''Heroes Die'' is a

science fantasy Science fantasy is a hybrid genre within speculative fiction that simultaneously draws upon or combines tropes and elements from both science fiction and fantasy. In a conventional science fiction story, the world is presented as being scientif ...

novel by American writer

Matthew Stover Matthew Woodring Stover (born 1962) is an American fantasy and science fiction novelist. He is most well known for his four ''Star Wars'' novels, including the novelization of '' Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith''. He has also writ ...

, the first of a series of novels featuring the

protagonist A protagonist () is the main character of a story. The protagonist makes key decisions that affect the plot, primarily influencing the story and propelling it forward, and is often the character who faces the most significant obstacles. If a st ...

Caine.

Plot

The novels are set in a future

dystopia A dystopia (from Ancient Greek δυσ- "bad, hard" and τόπος "place"; alternatively cacotopiaCacotopia (from κακός ''kakos'' "bad") was the term used by Jeremy Bentham in his 1818 Plan of Parliamentary Reform (Works, vol. 3, p. 493). ...

Earth where a parallel world called Overworld reminiscent of the worlds featured in post-

Tolkien John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (, ; 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''. From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the Rawlins ...

secondary world fantasy has been discovered. The corporations that run Earth send actors into Overworld in order to provide the masses of an overcrowded world with virtual-reality entertainment. Hari Michaelson is a famous Actor and son of a now-mentally ill libertarian professor. On Overworld, he is the assassin Caine, while his estranged wife Shanna is another Actor, playing the mage Pallas Ril. Actors who travel to Overworld through advanced technology and assume an alternate persona which they then use to carry out 'adventures'. Pallas is captured by Ma'elKoth, the Emperor of Overworld's human kingdom of Ankhana, on one of her adventures. Ma'elKoth's plan to rule Ankhana by wiping out a final resistance group is blocked by a spell that causes others to forget the existence of the resistance group's members. The remainder of the book plays out the conflict between Ma'elKoth, Caine and the resistance. Hari finds himself manipulated by both the powers on Overworld and the Studio on Earth, and must defeat them both in order to save himself and Pallas Ril from death.

Major themes

''Heroes Die'' contains moral questions the author does not believe typically arise in fantasy.Interview with Matthew Stover
/ref> In a 1999 interview regarding the novel, Stover describes it as follows:

"It's a piece of violent entertainment that's a meditation on violent entertainment- as a concept in itself, as a cultural obsession. It's a love story: romantic love, paternal love, repressed homoerotic love, love of money, of power, of country, love betrayed and employed as both carrot and stick. It's about all different kinds of heroes and all the different ways they die."

Violence

Earth is overcrowded and oppressed, with a

caste Caste is a form of social stratification characterised by endogamy, hereditary transmission of a style of life which often includes an occupation, ritual status in a hierarchy, and customary social interaction and exclusion based on cultura ...

-based

n government; the masses turning to the adventures of the Actors such as Caine for entertainment and distraction. The violence within the ''Acts of Caine'' is often portrayed in graphic detail because that is what the viewers on Earth are seeking. Michaelson, in the character of Caine, exhibits willingness to sacrifice the citizens of Ankhana and even his friends in order to save his wife. Hari's father is a former

libertarian Libertarianism (from french: libertaire, "libertarian"; from la, libertas, "freedom") is a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core value. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, and minimize the state's e ...

academic who provides a counterpoint to the violence and despair of Earth.

Style

As with its sequel, ''Heroes Die'' utilizes multiple point of view; a number of characters including Hari, Shanna, and Berne are used as third-person narrators for various parts of the story. However, for the scenes from Hari's perspective when he is on Overworld as Caine, the sections are portrayed from a first-person viewpoint and are meant to be Caine's interior soliloquies he runs for the benefit of the audiences on Earth; toward the end of the novel he addresses the audience directly. These segments tend to be more in plain speech, more peppered with profanity, shorter paragraphs, and tangents that follow Caine's train of thought.

Influences

Caine mentions the book The Moon is a Harsh Mistress as the source of Pallas Rill's pseudonym, Simon Jester.

Footnotes

External links

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