Forcing a specific order

This may come across as a rather odd question. However, is there a way
to force PostgreSQL to return rows in a very specific order? I am
currently facing running one three-way-join query which will last 50+
seconds. Since this is a web-based application this hardly makes for a
fast browsing experience.

One solution is to break it up into more manageable pieces. If I can
specify the sort order then I can run concurrent queries and get things
settled easily. Otherwise I'll have to fetch for every row returned
and that seems messy and I would like to avoid it.

Any ideas?

Martin Foster
martin(at)ethereal-realms(dot)org