"Hell Is the Absence of God" is a 2001 fantasy novelette by American writer Ted Chiang, first published in Starlight #3, and subsequently reprinted in Year's Best Fantasy 2, and in Fantasy: The Best of 2001, as well as in Chiang's 2002 anthology, Stories of Your Life and Others. "Hell Is" won the 2002 Hugo Award for Best Novelette, the Nebula Award for Best Novelette, and the Locus Award for Best Novelette. It was also a finalist for the 2002 Theodore Sturgeon Award. The novelette has also been translated into Japanese, Italian, Spanish, French, Russian, German, Ukrainian and Romanian. Source: Wikipedia (en)