Beyond the Doors of Death by Robert Silverberg and Damien Broderick – Part one of this book is Silverberg’s 1974 novella (Born With the Dead,) which I liked very much. That novella won both a Nebula and a Locus award and was nominated for several other awards. In this book Silverberg’s novella acquaints reader with the split society of “warm” (normal living people) and “cold” (rekindled dead people). I find Silverberg’s writing to be both thought-provoking and entertaining and I enjoyed reading it very much. However, part two of the book is Broderick’s continuation of the story using many of the same characters, but moving them through time into the fathomless future. I was very disappointed with Broderick’s expansion of the story. It had some interesting segments and an ambitious storyline. However, I found his story to be convoluted and confusing and his prose to be tedious and boring. Of course, that may be due to my own deficiencies instead of Mr. Broderick’s. However, I should have quit reading at the end of Silverberg’s contribution, which I enjoyed very much. ( )

Robert Silverberg’s “Born with the Dead”, written in 1974, is a justly celebrated classic of science fiction. In a near future where the dead are "rekindled" and form a separate society of their own, a man obsessively seeks to understand and know his dead wife's new existence. An icy parable of such precisely controlled tone and so lacking in rationalizing technology or science babble that it has as much the flavor of a weird story as of science fiction.

It has been widely anthologized, and the first half of Silverberg’s introduction to this book is taken from the story’s appearance in Trips: The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume 4. The second half talks about how Damien Broderick’s sequel, “Quicken”, came to be written. Silverberg made only three alterations in his story. Apropos to updating a 40 year old story, he changed two dates from 1993 to 2033 and the name of an airline.

Broderick picks up the story of the newly Dead Jorge Klein. He becomes sort of an apostle of the Dead to the world of the warms as tension mounts. The Dead, rich, freakish, and seemingly true immortals are resented and feared and fetishized.

It’s when this cultural cold war goes hot, and shortly after we learn a startling truth about how the Dead came to be “rekindled”, that the story starts to justify Silverberg’s description of Stapledonian. The narrative starts to jump forward in century long leaps.

Where Silverberg’s prose is smooth and lightly anchored to 1974, Broderick’s prose is spiky with specifics, contemporary political and cultural allusions, thick with, as fitting Broderick’s literary and scientific interests, technical jargon and literary and mythological references. No attempt was made by Broderick to match Silverberg’s tone or style, and his story attempts commentary on many issues, most having to do with his professional interest in the Singularity.

The denouement was a bit too clotted with mythological references and vague to ultimately satisfy me, but the journey through most of Broderick’s story was interesting and held my interest. Don’t think of Broderick’s story so much a sequel as a variation on master work with some faltering notes but still satisfying. ( )

Born with the Dead is an amazing story and is still relevant today! Now Robert Silverberg has updated a few dates and allowed Damien Broderick to expand this story even further. Mr. Broderick takes a bold and daring expansion that works well with the original. ( )

Born with the Dead is an amazing story and is still relevant today! Now Robert Silverberg has updated a few dates and allowed Damien Broderick to expand this story even further. Mr. Broderick takes a bold and daring expansion that works well with the original. ( )