History AndIMustScream / Literature

** The ''Literature/SkeletonCrew'' short story "The Jaunt" is about a form of teleportation that takes a split second on the outside, and '''''quadrillions''''' of senseless years on the inside. It's mentioned at one point that a woman was Jaunted off to nowhere by her murderous husband. Her husband's lawyer made the mistake of trying to defend him by claiming that it wasn't murder since there was no proof she was dead; once the jury had time to think about that, the husband was convicted and executed. Most people who use it are drugged and unconscious throughout... unless you're an inquisitive little boy who decides to hold his breath during the process of administrating the anesthetic gas. Then you get to be conscious the whole time -- as in '''''[[PunctuatedForEmphasis the. Whole. Time.]]''''' [[SarcasmMode Yippee]]. No wonder everyone who goes through it while conscious ends up dead or insane.
--->''"LONGER THAN YOU THINK, DAD! ''LONGER THAN YOU THINK!''"''

* In John Bellairs's young adult novel ''The Letter, the Witch and the Ring'', the witch villain acquires the Ring of King Solomon and calls the demon Asmodeus, asking to live for a thousand years, and be young and beautiful forever. The demon obliges... by transforming her into a willow tree.

* Annalee Newitz's ''The Terraformers'' has the Intelligence Assessment system, which ranks intelligence by linguistic ability. It didn't take long for corporations to figure out that the easiest way to make a slave is by putting sophont level intelligence into a person and then damaging their ability to communicate, letting them create a person that isn't legally a person. Whistle, an [[UpliftedAnimal uplifted]] moose, describes his language limiters as trying to push all his thoughts through a tunnel and in one scene [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Cylindra]]'s Blessed cook (a class of people who are only able to talk about their jobs) struggles to find enough loopholes beg her for freedom, which she finds cute.

" "Literature/TheHauntingHour" has a story titled 'the Halloween Dance', in which the main character (a boy) ends up traveling back in time, sounds much like an earlier Goosebumps story, no? In the story, the protagonist travels back through time until he is a baby, what is worse is that his memories are all intact, as he remembers that he is in the previous house with his parents before his sister was even born. It does not imply how exactly how old he is age, whether he is one year or a few months, but his mother does tell him that it is first Halloween, and he cannot even communicate to tell his parents what happened (not that they would have believed him anyway). If he de-ages even more, gradually ages, or stays that age, is unclear.

* In Isaac Asimov's short story "The Last Trump" , the end of the world is just everyone coming back from the dead, but with the inability to feel passion or pleasure, to continue living eternally. This will eventually drive everyone who has ever lived mad with boredom.
** As a character says - "The [[Literature/TheDivineComedy Dantean concepts of Inferno]] were childish and unworthy of the Divine imagination: [[FireAndBrimstoneHell fire and torture]]. Boredom is much more subtle. The inner torture of a mind unable to escape itself in any way, forced to fester in its own exuding mental pus for all time. Oh, yes, my friend, we have been judged, and condemned, too, and this is not Heaven, but hell."

** The last king of Númenor, Ar-Pharazôn, tried to conquer Valinor (essentially [[RageAgainstTheHeavens Heaven on Earth]] at the time) to gain immortality. He and his army "were buried under falling hills: there it is said that they lie imprisoned in the Caves of the Forgotten, until [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt the Last Battle and the Day of Doom]]."

* In Creator/DavidEddings' ''Literature/TheBelgariad'', Belgarath encases Zedar in rock. Made worse by the fact that a) they were like brothers before Zedar's FaceHeelTurn, b) Zedar is stated in the prequels to be very afraid of the dark, and c) Belgarath fashioned the spell specifically so that Zedar can't die while entombed, and only Belgarath can let him out again. Belgarath makes it very clear that he has no intention of doing any such thing.

** The ''Literature/SkeletonCrew'' short story "The Jaunt" is about a form of teleportation that takes a split second on the outside, and '''''quadrillions''''' of senseless years on the inside. It's mentioned at one point that a woman was Jaunted off to nowhere by her murderous husband. Her husband's lawyer made the mistake of trying to defend him by claiming that it wasn't murder since there was no proof she was dead; once the jury had time to think about that, the husband was convicted and executed. Most people who use it are drugged and unconscious throughout... unless you're an inquisitive little boy who decides to hold his breath during the process of administrating the anesthetic gas. Then you get to be conscious the whole time -- as in ''the whole of time''. [[SarcasmMode Yippee]]. No wonder everyone who goes through it while conscious ends up dead or insane.

*** The [[spoiler: Thought Bomb]] only destroys your body. Your ''consciousness'' is trapped within an unholy vortex to suffer eternal torment, [[spoiler: as demonstrated when Bane discovers the aftermath of the bomb's detonation: he listens to the cries of the Jedi/Sith spirits and finds they're not even human cries, just bestial shrieks of anguish]].

* The short-lived ''Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine'' had a story by Victor Milan called "The Casque of Lamont T. Yado". Yeah, [[IncrediblyLamePun lousy pun]]... anyway, in a twist on Edgar Allan Poe's ''Literature/TheCaskOfAmontillado'', the "Montresor" character helps the "Fortunato" character to steal a time helmet which will let him move so quickly it will seem as if TimeStandsStill. The twist is that "Montresor" has sabotaged the controls, so "Fortunato" actually finds himself moving slower and slower until he can't make any visible movement, while his consciousness remains in normal time. [[spoiler: It gets worse. "Fortunato" has a pseudo-Jamaican accent and worships an entity known as Tracer God, and his last words are [[IncrediblyLamePun "For the love of Tracer God, mon!"]]]]

* The end of Creator/TadWilliams' series ''Literature/{{Otherland}}'' has the co-BigBad Johnny Dread, a PsychoForHire SerialKiller, trapped in an illusory world within his own mind in which he's constantly chased across a desert by the women he has killed over his lifetime, all of whom have transformed into relentless hyena-like monstrosities. He can't even stop for a few minutes or they will catch up to him and tear him to pieces. Horrible, but when you consider what an inhuman monster Dread actually was, it was [[IncrediblyLamePun just deserts]]...

* Creator/SomtowSucharitkul:

** ''Literature/TheKnightInScreamingArmor'' featured a bad ending where the reader discovers the clock from ''The Cuckoo Clock Of Doom''. If the reader guesses the wrong option, they turn into a baby while the companions in the story (the two cousins) are babies, as well, but when the reader tries to turn back the clock. The cousins revert back to their original ages, and you remain a baby for some unexplainable, and whether you gradually age, stay how old you are, or de-age into nothing is unclear. Your cousins are also unaware that anything is out of the ordinary and just comment how cute you are while you remain there crying not being able to communicate in any other way.

** ''Literature/TheKnightInScreamingArmor'' featured a bad ending where the reader discovers the clock from ''The Cuckoo Clock Of Doom''. If the reader guesses the wrong option, they turn into a baby while their companions in the story are unaware that anything is out of the ordinary.

" "Literature/TheHauntingHour" has a story titled 'the Halloween Dance', in which the main character (a boy) ends up traveling back in time, much lik