If October is for genre horror, November is for existential horror. The looming holiday season, the sun setting before the workday is over, and waves of nostalgia all arrive as the season slips from autumn to something colder, something bluer. November asks us to sit with the uncomfortable. For those of us living somewhere with four seasons, the only antidote may be to embrace the feeling and settle into something metaphysical. Steven L. Peck’s “A Short Stay in Hell” is a fitting read for the occasion: a brief novella full of philosophical dread, cosmic absurdity, and a thought experiment whose scale is comforting in its enormity.

In Borges’ book, he presents the concept of an infinite library, with an infinite number of books. People wander the library that seemingly contains all information, but it is impossible to locate any one specific book. The library is a metaphor for the organization, or lack thereof, of the universe and everything contained within it. In “A Short Stay in Hell,” author Steven L. Peck takes this idea and fuses it with Zoroastrian theology with a simple premise: a man dies, finds out his religion was not true, and is condemned to an incomprehensibly large library where he must find the one book that details his life, in order to go to heaven. The religious framework is an interesting choice. Zoroastrianism, one of the world’s oldest theological traditions, provides Peck with a way to explore the afterlife without familiar assumptions about the Abrahamic conception of the afterlife. In “A Short Stay in Hell,” Peck takes Zoroastrianism's concept of hell being escapable and fuses it with the philosophy of Borges’ infinite library.

The library isn’t truly infinite, so there is hope that eventually he will find the book that details his life. As the math of the size of the library is revealed, the scale of it becomes functionally incomprehensible. The concept of near-infinity itself becomes the mechanism of horror. You might presume the author to be a Zoroastrian, but he is Mormon, and a professor at the religion’s university, BYU. In the book, you can feel like perhaps Peck is grappling with the sense that his concept of the afterlife may be wrong, and if so, what else could it look like? Or maybe instead, he is inviting the reader to question their conception of the afterlife. In Mormon theology the possibility of eternal family separation gives the afterlife a very personal and tangible significance.

As humans, we are always trying to organize our reality and make sense of our connection to other people and to the material world. There’s something strangely liberating about the book’s bleakest implication: If the universe offers no distinguishable structure or meaning, perhaps we have more freedom than we think to build a life that feels worthwhile. Maybe the concept presented is urging us to note the inanity of existence, and choose a path in our life that feels fulfilling. Albert Camus famously wrestled with this tension, saying, “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”

As the trees surrender their leaves and winter approaches, “A Short Story in Hell” offers a fitting companion for the season. At just over 100 pages, it's an accessible introduction to existentialism, cosmic horror, and the absurdity of trying to comprehend an incomprehensible universe. It’s also a salient reminder that maybe sometimes the most comforting thought isn’t finding meaning in the cosmological, but creating it in your own life.