The Secret to "Lost"
The BF and I were watching 'Lost' tonight off our iTV (and I dearly love my iTV), when he suddenly turned to me and said, 'Riverworld!'
I had no idea what he was talking about, but he explained to me that there's this (now) fairly obscure Sci-Fi fiction series of books written by Philip José Farmer called 'Riverworld', which tell the story of the population of Earth resurrected on a planet created by aliens who designed the planet of Riverworld as a moral test for the human species.
"Apparently left to their own devices, the people set about recreating their Earthly societies and coming to terms with an afterlife no religion ever described."
Go take a look at the Wikipedia page describing the 'Riverworld' series -- you'll find that 'Lost' suddenly starts to sound very familiar.
ADDENDUM:
I find this paragraph, listed under the "origins" section of the Wikipedia page, very revealing:
"The original Riverworld story was titled Owe for the Flesh and ended with the protagonist (called Richard Black in this version) finding the tower at the end of the river. Farmer entered a scifi contest run by Shasta Press and subsidized by Pocket Books, submitting his 150,000-word entry. He won the contest, but received no money. The work was never published and WAS LOST in its original form. A later, revised manuscript (itself LOST for decades) was discovered and published in 1983 as River of Eternity." (-- emphasis mine)