Afterworld

By R. Vincent Riccio

Fantasy and & Sci-Fi combine in a highly imaginative, epic journey through afterlife, which includes an infinity of bizarre worlds, colors, creatures & beings from all eternity, and told in a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0595176909
• ISBN13: 9780595176908
• Release Date: April 2001
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Length: 360 Pages
• Weight: 1.16 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Science Fiction and Satire blend perfectly

A scintillating look at a man's afterlife, which begins as you open the book. It traces the "afterworld" experiences of an unbeliever as he tries to sort his way through his afterlife with a variety of humans, aliens, bizarre worlds and forms of transportation, and it delves into the MANY questions everyone has about what there is after this life. It does so with occasionally tongue-in-cheek humor, and a good amount of satire in poking fun at our religions, customs, and institutions, through the eyes of the many different life forms the main character encounters. It is about this man finding a purpose, even in afterlife, in finding himself, and finding out who else there might be to share it with. This is an extraordinary and imaginative look at a usually untouched subject, and told in an engaging, informative, and poignant fashion. It is an afterworld that we all might wish to attain someday, but if not, it certainly is fun and interesting to look at this one!

Thought-provoking satire, sci-fi, and fantasy.

What a great concept! It's like taking Dante's "Inferno", and racheting it up a notch in fantasy and satire. The first surprise is that the main character, Gary, dies in the first couple of pages. THEN his adventure begins! He phases into his afterlife, his "afterworld", the place which we see, in this ceative vision, is the logical final adventure for all types of beings from all history and all creations from the dawn of time until it's physical end. Here, in afterworld, life NEVER ends, but lays out an endless review of all the created life forms that ever were, fromall the universes God ever created. The afterlife-universe is infinitely larger than the one we know here in "prior life," and infinitely more diverse, with characters, worlds, cities, and creatures, from all the creations God has ever made - plus much more. We get to witness some of the lives and pasts of the many characters, and they are fascinating, as well as their physical appearances - everyone able to "arrive" at whatever age they chose just by thinking about it, and where they can have ANY relationship with ANY other being they choose. The limitless freedoms this novel speaks of are truly staggering, and the satire it has of the stodgy, overly-religeous types is certainly meant to be read in our times! Gary wanders through this infinitely diverse afterlife universe, trying to find meaning in his own short life (he was 32 when he arrived), and also find a relationship with someone that means something, which ultimately he does, with a most unlikely beautiful creature, who unfortunately must die again! How it all works out, and how he finds the meaning to the confusion of existence, how he fits into God's Divine Plan, with humor, and wonder, and always poking fun at our customs and mores, is what makes this novel so delightful.

Good satire, great fantasy.

This book is written in the tradition of some of the great "Star Treks," episodes and movies, for instance, which took some serious shots at our customs, mores, and religious beliefs, and yet gave us some great science fiction and fantasy in the process. This story does the same thing, tracing the eternal life of a person who begins his afterlife at the beginning of the book. He is confused and distrustful of this new life, and approaches it gingerly trying to unravel its unending mysteries, as well as its infinitely diverse collection of characters from all over the universe and from all periods of time. Many of the characters are comic, some satirical and representative of our own many superstitions and oddball beliefs, and we are able to catch a few laughs at their expense, as we are meant to. But through all this odyssey, there is a solid and captivating story, which is the personal life and struggle of the main character, Gary, as he wanders through this infinite and immense new existance, which is filled with many scientific inventions which the author carefully constructs to make this new world work, if by entirely different principles. They are interesting and peak our interest as to how everything actually "WORKS" - that is, how GOD works - and we find ourselves asking "Could that be how He does it??" Gary's new life, his afterlife, becomes a quest to find meaning and purpose for himself and for the universe, and yet it is a learning experience for him, for he can hardly believe that he is there. The people he meets each, one by one, give him a new incite into reality and himself, into humanity and how all people should work together, and we can't wait to see if he finally unravels it all and finds his purpose in afterlife. This book has everything a reader could want in it - suspense, adventure, satire, some laughs, and a good story about people and finding meaning in life. I recommend it highly to just about everyone who likes to read - it's hard to believe they wouldn't find something to rave about in AFTERWORLD.

Fantasy and satire make a great combo in afterlife!

This is a subject not too many authors have ever dealt with in ANY capacity, let alone the ease with which this author has tackled it. Everyone wonders about afterlife, what will come after THIS life, and yet no one ever talks about it, almost any way at all. Here, in AFTERWORLD, we find a man who goes there right away, in the first pages, and we trace his epic adventure, through the myriad comic cosmic characters and amusing, often laughable, satirized situations he encounters while he tries to discover exactly what all this afterlife stuff is about. The main character, Gary Townsend, is an "everyman" type of person, but a methodical doubter, who distrusts pretty much everything and everyone, especially sanctified types and religions - this makes for an interesting and usually amusing CLASH between him and the powers that be, which can just barely tolerate his presence in their purified and orderly universe. Townsend becomes determined to change all that and add some excitement to eternity - and how he does that makes us admire him and laugh at the satirizations of many superstitions and customs that our religions and government carry around in "prior life". This book is adventurous, intriguing, and yet filled with situations and strange characters which poke fun at the way we live and worry, and make us smile and keep turning the pages. This is destined to be a great one. Anyone who has loved good fantasy, or even good satire as produced by Orwell ("1984," "Animal Farm") or Huxley ("Brave New World"), or even things like Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange World" will LOVE this!