Gilgamesh in the Outback

Gilgamesh in the Outback

Author	Robert Silverberg
Cover artist	Gary Freeman
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Science fiction
Publisher	Asimov's Science Fiction
Publication date	1986

Gilgamesh in the Outback is a science fiction novella by American writer Robert Silverberg, a sequel to his historical novel Gilgamesh the King^[1] as well as a story in the shared universe series Heroes in Hell. It won the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1987 and was also nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novella in 1986.^[2][3] Originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction,^[4][5][6] it was then printed in Rebels in Hell^[7] before being incorporated into Silverberg's novel To the Land of the Living. Real-life writers Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft feature as characters in the novella.

Robert Silverberg wrote that he was "drawn into" writing a story for the "Heroes in Hell" project. While he remembered that the central concept of the series was "never clearly explained" to him, he noted the similarity of "Heroes in Hell" to Philip José Farmer's Riverworld works, and decided "to run my own variant on what Farmer had done a couple of decades earlier." After writing "Gilgamesh in the Outback", he decided that, since the story "was all so much fun," to write two sequels, "The Fascination of the Abomination" and "Gilgamesh in Uruk".^[8] In writing those stories, as Silverberg recalled, he "never read many of the other 'Heroes in Hell' stories", and had "no idea" of how consistent his work was with that of his "putative collaborators"; instead, he had "gone his own way ... with only the most tangential links to what others had invented."^[8]

Silverberg compiled the three stories as To the Land of the Living, revising the stories to remove any references to other writers' contributions to "Heroes in Hell" to avoid copyright issues.^[8] To the Land of the Living was published in the British market in 1989 and reprinted in an American edition in 1990.

References

External links

• Gilgamesh in the Outback title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

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Robert Silverberg

• Bibliography

Novels

• Revolt on Alpha C
• Lest We Forget Thee, Earth
• Starman's Quest
• Collision Course
• The Seed of Earth
• The Silent Invaders
• Time of the Great Freeze
• Conquerors from the Darkness
• The Gate of Worlds
• Planet of Death
• Thorns
• Those Who Watch
• The Time Hoppers
• Hawksbill Station
• The Masks of Time
• The Man in the Maze
• Nightwings
• Across a Billion Years
• To Live Again
• Up the Line
• Downward to the Earth
• Tower of Glass
• Son of Man
• The Second Trip
• The World Inside
• A Time of Changes
• The Book of Skulls
• Dying Inside
• Shadrach in the Furnace
• Sailing to Byzantium
• Nightfall
• The Face of the Waters
• Kingdoms of the Wall
• The Positronic Man
• Starborne
• Roma Eterna

Nidonian series	The Shrouded Planet The Dawning Light
Majipoor series	Lord Valentine's Castle Majipoor Chronicles Valentine Pontifex
Gilgamesh series	Gilgamesh the King To the Land of the Living

Short story collections

• The Cube Root of Uncertainty

Anthologies edited

• Alpha series
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
• The Best of Randall Garrett
• Dawn of Time
• Deep Space: Eight Stories of Science Fiction
• Epoch
• Far Horizons
• Legends
• Legends II
• The Nebula Awards #18
• Nebula Awards Showcase 2001
• New Dimensions 1
• New Dimensions II
• New Dimensions 3
• New Dimensions IV
• New Dimensions 5
• Robert Silverberg Presents the Great SF Stories: 1964
• The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929–1964
• Strange Gifts
• Universe 1
• Universe 2
• Universe 3

Non-fiction

• Lost Cities and Vanished Civilizations

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