Steven L. Peck

In A Short Stay in Hell (2009), a man must find the book of his life's story among every possible book. David Spaltro described the novella as "one of the most original and powerfully moving things I’ve ever read" and has acquired the rights to adapt it into a film.[9] Doug Gibson at the Standard Examiner wrote that a hell that contains an "eternity of the mundane" was a "pretty effective hell."[10] Derek Lee at Rational Faiths wrote that the novella encouraged reflection on the nature of the afterlife and what living forever would mean.[11]

The short story collection Wandering Realities (2015) contains stories set on other worlds and this one, and many are "just plain weird" featuring "odd characters driven by peculiar demons, with each tale told in a different voice and structured in a unique way," as described by reviewer Scott R. Parkin in BYU Studies.[8] Parkin concluded that Peck's stories move Mormon storytelling beyond a critique of the church as an institution and towards and more analytical approach to the inner life of Mormon characters.[8] Steve Evans said the stories were "wondrous and rich."[12]

In a summary of Peck's book, Evolving Faith (2015), Michael Austin wrote: "Because all knowledge incorporates subjective assumptions, both religion and science require an element of faith." Literal interpretations of scripture cheat "both religion, by ignoring what the author of the text was really trying to tell us, and science, by setting up unnecessary oppositions between important religious principles and easily testable facts."[7] At the Association for Mormon Letters (AML), Heather Young wrote that Evolving Faith had "enlarged my appreciation for my time on earth and the part I can play in protecting its immeasurable gifts."[13] At By Common Consent, Steve Evans said the book was "not for beginners" and uses terminology that is difficult to understand, and that the two parts of the book were not well-connected.[14]

In conceiving the main character for Gilda Trillum (2017), Peck wrote vignettes for a fictional main character and her relationship with writing and the Association of Mormon Letters. Several readers believed her to be real. Peck stated that he enjoys mixing fictional references with real ones in his fiction.[15] Rachel Kirkwood, writing in Dialogue felt that the various narrative fragments did not achieve the "characterization and depth for which the book seems to reach", but acknowledged that "the insufficiency of the fragments has its own charm."[16] In another Dialogue review, Shane R. Peterson wrote that the book's strength is in its meditations on Mormon theology, and that its weakness was its presentation through the frame story of another character's dissertation, which gave Gilda a "strange distance" from the reader.[17]

The Tragedy of King Leere, Goatherd of the La Sals (2019) received a starred review in Publishers Weekly, where its setting was described as a "fascinating world of technological solutions to global warming".[18] In Dialogue, Kylie Nielson Turley noticed how the book was difficult to categorize, wondering if it was better to call it "a modern-day ecological interpretation of the famous Shakespearian familial tragedy" or "a dystopian novel that will haunt the reader with visions of a post-apocalyptic future". She concluded by praising the book as "a well-written and thought-provoking tragedy that can stand solidly on its own."[19]^{: 194, 198}

Peck's novels and short stories have received multiple awards. The Scholar of Moab won the award for best novel from the AML in 2011, and was a finalist for the Montaigne Medal in 2012.[20][21] "A Strange Report from the Church Archives" won second place in the Irreantum fiction contest in 2012.[22] Peck received the AML award for short fiction for "Two-Dog Dose" in 2014.[23] His non-fiction essay, "Five Wagers on What Intelligent Life Elsewhere in the Universe Will Be Like", received second place from the 2015 analytical laboratory reader's awards.[24] Gilda Trillum received the 2017 AML award for best novel.[25] In 2021, Peck received the AML Smith-Petit lifetime achievement award. The award citation praised his unusual fiction: "If Peck’s works are medicine, they are strong, strange, and sometimes bitter-tasting. But perhaps this dose is what we need. Peck’s unpredictability confronts both the casual and scholarly readers, both the faithful and faithless, forcing them to question stereotypes, simplistic binaries, and straightforward reversals."[26]