SILENCE IN HEAVEN

Science fiction, morality play and bitterly funny satire are mixed in this strange, unique book. One morning, a sigh swept across the world and the earth shrivelled; all life ceased. To the hermit, who had left civilization 17 years before to learn to Exist, it at first made little difference. But presently, curious, he walks across the withered world to find a latrine wall still standing and ""Call Rosetta"" is pencilled on both entrances. Living nearby, he finds Rosetta, a pleasant old whore. Together they find an old Jack Carson type salesman who shows them the underground mortuary of King Got, the car czar, where mummied families, after a lifetime on wheels, were buried in special funerary cars. Here, as earlier, there are marvelous spiels and satires on a super-machine age. Presently they encounter a girl who, with Rosetta, sets off to find the mate that can give life to her and to the earth, and they wander across the bone-heaps of Europe- an unforgettable spectacle of unaging scarecrows, still arguing, questioning, amid desolation. And, one night, the sigh comes again-- thunder and rain fall, the earth begins to turn green; the young girl is pregnant- and the old ones try to teach her how to manage the creativity they have found only in wisdom... It is a dry, strange, splendid tale- its parades of civilization shockingly funny, and its silent, bony scenery awesome.