The novel “To Your Scattered Bodies Go” by Philip J. Farmer was published for the first time between 1965 and 1966 in the magazine “Worlds of Tomorrow” and in 1971 as a book. It won the Hugo Award for Best Novel of the Year. It’s the first book in the Riverworld series.

Sir Richard Francis Burton dies in 1890 but wakes up in an unknown place where he finds himself surrounded by other people who, just like him, are naked and totally hairless but he seems to be the only one awake. He’s trying to figure out what’s going on when everyone is thrown into a valley next to a river.

The people in the valley include an alien from the Tau Ceti system who arrived on Earth in the early 21st century and a Neanderthal. Everyone says they died and found themselves there. On the riverside, there seem to be people everywhere, who could have created such an environment and resurrected all the sentient beings that ever existed on Earth?