This blog celebrates substantial popular fiction with deep literary roots. Poul Anderson's character, Svoboda, refers to both Alice and Dante. This led to a combox comparison of Dante with Milton, then to a combox discussion of Milton's "Better to reign in Hell..." as quoted both in
Star Trek and in Neil Gaiman's
The Sandman.
Earlier, I had compared Milton's
Precosmic Chaos to Anderson's and Heinlein's accounts of Hell. (For Heinlein's account, see
Heinlein's Hell.)
Milton and/or Dante are referenced in novels by CS Lewis, James Blish, Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle and Sir Philip Pullman and no doubt others.
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I'm pretty sure you have read C.S. Lewis' THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS and THE GREAT DIVORCE, which were Lewis' takes on the afterlife. And have you read Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's INFERNO and ESCAPE FROM HELL? Those works were based on John Ciardi's translation of the DIVINE COMEDY, with some input, I think, from Lewis.
And Poul Anderson gave us some ideas of what Hell might be like, from an SF point of view, in OPERATION CHAOS. Ingenious, I thought, using a dead universe, at the end of entropy, a heat death, for locating Hell in.
Sean
Sean,
I dislike SCREWTAPE because I think that it treats the idea of damnation frivolously.
I think that THE GREAT DIVORCE is a masterpiece of imagination and insight.
I read Niven's & Pournelle's INFERNO but did not get far with the sequel.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
The next time I read THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS, I hope to remember that, that you thought Lewis treated damnation frivolously. I never got that impression the three or four times I read SCREWTAPE. But that's probably because I am not as observant as you are.
I agree with what you said about THE GREAT DIVORCE. What interested me in that book was how Lewis treated Hell and Purgatory as being merely different aspects or modes of each other. And that it's the DECISION ultimately made by the spirits there which turns the afterlife into Hell or Purgatory. The latter, of course, being only temporary.
I loved Niven/Pournelle's INFERNO, one of their BEST collaborations. But you seemed to have thought ESCAPE FROM HELL to be unsatisfactory. While I might quibble at some of the theology of Niven/Pournelle, I still enjoyed the second book.
Sean
Sean,
In THE GREAT DIVORCE, the nature of the hereafter is so unexpected that many people do not realize what is going on. Remember I traced some parallels between the heavenly mountains in DIVORCE and the Christian hereafter as shown in one of SM Stirling's Emberverse books.
DIVORCE incorporates Spiritualism. The Ghosts are free to return to Earth and bother "those women ye call mediums." In fact, they are free to wander anywhere: stay in the gray town, take the bus to the foothills of heaven, haunt libraries to see if their books are still being read etc.
Paul.
Sean,
Search the blog for THE GREAT DIVORCE. I compare it to Emberverse in "Visions Of Heaven."
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I was esp. interested by how you compared THE GREAT DIVORCE to spiritualism. I had never thought of that in my previous readings of the book. I remembered the gray town and the bus, but not that the spirits of the dead could be still so active in our Earth, including writers jealously checking to see if their books were still read!
And I will be looking up your blog pieced comparing DIVORCE to Stirling's treatment of the afterlife.
Sean
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