★★☆☆☆ Five Views of the Planet Tartarus, by Rachael K. Jones
Ware spoilers. Lame flash horror
Five Views of the Planet Tartarus
Rachael K. Jones
** spoilers ahaead **
Lame flash horror
Rachael K. Jones's Five Views of the Planet Tartarus is a finalist for the 2025 Short Story Hugo.
I'm going to waste a little time reminding myself of what I think I know about the afterlife of classical Greek mythology. After you died you crossed the River Styx into Hades. Hades was not really Hell, it was only, as far as I can work out, extremely drab and boring. But there were alternatives for tiny minorities of dead souls. If you were sufficiently heroic you might end up in Elysium, which was the closest thing the old Greeks had to heaven. If you made the gods sufficiently angry, they would send you to the pit of Tartarus in Hades, where you would be imprisoned for eternity and probably tormented in some inventive way.
Thus the name Tartarus has associations with prison and torment.
In this very short story, the planet Tartarus is a prison where prisoners are tormented. The story is clearly intended as horror. Unfortunately I had my usual reaction to horror, "This is lame." Most horror just fails to horrify me. I'm old enough to appreciate that fiction is rarely as horrifying as reality.