Read in the UK’s Big Issue*:
Strangely enough, neither Amazon not BooksOnline seem to have a copy in stock!!
Gp
Hmmm … think this was on “The New Twilight Zone.” Some math professor offers to sell his soul for an equation or something, and the Devil shows up. The Devil offers to let him keep his soul if he can make some kind of request that he, despite all of his Devilish powers, is unable to fulfill.
So the professor asks the Devil to get lost. The Devil, who can go anywhere, can’t ever get himself lost, so he retreats with an anguished howl.
Snooooopy, I saw that one! In fact, that’s the one I thought of when I saw this thread title.
Sherman Hemsley was the professor.
Probably the best way to get out of selling your soul, though, is to call up God and ask him to play a poker hand with Satan, winner take all.
You know, that would have been a lot easier than that whole dying on a cross thing. Maybe gambling for souls is against the rules or something.
Same here, except I don’t think it was The Twilight Zone. I think it was another anthology series called Tales from the Darkside.
Obligatory bad joke: I guess Mr. Jefferson really was “Moving on up…to the sk-y”
I friend of mine named Johnny also did it. He’s got a golden fiddle to prove it.
I would ask the devil to write out PI and tell me the last digit. (then again, who knows if PI really does end)
You could make it a trial and get Dan’l Webster as your lawyer.
No, it was The Twilight Zone. The 80s version. They did another one like this, in which a guy plays poker with the devil. The devil keeps winning because he always gets three sixes, but when the devil offers to play for his soul, the guy gets to choose the game, and he selects “lowball”, in which the lowest hand wins.
At the end of one of these episodes, the narrator says: “Part of our continuing series about what to do if the devil shows up on your doorstep. A public service announcement…from the Twilight Zone.”
I thought that was pretty cool.
Satan would win; God can’t (or won’t) cheat, while Satan will deal seconds til the cows come home.
I think the best story on this subject is Larry Niven’s “Convergent Series.” A guy discovers he can summon up the devil and keep him confined, merely by drawing a chalk circle around a pentagram. But by summoning the devil, he has already made the contract to sell his soul. He asks the devil what he gets in return for his soul and is granted one request. He asks to stop time for everything in the universe but him, just for an hour. He thinks for a while, then comes up with the idea of drawing the circle and pentagram on the belly of the frozen devil. When time starts again, the devil reappears inside the circle in his belly… and again inside the circle in that one’s belly… at infinitum… and then the devil vanishes in a puff of smoke.
Very nice.
Yeah, but being omniscient and omni-everything else, God would know and not allow it.
My money’s on the Creator, though he probably wouldn’t approve of me betting, damn it…er…I mean shucks.
There’s a short story called, IIFC, “The Hellbound Train” [spoiler warning] where a guy sells his soul to the devil (disguised as a train conductor) in exchange for a watch that will stop time at any moment he chooses. Being human, he waits and waits until he thinks he’s finally found the perfect moment. Of course, the “perfect” moment never comes, and he dies. The devil, on a train, comes to collect. He decides that the moment wouldn’t be any better, so he activates the watch on the train ride to hell. Everyone, Satan included, is stuck on a never ending ride. He becomes the brakeman on “the hellbound train.”
I’m allergic go sulpher, so my mom will write me a note asking me to be exempt from Hell.
Chris DeBurg (of “Lady in Red” and “Don’t Pay the Ferryman” fame) did a song called “Spanish Train” (at least, I think that’s the name of it…), which is about this very thing.
That should be “DeBurgh”.
Actually, I don’t bargain for souls anymore-it’s bad business. 90% of the time I get the soul anyway!
These days I just play the market…sorry about that whole dot-com thing, by the way.
Gosh, no one’s seen Oh God! You Devil!
And Chas.E I was thinking of that story too. Niven’s dip into pure math, as he called it. I was trying to think of the name of the story, but I said “screw it” because I didn’t want to go rumaging through my closet trying to find N*Space just to post it.
Hey, I have a question while we’re on the subject. I don’t want to hijack this thread, but this question isn’t important enough to warrant its own thread. OK, there was a Twilight Zone episode about a stand up comic who stole someone else’s material about bananas and used it in his act. Then he died and went to hell and had to defend his life up on stage telling jokes. He bombed out, until he started revealing personal bits about his life to some guy in the shadows. Suddenly everyone started laughing at him.
OK, I never got to see the end of this episode and I’ve never seen it but once. I think the reason I remember it so clearly is because I’ve never seen the ending and the curiousity of it stuck with me. Can anyone help me out? What happened?
Back to the OP (since I didn’t see the banana episode):
The way to beat the devil is curling - look for The Black Bonspiel of Wully MacCrimmon by W. O. Mitchell.
You beat him ala Bart Simpson.
“I’d sell my soul for (insert what you want here)”
(Devil appears) “That can be arranged.”
“Changed my mind, take it back.”
Repeat until the devil gets sufficiently pestered and agrees to give whatever it is to you in exchange for stopping.