Review: A Short Stay in Hell

A Short Stay in Hell has left a long lasting impression. It’s an overwhelming premise, both horrific and wonderful, layered with human nature and social consideration.

It resubmits to you the idea of eternity, and presents a vision of hell that could be more terrifying than anything written by Dante.

At points I was reminded of Jose Saramago’s dystopian novel, Blindness, which as a social thought experiment is messy and devoid of hope. This is more lithe, yet will ultimately inject about the same amount of abject despair.

Yet, despite this, there is a lot to love here.

How large is a library with books that are exactly 410 pages long with 40 lines of exactly 80 English characters on each page?

This is the Borges Library of Babel and it has a book to cover every possible combination of characters.

A book with all blank pages? There is exactly one. A book that covers nearly the first half of War and Peace? Yup, there’s one of those too. The second half… it’s there somewhere.

This exact math, along with each book’s dimensions creates a hell that is unfathomably spacious.

Now find exactly one book that perfectly describes your life in all of this.

This novella does a great job at setting up a simple premise forging philosophical depth, and then creating simple plots and scenes that almost belie that complexity and depth.

It is simultaneously deep and simple, complicated and easy.

There is punctuated imagery that requires the above absurd setting. Imagine, for instance, all the fun things you can do while descending in a terminal velocity in free fall for years on end.

The math and consideration of this eternity, the inability to die but the anchoring in visceral biology creates a setting that is entirely unique. It created a lasting impression on me.

It is a short story (can be read in a few hours) but it leave a strong impression with a long half life.

The author is Steven Peck, a biologist at Brigham Young University. He has an varied background with a degree in entomology, a stint in the Vietnam war and involvement with the church of Latter Day Saints.

He’s must be a Mormon, and I’m off put by that, but this story has such a unique premise that i have to concede his religious affiliation has enriched the story.

Even if this does not have a similar impact, the brevity of the read makes it worth your time.