The Tale of Januarie and it is time for Pluto and Proserpina to return to the underworld. But they are taking Januarie with them. He has died. But, in the afterlife, he can see that May is now carrying a child, which he imagines is his. He tries to communicate with her, but she can no longer see him. He pleads with Pluto to allow him a little more time on earth, so he can be with the woman he loves and see their child born, but Pluto refuses. Though Januarie is now on his way to the underworld, the gods do not disillusion
Hell Is the Absence of God single SF story of 2002". Conversely, John C. Wright called it a "trite antichristian propaganda". Elf Sternberg has compared the novelette to C. S. Lewis's "The Great Divorce", saying that although Lewis is a supporter of God, Chiang is "far more ambivalent". In a review of Chiang's "Stories of Your Life and Others" in "The Guardian", English fantasy author China Miéville called "Hell Is the Absence of God" the showpiece of Chiang's collection. He wrote that despite the story's religious underpinnings, there is no "moralistic "Sturm und Drang", and Chiang "does not descend to the finger-wagging one might expect from