"Gilgamesh in the Outback" is a science fiction novella by American writer Robert Silverberg, a sequel to his novel Gilgamesh the King[ as well as a story in the shared universe series "Heroes in Hell." It won the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1987 and was also nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novella in 1986. Real-life writers Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft feature as characters in the novella.

Fantascienza - romanzo breve (67 pagine) - Nalla sua ultima avventura Gilgamesh deve fare affidamento su due alleati molto particolari: Robert E. Howard e H.P. Lovecraft. PREMIO HUGO 1987 Anche gli eroi, i condottieri (e gli scrittori) prima o poi muoiono. Ma la loro storia non finisce lì: continua, all'Inferno. L'Inferno: un luogo senza tempo dove Giulio Cesare gira su una jeep militare, con il mitra a tracolla e due pistole ai fianchi. Dove Robert E. Howard, il creatore di Conan, incontra H.P. Lovecraft e scopre qualcosa di sé stesso. E dove entrambi incontrano il primo eroe epico dell'umanità, il sumero Gilgamesh (che Howard scambia per Conan) insieme al quale dovranno compiere un'avventura per salvare, ancora una volta, il suo amico fraterno Enkidu. Robert Silverberg è unanimemente riconosciuto come uno dei massimi autori della fantascienza contemporanea. Nato a Brooklyn (New York) il 15 gennaio del 1935, iniziò a scrivere SF d'avventura negli anni '50, diventando ben presto uno degli autori più famosi e prolifici e ottenendo il premio Hugo come autore più promettente del 1956. Durante la metà degli anni sessanta però, spinto dal desiderio di dimostrare a se stesso e agli altri le sue capacità di vero scrittore, e di essere in grado di realizzare anche opere di qualità, Silverberg impresse una svolta decisiva allo stile dei suoi romanzi, iniziando a produrre opere di maggiore impegno umano e letterario. Tra gli scritti più importanti di questo secondo periodo ricordiamo Ali della notte (con cui vinse anche un premio Hugo), Brivido crudele, Torre di cristallo, forse la sua opera più completa e riuscita, Vertice di immortali, Paradosso dei passato, e Mutazione, che si inserisce in quel gruppo di romanzi dedicati da Silverberg alla descrizione e all'esplorazione dell'esperienza mistica della trascendenza.

This rich, spare, and evocative debut novel of encounters and escapes, of friendship and love, of loss and acceptance, marks the emergence of a world-class talent.

A New York Times Notable Book from the author of The Golden Age. “A remarkable study of a young woman’s most literal rite of passage” (The Baltimore Sun). Gilgamesh is a rich, spare, and evocative novel of encounters and escapes, of friendship and love, of loss and acceptance, a debut that marked the emergence of a world-class talent. It is 1937, and the modern world is waiting to erupt. On a farm in rural Australia, seventeen-year-old Edith lives with her mother and her sister, Frances. One afternoon two men, her English cousin Leopold and his Armenian friend Aram, arrive—taking the long way home from an archaeological dig in Iraq—to captivate Edith with tales of a world far beyond the narrow horizon of her small town of Nunderup. One such story is the epic of Gilgamesh, the ancient Mesopotamian king who traveled the world in search of eternal life. Two years later, in 1939, Edith and her young son, Jim, set off on their own journey, to Soviet Armenia, where they are trapped by the outbreak of war. Rich, spare, and evocative, Gilgamesh won The Age Book of the Year Award for Fiction and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award. “Bold and beautiful . . . [An] astonishing saga . . . A woman as epic hero? It’s high time.” —Cathleen Medwick, O, The Oprah Magazine

What is it about the Australian outback? For nearly two centuries, narratives of outback journeys have been suffused with the aura of death. Why? It is not just that the desert is big, dry, hot and apparently empty. The outback is Australia’s “mythological crucible,” and journeys there have become rites of passage. It is where settler Australians go to die and perhaps be reborn. This book explores the landscape of this evolving national mythology. It argues that a more conscious engagement with the process of symbolic death and rebirth is needed for Australians to enter into a deeper understanding of themselves and their relationship to the land and its Indigenous people.

Gilgamesh in the Outback. In this Hugo Award winning novella, Ancient Sumerian king Gilgamesh found himself in a Hell not so very different from the kingdom in which he came. Faced with nothing much to do for eternity, he continues as a warrior in the eternity of hell. Gilgamesh's conservatism and scorn for the modern technologies drove a wedge between him and his closest friend, Enkidu. Gilgamesh joins forces with otherdenizens of hell, including fantastic pulp writers H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, to foil a plot of Queen Elizabeth's to assemble a fortress at the exit of Hell. "Gilgamesh" is not the only highly-acclaimed master work included within. The other four stories were nominated for multiple major SF awards-and highlight the author's mastery of the language and his capacity to engage the reader fully in worlds of his own making. Included in this collection are such classic tales: as Sundance, Shwartz Between the Galaxies, Gianni, and In Entropy's Jaws.

How do novels get their start? The answers to that question often prove as varied as the authors who create them. In Novel Ideas: Fantasy, seven of the genre's most talented tellers of tale are represented by eight masterful short works--many of them award winners--which laid the groundwork for some of the most acclaimed fantasy novels and series in the field.