Bangsian fantasy is the school of fantasy writing that sets the plot wholly or partially in the afterlife. Frequently used are Hades (neutral; no torture or pleasure), Heaven (a 'good' place, although religious sects differ on what a newly arrived soul gets when he/she dies) and Hell (a 'bad' place, but again, exactly what souls face varies from religion to religion).

Summary

Bangsian fantasy is named for John Kendrick Bangs, whose late 19th- and early 20th-century Associated Shades series of novels deals with the afterlives of various famous dead people.

History

Bangs was not the first to write Bangsian fantasy; he was merely the modern face put on an old idea. The earliest surviving piece of literature, the Epic of Gilgamesh, contains a description of Hell and a voyage across the river of Death in search of eternal life.

A number of Greek myths deal with Hades. It is noteworthy that the Hades of Greco-Roman mythology is not the Hell of Christianity. Hades is a universal collecting place for all dead souls; the kind of life led by the owner of the soul makes no difference. In Christianity, Hell is a place where those who live socially unjust lives go to when they die. Most Christian beliefs hold that there is no escape from Hell, whereas characters in Greek or Roman myth sometimes escape from Hades.

Hell in the Bible was not described in great detail. However, with the publication of Dante's Divine Comedy, particularly the first Book (Inferno), it gained imagery still used in fiction today. Hell, as Dante described it, was a cone shape drilled into the earth (drawings of Dante's Hell resemble strip mining operations). The cone was divided into nine concentric rings, with each lower ring offering more terrible punishments. The worse a person had been in life, the lower on the cone that person would end up in death.

Dante took quite a few liberties with the Christian mythology of Hell. He placed people alive at the time of the book's publication in Hell, and he also meshed Greco-Roman myths into Christian Hell. Various Greek and Roman personages also turn up in the mix, such as Virgil, the Latin poet who serves as Dante's guide.

Characteristics

In addition to being set in Hades, Heaven or Hell, another unique characteristic of Bangsian fantasy is that it often has few, if any, fictional characters in it. The people in it are much more likely to be either historical or mythical in nature.

Works of Bangsian Fantasy

• Aeneid - Virgil
• The Inferno - Dante
• Beetlejuice - Tim Burton
• A House-Boat on the Styx - John Kendrick Bangs (1895)
• Pursuit of the House-Boat - John Kendrick Bangs (1897)
• The Enchanted Type-Writer - John Kendrick Bangs (1899)
• Mr. Munchausen: Being a True Account of Some of the Recent Adventures Beyond the Styx of the Late Hieronymus Carl Friedrich, Sometime Baron Munchausen of Bodenwerder - John Kendrick Bangs (1901)
• - Robert Heinlein
• Riverworld - Philip Jose Farmer (a sequence of science fiction novels based on the Bangsian-esque concept of an artificial world on which everyone who has ever lived has been resurrected )
• The Brothers Lionheart (Bröderna Lejonhjärta) - Astrid Lindgren
• Inferno - Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (a science-fantasy inspired by Dante's Inferno) (1976)
• Heroes in Hell - C.J. Cherryh and Janet Morris (a series of books with historical personages fighting continual warfare in Hell, from Brutus to Andropov. Marilyn Monroe is Satan's secretary. 11 volumes 1986-1989)
• FaustEric - Eric Thursley and Rincewind the wizard visit the Hell of Discworld (1990).
• God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian - Kurt Vonnegut (which is actually set in Heaven, although Vonnegut implies it is like Hades in the sense that you go there regardless.) (1999)
• Monkeybone - This Henry Selick film staring Brendan Fraser, Bridget Fonda, and Chris Kattan mostly takes place in a "waystation" for lost souls that is more like hell than heaven (2001).