Inferno

By: Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle

Narrated by: Tom Weiner

Length: 5 hrs and 43 mins

Publisher's summary

After being thrown out of the window of his luxury apartment, science-fiction writer Allen Carpentier wakes to find himself at the gates of Hell. Feeling he's landed in a great opportunity for a book, he attempts to follow Dante's road map. Determined to meet Satan himself, Carpentier treks through the nine circles of Hell, led by Benito Mussolini, and encounters countless mental and physical tortures. As he struggles to escape, he's taken through new, puzzling, and outlandish versions of sin recast for the present day.

©1976 Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"A dazzling tour de force." (Poul Anderson)
"A fast, amusing and vivid book, by a writing team noted for intelligence and imagination." (Roger Zelazny)

love the narration

Great story, and great narration. He used different voices for characters, it was fun listening

We are in the hands of ultimate power and ultimate sadism

I liked the voice actor, he did an excellent job and I’d like to hear some of his other work. I just couldn’t really get into this story. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either, just pretty mediocre all around. In the end, all of the characters were thinly written and ultimately forgettable. The main character spends the better part of the book refusing to believe that he’s actually in hell. This is comical at first, but it wears thin pretty quickly and overstays its welcome far too long. Ultimately, I’m glad the story was relatively short otherwise I don’t know that I would have been able to finish. I’m also glad that I picked this up on sale, paying full price would have only added to my disappointment.

Amazing

The sequel is just as good. Great humor, accuracy to Donte’s original is obvious with obvious side jokes to livin it up. Niven’s does as always. An amazing job. Could only wish for more, but very satisfied with what he has given us. I highly Recommend this book.

Second Read

This was a great read the first time. To hear it read made it so much better.

Where am I going and why am I in this hand-basket?

What did you love best about Inferno?

A modern-day journey through hell with Benito Mussolini as your guide? What could be more bizarre. Revisiting this story 45 years after I first read it? Priceless! Listening to if after re-reading Dante's Inferno? The best.

What other book might you compare Inferno to and why?

Dante's Inferno, of course. This is a bizarre twist on that tale with a science fiction writer as the protagonist.

What about Tom Weiner’s performance did you like?

This was a pretty straight-forward reading. There really wasn't anything special about it.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No, because I was paying close attention to correct my 45-year-old memory of this book.

Any additional comments?

I don't know whether this book is a classic or not, but was a great read. A journey of growth on a trip through hell. Even though hell isn't real and there is no life after death, it's a great topic for fiction.

Niven went to hell and got a lousy T-shirt

Inferno by the writing duo of Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle is the tale of a sci-fi writer who dies and ends up in hell. He traverses through Dante's imaginings of hell as he seeks to escape. There is much humor throughout as at first, the assumption of a science fiction expert is that rather than hell, he has been brought back to life by a future, more advanced society. Gradually, he accepts death and a real hell to an ever increasing scientifically implausible set of conditions. Besides all the various torments, hell is also overloaded with bureaucracy that is worse than the punishments.

Niven and Pournelle do an admirable job of first recreating Dante's version of hell, while providing much in the way of plausible technological solutions to the properties of hell, initially being viewed as an amusement park called Infernoland. Rather than merely a place of punishment, hell is more a place where people go who want to be punished (or at least don't leave once there), while there is some degree of mobility to the innocent. There is much in terms of the philosophical nature of sin itself.

While overall not a bad narration, there is an older quality to the rendition that comes across more as simply read, rather than performed. Pacing is brisk that makes for a quick listen.

Dante's Inferno, the sequel...

Interesting read, well written and humorous. I found it entertaining to listen to, and was well read. It is not as detailed as Mr. Nivens other novels, but worth the listen. This is a short review, I am aware, but I am not inspired to write a longer one. It is about one guys travel through hell, the people he meets and his personal discovery, which is a large part of what hell seems to be about.

This is my favorite book and it is narrated well

A thought provoking take on the old Dante story. The narrator does a great job of separating the character's voices in an obvious way and conveying the emotion durung key moments. I would highly recommend this.

Awesome

I loved every second of the story. The ending was well worth all the eternal pain and torment.

Can't miss this

I love this book. The audiobook is even better.

Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle paint an incredibly detailed, wildly imaginative and thought-provoking take on Dante's Inferno as seen through the eyes of a recently deceased science fiction writer. His theories on the whys and hows of Hell from the point of view of an agnostic are very clever and even gave me doubts at times as to whether they were really dead, and trying to make rational sense of the extraordinary experiences of Hell echoes what a normal person would feel like if dropped into Dante's imaginative take on hell.

I genuinely like Carpenter and Benito, and it was a pleasure watching their friendship grow. The assorted cast of other damned make for a colorful background as well, and it was great seeing the changes brought from this book take shape in the sequel, Escape from Hell.

As impressive as the writing is the performance - Tom Weiner does a wonderful job of narrating the story and the characters, adding an extra dimension of tone and depth to an already thoughtful book. I'd want this man to narrate my life.

All in all, a fantastic book and an even better audiobook. I'd also highly recommend the sequel, Escape from Hell.