Imagined Places

Lilliput and Brobdingnag. Earthsea. Wonderland. Middle Earth. Eden. Imaginary places have shaped our culture since before it was a culture. Idyllic or otherwise, imagining a place with specific topography and characteristics allows writers to tell stories that couldn’t be told if they were set, say, in Watford.

For a time I was hooked on Star Trek, where a different imaginary world appeared each week. How will this new place affect our heroes? Sometimes the places were there only by inference-the Borg collective is more of a psychogrouping than a physical locale-but every new setting allows the writers to play creator of the universe, week after week after week.

Stomping around the Salton Sea this weekend, where the salt and heavy metal smell combines with the pink algae that can only survive in such extreme conditions, put me in mind of Mordor (or its comical offspring, Terry Pratchett’s city of Ankh Morpork). For some reason it’s easy enough to imagine dystopias; it’s having the courage to imagine a future where there’s no poverty, no environmental crises, no hatred that seems really tough.

Why is this? And, more to the point, what happens if we can’t?

This is a contribution to the Ecotone Wiki’s joint topic of Imaginary Places