The Line Between Life And Death In Fiction

Sometimes, near the end of a volume or of a series, we think that a character is about to die but he is rescued after all. We think that Hanno will die at sea near the end of Poul Anderson's The Boat Of A Million Years but he doesn't. We think that Dominic Flandry and Chives will die in space near the end of Anderson's A Stone In Heaven but they don't. We think that Lazarus Long will die on a World War I battlefield near the end of what I regard as an inauthentic Future History sequel, Time Enough For Love by Robert Heinlein, but he doesn't.

I don't think that Anderson ever makes us think that a character really has died only to show us that he didn't? For what I regard as good examples of this maneuver in comics and films, see:

Dead, Not Really

This is "Relevant Other Reading" time of the evening. In Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Played With Fire (London, 2009):

SPOILER ALERT, I SUPPOSE!

on p. 550, Lisbeth Salander is shot in the head and loses consciousness;

on p. 551, she is buried;

on pp. 551-556, we read about other characters and even about a fox that knows that something is buried there;

on p. 556, something else happens...

Masterful and worthy of Poul Anderson. 

Characters live on in the imagination and often also in their texts. Holmes came back from Reichenbach but you all know all that...