Explorers in Hell, by Janet Morris and David Drake, is the fifth novel and the twelfth overall volume in the Heroes in Hell series. It was the final book published before the series went on hiatus in 1989.
Janet Ellen Morris is an American author of fiction and nonfiction, best known for her fantasy and science fiction and her authorship of a nonlethal weapons concept for the U.S. military. Janet Morris began writing in 1976 and has since published more than 20 novels, many co-authored with her... husband Chris Morris or others. Her first novel, written as Janet E. Morris, was High Couch of Silistra, the first in a quartet of novels with a very strong female protagonist. She has contributed short fiction to the shared universe fantasy series Thieves World, in which she created the Sacred Band of Stepsons, a mythical unit of ancient fighters modeled on the Sacred Band of Thebes. She created, orchestrated, and edited the Bangsian fantasy series Heroes in Hell, writing stories for the series as well as co-writing the related novel, The Little Helliad, with Chris Morris. Most of her fiction work has been in the fantasy and science fiction genres, although she has also written historical and other novels. Her 1983 book "I, the Sun", a detailed biographical novel about the Hittite King Suppiluliuma I was praised for its historical accuracy; O.M.more
David Drake is an American author of science fiction and fantasy literature. A Vietnam War veteran who has worked as a lawyer, he is now one of the premier authors of the military science fiction subgenre. Drake graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Iowa, majoring in history and Latin.... His studies at Duke University School of Law were interrupted for two years when he was drafted into the U.S. Army, where he served as an enlisted interrogator with the 11th Armored Cavalry in Vietnam and Cambodia. With Karl Edward Wagner and Jim Groce, he was one of the founders of Carcosa, a small press. He now lives in Pittsboro, North Carolina. His best-known non-collaborative work is the Hammer's Slammers series of military science fiction. His newer Republic of Cinnabar Navy series are space operas inspired by the Aubrey–Maturin novels. In 1997, Drake began his largest fantasy series, Lord of the Isles, using elements of Sumerian religion and medieval technology. In 2007, Drake finished the series with its ninth volume.more
The Fictional Representation of the famous early 20th century aviatrix Amelia Earhart, whose mysterious disappearance during an around-the-world has... placed her as a character in many interesting fictional stories in all mediums .more
The fictional representation of the famous 19th century pianist and composer, Franz Liszt.
Heroes in Hell is a series of shared world fantasy books, within the genre Bangsian fantasy, created and edited by Janet Morris and written by her, Chris Morris, C. J. Cherryh and others. The first 12 books in the series were published by Baen Books between 1986 and 1989, and stories from the... series include one Hugo Award winner and Nebula nominee, , as well as one other Nebula Award nominee. The series was resurrected in 2011 by Janet Morris with the thirteenth book and eighth anthology in the series, Lawyers in Hell. The shared world premise of Heroes in Hell is that all the dead wind up together in Hell, where they pick up where they left off when still alive. The Encyclopedia of Fantasy states "In the long series of shared world adventures begun with Heroes in Hell, Hell becomes an arena in which all the interesting people in history can come together to continue the relentless pursuit of their various ends." Brian Stableford commented that the series "adapted the backcloth of Dantean fantasy as a stage for violent adventures with ironic echoes of infernal comedy".more
Speculative fiction is an umbrella term encompassing the more fantastical fiction genres, specifically science fiction, fantasy, horror, supernatural... fiction, superhero fiction, utopian and dystopian fiction, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, and alternate history in literature as well as related static, motion, and virtual arts. Speculative fiction as a category ranges from ancient works to both cutting edge, paradigm-changing and neotraditional works of the 21st century. Speculative fiction can be recognized in works whose authors' intentions or the social contexts of the versions of stories they portrayed is now known, since ancient Greek dramatists such as Euripides whose play Medea seems to have offended Athenian audiences when he fictionally speculated that shamaness Medea killed her own children instead of their being killed by other Corinthians after her departure, and whose Hippolytus, narratively introduced by Aphrodite, Goddess of Love in person, is suspected to have displeased his contemporary audiences because he portrayed Phaedra as too lusty.more
Bangsian fantasy is a fantasy genre which concerns the use of famous literary or historical individuals and their interactions in the afterlife. It... is named for John Kendrick Bangs who often wrote it. According to E. F. Bleiler, in his 1983 Guide to Supernatural Fiction, "Bangs' most noteworthy achievement was a contribution to literary typology: the so-called Bangsian story, in which important literary and historical personalities serve humorously as characters in a slender plot line. Bangs did not invent this subgenre, but his work gave it publicity and literary status". This definition does not take into account that some of Bangs' stories took place in the afterlife. Jess Nevins' 2003 definition in Heroes & Monsters: The Unofficial Companion to the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen says it is "a fantasy of the afterlife in which the ghosts of various famous men and women come together and have various, usually genial, adventures", which closely agrees with Rama Kundu's 2008 definition. ARSDnet suggests it is a fantasy "which focuses primarily on the exploration of the afterlife and possibly where various ancient and influential figures ended up in the scheme of things.more