Philip José Farmer's The Dungeon 06] - The Final Battle

FOREWORD
CHAPTER 1 The Ninth Level
CHAPTER 2 The Frozen Giant
CHAPTER 3 "Your Eyes Will Remain Open!"
CHAPTER 4 No Roman Orgy
CHAPTER 5 "Death Is the Least Fearsome Thing"
CHAPTER 6 "I Am Not at All Surprised!"
CHAPTER 7 But the Smallest Hint
CHAPTER 8 Into the Very Den of Peril
CHAPTER 9 The First of the Folliots
CHAPTER 10 He Is Long Dead
CHAPTER 11 Neither Fang nor Claw nor Venomous Barb
CHAPTER 12 The Dandy and the Count
CHAPTER 13 As an Alien in Eden
CHAPTER 14 "Your Dinner Had Grown Cold"
CHAPTER 15 By Cab to the Stars
CHAPTER 16 Expedition from Earth
CHAPTER 17 Novum Araltum
CHAPTER 18 "Clive, My Darling Clive"
CHAPTER 19 Prepare for the Final Onslaught!
CHAPTER 20 "From Among Mine Enemies, Clive Folliot!"
CHAPTER 21 "I Thought I Had Seen the Ultimate!"
CHAPTER 22 "The Gennine—Face to Face!"
CHAPTER 23 Now and for All Eternity
CHAPTER 24 "It Comes in the End to This!"
CHAPTER 25 Master Versus Master
Selections From the Sketchbook of Major Clive Folliot

 

WELCOME TO THE DUNGEON

 

It is a struggle across the frozen, barren land of the polar ice caps.

It is a dark and mysterious maze of tunnels below 19th century London and a pub that transforms into Hell itself.

It is a journey through space and a strange asteroid where giant insect monsters wait to attack.

It is the ninth and final level of the labyrinth… and a final battle with the Masters of the Dungeon.

 

Ask your bookseller for all six volumes

of Philip Jose Farmer's
The Dungeon

 

The Black Tower

The Dark Abyss

The Valley of Thunder

The Lake of Fire

The Hidden City

The Final Battle

 

 

Here at hand is a book which resembles, in many respects, the final book of the Bible,
The Revelation of Saint John the Divine
.

All things are explained; all loose threads are tied together. The mysteries and The Mystery are revealed. The trumpets of the angels announce the falling away of the veils, and we see who are the angels, who are the devils, who are the villains, and who are the heroes and heroines.

I won't disclose who wins this mighty battle. Read for yourself.

This is Volume VI:
The Final Battle
of
The Dungeon
series. It is the last of the epic that began with Volume I:
The Black Tower
. Both were written by Richard Lupoff. Volumes II-V were created by different writers. These were derived from the "spirit" of my own works, not as spinoffs from any one of my series or stands-by-itself stories.

I have been worrying—somewhat—about the immense task Richard Lupoff would have when he wrote this concluding volume. He gave it a magnificent start, started the ball rolling. No, that's not accurate. What he did was to start an avalanche. His first book was the explosion that caused the avalanche. Each succeeding book added to the mass sliding and rumbling down the mountain. And Lupoff had no idea how each writer would develop the plot and introduce new themes, twists, and characters which he did not have to explain.

It was like five weavers working on one tapestry, and four of them given only general directions about the pattern to be woven. When these had done their work, the first weaver became the last one. It was his goal to finish the pattern and to make sense of the work of the other four. He had to make a pattern which would, in a sense, magically reshape the other patterns so that the result was one self-consistent work.

On the whole, this goal was achieved.

Only a writer would know how much Lupoff had to sweat and strain and reach way down into his pocket of imagination and ingenuity to find explanations for things which he had not dreamed of when he wrote the initial volume.

He had to dive deep to bring up the pearl of great price.

You not only have this pearl at hand. You have a book (considering this volume as part of one six-volumed book) which is a sort of encyclopaedia—or compendium—of most of the traditional themes of science fiction and fantasy. In addition, there are new themes. But the traditional ones are recut to make novel facets.

Old or traditional themes, such as time travel, parallel worlds, alternate universes, shape-changing, and so on have never died out or become obsolete. They are being reworked and will always be reworked. Human ingenuity finds new uses or applications and new explanations for the traditional themes.

This set of six volumes (a sexology?) has all of them or almost all of them. In fact, if I had written the final volume, I might have slyly inserted a Magical Kitchen Sink. Or a Chirality or Superstring Kitchen Sink in order to make it scientific-sounding.

Doing this is one of my weaknesses. I can't help it if I am sometimes facetious.

One of the inventions I admire in this series is Esmond the Unborn. There may be a literary precedent for Esmond, but I don't know of it; although there is a reference to an Uni the Unborn in a genealogy in the Icelandic saga,
The Story of Burnt Njal
. But this is just a name with no explanation about the epithet. (How would you like to go through life with this name?) I doubt if this was the source for the character of Esmond.

You have here a work the range of which exceeds that of the poet John Milton (1608-1674). His great epic works were about Heaven and Hell and the conflict between good and evil. These were
Paradise Lost
and
Paradise Regained
. This series,
The Dungeon
, not only covers the above subjects and locales, it goes beyond them into other dimensions.

The language, of course, is not Miltonic. If it were, you probably wouldn't be reading this series. (My apologies to those who would read both.) But its scope certainly is Miltonic, and it, too, is about the battle between good and evil. The good guys, however, reflect reality. They have certain touches of evil; they're not perfect. But the hero, for instance, while battling Nature and hostile beings and forces, is also battling inside himself to overcome his prejudices and irrational attitudes.

In this respect, Clive Folliot is human, unlike Milton's Satan. Being a fallen angel, Satan has no self-doubts or any consciousness of being wrong. His only doubts are whether or not he is going to win the battle against Heaven. Our hero, Folliot, has his doubts about winning over the forces of evil, of, in a real sense, the hosts of Hell. But, since this is a science fiction story, Hell is something different in origin and nature from Milton's Hell. And it does not spawn beings of the same, origin, though their nature is the same.

In fact, without a program, you can't distinguish the angels from the devils. You have to wait for the final act.

But isn't this true of our own world, of the Earth we know? Haven't we mistaken angels for devils and vice versa? And, though people can't change their shapes in this real world, don't they do the equivalent? Put on different masks, play different roles, depending upon their environment and the people they deal with?

We're all shape-changers, if you define "shape" as "role" or as "behavior adaptation."

Another unexpected concept is the introduction of a character whom we thought existed only in fiction but who is portrayed here as existing in reality. I was surprised by this, though I suppose I should not have been. After all, I've done something like this in a similar fashion. And Lupoff, mindful that this series is in my "spirit," out-Farmered Farmer.

I won't reveal just who this character is, but it'll be familiar. Even those who haven't read about it will know it from the movies. I was delighted with its sudden entrance.

We have here a work which exemplifies the classical Quest story. It resonates with
The Odyssey
, the tale of Jason and the Golden Fleece, the search for the Holy Grail, the fairy tale of the little tailor, the saga of Sigurd, the slayer of the dragon Fafnir, of the great seductresses Lilith and Ayesha, of Castor and Pollux, of the journey underground by the hero, and, indeed, of the hero-cycle which Joseph Campbell and Robert Graves have depicted.