# Choose your Hellhole!



## hypocriticHarkonnen (Jun 29, 2006)

hey guys! Choose your hellhole!

Imagine this.....
You're lollygagging about with your sweetheart, best pal, best pet, whatever, when a groups of orcs/monsters/priest-fanatics/boy-band-fanatics[?!] gag you, blindfold you, kidnap you [what-have-you] and tell you they're gonna drag you to some of the worst places in fictional history. But ah! They have at least a teensy drop of leniency [if you can call it that], and gives you the choice. Which hellhole do you want to be dropped off to?

a. Mordor
b. Azkaban
c. Arrakis
d. Apokolips (for all yah DC fans out there)
e. The Castle of Night

....and because of my extreme lack of knowledge of fictional hellholes, just name what hellhole you, uhm, prefer.


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## Paige Turner (Jun 29, 2006)

Mordor, definitely.

I love volcanoes. 

I've studied the maps and know all the roads.

Summer holidays at Club Barad-dur! Woo hoo!


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## Carolyn Hill (Jun 29, 2006)

Of the five you name, I'd take Arrakis.


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## SteveR (Jun 29, 2006)

What about Chasm City from the Alastair Reynolds novel of the same name?


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## hypocriticHarkonnen (Jul 1, 2006)

heck, why not? haven't read those, can you describe it for me?


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## Culhwch (Jul 1, 2006)

What is Arrakis? Actually, what are they all apart from (a) and (b)?


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## hypocriticHarkonnen (Jul 1, 2006)

Arrakis is the Dune world in Frank Herbert's book, Dune. Basically, it's one huge, huge desert where giant sandworms [when i say giant, i mean it!!! big enough to swallow you, your family, your friends...you get the picture] live and well, obviously, it's very hot and water is extremely scarce. Top it all off with warring Houses [sort of like clans] competing to possess Arrakis [the sandworms fabricate a very precious spice coveted all over the universe], and a tribe called Fremen who live by  strict codes, and you've got yourself a hellish planet!

Apokolips is the planet of the warlord Darkseid, one of the most powerful and enigmatic characters in DC comics [who has a band of warrior chicks called Female Furies as honor guards]. His planet is one giant ball of charred rock pock-marked with giant firepits and populated by terrorists and the terrorized. Ask a friend who knows DC comics, hehe. 

Lastly, the Castle of Night is the author Cornelia Funke's invention, the castle of The Adderhead. A guy named after a snake's head? He's gotta be a bad guy! His castle is made of silver...but you never want to find yourself stuck there, anyways, since you'll be killed by The Adderhead's mercenaries before you so much as see the glitter of silver.


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## j d worthington (Jul 1, 2006)

I still stand by my earlier statements in other posts: Here. This fictional construct we call "consensus reality". Again, quoting Marlowe: "Why this is Hell, nor am I out of it...."


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## steve12553 (Jul 1, 2006)

j. d. worthington said:
			
		

> I still stand by my earlier statements in other posts: Here. This fictional construct we call "consensus reality". Again, quoting Marlowe: "Why this is Hell, nor am I out of it...."


 
To sit reading a forum with posts that cry out for an answer and not be able to log in. That would be Hell.


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## j d worthington (Jul 1, 2006)

steve12553 said:
			
		

> To sit reading a forum with posts that cry out for an answer and not be able to log in. That would be Hell.


Amen to that, brother!


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## hypocriticHarkonnen (Jul 1, 2006)

j. d. worthington said:
			
		

> Amen to that, brother!


 
double amen to that......and then some.


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## kyektulu (Jul 1, 2006)

*Can I just go to the regular old Abyss...?

Although the castle of night sounds quite appealing...

Definetly not Mordor, im not good with heat and it would be quite roasty toasty in a volcano!*


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## steve12553 (Jul 2, 2006)

kyektulu said:
			
		

> *Can I just go to the regular old Abyss...?*
> 
> *Although the castle of night sounds quite appealing...*
> 
> *Definetly not Mordor, im not good with heat and it would be quite roasty toasty in a volcano!*


 
I think that's the point. Choose your own Hell. And Kye, you've changed your avatar. Very becoming.


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## weaveworld (Jul 2, 2006)

*Azkaban

Its looks surprisingly roomy and you get to meet like-minded people.
*


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## kyektulu (Jul 2, 2006)

steve12553 said:
			
		

> I think that's the point. Choose your own Hell. And Kye, you've changed your avatar. Very becoming.


*
Cheers, although we do have a choice...  

So where is the Castle Of Night from?*


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## chrispenycate (Jul 2, 2006)

I think i'll try Harry Harrison's "Deathworld"(the original, not the two sequels) Not that I expect to survive there that long, but great to visit (fast)


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## alicebandassassin (Jul 2, 2006)

i think i would like to be droped in robert rankins toy town
 i think i could have great fun messing with nursary rymes


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## hypocriticHarkonnen (Jul 3, 2006)

kyektulu said:
			
		

> *Cheers, although we do have a choice... *
> 
> *So where is the Castle Of Night from?*


 
sorry I forgot to mention that  

The Castle of Night is from Cornelia Funke's Inkspell.

Dudes, can you post a description of your respective 'hellish hotspots'? unfortunately i'm not well-versed in that arena and i'd really like to know what those places are like


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## SteveR (Jul 3, 2006)

Ok, from memory (and the back cover), Chasm City is a large domed city on a nasty looking planet called Yellowstone. With multiple layers of housing and trees it used to be a high tech place but is now ravaged in large parts by a nanotech plague that consumes all matter - turning it into some sort of sludge. Parts of the city are knee deep in this sludge. Very dark and gothic.


I can't remember the name of the plague, it is referred to throughout Reynolds's revelation space novels. On the tip of my tongue but nope, it 'aint coming 

It's a top read if you're into Reynolds and reasonably hard Sci-Fi.

Cheers
Steve


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## SteveR (Jul 3, 2006)

Ah ah ah! Just came to me - The Melding Plague!


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## Rosemary (Jul 17, 2006)

From the Fire Of Heaven by Russell Kirkpatrick -

Helig Holth - a deep dark pool at Adulok Down, where the Widuz Priest cast down captives as a sacrifice to The Earth Mother.

1.  Am not very good at standing on ledges high above deep dark pools.
2.  Nor do I like the sound of being a sacrifice.
3.  Worst of all, most stories depict The Earth Mother as being good and 
      not wanting sacrifices made to her in that way!


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## star.torturer (Jul 17, 2006)

dyson alpha- lots of hoswork (not)
shayol ghul- as u may WOT know
gates of death- nice and scary#
france
planet of the vogons
take your pick


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## Perpetual Man (Jul 18, 2006)

star.torturer said:
			
		

> dyson alpha- lots of hoswork (not)
> shayol ghul- as u may WOT know
> gates of death- nice and scary#
> france
> ...


 
France?

France?

Haven't stopped grinning all morning! Thanks Star.torturer!

For myself I'd choose Arrakis.


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## star.torturer (Jul 18, 2006)

microsoft head office (computers crash more often)

Tartarus

maybe just hell itsself

valhalla


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## dustinzgirl (Jul 18, 2006)

Valhalla is not hell, but I would like to go there and hang with all those big viking warrior types....yummy...

um....

what were we talking about again?


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## star.torturer (Jul 19, 2006)

> Valhalla is not hell, but I would like to go there and hang with all those big viking warrior types....yummy...



ecept for the above reasons:

valhala isnot hell, but:

looking at the ride at Blackpool Pleasure beach, it is a prety hellish place to be, especialy at the moment


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## The DeadMan (Jul 20, 2006)

*Any of the seven layers of Hell from Inferno by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle.*


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## iratebeaver (Jul 20, 2006)

alicebandassassin said:
			
		

> i think i would like to be droped in robert rankins toy town
> i think i could have great fun messing with nursary rymes


 

I agree completely


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## hypocriticHarkonnen (Jul 20, 2006)

star.torturer said:
			
		

> microsoft head office (computers crash more often)
> 
> Tartarus
> 
> ...


 
aye, tis a hellish existence, indeedy, when one's computer crashes and barrnss.....like what mine did yestirdee. arrrrrrg!


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## star.torturer (Jul 20, 2006)

windows dosent crash, it tries to work and cant


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## hypocriticHarkonnen (Jul 20, 2006)

it tries?


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## star.torturer (Jul 20, 2006)

well yeah, it tries to work, but it cant.

the plughole of the tearoom jacuzzi is a scary place to end up


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## Nesacat (Jul 20, 2006)

Ray Bardbury's world in Fahrenheit 451 where book burning was institutionalised.

"Where they  burn books, they will end in burning human beings." — Heinrich Heine in 1821.


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## star.torturer (Jul 20, 2006)

> "Where they burn books, they will end in burning human beings." — Heinrich Heine in 1821.


 fire is a dangerious thing then isnt it


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## Nesacat (Jul 23, 2006)

So are books.


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## steve12553 (Jul 23, 2006)

So are the minds that absorb them.


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## j d worthington (Jul 23, 2006)

Hadn't really thought of the future(?) Earth of Bradbury's *Fahrenheit 451* in this context; but, given it as an option.... I think it just moved into my #1 spot of worst hellhole ever.....


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## the smiling weirwood (Jul 23, 2006)

Yes, especially since they run over cute, brainy girls! NOOOO!


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## hypocriticHarkonnen (Jul 25, 2006)

what else happens in Fahrenheit 451? and why do they burn books?


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## Nesacat (Jul 25, 2006)

*Spoiler warning:*

In _Fahrenheit 451_, firemen start fires in order to burn books and the title is the temperature at which they burn the books.

It's a society where trivial information is good, and knowledge and ideas  are bad. Guy Montag is a fireman undergoing a crisis of faith and who starts hiding books in his home. His wife turns him in, and he must answer the call to burn cache of books. He eventually winds up joining an  outlaw band of scholars who keep the contents of books in their heads, waiting  for the time society will once again need the wisdom of literature.


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## hypocriticHarkonnen (Jul 25, 2006)

yeah, in that dreary abyss I wouldn't spend a lot of time, since I would probably die of _Lakof buksturead
_(corny joke. forgive me, I'm bored)


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## Paige Turner (Jul 25, 2006)

It's better in a hell hole
You know where you stand in a hell hole
Folks lend a hand in a hell hole
Girl get me back to my hell hole.


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## TK-421 (Aug 2, 2006)

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, where all humans are made in test tubes in laboratories.


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## hypocriticHarkonnen (Sep 12, 2006)

I just watched Star Trek a few days back, and I just realized it would be a bloody bummer to get captured by a Borg and be assimilated. One of the next worse things to dying, maybe even worse.


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## Nesacat (Sep 12, 2006)

But would you even know or remember all that was? Would you totally forget or would there be a tiny part that screamed all down the ages?


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## Ozymandias (Sep 13, 2006)

It's not actually science fiction (or maybe it is) but that hill covered in those carnivorous and vaguely sentient vines from Scott Smith's The Ruins. But I already live in a hellhole-the suburbs of St. Louis.


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## j d worthington (Sep 13, 2006)

Nesacat said:
			
		

> But would you even know or remember all that was? Would you totally forget or would there be a tiny part that screamed all down the ages?


 
From hints in the original stories dealing with the Borg, and from the way that consciousness tends to work (to the best of our understanding), I'd say that it would be impossible to truly eliminate the "I" altogether, though it would probably be severely truncated, leaving it to not only be screaming at the imprisonment within that altered mind/body, but perhaps even horrifically aware of the parts of it that are now missing.... Yes, that would certainly be hell enough.


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## Ozymandias (Sep 13, 2006)

If I'm not mistaken, the Borg were intent on assimilating all forms of sentient life into one gigantic single consciousness. A sort of We the living. I've always suspected it was a dig at communism.


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## Nesacat (Sep 13, 2006)

Ozymandias said:
			
		

> It's not actually science fiction (or maybe it is) but that hill covered in those carnivorous and vaguely sentient vines from Scott Smith's The Ruins. But I already live in a hellhole-the suburbs of St. Louis.



Somedays The Ruins sound much better than the Big Bad City where I work and the suburbs where I live. Hellhole definitely except they don't burn books. But then again hardly anyone reads them anyway.


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## hypocriticHarkonnen (Sep 15, 2006)

I've encountered a few fantasy/science fiction stories that deal with a time anomaly, wherein certain acts or events, or even Time itself, would repeat and repeat until the damage or the cause has been repaired. Usually, in these types of stories, the prominent characters are aware of the 'repetition'. That would certainly drive you near the breaking point, at the very least. For instance, there was a story arc in the Superman/Batman comic series wherein there was a point that the duo moved uncontrollably through various alternate times, and within those timelines they end up getting horribly killed each time.


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## j d worthington (Sep 15, 2006)

Hmmm. On that note, there's the anomalous structure in Algis Budrys' *Rogue Moon*, which must be explored to find out if it poses a threat, yet each time a person steps into it, they die just beyond where they died the last time (the character is being replicated in order to reach the end, but since he's got a "connection" with his double in the structure, each time he feels himself die in a different and particularly nasty way... over and over and over...)


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## The Ace (Oct 3, 2006)

England
 USA
 Tesco (or any other superstore)
 Nightclubs
 A bookshop that only sells Mills and Boon


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## Nesacat (Oct 4, 2006)

Having worked in a store that was 99% filled with romances, I'll agree; though it was also one of the most amusing jobs I ever had.


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## hypocriticHarkonnen (Oct 5, 2006)

Nesacat said:
			
		

> Having worked in a store that was 99% filled with romances, I'll agree; though it was also one of the most amusing jobs I ever had.


 
what made it amusing, may i ask?   i've always wondered what it was like to work at a bookstore. hmm, it would prolly drive me insane if i did get to work at a bookstore that only sold physics and statistics textbooks.


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## Loner (Oct 11, 2006)

Hellhole : A grey office cubicle with a clock who's hands never move, whilst you are periodically visited by "management" types who speak to you about impossible projects in acronyms, then come back later and countermand their own orders which you had almost completed...

... O h   w a i t . T h a t ' s   r e a l i t y.


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## j d worthington (Oct 11, 2006)

Of course, if we wanted to get back to the originals, we could pick Hades or, worse yet, the Inferno as depicted by Dante... now _THAT'S_ a Hellhole! Though I must admit, I wouldn't particularly want to visit, let alone inhabit, either one....


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## hypocriticHarkonnen (Oct 12, 2006)

Ahh Dante. Though I do agree that I dont want to spend a nanosecond in his contrived imagery of Hell, one must admit that Inferno was one heckuva nice piece of literature. Fittingly gruesome detail for a place of eternal damnation.


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## Nesacat (Oct 12, 2006)

I think I would quite like to visit Dante's Inferno. Have always had a soft spot for His Royal Darkness. And as for Hades ... I think he's very romantic in an odd sort of fashion.

The world in Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale would be hell indeed.


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## Jaggy Jai (Oct 12, 2006)

Hell Hole......for its Friar Park!!!!! A very personal hell-hole for me!!!!!!!


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## Nesacat (Oct 12, 2006)

Omelas ... I think living there would be hell although it felt like paradise. It's from Ursula K Le Guin's short story The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas where the joy and peace of a whole country depends on the absolute misery of one child.


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## j d worthington (Oct 12, 2006)

Ah, yes... that is one of my favorite LeGuin pieces, too.... that one sneaks under the wire and really hits home, doesn't it? A particularly nasty kind of hell indeed.....


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## hypocriticHarkonnen (Oct 13, 2006)

come to think of it, I'd find it gruesome if I was left in the Tombs of Atuan. Slow deaths are not the way to go, blech.


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## The Ace (Nov 10, 2006)

Can you make toast at a fiery furnace with a nicked pitchfork ?


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## hypocriticHarkonnen (Nov 14, 2006)

I'd doubt the Guy Below will let you even touch it. It'd burn to a crisp, anyway


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