Re: Five SFF Stories About Hell and Damnation

On 8/20/24 07:12, James Nicoll wrote:

Five SFF Stories About Hell and Damnation
 Hell gets a bad rap--it's certainly a great motivator for any number
of plots and characters attempting to escape from the fiery flames
of perdition!
 https://reactormag.com/five-sff-stories-about-hell-and-damnation/

How about Black Easter?

Black Easter 1968 novel by James Blish
 Black Easter is a fantasy novel by American writer James Blish,

in which an arms dealer hires a black magician to unleash all the
demons of Hell on Earth for a single day. The novel initially depicts
the assassination of a Governor of California by a black magician
working as a contract killer. The same magician is then hired to
release every demon in Hell for a brief time period. Wikipedia

Author James Blish
Series After Such Knowledge trilogy
Publisher Faber and Faber (UK), Doubleday (US)

I believe, perhaps in error, that I read this
serialized  in a magazine.
Lots of recent stuff by Kim Harrison and other fantasy
writers exploring what follows the return of magic to Earth and
the coming out of hiding of all sorts of creatures which are
merely fantasy here in our scientifically safe(?) reality.
S.M.Stirling in Emberverse series brings hellish
opponents to the heroes of the Changed World.
Charles Stross in the Laundry Files brings hell to
Earth finally and the survivors now work for a totally
eldritch entity resembling one of Lovecraft's horrible
extra-dimensional monster gods with a dash of Mexican
gods who liked to see the sacrifices displayed.
bliss
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