Operation Chaos: Heaven and Hell.
"Pact": demons in Hell.
"Dead Phone": a hinted hereafter.
"The Martyr": immortal souls for the enigmatic aliens but not for human beings.
James Blish
Black Easter and The Day After Judgment: Hell wins the War with unexpected results.
CS Lewis
The Great Divorce: an imaginative and original account of a hereafter.
Narnia: Aslan's country.
SM Stirling
The Emberverse: a Heaven where time runs differently; also, a Purgatory.
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
Inferno and Escape From Hell: Dante's Inferno updated.
Julian May
Diamond Mask: "...the peace and light of the Cosmic All..." (PROLOGUE, p. 10)
A philosopher with whom I recently corresponded
We enter the hereafter temporarily in dreams and permanently after death.
Kaor, Paul!
ReplyDeleteI think you could have included in this list the first sentence from J.R.R. Tolkien's "Ainulindale," the first part of THE SILMARILLION (as edited by Christopher Tolkien): "There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Iluvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made."
I know not all fans of Tolkien have liked THE SILMARILLION, but I do! And I must have read it three or four times.
Sean