Les Thanatonautes is a 1994 science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 novel by French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 writer Bernard Werber

Bernard Werber

Bernard Werber is a French science fiction writer active since the 1990s.-Novels:His style of writing mixes different literary genres, notably the saga, the science fiction of the inter-war years, and tracts of philosophy.In most of his novels, Bernard Werber uses the same form of construction,...

. The book deals with the search for afterlife

Afterlife

The afterlife is the belief that a part of, or essence of, or soul of an individual, which carries with it and confers personal identity, survives the death of the body of this world and this lifetime, by natural or supernatural means, in contrast to the belief in eternal...

.

Les Thanatonautes is first in a five-part series. Together with L'Empire des anges ("The Empire of Angels", 2000) and Nous les dieux ("Us the Gods", 2004), it makes up the Les Thanatonautes trilogy. Nous les dieux, together with Le souffle des dieux ("The Blow of the Gods", 2005) and Le mystère des dieux ("The Mystery of the Gods", 2007), make up the Nous les dieux trilogy.

The book, which one could classify as philosophic science fiction (with a hint of fantasy), takes us on a voyage to the last unexplored continent, death. The term thanatonaute is derived from "thanatologie", comes from the Greek god of death Thanatos

Thanatos

In Greek mythology, Thanatos was the daemon personification of death. He was a minor figure in Greek mythology, often referred to but rarely appearing in person...

 and nautis (navigateur) and thus signifies navigator of death or explorer of death.

The novel tells the story of a researcher Michael Pinson and his friend Raoul Razorbak who go explore the Ultimate Continent (called New Australia): the continent of death. This adventure takes us across the different zones of the continent of the dead to the famous light. In doing these explorations the thanatonautes voluntarily risk their lives to discover the mysteries of death.

The book is scattered regularly with a number of different sacred texts

Religious text

Religious texts, also known as scripture, scriptures, holy writ, or holy books, are the texts which various religious traditions consider to be sacred, or of central importance to their religious tradition...

 drawn from mythology

Mythology

The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...

, religion

Religion

Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...

, and cosmogony

Cosmogony

Cosmogony, or cosmogeny, is any scientific theory concerning the coming into existence or origin of the universe, or about how reality came to be. The word comes from the Greek κοσμογονία , from κόσμος "cosmos, the world", and the root of γίνομαι / γέγονα "to be born, come about"...

from all over the world. And it is astonishing to see that each of these points of view resemble each other and tell the same story just with different words and symbols.