A friend of mine asked me the other day what I’d heard about Riverworld, and the answer was….nothing. Providentially almost, within hours of that conversation the trailer popped up on Quiet Earth (and other places, but that’s where I saw it first, so they get the nod), and I didn’t even have to do much of my own research!

It’s an upcoming Syfy miniseries, due to air in 2010, starring Battlestar Galactica costars Tahmoh Penikett and Alessandro Juliani, among others including Alan Cumming and Smallville‘s Laura Vandervoort. Penikett and Vandervoort are fiancés, both killed in a terrorist bombing – but then Penikett wakes up in a strange world of rivers, and discovers that everyone else there has also died. All throughout history, in fact. He ends up traveling with a 13th century female warrior and Mark Twain to find Vandervoort, and looks like they get mixed up in some power struggle (not surprising, really, considering there appear to be Conquistadors running around all over the place).

It’s based on a series of books by Philip Jose Farmer, but I’m not familiar with them, so I’m coming at the story purely from the descriptions of the miniseries. The premise really intrigues me, what with the possibilities of some kind of limbo or non-heavenly afterlife, possibly with an alien guiding presence. Right now everything I can find indicates that this is just going to be a four-hour miniseries, but there ought to be enough story here for this to be a full series. I mean, come on. People from all historical periods finding themselves alive together in an unknown world? Such possibilities! I might have to read the books to find out some of the ones the miniseries obviously won’t be able to include.

On the the other hand, this is Syfy, which can’t even be trusted to hang on to a reasonable name for their network and have never been known for quality original miniseries programming. So I guess I’ll rein in my hopes a bit. But I’m definitely up for checking it out.