A Short Stay in Hell
An ordinary family man, geologist, and Mormon, Soren Johansson has always believed he’ll be reunited with his loved ones in an eternal hereafter. Then, he dies. Soren wakes to find himself cast by a God he has never heard of into a Hell whose dimensions he can barely grasp: a vast library he can only escape from by finding the book that contains the story of his life. In this haunting existential novella, author, philosopher, and ecologist Steven L. Peck explores a subversive vision of eternity, taking the reader on a journey through the afterlife of a world where everything everyone believed in turns out to be wrong.
Stats for nerds
13recommend
16mentions
15people
2020–2026years
88% recommend13% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I'm also reading the first dungeon crawler carl series. You might really like the bobiverse, just got another book as well! Before that I read "a short stay in hell", super good! Or discordia by max barry or road kill by dennis e. taylor. All very entertaining.
- It relies entirely on infinity. Even a much smaller probability like flipping heads on a coin n times in a row quickly becomes practically impossible. How many monkeys would you need flipping coins to get 30 heads in a row?
Now imagine that’s hitting the right letter on a keyboard many thousands of times in a row.
I recommend the story A Short Stay in Hell
- Somewhat shameless shout out about this... My friends father is Steve Peck, the author of "A short stay in hell". It's a short story about a guy who ends up in hell that is this library. Fun weekend read.
- Reminds me of a book I recently read:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Short_Stay_in_Hell
The numbers produced by permutations are astounding! Especially compared to the (much smaller) numbers in our actual physical universe.
- Couple of books from this year:
- A short stay in hell (sci-fi): A modern take on Library of Babel. Pretty dark. Quick read.
- The Burried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. Nominally fantasy, but not really. Great, like his other books.
- Small things like these (fiction). Set in 1900s Ireland, atmospheric. I learned about Magdalene laundries from this book.
- Parable of the Sawer by Octavia E. Butler, science fiction. Collapse of society, survival etc. Pretty bleak.
- Lonely Kind of War (biography). Author was a forward air controller during the Vietnam war. His job was to direct air strikes from jets and bombers on enemy positions and then confirm the kills. Interesting and depressing.
- My favorite book this year has to be The Divine Farce, I haven't been gripped by a story like that in years. A short stay in hell falls in the same category. I'm still reading a book by Barbara Kingsolver: Demon Copperhead. It's really good and I like the story, but I have not finished it yet since I can't seem to find the time for it. Some other short stories like an inhabitant of Carcossa...
