January 2011 The Fabulous Riverboat by Philip Jose Farmer. This is the second book in the "Riverworld" series, the sequel to To Your Scattered Boides Go. The protagonist in this book is Sam Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain, who travels the river with the likes of King John (Lackland) of England, Erik Bloodaxe the 11th Century Viking, Herman Goring, and Cyrano de Bergerac. The plot revolves around extracting metal from a giant meteorite to make a great Riverboat to go up river and discover the source and secret of their world. The overall plot of the big story in the Riverworld series is revealed a little more in this book. Clemens, Richard Burton (protagonist of the first book) and several others were chosen by the Riverworld architects (or a renegade faction of them) to understand more about their world. It's a good and entertaining book.