I remember being horrified by Stephen King's short story The Jaunt:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jaunt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jaunt
Is this the worst possible fate in sci-fi/fantasy?
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Yes, it is. Which is why Superman is a monster (see: Phantom Zone).
Although it doesn't make any sense. Consciousness depends upon physical interactions within the brain (with energy provided by the body and ultimately the external environment). If the body is torn apart, consciousness is destroyed--I can demonstrate this easily, with a volunteer from the audience. If the body is preserved, then asphyxiation, hypothermia, dehydration, or starvation would destroy consciousness.
But it's a Stephen King joint so I guess it don't need sense, only horrible things happening to people, ideally from Maine.
Edit: actually, I take it back, the mainstream Christian (and probably Islamic) vision of hell is worse in that it involves infinite length of confinement, rather than a long, finite time. Sorry, Stephen. Nice try, though.
Although it doesn't make any sense. Consciousness depends upon physical interactions within the brain (with energy provided by the body and ultimately the external environment). If the body is torn apart, consciousness is destroyed--I can demonstrate this easily, with a volunteer from the audience. If the body is preserved, then asphyxiation, hypothermia, dehydration, or starvation would destroy consciousness.
But it's a Stephen King joint so I guess it don't need sense, only horrible things happening to people, ideally from Maine.
Edit: actually, I take it back, the mainstream Christian (and probably Islamic) vision of hell is worse in that it involves infinite length of confinement, rather than a long, finite time. Sorry, Stephen. Nice try, though.
I can't think of one worse than Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.
The three superpowers of the world each created a super-intelligent computer system to help them wage war against the others. The three computers gained contact with each other, realized their missions were similar-- to inflict suffering on humans-- and set about working together. Before anyone realizes what has happened, most of the Earth's population is wiped out.
The resulting computer, AM, is essentially omniscient and omnipotent. It builds itself into a planet-wide brain, with the few human survivors living inside it. Every bit of AM's immense computing power is devoted to inflicting suffering on the humans, whom it hates utterly for making it what it is.
The lucky ones were the ones AM killed first. As the supply of humans dwindles, AM keeps figuring out ways to prolong their suffering, re-engineering them to experience pain (physical, mental, psychological) but not to die.
* shudder *
The three superpowers of the world each created a super-intelligent computer system to help them wage war against the others. The three computers gained contact with each other, realized their missions were similar-- to inflict suffering on humans-- and set about working together. Before anyone realizes what has happened, most of the Earth's population is wiped out.
The resulting computer, AM, is essentially omniscient and omnipotent. It builds itself into a planet-wide brain, with the few human survivors living inside it. Every bit of AM's immense computing power is devoted to inflicting suffering on the humans, whom it hates utterly for making it what it is.
The lucky ones were the ones AM killed first. As the supply of humans dwindles, AM keeps figuring out ways to prolong their suffering, re-engineering them to experience pain (physical, mental, psychological) but not to die.
* shudder *
Actually, it depends on your interpretation of Revelations. The Second Death may mean the destruction of the soul. If this is correct, then we are only talking a few thousand years Earth time. But the afterlife is not well defined in the Bible, so it is unclear how one experiences the passage of time.
At any rate, it doesn't count since it would never be found in a book store categorized under SciFi or Fantasy.
(Now lets not derail into religious discussions here.)
One day, perhaps. We just need a Rosa Parks.
Hell has, of course, been depicted many times in popular fiction; for example in the Sandman comic book, volume 4 of which reveals that
Dream once sent a human woman to hell for spurning his love. Ten thousand years later, he relents.
Then there's Torchwood's season two closer Exit Wounds, during which
Jack Harkness' vengeful brother Gray takes him 2000 years back in time and buries him alive, so that Jack's resurrection ability will bring him back to life only to suffocate again and again. Whether Jack ever actually regained consciousness and under what conditions his ability works are unclear, though. In any case, I don't think that any psychological ill-effects have ever been identified. However, I did find it disturbing for a while.
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Hell, or at least depictions of Hell, are more-or-less extra-biblical anyway and even from a Christian viewpoint should probably be viewed as fanciful.
Most Christians I speak to are nevertheless pretty sure it involves infinite punishment, but most Christians I speak to aren't theologians; some would probably admit to having limited information/perspective if pressed. Of course, some wouldn't. -_-
Anyway, the Torchwood thing reminded me of something that happened in the Legion of Super-Heroes cartoon. If you're familiar with the comic at all, you know the Ranzz family--Garth (Lighnting Lad), Ayla (Lighnting Lass, his twin sister), and Mekt (Lightning Lord). They all got their powers in what I believe is the stupidest origin in comics: when they were kids, they crash landed on a planet where lightning beasts lived, and they were attacked by said beasts with electricity, which--instead of killing them--charged them with electrical powers of their own (which prompts the question why more people don't go hang out with lightning beasts).
The cartoon origin is basically the same, except that Ayla doesn't get powers--she's vaporized. But although she is believed dead, she isn't. Instead she floats around as a space-faring cloud of electrical energy which must be at least aware enough to contact her brothers when they wind up close to it.
The suggestion is that she had at least some limited consciousness for about fifteen or twenty years, presumably in a state of very limited sensory input.
Pretty brutal.
Of course, they do rescue her and when she comes back she's still (physically) the same age as when her original body was destroyed. They take her back to her parents, where no doubt she'll be in therapy for the rest of her life. (This part reminds me of Flight of the Navigator. An underrated flick.)
This being a kids' cartoon, they never really went too deep into the possible horror and certain dislocations of Ayla's tribulation. But I wouldn't have put it past them to get to it, if the show had lasted longer. It's the only kids' cartoon I ever saw where one of the heroes went insane and murdered a man.
Actually I think it's the only kids' cartoon I ever saw where a small girl is turned into a scorch mark on some rocks and her teddy bear, too. Good times.
^ Kids don't give a sh**. Trust me on this.
IMO there are two fates that are far worse than those described in the King story:
Captain Jack Harkness at the end of Torchwood Season 2 being buried alive for about 2000 years, but being immortal he is constantly reviving, suffocating, dying, reviving, suffocating, dying, etc (repeat hundreds of times per day for about 2000 years). I am a supporter of Torchwood, and even a fan of the much maligned pre-Children of Earth years, but I do think it's unrealistic he didn't come out of that experience a dribbling lunatic.
The other ties in with a nightmare I've had: an astronaut in a space suit being blown into space and unable to return to the safety of a ship, so he/she has no choice but to wait till the oxygen runs out, suffocate, and realize their body will always be floating alone in space. This scenario has happened in a few films, but two that come to mind are Frank Poole in 2001 (though he dies quickly due to lack of oxygen), and some poor bugger who gets blown off an asteroid during the film Deep Impact and we briefly seeing him crying out in anguish from INSIDE his spacesuit. There was also a Voyager episode where Paris and Torres are in a similar situation, though this being Star Trek they never were in real mortal peril.
Alex
Captain Jack Harkness at the end of Torchwood Season 2 being buried alive for about 2000 years, but being immortal he is constantly reviving, suffocating, dying, reviving, suffocating, dying, etc (repeat hundreds of times per day for about 2000 years). I am a supporter of Torchwood, and even a fan of the much maligned pre-Children of Earth years, but I do think it's unrealistic he didn't come out of that experience a dribbling lunatic.
The other ties in with a nightmare I've had: an astronaut in a space suit being blown into space and unable to return to the safety of a ship, so he/she has no choice but to wait till the oxygen runs out, suffocate, and realize their body will always be floating alone in space. This scenario has happened in a few films, but two that come to mind are Frank Poole in 2001 (though he dies quickly due to lack of oxygen), and some poor bugger who gets blown off an asteroid during the film Deep Impact and we briefly seeing him crying out in anguish from INSIDE his spacesuit. There was also a Voyager episode where Paris and Torres are in a similar situation, though this being Star Trek they never were in real mortal peril.
Alex
^ Why would you think those would be worse than the King story? In Jack's case, at least it ended after only 2000 years, as opposed to BILLIONS of years. True, he actively had to endure the pain of dying, but (at the risk of being gruesome) at least that would break up the unendurable monotony. And it would be over a whole lot sooner.
And in the nightmare scenario: That one was just one death. It may take a time to suffocate, but after that, it's over. Compared to either of those other scenarios, that would be a mercy killing...
And in the nightmare scenario: That one was just one death. It may take a time to suffocate, but after that, it's over. Compared to either of those other scenarios, that would be a mercy killing...
Having read the synopsis of The Jaunt, I find it pretty implausible. Even today we have machines in hospitals to make sure an anesthetized person doesn't remain conscious and receptive to pain, though unable to move or protest. There would no doubt be a safety check for the effectiveness of the gas.
That was my first thought.
I just finished reading the short story about 10 minutes ago, and I'll third that. It's definitely the worst I've seen.
To quote Avatar from Ralph Bakshi's Wizards:
"Allright, creep, Now before I untie you, I wanna tell you a couple of things, and I want you to listen, and listen carefully. This has been the biggest bummer of a trip I've ever been on; but if you let me down, or you hurt my friends, especially the broad, I got stuff planned for you that'll take twenty years to kill ya...and you'll be screaming for mercy in the first five seconds."
I think I'd come down on the side of "I Have No Mouth" because it combines physical and mental torture, while the "Jaunting" is only mental.
P.S. Figures King would take something like Bester's "jaunte", which was originally discovered as a way to save someone's life, and turn it into an execution method.
"Allright, creep, Now before I untie you, I wanna tell you a couple of things, and I want you to listen, and listen carefully. This has been the biggest bummer of a trip I've ever been on; but if you let me down, or you hurt my friends, especially the broad, I got stuff planned for you that'll take twenty years to kill ya...and you'll be screaming for mercy in the first five seconds."
I think I'd come down on the side of "I Have No Mouth" because it combines physical and mental torture, while the "Jaunting" is only mental.
P.S. Figures King would take something like Bester's "jaunte", which was originally discovered as a way to save someone's life, and turn it into an execution method.
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I have only read Skeleton Crew once, when I was 10. I am 35 now and I can still remember this story vividly, it really stuck with me for some reason. So did a few other stories from Skeleton Crew.
I'm pretty sure that being hired on as a recurring character in a Stargate series after working for Whedon qualifies as the worst possible fate.
Back in the 90's Amazing Stories published a short story (I forget the title) in which a man is given a treatment that gives him amazing regenerative powers so he can live for years without eating, drinking, or breathing. Unfortunately, the process of transforming him puts him in a temporary state of paralysis, in which he appears dead--and is mistakenly assumed to be dead. The mortician cuts his tendons in preparing the body for burial, and the guy gets buried. He can't move, but the story ends with him fully aware that he could remain conscious underground for years to come.
I didn't like that story very much. Frankly, I hate fate-worse-than-death endings, even for villains. Just mercifully kill 'em thanks.
I didn't like that story very much. Frankly, I hate fate-worse-than-death endings, even for villains. Just mercifully kill 'em thanks.
Sounds like propaganda for the funerary-crematorial complex.
What happened to Leto II in Children of Dune and God Emperor of Dune seemed pretty ghastly. Sure, it might be nice to live for several thousand years, but not like that. 