“Hell is Forever”
Unknown Worlds, August 1942
Most recently reprinted in Redemolished.
Alfred Bester’s birthday was a few days ago. I decided to reread his novella “Hell is Forever” to mark the occasion. Or rather, reread. I’d first read it in the collection Starlight: The Great Short Fiction of Alfred Bester way back in 8th grade. I didn’t like the story at the time, but since that was mumblety-mumble years ago, I thought I would give it another try.
I still didn’t care much for it.
The story opens in a bomb shelter in the basement of a manor house during the Blitz. The six people in the basement live to experience new things, and are a pretty jaded group. In the opening scene, they’re putting on a play one of them has written for the benefit of their hostess. During the play, one of the characters summons up a demon, which gets loose. The hostess, who is grossly obese and not in the best of health, dies of a heat attack.
Turns out that was the intention of the other five all along, and the demon wasn’t real. Except he was. Oh, not the actor done up to look like a demon, but the real one who shows up after the hostess dies. He makes a deal with the group, pass through a shimmering wall of flame where the exit used to be and they will each enter a world in which the individual’s greatest desire will be realized. Which sounds like a good deal. The husband of a married couple wants to stay married, while his wife wants to kill him. The artist is in love with a woman who often models for him, but she’s frigid and wants nothing to do with him.
Of course there’s a catch. There always is in such a bargain. Each section of the novella after the opening section deals with a different character, and shows how things go wrong for them. For instance, the artist wants to be a god, but in his universe all his creations come out twisted and deformed. The married woman kills her husband only to find that he was her greatest desire.
It goes on like that.
Alfred Bester
The writing is good. Bester didn’t do anything fancy like he did in The Demolished Man or “Fondly Fahrenheit”, but “Hell is Forever” is still a solid piece of writing. I just didn’t care for the story. The twist at the end wasn’t entirely predictable, but wasn’t a great surprised.
The thing I most disliked about it was the characters just weren’t very likable. They had few if any redeeming qualities, which made it hard for me to feel sorry for them or experience any sympathy when they got their just desserts. YMMV.
“Hell is Forever” was originally published in the August 1942 issue of Uknown Worlds. It shared the table of contents with stories by James H. Beard, John Hawkins, A. E. Van Vogt, Fritz Leiber, Malcolm Jameson, L. Sprague de Camp, Frank Belknap Long, Cleve Cartmill, and Lester Del Rey. It was been reprinted a number of times, most recently in the collection Redemolished.
I remembered reading this many, many (or as some might put it, “mumbledy mumble”) years ago, when I was at an exactly appropriate age, in this case, about 14. Old enough to understand the themes and the decadence, young enough to be impressed by the handling thereof. I have had this good fortune for a lot of reading…like picking up the unauthorized Ace edition of “Fellowship of the Ring” the week it was released, having never heard of it before and right prior to a cross country road trip with my parents (Alabama to Utah, close enough), at age 12. Talk about making an impression!
Anyway, I had formed the idea that the title was “Ashtaroth Was No Lady”, and couldn’t find a trace of it. Now it occurs to me that that might have been the title of the play-within-a-story in the opening section. After digging through the titles of Bester’s short stories, was glad to get confirmation of the actual title. And yes, MMDV.
IIRC, I was most impressed with the well-thought-out “hells” each of the libertines were consigned to…the sleazy artist who pandered to the decadence of his audience facing an infinite eternity of nothing but manifestations of his own warped soul, or the frigid, beautiful model who wanted to be worshipped as a goddess trapped in the role of goddess to repulsive adherents, her damnation being a function of her shallow faith in appearances above all (I also recall getting the impression that part of her role was to have sex with those repulsive followers as well, though given the era, that would have to have been conveyed fairly subtly).
I didn’t have much trouble with the generally bad characters of the protagonists. That might have had something to do with having found my Dad’s unexpurgated translation of DeSade’s Justine and Juliette the year before, and having at that time concluded that the adults in the world were a bunch of very messed-up people anyway.
I can understand how your enjoyment was compromised by it, though. I just found the neat working-out of the hellish punishments, through the granting of “heart’s desire” to be rewarding enough. And I thought the final revelation was rewarding enough. I especially appreciated the “man of hidden faith” being shown a universe that was not, after all, controlled by a Marx Bros/3 Stooges divinity.
Thanx for the review.
And, since I was going to replace my copies of “Demolished Man” and “The Stars My Destination”, I think I’ll also get a Bester short story collection while I’m at it.
If you want a great compendium of Bester’s ‘best’ short stories and novellas (Hell is Forever in included), try to find a copy of “Starlight, Star Bright – the best of Alfred Bester” ….my hardbound copy is a permanent resident in my master bathroom. I find I can read some of them 10 times without being bored. As an SF fan for the better part of my 75 years on this dustball, I have amassed a decent collection of anthologies, mostly from the 60’s and early 70’s, where the bulk of the stories are from the masters of my favorite era (what I consider the golden age) – 1935 to 1965. Feel free to email me to chat if you are so inclined.
Hi, Brad. I picked up a paperback copy of Starlight and read it back in 8th grade. I snagged a hardcover copy a little over a year ago at a Friends of the Library sale. We probably have many of the same anthologies, since I’ve always read a lot of short fiction. I also really like stories published in that time frame. Probably because there were so many anthologies and collections available when I was a teenager and just getting into science fiction and fantasy.