#escape from hell

Horror RPGs, a video by 90sgamer92

Savage Island (1985)

Savage Island is a movie pieced together from Hotel Paradise (1980) and Escape from Hell (1980). The producers of the film brought in Linda Blair to record 10 minutes of inserted footage, hoping to bring in viewers on release.

           Inferno and its sequel Escape From Hell, both by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, are a modern retelling of Inferno from Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. I have decided to review these two books together as the story flows directly from Inferno into Escape From Hell.

            A major premise of the novels is that Dante’s Inferno is not a work of fiction, but actually an account of a detailed vision Dante experienced of Hell itself.

            The weakest point of the two novels is the first person protagonist Allen Carpenter. Allen is a science fiction author who died in the 1970s by an accidental drunken fall out a window at a science fiction convention. Religiously agnostic Allen is not certain what to make of his unexpected existence after death.

            At a glance it looks like Allen suffers from the same problem that Louis Wu suffered from in Ringworld, a lack of character depth. Allen reacts to events around him, but looking back I think there is more that we learn about him than I original thought. The reader learns very little of what Allen’s life was like, and I do not think he mentions either his family or friends at any point. Allen’s strength as a character comes from his trying to come to some sense of understanding of how Hell and the Christian God fit together. However, a little more information about Allen’s character would have certainly been beneficial.    

            The theological aspect of the books is where their greatest strength lie. The last time I read Dante was in high school so I cannot recall the subtler parts of the text in detail, but Hell as Allen finds it is not as cut and dry as it seems. Souls are free to leave at any time that they choose if they will but make the journey through Hell. There is no escape to be found in trying to go either literally or figuratively backwards.

            Few souls are willing to do this though. The majority either have given into despair, have chosen to wallow in self-loathing, or refuse to acknowledge that they have sinned in the first place.

            Redemption must come through confronting the evil one has committed.

            Allen encounters a number of souls both real and fictional as he travels deeper into Hell. Dante himself placed many historical and contemporary figures in his work, and Niven and Pournelle have continued this tradition. Mercifully they do not use this opportunity to only take shots at people they do not like, although they take the chance to do so more than once (this is also in keeping with Dante).

            The souls Allen ends up spending a significant amount of time with on his journey develop and grow as characters, often times more so than Allen himself. They help to keep the story one that is driven by characters first and foremost.