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Orpheus returns to tell his story in Robert Silverberg's The Last Song of Orpheus. This is Silverberg tuning into his melodic voice to retell the myths surrounding this character. Those familiar with Greek myth can anticipate Orpheus' dive into Hades to retrieve his beautiful Eurydice, as well as his part in the story of Jason and the Argonauts.

The story opens with the typical Greek bard's calling upon the Muse. Also, it establishes some of the themes to be visited throughout: namely, the never-ending beginning-end cycle of existence, especially for a poet bard like Orpheus. Also, Orpheus is resigned to whatever fates are laid out for him: what the gods ordained his destiny to be, he is resigned to follow. Even his journey into Hades -- however forbidden -- is preordained, just as Charon had to row him across the Styx though his inner self rebelled, and just as Orpheus had to lose Eurydice.

"[W]e are none of us allowed the option of deviating from the track that has been laid down for us by the gods. I had to turn back for that fatal glance, just as Oedipus had to slay the old man he encountered at the crossroads and thereby set in motion the relentless machinery that the gods had devised for him."

Being born of a god and of a mortal has split his understanding of even himself: "All that was new to me, I who had never experienced anything for the first time, for my love of Eurydice was an aspect of the mortal part of myself, which does not see things the way the divine part does."

Here, Silverberg has Orpheus anticipate/paraphrase Walt Whitman's encompassment of all of America (and humanity) in Song of Myself although he works with and against Whitman's purposes: "Do I seem to contradict myself? Yes, I do; but I embody in myself all the contradictory things that men have believed of me. I confirm nothing; I deny nothing. I am Orpheus the demigod, and you must be a demigod to comprehend what that is like to be. I will help you as much as I can; but it will not be enough."

Though Orpheus is content as a ruler, the gods send him off on an adventure with Jason and the Argonauts to retrieve the Golden Fleece from the great serpent. They trick the rocks that smash ships, the sirens who lure sailors to their shores, and Medea's father through Medea herself. Finally, Orpheus must meet his death. The followers of Dionysius stone him. But this end is not his ending.

The Last Song of Orpheus is very contemplative in both mood and posture. One reads stories revisiting other writers' works by seeing what was added, what taken away, what is scrawled in the margins. Any reader familiar with Silverberg's work should be curious to read this one: where is the writer going? What new themes does he tease out of these well-known Greek myths? Even deeper, what does this mean both for our contemporary society and perhaps even for the author himself, for are not this and other tales a kind of immortality, leaving and returning for new generations?

Trent Walters teaches science; lives in Honduras; edited poetry at Abyss & Apex; blogs science, SF, education, and literature, etc. at APB; co-instigated Mundane SF (with Geoff Ryman and Julian Todd) culminating in an issue for Interzone; studied SF writing with dozens of major writers and and editors in the field; and has published works in Daily Cabal, Electric Velocipede, Fantasy, Hadley Rille anthologies, LCRW, among others.