Enter a Silverberg. Later: Enter Another.

More electronic vacation reading (wrapping it up). These were two wildly different tales by one of science fiction's best writers, Robert Silverberg.

The first was Gilgamesh in the Outback. I recall reading this in one of the many shared-world anthology series that spawned during the 1980's, in this case the so-called Heroes in Hell series. Unlike Thieves' World or Wild Cards, this one really did not seem to produce many classics, and unlike those two shared-world anthologies, Heroes in Hell has not been revived.

Let's face it, the series wasn't very good. Luckily, there were a few bright spots, such as this story. Gilgamesh is one of the old dead. When he died, Hell wasn't that bad a place. You could still hunt. However, as time went by and newer and newer dead came crowding in, each "generation" tried to remake Hell in their own image. When those pesty Christians moved in, Hell went to, well, Hell in a handbasket.

Toss in various historical figures as Julius Caesar, Robert E. Howard, and H.P. Lovecraft, and you've got one of the better entries in that series. Lots of amusing bits like various historical figures complaining about how they have been portrayed in history or fiction, clashes between the various eras of dead and more.

In Enter a Soldier. Later: Enter Another, Silverberg takes a completely different tack and combines cutting-edge computer theory (artificial intelligence) plus two widly different historical figures. It's more a series of clever dialogues and monologues, but he manages to create an interesting little tale that examines what "life" is.

Both purchased at Fictionwise.

Counts as two (2) entries in the 2006 Short Story Project.