Choose your Hellhole!

[hypocriticHarkonnen]

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)

 

[Paige Turner]

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.

 

[TK-421]

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

 

[hypocriticHarkonnen]

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.

 

[Nesacat]

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?

 

[Ozymandias]

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.

 

[j d worthington]

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.

 

[Ozymandias]

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.

 

[Nesacat]

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.

 

[hypocriticHarkonnen]

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.

 

[j d worthington]

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...)

 

[The Ace]

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

 

[Nesacat]

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.

 

[hypocriticHarkonnen]

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.

 

[Loner]

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.

 

[j d worthington]

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....

 

[hypocriticHarkonnen]

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.

 

[Nesacat]

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.

 

[Jaggy Jai]

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

 

[Nesacat]

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.