From Chuck Miller, Creator of THE BLACK CENTIPEDE (review and interview coming soon to ALL PULP)-
I've been enjoying the Philip Jose Farmer tributes this weekend. I've been a Farmer devotee for almost longer than I can remember. His Doc Savage biography and the Riverworld series in particular had a profound influence on me, which I can still detect in my work today. One evening about 20 years ago, I rather impulsively got his home phone number in Peoria from directory assistance and gave him a call. He was very friendly and engaging and seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say, and the questions I asked him. I talked with him a couple more times after that, and we corresponded for a while, and he was always very encouraging about my own ambitions, which I shared with him.
I will always be indebted to him for that, and for the great body of work he produced during his lifetime. He was absolutely fearless artistically. Who else would have had both the nerve to write a Tarzan story as told by WILLIAM S. Burroughs rather than Edgar Rice ("The Jungle Rot Kid on the Nod"), and the talent to pull it off?