In (mythical) memoriam...
Posted: Sat Mar 13, 2004 1:28 am
Fist and Faith's new .sig in honor of ShadowLurker, which includes a benediction for the departed from the Neverness series, got me thinking about this:
What memorial practices or funeral scenes in different works of F/SF do you find particularly memorable?
Le Guin's Always Coming Home, a pseudoanthropological miscellany describing a culture in the far future of the Napa Valley, has a whole section on "How to Die in the Valley," including the "Songs of Going Westward to the Sunrise." One set of songs are sung by loved ones keeping vigil with a dying person; the other set are sung simultaneously (in the mind, if not vocally) by the dying person him- or herself.
When I first read the scene in Dune where friends are dividing up the personal property of a Fremen killed in a duel, and speaking tributes beginning "I was a friend of Jamis," my chest was full of rocks.
What memorial practices or funeral scenes in different works of F/SF do you find particularly memorable?
Le Guin's Always Coming Home, a pseudoanthropological miscellany describing a culture in the far future of the Napa Valley, has a whole section on "How to Die in the Valley," including the "Songs of Going Westward to the Sunrise." One set of songs are sung by loved ones keeping vigil with a dying person; the other set are sung simultaneously (in the mind, if not vocally) by the dying person him- or herself.
When I first read the scene in Dune where friends are dividing up the personal property of a Fremen killed in a duel, and speaking tributes beginning "I was a friend of Jamis," my chest was full of rocks.