Report on an Unidentified Space Station (1982)
geosci.uchicago.edu
geosci.uchicago.edu
> /This palace is the work of the gods,/ was my first thought. I explored the uninhabited spaces, and I corrected myself: /The gods that built this place have died./ Then I reflected on its peculiarities, and told myself: /The gods that built this place were mad./ I said this, I know, in a tone of incomprehensible reproof that verged upon remorse--with more intellectual horror than sensory fear. The impression of great antiquity was joined by others: the impression of endlessness, the sensation of oppressiveness and horror, the sensation of complex irrationality.
(There's more to it, but I don't want to spoil it. Suffice to say that this one has something of the antithesis of the nice, neat hexagons in "Library".)
Canadian public domain link: https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20140726
I read it on the bus when I used to have to commute for 4 hours a day. Must have looked weird reading this giant book, and at some points reading it upside down, or on its side, or flicking through pages pretty fast (some pages only have 1 or 2 words on them).
Another take on this idea can be found in the extremely good anime "The Tatami Galaxy".
The last line, about worshipping the station, is the reveal. Ballard saw within man a tendency to underestimate the depth of the problems he tackled, and a tendency to end up absolutely enmired within false premises, within artifice - these themes are endemic to many of his dystopias.
My best guess is that this is a parable on exactly those themes.
Which is very close to being a distinction without a difference, i know. But i think it's rare that Ballard frames this as a flaw in people; rather, it's a terrifying fact about the universe.
The space travelers travel from transit station to transit station.
What do they assume when they stumble upon an uninhabited Earth? It's a transit station.
It's not only the bias of the space traveler, but also that of the reader who assumes that the space traveler is familiar with the concept of people living on planets, and therefore since the traveler did not conclude that this was an uninhabited planet, the reader already assumes it cannot be Earth.
And if it's just used as a medium for commenting on contemporary issues, I'm not interested. There's other mediums for that like the news or documentaries.
I think that begins an overly-subjective line of thinking that just doesn't fit everyone. It certainly doesn't fit me.
Also Blame on Netflix although different sort of theme to this is worth a watch if you want your megastructures itch scratched.
Was pleasantly surprised by the direction it ended up taking.