(5) ROBERT SILVERBERG –
TO THE LAND OF THE LIVING (1990)

Straight outta the afterlife!

Robert Silverberg is a prolific author of fantasy and SF – one whom deserves his own Top 10 list from either his novels or short stories (or both!). Ironically, this is not the novel I would recommend as introduction to Silverberg – that would be his epic planetary romance, Lord Valentine’s Castle, which combines elements of fantasy and SF to please fans of either genre.

However, it is his posthumous fantasy here that earns my Top 10 SF entry. Evolved from his story “Gilgamesh in the Outback”, his contribution to the posthumous fantasy anthology series, Heroes in Hell. Everyone who has ever lived and died throughout humanity’s history – and prehistory – finds themselves reborn in the afterlife, a mysterious and vague limbo. It is not unlike terrestrial existence – one can even die in it but is then reborn elsewhere – but more plastic in its reality, as geography and even memory can be unreliable or untrustworthy.

Like limbo, humanity’s main purpose in the afterlife is to find ways to pass eternity – or for protagonist Gilgamesh (of the Sumerian epic) to find a way back to life, mirroring his epic quest.

FANTASY & HORROR

Yes – it’s the third of four posthumous or afterlife fantasies by an SF author in my Top 10 SF Books

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD-TIER)