Derivative Works
Since the publication of the original books, several authors have used the Riverworld setting for their own stories.
A licensed guidebook outlining the setting for use in the GURPS role-playing game was released by Steve Jackson Games. Copies of this guidebook were provided to the authors of the stories published in Tales of Riverworld and Quest To Riverworld, as this book summarizes the chronology, characters, geography and technical details of the Riverworld universe.
A television series loosely based on the Riverworld saga went into production for the Sci-Fi channel in 2001 but only the feature length pilot episode Riverworld was completed. It was first aired in 2003. It used elements from To Your Scattered Bodies Go and The Fabulous Riverboat, though it replaced the books' hero, Sir Richard Burton, with an American astronaut and King John of England with Nero as the villain. This pilot is available online through the Joost software worldwide except in the United States and Canada. It can be found on the Alliance Atlantis Sci-Fi channel.
A 4-hour TV movie, Riverworld has been produced and released by Syfy (formerly The Sci-fi Channel) in the US and by Studio Universal elsewhere, written by Robert Hewitt Wolfe. The protagonist is Matt Ellman, an American war reporter, played by Tahmoh Penikett. The main villain is Richard Francis Burton, although in the books he is the protagonist and is written more as a hero than a villain.
A PC computer game version of Riverworld was released in October 1998 by Cryo Interactive. The soundtrack was by Stephane Picq and published as a CD by Shooting Star Music.
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