1966), he devised an alien race where aliens have only one mother but several fathers, perhaps because of an unusual or untenable physical position that cannot be reached or continued by two individuals acting alone. Both Image of
2067-554: The groundwork for his own continuations of Farmer's Ancient Opar series, which include the novellas Hadon, King of Opar (2015) and Blood of Ancient Opar (2016). On film, Opar was seen in the early Tarzan films The Adventures of Tarzan (1921), based on The Return of Tarzan ; and Tarzan the Tiger (1929), based on Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar ; as well as the film Tarzan and the Lost City (1998). Opar also appeared, in
2120-594: The guise of a generic African village, in Tarzan and the Lost Safari (1957), in which the Oparians were led by the male chief Chief Ogonooro (played by Orlando Martins ) rather than the female queen/priestess La . In the pre-title opening sequence for The Legend of Tarzan (2016) , a fictionalized Léon Rom , portrayed by Christoph Waltz , led an expedition to secure the fabled diamonds of Opar to help finance
2173-493: The link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Opar&oldid=995993051 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Opar (fictional city) The city first appeared in Burroughs' second Tarzan novel, The Return of Tarzan (1913). As envisioned by Burroughs, Opar
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2226-489: The main character in the series.) The series consists of The Maker of Universes (1965), The Gates of Creation (1966), A Private Cosmos (1968), Behind the Walls of Terra (1970), The Lavalite World (1977) and More Than Fire (1993). Roger Zelazny has mentioned that The World of Tiers was something he had in his mind when he created his Amber series. A related novel is Red Orc's Rage (1991), which does not involve
2279-469: The ninth and fourteenth Tarzan novels. Hints at the nature and origins of Opar appear in Philip José Farmer 's fictional biography Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke (1972). This book attempts to add a high degree of realism and plausibility to the Tarzan stories, including references to Opar. Farmer conjectures on the inhabitants of Opar, and even goes to suggest that
2332-529: The novella The Lovers , earned him the Hugo Award for Best New SF Author or Artist in 1953, and is critically recognized as the story that broke the taboo on sex in science fiction . (Farmer's talk at the award ceremony was entitled “Science Fiction and the Kinsey Report”. ) It instantly put Farmer on the literary map. The short story collection Strange Relations (1960) was a notable event in
2385-455: The premise that the two were based on real people fictionalized by their original chroniclers, and connect them genealogically with a large number of other well-known fictional characters in a schema now known as the " Wold Newton family ." Further, Farmer wrote both an authorized Doc Savage novel, Escape from Loki (1991) and an authorized Tarzan novel, The Dark Heart of Time (1999). In his 1972 novel Time's Last Gift, Farmer also explored
2438-451: The principal characters of the other books directly, but does provide background information to certain events and characters portrayed in the other novels. This is the most "psychological" of Farmer's novels. Farmer's work often handles sexual themes; some early works were notable for their ground-breaking introduction of such material to popular science fiction literature. His first published science fiction story (with one minor exception),
2491-447: The pseudonym had caused confusion among many readers, who for some time assumed that Vonnegut was behind it; when the truth of Venus on the Half-Shell' s authorship came out, Vonnegut was reported as being "not amused." In an issue of the semi-prozine The Alien Critic/Science Fiction Review, published by Richard E. Geis , Farmer claimed to have received an angry, obscenity-laden telephone call from Vonnegut about it. Thereafter Farmer wrote
2544-468: The rather unholy Father John Carmody on an odyssey on an alien world where spiritual forces are made manifest in the material world. In Flesh (1960) astronauts return to an Earth 800 years in their future dominated by a pagan goddess-worshiping religion. Jesus of Nazareth shows up as a character in both the Riverworld series (in the 1966 novelette "Riverworld" — but not in the novels, except for
2597-401: The series derives its name, consists of an enormous tiered planet, shaped like a stack of disks or squat cylinders, of diminishing radius, one atop the other. The series follows the adventures of several of these godlike humans and several "ordinary" humans from Earth who accidentally travel to these artificial universes. (One of those "ordinary" humans was Paul Janus Finnegan [PJF], who becomes
2650-562: The series, and in fact left two incomplete Opar works: the novel The Song of Kwasin and novella "Kwasin and the Bear God". Both were later completed by Christopher Paul Carey (known best for his work on the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game ), and later the novels were all compiled into the omnibus Gods of Opar . Carey went on to write an original Opar novella, a prequel called Exiles of Kho (2012). This provided
2703-486: The take-over of the African Congo for King Leopold II of Belgium . Rom's heavily-armed expedition was ambushed and massacred by native warriors, with only Rom himself surviving. Their tribal leader, Chief Mbonga ( Djimon Hounsou ), offered Rom the diamonds in exchange for Tarzan ( Alexander Skarsgård ). The film itself only mentioned Opar but did not actually show the lost city. Opar has also appeared in some of
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#17327766620072756-540: The television series based on the Tarzan books. Most notably it appeared in the Disney TV adaptation , with La still ruling. However, the city's populace are humanoid leopards called the Leopard Men, who act as La's soldiers and servants. The Leopard Men are distantly based on the Leopard Society , a historical West African cult that Edgar Rice Burroughs had fictionalized in the non-Opar Tarzan novel Tarzan and
2809-483: Was misappropriated, and Farmer nearly gave up writing altogether. The original manuscript of the novel was lost , but years later Farmer reworked the material into the Riverworld magazine stories mentioned above. Eventually, a copy of a revised version of the original novel surfaced in a box in a garage and was published as River of Eternity by Phantasia Press in 1983. Farmer's introduction to this edition gives
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