Peter Empringham

The Afternet Peter Empringham

Publisher Marketing: There's a crisis in the afterlife. Since St Peter downed tools and left the sorting of the deceased to a computer system, The Afternet, the rate of new arrivals has risen to a level where the system can't cope. It is left to two totally unqualified representatives of God and the Devil to find a way to fix the system and process the billions who are left to wander a half-world between life and judgement. The Afternet is an intensely funny imagination of the consequences, and follows the fate of, amongst others, a group of Visigoths, a middle-aged couple from Esher, and Abraham Lincoln as they await their fate. The operatives of the system, threatened with a return to their previous eternities unless they bring about its repair, set off on an odyssey to safeguard their jobs. Aided by an incompetent Grim Reaper and the two 21st century souls whose premature demise he has caused, they pass between parts of the afterlife, modern day London, and the claustrophobic Control Room in a race against time. The novel throws together Gods and Monsters, historical luminaries, small-time crooks, and a world in which anything is possible, to bring humour and pathos to questions of eternity. Almost impossible to classify, The Afternet nonetheless offers something for lovers of science fiction and fantasy, humour, theology, and a fast-moving plot through a landscape of unbounded imagination.