ROBERT SILVERBERG – When the Myths Went Home. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1969. Reprinted in World’s Best Science Fiction: 1970, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr (Ace, paperback, 1970). Collected in Moonferns and Starsongs (Ballantine, paperback, 1971).

   This particular tale, and a nifty one it is, takes place in a future far distant in time than ours. It is in fact, in terms of years, somewhere between 12400 and 12450, but still an age of new inventions and discoveries. The one of the latter that is of interest to the people of that time is one that can bring back to life people of fame and notoriety such as Cleopatra, Winston Churchill, Napoleon and more.

   The kind of people who are fun to have around, to talk to and interact with, but gradually the attraction wears off. More is wanted. Working on the problem is man named Leor, who  discovers that there is a way to bring back people who were perhaps not as real, starting (of course) with Adam. Then, and I’m quoting:

   “Leor continued to toil in his machine.

   “He brought forth Hector and Achilles, Orpheus, Perseus, Loki, and Absalom. He brought forth Medea, Cassandra, Odysseus, Oedipus. He brought forth Tooth, the Minotaur, Aeneas, Salome. He brought forth Shiva and Gilgamesh, Viracocha and Pandora, Pnapus and Astarte, Diana, Diomedes, Dionysus, Deucalion. The afternoon waned and the sparkling moons sailed into the sky, and still Leor labored. He gave us Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, Helen and Menelaus, Isis and Osiris. He gave us Damballa and Guede-nibo and Papa Legba. He gave us Baal. He gave us Samson. He gave us Krishna. He woke Quetzalcoatl, Adonis, Holger Dansk, Kali, Ptah, Thor, Jason, Nimrod, Set.

   “The darkness deepened and the creatures of myth jostled and tumbled on the stage, and overflowed onto the plain. They mingled with one another, old enemies exchanging gossip, old friends clasping hands, members of the same pantheon embracing or looking warily upon their rivals. They mixed with us, too, the heroes selecting women, the monsters trying to seem less monstrous, the gods shopping for worshippers.”


I   It was indeed an awesome accumulation of people. And yet, and yet, there comes a time when it was decided that they all must be sent back. Not an easy task, but at last it was done.

And then, and then … well, I won’t tell you, good or bad, but perhaps you can guess.

   This was written at a time in Silverberg’s career. 1969, while he was making the change from writing pulpy science fictional adventure tales to a more mature, “adult” kind of story for which he must most remembered  today. Myself, I still enjoy the former, tales which no one but the fiercest champion of such stories would recall at all. This is not one of them. It’s one of his “good” ones, or at least one of the early ones that foresaw what was to come.