MetaChat - What fictional world would you like to live in?

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16 June 2009

What fictional world would you like to live in? A question inspired by this article on The AV Club. →[More:] If you'd asked me as a kid, I'd probably have said, the world of "Bewitched." (Assuming I was part of Samantha's family and not Darren's, of course.) As an adult I have a different answer, which I'll post in a comment.

post by: BoringPostcards at: 08:09 | 40 comments

The Culture from Iain M. Banks Culture series.

It's a technological Utopia where everyone has can have any material whim satisfied, run by altruistic supercomputers, with as much living room as you want since most people live on ringworlds, Dyson spheres or giant spaceship; and everyone just parties or plays sport or makes art or plays virtual reality games all day.

posted by TheophileEscargot 16 June | 08:16

I'd love to live in the late-1950's Paris suburb of Jacques Tati's Mon Oncle. The modernist architecture (which Tati was parodying, but it's clear he had an eye for it as well) is so serious that it's funny, as are the people who live in it. There's never been a movie scene that captures my love/hate relationship with technology better than this one.

Also, the city still has its vibrant and colorful parts, unlike the Paris of Playtime, the sort-of sequel to Mon Oncle. (I like Playtime a lot, but in it, humanity has been reduced to mostly dots moving around a grid- not a nice place to live.) The world of Mon Oncle seems like an odd but benevolent place, where even when things go wrong, no one's hurt and it works out somehow in the end.

posted by BoringPostcards 16 June | 08:42

Eden

posted by Hugh Janus 16 June | 08:57

LKH's St. Louis. (Yeah, it's fluff, but it's enjoyable fluff.)

posted by sperose 16 June | 09:27

This is easily the best question ever on Metachat outside of "what does your room look like at the Metachat Mansion?". In no particular order:

1. The world of the Phantom Tollbooth. Having Tock as a friend and being able to have Dictionopolis as your farmer's market - later kids, I'm gone....

2. The world of any Italo Calvino story ever written, with special emphasis on Invisible Cities and Cosmicomics. Italo Calvino is such a gentle, sweet, imaginative and moral writer that to be able to visit or live in anything he's done would be a fantastic treat.

3. The world of Dune - not forever, because I think it would be too confining and claustrophobic, or like the Indian caste-system in overdrive. But man, how about an internship with the Atreides or Bene Gesserit? Awesome.

4. The world of Little Nemo in Slumberland, by Windsor McKay.

5. And finally, how about a nice mashup of the worlds of Aquaman, Babe, Dr. Doolittle, Watership Down, Lady and the Tramp and Charlotte's Web. What I mean here is I want to talk with the animals, walk with the animals, squeak and squawk and quack with the animals....

posted by Lipstick Thespian 16 June | 09:58

Oh man. Roman Holiday-esque Rome? Riven? Winnie-the-Pooh? I can't think of anything cool enough, or exactly right.

And yeah, Mon Oncle is wonderful.

posted by Specklet 16 June | 09:59

On preview, when was that question asked, LT?!? I missed it!!!

posted by Specklet 16 June | 09:59

Okay, I have another one, because I think Eden might get boring and I'm a sucker for temptation. I'd like to live on the Krakatoa of The Twenty-One Balloons, that would be a gas. Until Krakatoa blew up, that is. Why does Paradise always blow up, dammit!

I also wouldn't mind living on board the Nautilus in Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

posted by Hugh Janus 16 June | 10:10

Oz under Ozma.

posted by brujita 16 June | 10:11

Oz under Ozma is my new Of Montreal tribute band, thanks Brujita!

posted by Lipstick Thespian 16 June | 10:12

Nick and Nora Charles' New York. Presuming, of course, I was part of their social circle.

posted by crush-onastick 16 June | 10:22

This one is too difficult and it made my brain leak a little bit.

posted by eatdonuts 16 June | 10:31

You know the part of the "Ducktales" theme song where Uncle Scrooge takes a dive off his diving board into his big pool of money? I'd like to live in that world.

posted by ThePinkSuperhero 16 June | 10:33

In the Enchanted Forest where the Magic Faraway Tree is.

posted by gaspode 16 June | 10:48

Dante's Inferno.

posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson 16 June | 10:55

Callenbach's Ecotopia.

posted by box 16 June | 11:08

Let's go have this discussion in Second Life!

posted by dhartung 16 June | 11:19

La Belle Noiseuse

posted by Joe Beese 16 June | 11:21

I also like The Culture, but would put in a second choice for Riverworld.

So cool - you'll never die, and everyone, ever, is here to be found.

posted by Meatbomb 16 June | 11:23

>You know the part of the "Ducktales" theme song where Uncle Scrooge takes a dive off his diving board into his big pool of money? I'd like to live in that world.

We were just discussing this at the bar the other day, and how likely you'd really hurt yourself upon smacking onto an irregular surface of densely packed hunks of metal. My fella got all puppy-eyed and pleaded "Guys, you're ruining my fantasy, here."

It's not so much fictional, but I'd really like to live in the African-American Southern communities of the early 1900s as depicted by Zora Neale Hurston and Alice Walker, minus the real-world social injustices and economic disparities. I'm kind of obsessed with juke joints. I really want to eat some vinegar-laced smokey barbecue and put salty peanuts in my glass bottle Coca Cola while listening to someone play the steel guitar.

Also, can I be a wizard please kthnx (SHUT UP, YOU KNOW YOU READ HARRY POTTER TOO).

posted by Juliet Banana 16 June | 11:29

Star Trek, hands down. In particular, Star Trek, Next Gen. (post-Borg era, preferably). Whenever I watch the opening sequence, with the view of the planets and stars and that intro., "Space, the final frontier...," I get such a pang of longing. When I was a kid, I used to imagine I was left here from another world and I'd sometimes plead to go home. The light in the hall outside my bedroom was the communicator. The answer was always, "Not yet, not yet..." (I was a strange child).

On a more earthly note, Paris, 1925. I'd love to sit in a cafe and share a drink with Hemingway, alla A Moveable Feast.

posted by Pips 16 June | 11:37

If Juliet Banana gets to be a wizard, I want to be a vampire.

posted by ThePinkSuperhero 16 June | 11:40

Oh man, being a Starfleet officer would be so awesome.

posted by muddgirl 16 June | 11:40

Well, people have pretty much nailed it for me. Nick and Nora Charles' New York, the Paris of Mon Oncle. I'd add to that St Louis in Meet Me In St Louis and the Italy of The Talented Mr Ripley.

The England portrayed in Richard Curtis films looks very attractive too, and completely unlike any actual English person's life that I know of.

posted by essexjan 16 June | 11:49

I think it would be cool to live in the Mexican Day of the Dead world of the video game Grim Fandango and be a skeleton, maybe a musician, play congas or something.

posted by Hugh Janus 16 June | 11:50

*idly thumbs Playboy*

Er, what? Oh, sorry.

I'd want to be a Starfleet officer, too, but I suspect I'd end up like the alternate Picard stuck in astrometrics.

I think a number of Larry Niven's worlds appeal to me, at least for visiting. Ringworld would be awesome, of course, and it would take a long, long lifetime to get bored. Having worlds like Tabletop (with a single continent the size of California rising on sheer cliffs out of a toxic atmosphere) would be really cool. To visit. I'd probably be just the loner type to be an asteroid miner.

Middle-Earth could be interesting. I once wanted to be an Elf, or a Numenorean. Surely a few of the other Rangers had interesting adventures, and there was a lot of land in "the East".

To sum up, I guess anyplace I could be in space (especially in a space suit), and anyplace where I could get more sex.

posted by dhartung 16 June | 12:26

Right now, I'd go for "Gilligan's Island". Sounds so nice to be castaway with no worries about bills or other problems. All issues would be ones that the Professor could fix with his amazing ability to create everything needed but a rescue plan that worked. Course, I'd hope to never be rescued. I'd be AndMaryAnn, not one of the more colorful characters...

posted by mightshould 16 June | 12:45

- Middle Earth
- Star Wars
- Star Trek
- Steampunk (I haven't read any Steampunk fiction, but I really love the look of it especially the clothing)

Also - Gilligan's Island sounds good, only I want to be alone, without the other castaways. I often daydream of being stranded on a tropical island. Is that weird?

posted by deborah 16 June | 15:09

Right now, Terre d'Ange because I really, really, really wish that I could worship at the Valerian house or the Mandrake house right now. Or be an anguissette.

posted by TrishaLynn 16 June | 15:27

Reagan's "Morning in America."

But with sex.

posted by danf 16 June | 15:28

Discworld.

posted by Daniel Charms 16 June | 15:55

Perhaps Barsetshire, or Prydain. I spend half the time wishing I could live completely alone on an island (though I tend towards wanting something in the Pacific Northwest or the Outer Hebrides), and the rest of the time wanting to be part of a tightly-knit community where I have a useful role... Krakatoa is a great idea. Luxury and comfort without exploitation and conflict! Beds that wash and change themselves! And even turn-of-the-century wherever-you-landed couldn't have been so bad (for you) if you managed to keep most of your diamonds with you.

posted by notquitemaryann 16 June | 16:03

Any one of a million fantasy novels.

I wanna be the guy that runs the inn that the heroes stay at on the way to their adventures. An inn that isn't destroyed by dragonfire or torched by orcs or looted by invaders or anything. Just an inn. Near a river.

My second choice would be the science fiction universe of EE "Doc" Smith's "Lensmen" books -- ZAP! ZING! BOOM!

posted by BitterOldPunk 16 June | 16:03

I'm also a huge fan of sci-fi worlds. I would love to live in either Banks' Culture, or the World of Noon of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. I guess you could say that one of them is an Anarchist, the other a Communist utopia.

posted by Daniel Charms 16 June | 16:08

Either the one left at the very end of Stephen King's "The Stand" or the one Obama promised us.

posted by Ardiril 16 June | 18:01

We were just discussing this at the bar the other day, and how likely you'd really hurt yourself upon smacking onto an irregular surface of densely packed hunks of metal.

I think there was a episode where Lauchpad tried to swim in it and that´s pretty much what happened.

posted by concrete 16 June | 18:28

I don't think I'd ever be cut out for starfleet, but given the number of unusual civilian jobs it seems are available on Starfleet vessels and so on, I can see hacking it as a history teacher, or maybe "fiction expert" or bartender. You know, something that doesn't involve extensive physics and engineering knowledge.

It does kind of tick me off that, after growing up on sci fi, I'll never so much as go up far enough to see my own planet from orbit, much less any other worlds.

posted by kellydamnit 16 June | 23:35

It does kind of tick me off that, after growing up on sci fi, I'll never so much as go up far enough to see my own planet from orbit, much less any other worlds.

Yeah, I always preferred Cyberpunk, so I'm basically happy that the coming dystopia is taking its time. That said, dystopian SF doesn't really work too well with this question.

So, in conclusion, I will vote for Huxley's Brave New World, where I would be happy doing whatever it is that I am assigned to be doing.

Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid.

posted by pompomtom 17 June | 00:41

Narnia maybe? Though I think as an adult it would probably bore me and the precious animal characters would start getting on my nerves. As Caspian said, he promised to be a good king to the Talking Animals, but no one said anything about the animals who never stop talking.

I'm too realistic to really think that any alternate life would be much better than the one I have, or that I'd be happy with it if it was.

posted by Orange Swan 17 June | 09:42

The world of The King in Yellow. I think Xerox machines would be outlawed, though.

posted by Eideteker 17 June | 11:00

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