Your favorite fictional depiction of Hell

[Riemann]

@DigitalC

In The Culture series of books by Ian M. Banks the digitalization and uploading of your consciousness is a well know and widely used technology, usually for benevolent purposes. Except in one of the books it is revealed that some more conservative civilizations have literally invented hell and upload the consciousness of people they deem undesirable into it. It is… brutal.

I came in to mention this. Surface Detail is the book. Brutal as you say, but a superb book, one of his best. I especially like the audiobook - Peter Kenny has the perfect voice for reading Banks.

[Darren_Garrison]

@DigitalC

That’s very spoilery.

I think at this point is is pretty much on “Rosebud was a sled”/“Darth Vader is Luke’s father” level of spoiler. Soylent Green is people!

[Dropo]

Some lesser known hells:

Dante’s Inferno (1935) - DANTE'S INFERNO (El Infierno del Dante-1935) - YouTube

Jigoku (1960) – features a colorful if pointless tour through hell

The Devil’s Eye (1960) – Don Juan in hell is kinda fun. Unfortunately, most of the film takes place on earth

Double Vision (2002) – Illustrations of Tongue Removal Hell are seen as part of a Taoist tapestry

Also - https://arthistoryproject.com/artists/jean-delville/the-treasures-of-satan/

[burpo_the_wonder_mutt]

There’s a Harlan Ellison story, “Hitler Painted Roses,” where the main character is sent to Hell (brimstone, victims burned and blackened, dark, burning tunnels) for basically a clerical error, but she escapes and makes her way to Heaven which is represented as a slightly tacky theme park. Heaven starts peeling at the edges until she leaves – back to Hell.

[gkster]

Dante, a fave because of the variety of the circles of Hell and the character backstories and descriptions.

CS Lewis’s Screwtape Letters, where it’s a goal-oriented bureaucracy: “the justice of Hell is purely realistic, and concerned only with results. Bring us back food, or be food yourself.”

[MrDibble]

I was going to nominate Barlowe’s Inferno, also for the idea of Hell as a place with its own ecology and prior inhabitants.

That and I like the Hell in the recent A Tale Dark & Grimm animated show on Netflix. Punishments are illusionary.

[Gyrate]

@DigitalC

In The Culture series of books by Ian M. Banks the digitalization and uploading of your consciousness is a well know and widely used technology, usually for benevolent purposes. Except in one of the books it is revealed that some more conservative civilizations have literally invented hell and upload the consciousness of people they deem undesirable into it. It is… brutal.

There’s a Mitchell and Webb radio sketch along these lines - people have paid to have their consciousnesses uploaded to a virtual afterlife but due to a computer error once they “arrive” they are promptly stuffed into a large pig. It is extremely unpleasant.

In lesser-known hells, there’s always Stig’s Inferno. The perpetually unfinished state of the story (which got rebooted but still not finished) is a minor torment in itself.

[Knowed_Out]

https://scontent-iad3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.18169-9/fr/cp0/e15/q65/10603629_729369713802615_8898034838152133440_n.jpg?_nc_cat=109&ccb=1-5&_nc_sid=2d5d41&efg=eyJpIjoidCJ9&_nc_ohc=J8y9-0itwLMAX-IQ3Ni&_nc_ht=scontent-iad3-1.xx&oh=c147ca1401ec803a559fa2ea62eaefd1&oe=61D6A5A2

[running_coach]

Also known as The Prince of Insufficient Light.

[CalMeacham]

All of this, and no one mentions the “Don Juan in Hell” segment from George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman ?

it hasn’t got the drama and terror of Dante’s Hell, or any of the books (Like Niven and Pournelle’s Inferno) based on it, nor the wonderful grotesquerie of the Hell depicted in several of Hieronymous Bosch’s triptychs, but it’s witty and intriguing, and the first case I know of where it’s suggested that the inmates of Hell are there essentially by their own choice.

Shaw loved inverting tropes and defeating people’s expectations, so having the debauching and debased sinner Don Juan Tenorio being the spokesman of reason is really kind of a hoot.

Don Juan Play[edit]

The long third act of the play, which shows Don Juan himself having a conversation with several characters in Hell, is often cut. Charles A. Berst observes of Act III:

Paradoxically, the act is both extraneous and central to the drama which surrounds it. It can be dispensed with, and usually is, on grounds that it is just too long to include in an already full-length play. More significantly, it is in some aspects a digression, operates in a different mode from the rest of the material, delays the immediate well-made story line, and much of its subject matter is already implicit in the rest of the play. The play performs well without it.[8]

Don Juan in Hell consists of a philosophical debate between Don Juan (played by the same actor who plays Jack Tanner), and the Devil, with Doña Ana (Ann) and the Statue of Don Gonzalo, Ana’s father (Roebuck Ramsden) looking on. This third act is often performed separately as a play in its own right, most famously during the 1950s in a concert version, featuring Charles Boyer as Don Juan, Charles Laughton as the Devil, Cedric Hardwicke as the Commander and Agnes Moorehead as Doña Ana. This version was also released as a spoken word album on LP, but is yet to appear on CD. In 1974–1975, Kurt Kasznar, Myrna Loy, Edward Mulhare and Ricardo Montalban toured nationwide in John Houseman’s reprise of the production, playing 158 cities in six months.[9]

Man and Superman

[ZonexandScout]

I’ve really enjoyed Mark Cain’s take on Hell in his Circles of Hell series. It’s sort of a mix of the Bizarro world, Brazil, and vaudeville. One nice touch is that you get a cream pie in the face if you compliment somebody.

[hogarth]

Dante’s got to be the winner.

But I also like the version of Hell in the animated series Ugly Americans, where they built the tourist attraction/shopping area New Hell on top of Old Hell.

[Knowed_Out]

There’s the Adult Swim series, Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell. The obnoxious annoying losers nobody can stand are now low-level demons working in Hell’s cube farms. Satan’s a horrible boss, but easily amused with meaningless suffering.

Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell

[DigitalC]

@Darren_Garrison

think at this point is is pretty much on “Rosebud was a sled”/“Darth Vader is Luke’s father” level of spoiler.

Is it? The Good Place ended last year and it wasn’t like a giant hit or anything.

[Guest-starring_Id]

I like Goya’s hellish visions in his Follies, which were a set of 22 black and white prints, and then later, his much darker (in both senses of the word) Black Paintings, featuring the quite grisly Saturn Devouring His Son.

And of cource MC PeePants having a tough go of it.

[ATHF] MC PeePants in hell

“No, it isn’t.”

[Son_of_a_Rich]

I like the Sebastian Cabot hell, but with my luck there’d be no internet.

[Son_of_a_Rich]

Wasn’t Homer in a hell where they tried in vain to torture him by force feeding him donuts?

[Thudlow_Boink]

Homer's Donut Hell

[Two_Many_Cats2]

Hell, Michigan is actually kinda nice.

[mbh]

Hell, Grand Cayman looks scary, but is in the middle of a beautiful island.