A Short Stay in Hell is a speculative fiction novella published in 2012 in the English language by American evolutionary biologist, university professor, and poet Steven L. Peck.
The narrative follows a Mormon protagonist who discovers upon his death that Zoroastrianism is the one true religion, and he - and virtually every other human being who has ever lived - is condemned to spend some time in Hell. The demon he meets upon arrival explains to him that this stay will be only temporary, certainly not eternal or infinite, and that he can shorten his stay if he chooses. All he must do is find the one book which perfectly describes his entire life story, without error or omission, in the vast Library that will be the form of Hell he personally experiences.
What follows is a description of the protagonist's time in a Library which readers will recognsise is based on the Library of Babel, from the short story found in Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges. While the Library is not infinite - in fact does not even begin to approach the notion of infinity - its finitude is still so vast that if it was characterised in written numbers, the number of digits needed to describe its size or its count of books would exceed the count of all atoms in our universe.
Every day at "dawn" in the Library, the narrator awakens, subjectively alive, healthy, and unimpeded by any forgetfulness of his prior experiences during his stay in Hell. He is one of many people who find themselves in the Library, but to become separated from any other person is functionally to be parted from them forever, because traversal of the library from its highest level to its lowest level demands an interval of time that is many times longer than the lifespan of a universe.
The narrator's perspective about his situation shifts over the course of the book, as he experiences different "epochs" of changing social norms among the Library's inhabitants. Free of anything they can understand as lasting consequences, many of the Library denizens abandon all civility and indulge in episodes of explosive violence and tribalism. At other times, they attempt to reconstruct a society for themselves, making what resources they can from the limited materials the Library provides.
For a text of barely 108 pages, this one really left quite the impression on me, and it serves as a fine follow-up read for Labyrinths, as well as a good companion piece for Exordia by Seth Dickinson, which at times also explores a Zoroastrian-like approach to cosmic morality. It is both a fun read and a very grim one, with overtones of horror shot throughout, as the narrator's perception of his own circumstance swings wildly between boredom, terror, grief, docile acceptance, and even occasional joy. As brief as this book is, reading it can be the light labour of a single afternoon, and I am glad to recommend it.
Iron Noder 2024, 07/30