Philip Jose Farmer (1918 – 2009)
American author, principally known for his science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories, especially those of his Riverworld series.
The critics seem like the legendary blind philosophers who each touching the creature in a different place, bring back conflicting reports of what an elephant is. … I would like to suggest, with no pretensions to being any less blind than the others, that a key to these contradictions may be found in what appears to be the image in terms which Farmer most often presents himself as an artist, the trickster god. … Farmer seems to have a special affinity for Trickster.
According to Burton, the Ethical who talked to him did not agree with his fellows. Apparently, there was dissension even among those beings who we could account as gods. Dispute or discord in Olympus, if I may draw such a parallel. Though I do not think that the so-called Ethicals are gods, angels, or demons. They are human beings like us but advanced to a higher ethical plane. What their disagreement is, I frankly do not know. Perhaps it is about the means used to achieve a goal.