"Why Call Them Back from Heaven?" by Clifford Simak, summary

This science fiction novel depicts a world where commercial cryonics has replaced religion, turning human existence on earth into a grueling austerity for the sake of a future life. The plot centers on the idea of a total monopoly held by a global corporation, the "Incorruptible Center," which has concentrated all the world’s wealth on the promise of reincarnation. The book was published in 1967.

Court verdicts and hidden worries

A computer jury sentences rescue vehicle driver Franklin Chapman to physical death. Defense attorney Anne Harrison unsuccessfully attempts to prove the computer’s bias. The vehicle’s delay resulted in the destruction of her client’s body, so the culprit is stripped of his chest pulse transmitter. Chapman loses his right to cryopreservation, leaving him the only person among hundreds of billions frozen with a finite lifespan.

Daniel Frost heads the public information department of the Imperishable Center. On his way to work, he notices a slogan of the Saints’ opposition movement scrawled in yellow chalk on a brick wall: "Why call them back from heaven?" Earthlings are scrimping on every penny, giving up theaters, meat, and whole milk, buying up postage stamps, antiques, and stocks to secure seed capital for the second existence. At a morning meeting, the president of the corporation, B.D., demands an expedited search for employee Mona Campbell, who escaped with time-travel calculations based on the mathematics of the vanished civilization of Gamalia. Security Chief Marcus Appleton provokes Frost by revealing to his colleagues the existence of a departmental network of secret agents.

Frost recalls a memo he accidentally received for treasurer Peter Lane. The draft contained an order to add a certain number to a list. At a secret meeting in the park, informant Joe Gibbons offers a bribe of a quarter of a million dollars to allow Harry Hasting’s book, debunking immortality, to pass through. Frost refuses, suspecting a security trap.

That evening, Anne Harrison comes to visit Daniel. The lawyer asks him to intercede for Chapman. The charmed guest arranges a candlelit dinner and, as a parting gift, gives the lawyer an envelope containing old papers from his desk drawer, hoping to keep the secret. While out for a nighttime stroll, Frost is shot in the neck with a sedative. Waking up in a darkened courtroom, he hears his sentence for treason against humanity. Red "O" tattoos are branded onto the official’s cheeks and forehead, he is stripped of his property, and he is paraded naked into the street as a disgraced outcast.

The Saints’ Underground and the Flight to the West

The Saints’ secret agents rescue Frost from the cold outside. In the port cellar, the grizzled leader, George Sutton, questions his guest about his faith in God and feeds him Lenten stew. A sudden police raid by Appleton forces Daniel to flee: the floorboards give way, and he falls into a fetid sludge infested with rats.

After hiding in a dilapidated basement, Daniel begins a nightly scavenger hunt for food scraps. Soon, Chapman, sent to search for Anne Harrison, arrives at the hideout. The driver brings a knife, fishing line, matches, and medical supplies. In an alley near the café’s service entrance, an unknown sniper kills the cook who was feeding the exile. The headshot destroys the cook’s brain, making resuscitation impossible.

Realizing he’s being framed for execution, Frost climbs the exposed bricks to the roof of a nearby building. He steals an electric car from a market, changes the license plates, and heads west. His destination is his grandfather’s half-forgotten farm near Bridgeport, Wisconsin. Along the way, a gang of traveling drifters overturns the car, strips the driver naked, and dumps him naked in the river. Covering himself in bank mud to protect himself from swarms of mosquitoes, the fugitive reaches a familiar spring. Near the stream lies treasure hunter Amos Hicklin, dying from a snake bite. Delirious, the wanderer talks about a museum collection of jade hidden two hundred years ago.

The Discovery of Mona Campbell

With Hicklin on his back, Frost climbs the hill through a wall of thunderstorms to his grandfather’s house. Mona Campbell, hiding, opens the door. After cleaning the patient’s wounds, the woman takes him to the rescue station that night. Alone with Frost, Mona reveals the nature of her Gamalian calculations.

It turns out that manipulating time is physically impossible. Space, matter, and time are inseparable. Life is a fundamental constant of the universe, analogous to energy: death turns out to be a natural transition, not annihilation. The researcher decides to conceal her findings, so as not to deprive people of their traditional support and to avoid making fools of generations of ancestors who wasted their energy in cryo-chambers.

Exposing the Conspiracy

In the morning, Mona disappears without a trace. Marcus Appleton arrives at the gate, accompanied by his gunman, Clarence. The security chief demands the fugitive be handed over, threatening to beat Frost to death. A fight ensues. A distraught Clarence smashes his head against the fence, and Appleton begins strangling his prostrate opponent.

Suddenly, a Rescue Services helicopter lands in the courtyard. Armed guards, President B.D., and Anne Harrison emerge from the cockpit. The plot has been uncovered. The deadly encryption meant erasing the records of wealthy, lonely investors: Treasurer Lane was embezzling their accounts, and Appleton was fabricating false charges, eliminating witnesses.

Ann handed the papers she’d received to Sutton, and the experienced underground agents quickly deciphered the digital code. Chapman died of a heart attack at the post office, but managed to retrieve the envelope for his lawyer.

The corporation’s president promises to drop the charges, remove the stigma, and restore Frost’s leadership position. Daniel agrees to fly to New York with Anne, concealing the truth about Mona’s whereabouts.

On a sandy river island, the hermit Ogden Russell stumbles upon a buried steel suitcase containing ancient plates of engraved jade. Having failed to stabilize a falling wooden cross and having failed to find a divine sign, the sectarian, exhausted by fasting, realizes the failure of his own spiritual quest. Mona Campbell, passing by in a car, unsuccessfully offers the vagabond help, leaving him to whisper into the void words about the world’s abandonment by God.