“Hard s-f” is a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes scientific accuracy. Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle are two of its most successful practitioners. In 1976 they teamed up to write Inferno, a novel that might be characterized as hard fantasy. 
The premise was simple. Allen Carpenter falls out of an eighth-story window and wakes up in the Hell described by Dante Alighieri in The Divine Comedy. Carpenter, a modern agnostic and science-fiction writer who wrote under the name Carpentier, tries to convince himself that he has been resuscitated thousands of years in the future by advanced technology. Eventually, however, he is forced to conclude that his revival is due to the supernatural rather than super science. This sets up the main question of the novel: If Dante’s description of Hell was literal and precise, what is the purpose of Hell, and what does the existence of Hell say about a God described as compassionate and forgiving?
As Dante was guided through Hell by Virgil, so Carpenter is given his own Italian guide, a somewhat mysterious man known only as Benito. Benito informs Carpenter that there is an exit from Hell, but, just as in Dante’s telling, one first must pass through into Hell’s deepest level.
Like its model, the Niven-Pournelle Inferno is in part a cultural travelogue in which Carpenter and the reader get to meet the famous and ponder their fates. Carpenter runs into Billy the Kid, Henry VIII, and Vlad the Impaler, the real life Dracula. He witnesses the punishment of corrupt environmentalists and real estate developers. And, as in Dante’s version, we occasionally hear the sound of personal axes grinding. Kurt Vonnegut may have a tomb complete with blinking neon SO IT GOES sign because he made up false religions, but it is clear that Niven and Pournelle put him in the sixth circle for different reasons.
Why him? A science fiction writer who lied about being a science fiction writer because he got more money that way. He wrote whole novels in baby talk, with sixth-grade drawings in them, and third-grade science, and he knew better. How does he get a monument that size? . . . If you must know, I was writing better than he ever did before I left high school.
The tortures of the damned in this version are as flamboyant as they are in the original. The difference is that while Dante and Virgil could not be touched by the rains of fire or rivers of boiling blood, Carpenter and his companions have to endure them. They are able to endure because, being already dead, they cannot die again.
Throughout the journey, Carpenter constantly questions the justice of what he sees. On the one hand, even those at first apparently innocent turn out to have been guilty of serious sin. On the other hand, Carpenter finds it extremely difficult to reconcile their guilt with eternal punishment. “How could I worship a God who kept a private dungeon called Hell? That might be all right for Dante Alighieri, a Renaissance Italian! But Carpentier had higher standards than that.”
By this point in the novel, the issue is no longer a conflict between scientific skepticism and religious superstition. It is a question of temperament. When Dante and Virgil traverse the frozen ninth circle, Dante kicks the head and grabs the hair of one of those frozen in the ice. Carpenter is forever saying “Sorry,” even when stepping on the likes of Al Capone or Louis Lepke.
By the end of the book, Carpenter comes to believe he has discovered the purpose of Hell. It is God’s last attempt to get our attention, so we may change our ways and come to him.
Larry Niven conceived the idea to write a sequel to Dante’s Inferno but worried about its theological underpinnings. He felt that the “naïve Roman Catholicism of Dante Alighieri would hardly do for a twentieth-century readership.” Pournelle then suggested that they look at Dante through the eyes of C.S. Lewis. The result was unexpectedly successful. Inferno went through twenty printings and was credited with inspiring renewed interest in Dante among college students as well as providing the impetus for a new printing of the John Ciardi translation of The Divine Comedy.
Now, more than a quarter of a century later, Niven and Pournelle have written a sequel, Escape from Hell. They explain that since the first book, “the Roman Catholic Church has made formal changes in its doctrines concerning the necessity of salvation through the Catholic Church alone, as well as a considerable expansion of the doctrine of cocreation.” In fact, the working title for the new book was “Dante meets Vatican II.” The changes provide both the impetus to reexamine Hell and several plot points for the new story.
Benito has ascended to Purgatory. Carpenter has taken his place as guide to anyone who will follow him out of Hell. Only a few take him up on his offer. Some fear being stuck on a lower, more painful level. Others are content, or at least resigned, to being where they are. Albert Camus is one of those who refuse to accompany Carpenter. “I have seen such horrors that no one can endure, yet God does not intervene. If He has the power to stop such monstrous evils and does not stop them, He is a rock! A stone idol, not fit for the worship of free men!”
Carpenter reunites with Billy the Kid. Billy has the job of keeping the violent in a river of boiling blood, a job he clearly enjoys. He insists that the torments of the damned are deserved, but he is nonetheless perplexed by how things have changed in the land of the living.
Went out and shot a bunch of people at the college he was at. Allen, it puzzles me that a man can shoot thirty-two full-grown men and women before the sheriff’s men gun him down. . . . Why didn’t someone just shoot the son of a bitch? . . . Five of ’em were teachers. They had to protect their kids. How could they not be armed? It’s as if someone has been taking away their guns.
In a joke that is almost too obvious, New Orleans lawyers have been recruited by Satan to deal with the changes brought about by Vatican II. “Many doctrines changed. They came close to abolishing the idea of heresy. Ecumenism everywhere. That is why we have to organize for new trials.”
The emotional center of the novel, however, is Carpenter’s relationship with Sylvia Plath, whom we meet first as a tree in the Grove of Suicides. Carpenter restores her human form by burning the tree. (It should be obvious by now that these books have enough physical pain for a Mel Gibson movie.) Plath comes across as a surprisingly sweet woman—able to explain Dante in detail to Carpenter, concerned about the fate of her former husband (Ted Hughes is dealt with appropriately in Hell), and shocked at the very idea of a priest sodomizing altar boys when she learns of the scandals that came to light after her death. She is for Carpenter what Virgil was for Dante: an admirable human being who may not have been ready for heaven but surely deserves something better than eternal damnation.
Any book like Inferno or Escape from Hell risks being dismissed as Dante for Dummies. Authors who set themselves up, even implicitly, to be compared to Dante or Lewis are almost certain to be told they fall short. Furthermore, readers looking for doctrinal purity should remember that Niven and Pournelle are writers of speculative fiction. There is plenty of theology to cavil at for those inclined to do so. Yet the speculation is more restrained and respectful, and vastly more entertaining, than much coming out of the theology departments of putatively Catholic universities. Like a lot of us, Niven and Pournelle are trying to make sense out of Hell. Their tentative conclusions may or may not be convincing. But if all they do is send you back to the original, or convince you to read Dante for the first time, they have performed a worthwhile service.
Robert R. Chase is chief counsel of an Army Laboratory and author of The Game of Fox and Lion and other science-fiction stories.
Comments:
Would someone more versed in Catholic teaching and doctrine (especially its development) than I like to offer comment on this?
I think the most commonly missed aspect of Hell, and perhaps its most important aspect, is that the damned choose damnation. Christians trust that God gives every person opportunity to know Him and the strength to choose Him, so rejection of God is never due to mere naivety or weakness. Hell is eternal because the damned choose to become persons who are by nature reject and violate the love they are offered.
I believe he is referring to the admission by the Catholic Church that, ultimately, God may choose to save those outside the Christian tradition. Most notably this stance addresses the problems of infants, children, and innocents who die before accepting (or even learning of) Jesus.
From the Vatican website, "The Hope Of Salvation For Infants Who Die Without Being Baptised" (2007):
Without responding directly to the question of the destiny of unbaptised infants, the Second Vatican Council marked out many paths to guide theological reflection. The Council recalled many times the universality of God's saving will which extends to all people (1 Tim 2:4). All “share a common destiny, namely God. His providence, evident goodness, and saving designs extend to all humankind” (NA 1, cf. LG 16). In a more particular vein, presenting a conception of human life founded on the dignity of the human being created in the image of God, the constitution Gaudium et Spes recalls that, “[h]uman dignity rests above all on the fact that humanity is called to communion with God,” specifying that “[t]he invitation to converse with God is addressed to men and women as soon as they are born” (GS 19). This same constitution proclaims with vigour that only in the mystery of the Incarnate Word does the mystery of the human being take on light. Furthermore, there is the renowned statement of the Council which asserted: “since Christ died for all, and since all are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partners, in a way known to God, in the paschal mystery” (GS 22). Although the Council did not expressly apply this teaching to children who die without Baptism, these passages open a way to account for hope in their favour.
http://learn.bowdoin.edu/italian/dante/
For the non-theologian,
GS=Gaudium et Spes
NA= Nostra Aetate (DECLARATION ON
THE RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS)
LG=Lumen Gentium
All of the above are documents from the Second Vatican Council. Nostra Aetate is most directly related to the issue, and (like the others) can be found in its entirety on the web.
From that document, I think the key paragraph is as follows:
"She [Mother Church] regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life [other religions], those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men. Indeed, she proclaims, and ever must proclaim Christ "the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6).
The simple truth is that no other person in the Bible speaks more often of Hell that Jesus Christ himself. Christ unambiguously states that "no one can come to the Father except through me" (John 14:6). There are several ways to interpret that. Some Catholics and Christians have interpreted it to me one is damned until he or she proclaims Christ as one's Lord. Others have pointed to near death experiences and their common feature of a "man of light", and suggested it may be possible for an atheist to acknowledge Christ after death, and thus be saved.
In the Matthew 25: 31-46, we're told that our actions towards others determine whether we end up in Heaven or Hell. No mention is made there of the necessity for belief in Christ--which some have interpreted to mean charitable atheists and non-Christians can win Heaven too.
We just don't know, and that should cause us to take very seriously our conduct and behavior in this life, and to pay special attention to the teachings of Christ (ALL of them, not just those we find convenient or warm and fuzzy).
Personally, I find it helpful to consider this analogy...Let's say there is a door with a biometric lock, that reads a thumbprint. Heaven is just such a door, and it's keyed to Christ himself. He's the only one who can open it, and given his generosity and love (which carried him to the Cross for each of us), we can expect he'll let others (Christian and non-Christian) through that door. But without Him unlocking it first, because of our sins, there's no way we could get past the door ourselves.
It's not really new theology, it's more rediscovering the early teachings of the Church Fathers. During the middle ages, scholasticism ran rampant. It was important to categorize, and theorize, and explain everything -- even when we don't have enough information to really make a judgment. Vatican II returned the Roman Catholic Church closer to the simpler time when we realized that there was a lot we don't know. God isn't limited by our rules and regulations. Ultimately, we know where the Church is, but we don't know where it is not. Ultimately, all we can do is have faith in God: "Should not the judge of all the world act with justice?" (Genesis 18:25)
One of the more affecting parts of both novels is how, as the protagonist goes through Hell, either Benito (in the first book) or himself (in the second) exhort the miserable damned souls around them that "There is a way out! Follow me and I'll show you..." And almost invariably the person in hell declines because they are still obsessed with whatever sinful activity put them there in the first place.
