"After the Myths Went Home"
by Robert Silverberg
Form: Short story
Year: 1969
ID: 13
Publication history:
- 1969: Fantasy & Science Fiction November 1969, Magazine
- 1970: World's Best Science Fiction 1970, DAW Mass market paperback
- 1971: Moonferns and Starsongs, Ballantine Mass market paperback, ISBN 345-02278-5, 244 pp.
- 1974: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow..., Holt Rinehart Winston Hard cover book
- 1975: Sunrise on Mercury, Thomas Nelson Hard cover book
- 1977: Another World, Follett Hard cover book
- 1983: Sunrise on Mercury, Gollancz Mass market paperback
- 1984: Supermen, Signet Mass market paperback
- 1986: Sunrise on Mercury, Pan Mass market paperback, 176 pp.
- 1990: A Is for Brian, Avernus Mass market paperback
- 1997: Ringing the Changes (The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg Volume 5), HarperCollins UK Trade paperback, ISBN 0-586-21373-2, 359 pp.
- 2002: Le Chemin de la nuit: Nouvelles au fil du temps, tome 1, 1953-1970, Flammarion Trade paperback, ISBN 2080682350, 727 pp., in French as Une fois les mythes rentrs chez eux
Other resources:
[None on record]
Comments:
More than ten thousand years into the future, people bore easily, so they start recreating great historical figures for their amusement. When they tire of that, they start making fictional and mythical characters. At their distant remove, it's pretty much the same thing. So they make Adam and Eve, Pan, Odysseus, the Minotaur, Salome, and many others. But eventually the people became bored with the myths, too. It is only later that they discover that having myths is maybe a good thing.