[NOVEL] A Short Stay in Hell (2011)
This novel’s greatest strength is squeezing every idea from its speculative concept, and having the grace to finish early. It’s a slim tome, just over a hundred pages, but it feels complete. The premise is that a man is sent to a hell represented by a library which contains every permutation of letters in the English language (similar to the Monkey Typewriter Theory). He is only allowed to leave when he finds a book that contains a summary of his life. Most of the books, however, contain incoherent garbage, combinations of letters and punctuation marks that make no sense whatsoever, which leads the denizens of this hell to place enormous value into any excerpt of a book that contains a legible sentence.
What follows is a discussion on the nature of tedium, the idea of infinity, and the value of art and the written word. It’s abstract enough to impose your own experiences on, but coherent enough that the overall story remains enjoyable.