What is the most interesting or creative version of heaven or hell in fiction (including comics, TV, books, movies and computer games)? How does it differ from the standard “cloudscape/lake of fire” afterlives?
The Twighlight Zone had a few ideas… 
I meant “Twilight Zone”. :o
You gotta give high marks to Dante, of course, the prime cartographer of Hell. But my personal favorite is George Bernard Shaw’s vision in the “Don Juan in Hell” sequence in Man and Superman. C.S. Lewis criticized this, and presented his own odd vision of the afterlife, in The Great Divorce.
Highly rccommended : The History of Hell. (I forget the author’s name)
Mark Twain’s Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven.
The vision of Hell imagined in Vertigo Comics (originally by Neil Gaiman) is pretty interesting. It’s the standard Milton-derived Hell we’re familiar with, only Lucifer quits and leaves, and is replaced (to everyone’s dismay) by two “unfallen” angels from Heaven.
Just what I came here to mention. Both of them.
beyond that if we’re incuding comic books, the whole Vertigo take on it…now specifically Lucifer…is pretty interesting. Particularly the angels who took it over. And the fact that it was that idea of hell that provided me with a profound insight…“You don’t have to stay anywhere forever”.
But I think the bigger question is has anyone come up with a really compelling conception of Heaven? I don’t think so.
Interesting similpost 
Yeah, Heaven’s a lot harder to make interesting, perhaps because part of the premise of Heaven is that there wouldn’t be any conflict or strife. Harps and wings would get really boring really fast.
Albert Brooks maybe gets close to making it interesting in his good, but flawed film, Defending Your Life, but I don’t know if his afterlife world could be called Heaven.
Movies such as Here Comes Mr. Jordan, The Horn Blows At Midnight, Wings of Desire and It’s a Wonderful Life feature Heaven, but are about Earth, so maybe they don’t fit in this thread.
Diane Keaton made a movie about cinematic depictions of Heaven. It was a documentary, but I don’t remember much about it.
That’s the one I came into mention. I’ll just add that there’s a non-Gaiman spin-off series about Lucifer’s post Hell adventures (he owns a dance club called LUX) and that a keypoint of the plot of the movie DOGMA was borrowed (with acknowledgement) by Kevin Smith from the Sandman Hell.
The Muslim concept of Hell is particularly scary- it’s such an awful place that even the devil and demons don’t want to go anywhere near it. On the up-side, Allah has mercy and does not send all non-believers and sinners there forever.
Hermann Göring once lamented about being from the only race of people who ever devised a Depressing Heaven.
I love Milton’s descriptions of hell in Paradise Lost: the Palace, the cities, etc… I’ve yet to read Dante but would love to see an update (i.e. people used as examples that you don’t have to be a medieval Florentine to know, though Judas and Brutus and Cassius are still on the villain’s list).
He doesn’t need to worry about it…
Niven & Pournelles Inferno is pretty interesting. It is Dante’s Inferno, peopled with modern souls. The key is that a soul, once it has come to grips with its shortcomings, can leave Hell and move on to Purgatory. Hell is described as “the violent ward for the theologically insane”.
Well, that’s the impression you get reading Revelations too…
I feel bad because I thought that was funny…
FENG-DU: The Realm of the Dead, containing all the Chinese Hells.
Very similar to Dante’s conception of hell in many ways, but with unique features. A paradise is mentioned but no description of it is given.
Darn you to heck, I’d just researched the same site for Chinese Hells.
http://www.pholph.com/index.php?Strip=1
Warning: this is a webcomic with a MATURE rating.
Graphic language, violence, nudity, sex, and…
…furries.
Bunnies, puppies, kittens, foxes, skunks, raccoons, etc. cussing, and murdering, and raping, and dying, and going to hell.
But surprisingly, even in hell, you can still find redemption and be saved.
Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey!
There’s a Chinese Hell? I thought the Chinese were Buddhists.
From the cite: