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The Real-World Locations of 14 Sci-Fi Dystopias (2014)
- mellosouls 3y agoOne of my favourite books, the haunting and poetic dystopian Riddley Walker has a particularly interesting relationship with its real-life Kent locations, as the (American) author Russell Hoban played in his beautiful language twisting with their names: Bollock Stoans - Bullockstone Cambry - Canterbury Do It Over - Dover Horny Boy - Herne Bay etc http://www.errorbar.net/rw/Places http://www.errorbar.net/rw/Places Sample passage imagining the post-apocalyptic development of rhymes and myths tied to the local area by the hero's folk: It wer Ful of the Moon that nite. The rain littlt off the sky cleart and the moon come out. We put the boars head on the poal up on top of the gate house. His tusks glimmert and you cud see a dryd up trickl from the corners of his eyes like 1 las tear from each. Old Lorna Elswint our tel woman up there getting the tel of the head. Littl kids down be low playing Fools Circel 9wys. Singing: Horny Boy rung Widders Bel Stoal his Fathers Ham as wel Bernt his Arse and Forkt a Stoan Done It Over broak a boan Out of Good Shoar vackt his wayt Scratcht Sams Itch for No. 8 Gone to senter nex to see Cambry coming 3 times 3 Sharna pax and get the poal When the Ardship of Cambry comes out of the hoal
- bookofjoe 3y agoOH! This fantastic book which I've reread every 10 years or so since last century... time to do it again.... "The Bundle Downs" OMG Read it here: https://riddley-walker.narod.ru/Book/RussellHoban-RiddleyWalker.html#riddley_walker https://riddley-walker.narod.ru/Book/RussellHoban-RiddleyWal...
- IndrekR 3y agoThis reminds me The Meaning of Liff by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Meaning_of_Liff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Meaning_of_Liff
- cancerhacker 3y agoSimilar for me, Earth Abides takes place in Berkeley near where I used to live - giving details of a post apocalyptic Indian Rock Park and the all-revered University Library, that I knew decades later.
- wanderingstan 3y agoInteresting Bay Area trivia: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the book Blade Runner was adapted from, takes place in San Francisco. The Mission police station being a central place.
- MichaelMoser123 3y agoThe book is very different from the movie; the book is post World War 3 while the movie isn't.
- jhbadger 3y agoWell, a very mild WW3, so it hardly matters. It's not like it was in a Fallout/Road Warrior style wasteland.
- MichaelMoser123 3y agovery mild WW3. Earth is a wasteland where almost all animals died from radiation long ago and anything that survived it is an object of worship. Survivors need to go through periodic checkups, those affected by radiation are labeled off as "chickenheads". People are emigrating to desert Mars - which is an even worse wasteland, where things are so bad that even the Robots are trying to escape back to Earth, such a Robot has to kill his former master and then pose as his former master. (the whole plot is about finding these Robots) The culture of the survivors is based on this worship of what remained of the animal kingdom, as seen in the test that they administer to check if you are a robot or not. Especially amusing: the Robots in the book are hallucinating - (these hallucinations are called 'false memories'), just as these large language models of ours...
- kaycebasques 3y agoI wonder if Philip K. Dick had the old Mission police station in mind? The one near Gus's. Not sure when that one went out of commission.
- serf 3y agoI think the exclusion of Mercerism from the movie is criminal.
- yardie 3y agoProbably because it's the opposite of dystopic but Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciences [0], Valencia, ESP is one of the most sci-fi locations I've ever set foot in. You'll recognize it from Marvel films it's the setting for Guardians of the Galaxy. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Arts_and_Sciences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Arts_and_Sciences
- the_af 3y agoWhenever I visit Valencia we go there. My family calls it "the city of the future" (the Ciutat I mean). My daughter thinks one of the buildings looks like Darth Vader's helmet.
- bennyg 3y agoOne of my favorite cities - went there on my honeymoon in 2019. The river-turned-park is beautiful and the whole old town area of the city is just full of "play". Check out this sweet playground that's actually a giant Gulliver laying down (https://www.lovevalencia.com/en/the-gulliver-park.html https://www.lovevalencia.com/en/the-gulliver-park.html). If anybody can swing a visit to Valencia - do it. I can't wait to go back some day.
- Mobius01 3y agoIt was prominently featured in Westworld (the HBO series) from season 2 onwards as the headquarters of Delos Inc.
- anthk 3y agoHere I would love to visit IMAX.
- secretsatan 3y agoI watched Robocop again this weekend after playing the game released last year. The PS5 version is a bit glitchy, but I really enjoyed it otherwise, watching the film again and it was surprising how faithful the video game was to the film. I thought the film would show it's age more, but it actually still holds up quite well. Also brought back memories of music that sampled many of the lines and effects from the film.
- duxup 3y agoRobocop is wonderful how it both faithfully embraces the hollywood action flick / stereotypical "fear of crime" (not sure how to say that) film ... and seems to satirize it all at the same time. Robocop walking on water is both hilarious and fun.
- Terr_ 3y ago> stereotypical "fear of crime" (not sure how to say that) film My pet theory is that a whole glut of those films and film-adaptations (i.e. Judge Dredd) can be correlated to a zeitgeist of worry from rising US violent crime graphs. (The crime-stats, in turn, are quite suggestive of massive lead-exposure on a delay.)
- 15457345234 3y ago> seems to satirize it all at the same time Verhoeven managed that very well in Total Recall and Starship Troopers too - he really hit the right note. Right on the boundary of ludicrous and believable.
- pimlottc 3y agoIt should be mentioned that the Atlanta’s Marriott Marquis Hotel lobby is also used in Loki as the headquarters Time Variance Authority.
- helpfulContrib 3y agoIt was a beautiful, sunny day when my tiBook, the first generation arrived. It was exciting, Apple were building decent hardware again, MacOS X was on its way. I unpacked it, plugged it in, and set up my Ricochet Modem. A few hours later, the battery was charged and I left my office on Kingswell Avenue and walked down to the Ellis House, which was the closest bit of open, public lawn I could find.. I wanted to do 'that thing', surf the Internet in a random location outside in the realworld. The Ellis House provided the perfect location. I sat there on the lawn, ssh'ed into my server back in the office, kind of astounded. "This is the future, and I'm experiencing it at the Bladerunner House, lol", I thought to myself. I sent my girlfriend an ICQ message to join me, and bring a DVD for us to watch, maybe a small picnic too. She arrived a few minutes later and we watched the Final Fantasy movie on DVD, on my laptop, sitting on the Ellis House lawn, as the sun went down. It was a classic moment I'll never forget.
- 15457345234 3y agoEnnis house
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- nonrandomstring 3y agoChildren of Men [0] briefly put Bexhill [1] on the map again. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Men https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Men [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bexhill-on-Sea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bexhill-on-Sea
- duxup 3y agoGattaca is such a beautiful film. The future is decidedly Dystopian but the message is so hopeful and the settings / scenes are wonderful to look at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn_gUcCO-gM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn_gUcCO-gM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSNI13VpPOA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSNI13VpPOA I'm the type to sometimes feel overwhelmed by the bad things going on, but it's telling that Gattaca, in a terrible future, tells a hopeful story that despite the depths of a dark future you can still claim some victories.
- MomoXenosaga 3y agoThe technology in Gattaca is already among us. Parents screen their DNA to find out if they have any hereditary diseases. It's estimated that there won't be anyone with Down syndrome in a few decades.
- kjs3 3y agoIt's estimated that there won't be anyone with Down syndrome in a few decades. Estimated by who? Perhaps in the places where parents have enough access to enough prenatal health care and/or enough disposable income for the test and the procedure. Or the places where legislatures aren't trying to make terminating a pregnancy under any circumstance murder. This will clearly come as a great surprise to you, but those conditions cover a very large percentage of humans. So, no, from a practical standpoint genetic diseases probably aren't going to magically go away any time soon no matter what technology exists to identify them.
- aninteger 3y agoWhile I'm terrible at predicting the future, I find this hard to believe. I think screening your DNA is something maybe upper/middle class parents might do. I do not believe it is being done by those that cannot afford it.
- eindiran 3y agoAs William Gibson famously said, "The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed."
- sandworm101 3y agoI would add Simon Fraser University in Vancouver BC. Its grey concrete architecture combined with Vancouver's grey skies has appeared in a host of scifi, mostly dystopian stuff such as the Underworld vampire movies. And of course X-files, which was pretty dystopian imho. https://604now.com/simon-fraser-university-movies-filmed-at-sfu-hollywood/ https://604now.com/simon-fraser-university-movies-filmed-at-...
- aj7 3y agoI expected, from the title, to see locales in the world where predicted dystopias came to pass… not movie sets.
- glitchcrab 3y agoI'm not sure what gave you that idea, the title makes sense and the article was exactly what I expected. Judging by the comments this was the case for most people.
- cratermoon 3y agoWhat real locales are you thinking of?
- themadturk 3y agoMany locations in the former USSR and Eastern Bloc? North Korea?
- marsa 3y agosee the problem here is you somehow associate socialism -- i.e. socialist urbanism and architecture -- with dystopia
- themadturk 3y agoActually, I associate not the political philosophy, but the reality of everyday life in 20th century communist countries with dystopia.
- cratermoon 3y agoThe reality of everyday life in the 21st century for many people in capitalist countries is dystopian. GP is right, you're showing your bias.
- DrBazza 3y agoDisappointed to not see A Clockwork Orange and Thamesmead https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange_(film) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange_(film)
- cratermoon 3y agoThis article focuses on man-made locations, but I'd like to point out that the Horizon Zero Dawn franchise is set among the stunning natural beauty of the American West, including (spoilers?) The Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Lake Powell, Cheyenne Mountain, Arches National Park, Grand Teton, and Yellowstone National Parks. There's more lesser-known locations, and some man-made structures appear, in a state of advanced decay, but the setting is mostly about the natural world.
- JamieDawsonCode 3y agoAtlanta’s Marriott Marquis Hotel is easily one of my favorite designs in a hotel.
- kayodelycaon 3y agoI was there for a conference well over a decade ago and I will never forget that trip. It is stunning beautiful and an HVAC nightmare. :) There were several decorative pools bottom of the elevators. The atrium is a funnel for moisture and hot air. It got pretty swamp around halfway up. The conference levels at the bottom got pretty cold. Whoever made that decision should be required to move into a room on the 26th floor for a few years. XD Photo here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/atlexplorer/4165468538 https://www.flickr.com/photos/atlexplorer/4165468538
- yeeeloit 3y agoMad Max locations would be a good addition to this article. The "Halls of Justice" and the underground parking at Melbourne Uni come to mind.
- 15457345234 3y agoNot many people are familiar with the original Mad Max movie, for some reason - the second two have much more recognition. The first one is really quite a different type of movie.
- red-iron-pine 3y agothe apocalypses has just started and everyone was still living in their apartments. things are normal until they're not... and then like 5 years later it's raiders in football pads and spikes, lol.
- kaycebasques 3y agoIronically a lot of these locations are beautiful and idyllic in the world that we actually live in
- OldGuyInTheClub 3y agoLos Angeleno here: There are any number of guys with money who look at Blade Runner, Robocop, and such films and say, "That's what I want!" Then they make it happen. When gigwatt billboards all-in-a-row light up a foggy night, the city looks like the nightmares presented thirty or more years ago.
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- ugh123 3y agoValdez Rocks in Northern Los Angeles has had a lot of western films and even Star Trek filmed there. Also great rock hiking, even for kids. https://parks.lacounty.gov/vasquez-rocks-natural-area-and-nature-center/ https://parks.lacounty.gov/vasquez-rocks-natural-area-and-na...
- W-Stool 3y agoI'm sure just about everyone has seen "Blade Runner" by now - double points if you've seen the later version without Harrison Ford's narration. But you really need to see "12 Monkeys" if you haven't yet. Amazing, and these days somewhat timely.
- timonoko 3y agoBillion Dollar Brain (starring Michael Caine) was filmed in Helsinki. The 18th century house I was born into acted as KGB headquarters in Moscow.