NEVER SAY DIE

by Robert Grossbach ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 7, 1979

Where do we all go after we've finally bought the farm? When TV repairman Jay Aurinson drives to White Castle to get hamburgers for his pregnant wife and is killed in the parking lot by a Bungalow Bar truck, he finds out. The afterlife? Well, we all go to another universe, ruled by creatures called the Stim, who slip a ""Stim being"" into our intact ""genetic carriers""--bodies--and ship us back down to earth in other incarnations. The process involves some heavy ""draining""--a kind of post-mortem psychoanalysis--and Jay figures on trying to avoid this at all costs. With one of his fellow deads, he hijacks a saucer, gets as far as the Southern State Parkway back on Long Island, Earth, but then is recaptured. He hasn't given up yet, though. Grossbach is a funny writer (""You have a bureaucracy, they make foo-foo on you"") whose special niche is technology--and the super sci-fi-ness of the Hereafter is sparklingly drawn. Aurinson, too, makes a good Everyman, and there's real dash in the idea of an afterlife that keeps all of life's itches and pinches intact. When it doesn't get too taken with its own invention, this ""autonecro-graphical novel"" scores handsomely.

Pub Date: March 7, 1979

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1979

Categories: FICTION