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'Bangsian fantasy' is the school of fantasy writing that sets the plot wholly or partially in the afterlife. Frequently used are Hades (benign; 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).
Bangsian fantasy is named for John Kendrick Bangs^[1], whose Associated Shades series of novels, from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, deals with the afterlives of various famous dead people.

Contents

Predecessors

Characteristics

Works of Bangsian Fantasy

References

Predecessors

Bangs was not the first to write afterlife fantasy; he was merely the modern face put on an old idea. One of the world's earliest pieces of literature, the ''Epic of Gilgamesh'', contains a description of Hell and a voyage across the river of Death in search of eternal life.
Some Greek myths deal with Hades. The Greco-Roman mythological understanding of Hades is ''not'' the same as the Hell (which is also referred to as Hades) 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 to which those who live sinful and unrepentant lives go when they die. Most forms of Christian belief hold that there is no escape from Hell, whereas characters in Greek or Roman myth sometimes escape from Hades.
The Bible does not describe Hell in great detail, and some interpretations of the Bible claim it doesn't exist at all^[2]. However, with the publication in the 14th century of Dante's ''Divine Comedy'', particularly the first Book (''Inferno''), Hell gained imagery still used in fiction today. Hell, as Dante described it, was a cone shape drilled into the Earth by the impact of Satan's fall from heaven (drawings of Dante's Hell resemble an open-pit mine). 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. Dante's works use not just the dead but famous fictional personae as well.

Characteristics

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

Works of Bangsian Fantasy

★ ''A House-Boat on the Styx'' (1895), by John Kendrick Bangs

★ ''Pursuit of the House-Boat'' (1897), by John Kendrick Bangs

★ ''The Enchanted Type-Writer'' (1899), by John Kendrick Bangs

★ ''Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven'' (1909), a short story by Mark Twain

★ ''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, as originally reported for the Sunday Edition of the Gehenna Gazette by its special interviewer the late Mr. Ananias formerly of Jerusalem, and now first transcribed from the columns of that journal by J. K. Bangs'' (1901), by John Kendrick Bangs

★ ''A Matter of Life and Death'' (1946), by Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger

★ ''Les jeux sont faits'' (''The Chips Are Down'') (1952), by Jean-Paul Sartre: Two persons destined for each other are sent back to life, from a bureaucratic afterlife, to consummate their love

★ ''Huis-clos'', better known as ''No Exit'', by Jean-Paul Sartre: A gripping portrayal of Hell, where the only punishment is the people you are left with forever

★ ''The Great Divorce'' by C.S. Lewis: An imaginative vision that posits that hell and purgatory are the same place, in which some souls voluntarily remain while others leave

★ "Leaf by Niggle" by J.R.R. Tolkien: an allegory of an ordinary artist's journey through purgatory and heaven

★ "A Nice Place to Visit", an episode of ''The Twilight Zone'', written by Charles Beaumont and produced in 1960

★ '', by Robert A. Heinlein

★ ''How the Dead Live'' (1993), by Will Self

★ ''Riverworld'', by Philip José Farmer: A sequence of science-fiction novels based on the Bangsian-esque concept of an artificial world on which everyone who has ever lived is resurrected

★ ''The Brothers Lionheart'' (''Bröderna Lejonhjärta''), by Astrid Lindgren

★ ''Inferno'' (1976), by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle: A science-fantasy inspired by Dante's ''Inferno''

★ ''The Living End'' (1979) by Stanley Elkin: Novel concerning a liquor store owner murdered in a holdup, then sent to Hell by a vain God for slighting Heaven.

★ ''Heroes in Hell'' (12 volumes, 1986–1989), by C. J. Cherryh and Janet Morris: Historical personages, from Brutus to Andropov, fight continuous war in Hell; Marilyn Monroe is Satan's secretary.

★ ''Beetlejuice'' (1988), by Tim Burton.

★ ''Erik the Viking'' (1989), a comedy/adventure film by Terry Jones featuring Erik the Viking and his troupe of warriors who set out on a dangerous journey to Valhalla, the warrior's afterlife.

★ ''FaustEric'' (1990), by Terry Pratchett: Eric Thursley and Rincewind the wizard visit the Hell of Discworld.

★ ''Defending Your Life'' (1991): Heaven is presented as a sort of resort city, where the newly dead must justify their living choices during a trial that decides the course of their soul.

★ ''Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey'' (1991): Both of the eponymous duo are killed, sneak into heaven, and play parlour games with persons of historical significance.

★ ''After Life'' (1998): A Japanese film in which the recently departed are aided by "social workers" who help them select a memory that they wish to relive.

★ ''What Dreams May Come'' (1998): A drama film based on the 1978 book, following a modern man's passage into heaven and then down into hell to save his wife, starring Robin Williams and Cuba Gooding Jr.

★ ''Grim Fandango'' (1998): A humorous computer game set in the Aztec afterlife.

★ ''Brimstone'' (1998-1999): A short-lived Fox television series, featuring a dead detective whose mission (assigned by the Devil) is to return 113 spirits who have escaped from Hell to Earth.

★ ''God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian'' (1999), by Kurt Vonnegut: The story is actually set in Heaven, although Vonnegut implies that it is like Hades in the sense that you go to it no matter what.

★ ''Monkeybone'' (2001): This Henry Selick film, starring Brendan Fraser, Bridget Fonda, and Chris Kattan, takes place mostly in a "way station" for lost souls that is more like Hell than Heaven.

★ ''Corpse Bride'' (2005): Many scenes in this movie take place in the Land of the Dead

★ ''Bleach'': This ongoing manga series revolves around the world of the Shinigami (called Soul Society, but similar to the Bangsian version of Hades as well as the Buddhist concept of the afterlife) and its connections with the human world, the world of the Hollows (comparable to the "hungry ghost" realm in Buddhism), and (briefly) Hell.

★ ''YuYu Hakusho'' (manga, anime) deals with a boy who has died, travelled through the spirit world, and returned to his living body.

★ ''Devil's Point'', by Holly Lisle: In this series of urban-fantasy novels (''Sympathy for the Devil''; ''The Devil and Dan Cooley''; and ''Hell on High'') God, in answer to a prayer, allows Hell to release a number of damned souls back to Earth (specifically, to North Carolina), so that they may have a better chance of redemption; settings include Hell, Heaven, and Earth; these stories are distinctive in the genre, in that God is a major character instead of being distant or off-stage.

★ ''Old Harry's Game'', a BBC Radio comedy written by and starring Andy Hamilton as Satan

★ ''Made in Heaven'' (1987). In this movie, two souls meet and fall in love in Heaven, and then are reincarnated on Earth, with the task of finding each other again.

★ ''All Dogs Go to Heaven'' (1989), directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman, starring the vocal talents of Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLouise.

★ ''Incarnations of Immortality'', a seven-book series by Piers Anthony has many scenes involving Heaven, Hell, and Limbo. Good people go to heaven, which is similar to the Christian concept. Bad people go to Hell which is intended to serve like Catholic purgatory in that while it is a place of torment, you only stay until you are finished suffering for your sins. People who have an even mix of good and evil and unborn children go to Limbo, which houses the bureaucrats of the afterlife. The souls of atheists simply fade away after their death and they do not go to an afterlife.

★ ''les Thanatonautes, l'empire des anges and, to a lesser extent, Nous les dieux and Le souffle des dieux'' by French author Benard Werber in which the protagonist Michael Pinson discovers the land of the dead, becomes a guardian angel and eventually becomes a student at a god school.

★ Shades of Grey by Robin Dempsey: A webcomic about the afterlife that reverses to an extent the notion of Heaven and Hell. Heaven is portrayed as a place of unhappiness and lies, whereas hell is shown as being somewhat like normal life.

★ ''Irregular Webcomic!'' depicts the realm of the dead as an "infinite featureless plane" with "a single feature" [1] and a large but finite bureaucracy filled with various grim reapers. Each grim reaper is responsible for a different cause of death, from the somewhat usual (like "Death of Insanely Overpowered Fireballs" [2]) to the incredibly ridiculous (like "Death of Being Wrestled to Death by Steve [3]).

★ ''Ashes and Dust'' (''Popiół i kurz'') by Jarosław Grzędowicz

★ ''Disgaea'' by Nippon Ichi Software

★ ''The Wish List'' by Eoin Colfer

★ ''His Dark Materials'' by Philip Pullman; in the third book ''The Amber Spyglass'', lead characters Will Perry and Lyra Belaqua journey to the Land of the Dead.

References

1. FantasticFiction > Authors B > John Kendrick Bangs John Kendrick Bangs
2. Allan Kardec, ''Heaven and Hell'', 1865.