In the early days on the Riverworld, its inhabitants believe that everybody from approximately 2,000,000 b.c. to a.d. 2008 has been resurrected. It soon becomes apparent that children who had died on Earth at or under the age of five, the mentally retarded, and extreme psychopaths have not been raised on the Riverworld. These, Burton finds out from a renegade Ethical, have been resurrected on a planet called the Gardenworld. And it is revealed in a later volume that only those from approximately 99,000 b.c. to a.d. 1983 have been placed on the River-world. After this current Ethical project is over, those who died after a.d. 1983 will be raised.
The Ethicals are the heirs of several preceding cultures, some nonhuman, which had assumed the task of recording and resurrecting the sentient species of many worlds throughout the universe. If they did not do so, all sentients who died would be forever dead.
Some Ethicals, disguised as Terrestrials, have spread throughout the Riverworld the religious concept of Going On. A Valleydweller cannot Go On unless he or she attains a certain high ethical standard—in other words, a certain state of being “good.” At the end of a hundred years this project will be phased out, and those who have not arrived at a certain ethical development will die forever. The wathans of those who have reached this stage will be absorbed by the Godhead.
This concept is planted by the Ethicals and transmitted through various religions—for instance, the Church of the Second Chance. The -missionaries of the Church also teach their disciples to speak Esperanto. A language that everybody can understand is necessary because of the mixture of peoples from many times and places.
Burton and some others are early on visited by an Ethical who won’t reveal his identity. Burton and others call him X or The Mysterious Stranger. X (revealed as Loga, a member of the Ethical Council of Twelve, in The Magic Labyrinth) is thwarting the plans of his fellows. He gives various reasons for this, but the true reason for his becoming a renegade is told in the fourth volume, The Magic Labyrinth. X is recruiting some of the resurrectees to help him in his plot. Among these are Burton, Sam Clemens, Cyrano de Bergerac, a gigantic titanthrop called Joe Miller, and other exceptional men and women.
The River, they find out, starts from a small sea at the north pole of this planet, winds back and forth down one hemisphere, circles the south pole, and winds back and forth on the other hemisphere, finally plunging back to its source, the north pole sea. A vast tower built by the Ethicals rears up from the bedrock at the bottom of this sea. It is the headquarters of the Ethicals and contains the circuitry and the huge protein brain of the Computer. It also houses in a central well those wathans held while the dead are stored in the physical recordings. When a person is resurrected, the wathan immediately reattaches itself to the raised body. This entity, the wathan, contains all the memories that the body also has, duplicates them, as it were, and also provides self-consciousness for the mind of the body. Without the wathan, the physical part of the individual would lack self-consciousness and the means to keep its identity.
The first volume, To four Scattered Bodies Go, is mainly concerned with showing the setup of the Riverworld and Burton’s efforts to escape the Ethicals. These have found out that he was awakened in the resurrection chamber by their unidentified renegade colleague. Burton commits suicide 777 times while fleeing the Ethicals, but is finally caught. He is questioned in the tower by the Council of Twelve, one of whom is the renegade. His memory is taped so that the Council may see the renegade through his eyes. But the renegade has secretly rearranged various circuits in the Computer, and he has also arranged it so that the Council believes that Burton’s memory of his questioning has been erased. He returns to The Valley with a complete memory.
In the second volume, The Fabulous Riverboat, Samuel Clemens, the American writer, dreams of building a great paddlewheeled riverboat on which to travel up The River to its source. From there he will go on foot to the seagirt tower. He can’t start fulfilling this dream for a long time because the planet is poor in iron and other heavy metals. X arranges to divert a large iron-nickel meteorite into The Valley, and Clemens uses this for the needed metal. His boat is stolen by his partner, King John of England, brother to Richard the Lion-Hearted. Sam vows to build another boat, catch up with John, and get vengeance.