The Real-World Locations of 14 Sci-Fi Dystopias (2014) | Hacker News Reader

The Real-World Locations of 14 Sci-Fi Dystopias (2014)

atlasobscura.com

170 pointsBerislavLopac77 comments

Gattaca 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=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.

The 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.

It'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.

While 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.

As William Gibson famously said, "The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed."

In the UK, the NHS runs scans and blood tests as standard procedure at around 12 weeks, which can indicate any risk of something like Downs syndrome. You can then be referred for amniocentesis if necessary, all free at point of service. I'm sure many other European countries are similar.

Scanning for Downs syndrome is default in Denmark where I live. It makes a lot of sense. You will get a probably of Downs syndrome. No one is aborting your baby - you can take an informed decision yourself.

After birth a blood test is used for scanning for 25 rare known issues.

https://www.rigshospitalet.dk/undersoegelse-og-behandling/fi... -> in Danish.

This is the same for everyone.

> No one is aborting your baby - you can take an informed decision yourself.

Of course, this is exactly the point of Gattaca: you won't be "forced" to do it, but you and your child will be punished for making the socially unacceptable "choice".

In the UK it's free if there is some reason to think you may be carrier:

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/genetic-and-genomic-testing/

As the cost of doing it comes down, i would expect it to be offered more widely. I don't know if it will ever be cheap enough to offer to all prospective parents.

Oddly, the cost of doing genetic tests does not scale at all linearly:

https://www.rbht.nhs.uk/sites/nhs/files/Laboratories/CGGL%20...

(eg a single arrhythmia test is £650 - £900, but the whole panel is £1000, and then it's only another £150 to do multiple panels)

Meanwhile, sequencing a whole genome is ~$1000:

https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/DNA-Sequen...

Perhaps a lot of the cost is sample preparation, and the actual molecular genetics bit is dirt cheap.

The genetic tests were already down to $1,000 retail per parent a decade ago at the company I worked at and it tested for hundreds of hereditary diseases. Those base tests are even cheaper now thanks to microarrays and the mid/high end has moved up to full genome sequencing.

It won't be long before it's dirt cheap and standard in most countries, especially as the Affymetrix/Illumina patents expire and the genechips get commoditized.

Down syndrome is caused by a chromosomal aberration that comes about during formation of an egg, not a mutation. It's not possible to detect it by screening the parents' DNA.

But it is possible to detect by screening the embryo's DNA, which is currently happening. Still I don't think this technology will reach universal adoption within the next 50 years.

Perhaps this is why screening of the amniotic fluid to detect things about the parasite within the host is common?

What parasite?

That parasite gestating inside the female host.

They're making a cheeky reference to the fetus. Don't think too hard about it.

I didnt, and I knew the answer ahead of time. I think thats an insane way of thinking about things, barbaric and cruel, but I would rather parent spells it out and I leave it at that. Its the internet, people can and should say what they really think, im just helping parent get there.

I said exactly what I meant to say. I got there just fine on my own like the big boy I am.

I've had many a conversation with women that have decided to not have kids. This is where I first heard of a fetus referred to as a parasite. I found it quite humorous. It's their body after all*, and if that's how they think of having some life form growing inside their body, I'm here for it.

* as recognized in fewer places

Dont take it as derision. Id much rather a cultural exchange with you. I have many friends/family that are pro-choice, in conversation I have never gotten the impression that they would call an undesired baby a parasite, I would say thats rare.

I have a theory as to a clustering of ideas, you could call it a worldview, but its hard to pin down or narrowly define. However, some aspects appear axiomatic; and when you call a baby a parasite, that is an indication that you may share this worldview.

Id be interested in discussing it further. What are its fundamental predispositions, what do you have to assume is correct to adopt this view? What is the point of society?

I would be happy to exchange information on anarchocapitalism if you are interested.

Parasite: an organism that lives in or on an organism of another species (its host) and benefits by deriving nutrients at the other's expense.

If we drop the species bit, and the negative connotations, it's not far off the mark. Children, in utero are certainly not symbiotic.

Just from a biological POV the toll on women for carrying children is HUGE. There's a whole swath of things that get rebuilt in a woman's body (nose/sense of smell being an interesting one) and a rather large tax on resources. Calcium is a huge one, most mothers in the west supplement as part of pregnancy. Dig deeper and you're going to find more and more biological impact that looks less (re)"productive" and more parasitic.

If you change domains to art, the whole film aliens covers the themes of rape, impregnation and parasitic child birth. These notions are not far from our fears and nightmares.

Lastly loving your children and being honest about a biological and personal toll they take are not incompatible. I know women who HAVE children they love and adore who have used the term parasite to describe the process they went through. It is done partly with tongue in cheek and partly to express something horrifyingly taxing on their bodies...

There are people that legitimately and fully consider babies to be a parasite, maybe you arent one of them. I understand the biological parallels you draw, I understand the need for comedy in dealing with stress; however, I would advise anyone against making jokes that dehumanize people over immutable qualities, I caution you that this behavior is morally corrosive. It may seem acceptable based on current standards, but so would have dehumanizing comedy about blacks in the era of slavery or jews in the holocaust; I wouldnt want to have regrets about how I would have acted in those times.

>> I understand the need for comedy in dealing with stress

The rest of your statement says you do not understand why comedy and stress have the relationship they do.

If you go look there is data for the impact of humor on stress, on fear, on danger. The product of comedy, laughter, is one of the few autonomic functions that others can trigger in you.

In return I would caution you to not police others good time. Not only is it unfounded in data (yes there has been research on this, no one supports this perspective). It is the thing that has been done for generations, and failed (see tipper gore as the latest example).

>> dehumanizing comedy about blacks in the era of slavery or jews in the holocaust

Candidly this take is deeply misinformed. Blackface, had shades of slavery but the larger arc of it was NOT that. Calling attention to the slavery aspect is actually diminishing what it was. You're also reinforcing the stereo type of Black people and Slavery something that is massively historically inaccurate, read about the bakery pirates and the ottomans. Plenty of other people from other races have been slaves throughout history.

Meanwhile calling out "jews in the holocaust" and comedy is going to be a hard sell. Not only was this comedy never common, the foundations of American comedy are deeply rooted in the jewish community and jewish tradition. The godfather of modern comedy, Lenny Bruce was a jew. The scene in the Catskills that drove early days comedy that ended up on television (think cid cesar) was jewish.

I never said you shouldnt engage in humor, I said you shouldnt dehumanize people. Its possible to make a joke without equating an entire population as less than human. Its not productive to nitpick my analogies, I never claimed there was comedy about blacks during slavery, nor jews during the holocaust, you missed the point completely, its not funny to dehumanize people, and its corrosive to your own senses as well as society.

It's not just amusing (and for some, uncomfortable) terminology. Pregnancy stimulates the mother's immune system in ways normally associated with fighting a parasite, and the fetus defends itself using techniques that successful parasites use.

"Embryo implantation sets off a process that ultimately turns off a key pathway required for the immune system to attack foreign bodies. As a result, immune cells are never recruited to the site of implantation and therefore cannot harm the developing fetus."

...

"it gives a satisfying explanation for why the fetus isn't rejected during pregnancy, which is a fundamental question for the medical community" - https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120607142244.h...

Have a google around for similar papers. It's a fascinating topic that we've only begun to fully understand in the last decade or so.

I get it, based on a variety of medical phenomena, you can draw parallels between an unborn baby and a parasite. If thats your point, then fine, fair enough.

If you seek to use this analysis to push a political agenda, then I am having trouble differentiating the morality between that and slave owners pointing to the shape of skulls based on race. Your explanation is an analogy, parasites dont grow up to eventually provide care for the host, it doesnt sound scientificially accurate to call a baby a parasite based on some of the characteristics. Further, calling a baby a parasite, or anyone for that matter, is an attempt to dehumanize them; dehumanization has been followed by violence in a number of horrific tragedies, but the violence is committed by people who find it justified, because whoever they are killing aren't really people.

you took the bate and missed the joke mon ami, and are now launching into unrelated screeds about slavery. you're not making things better.

you might be right, you should collect more data points, try this class of jokes out on more people and see how funny they find it, you could call women walking birth canals. It should be easy to formulate this comedy; take a broad category of people based on some immutable quality, like skin color, find the least charitable insult you could possibly imagine, like parasite, and see how funny they find it.

I'm ~60% sure they themselves are trying to bait someone, into an anti-abortion argument. They're definitely deliberately taking the most provocative stance possible, and trying to provoke more people along with them.

edit: re-reading their comments, I'm at least 80% sure.

Possibly. People tend to speak more callously on the internet than in real life, but I asked a few coworkers about this, all were uncomfortable and one was visibly distressed; I guess thats what happens when someone that hasnt experienced this kind of behavior growing, then suddenly gets a full dose. Its hard to imagine winning anyone over leading with that.

Though, the strategy isnt so much about winning in that arguement, but just trying to get an ugly response, so you are probably right.

You're correct, but so is the person you replied to; they wrote their comment confusingly, though.

PGT-A testing is very common in IVF and will catch Down Syndrome. Essentially no births from IVF (a growing percentage of all births) have Down Syndrome.

As you mention, this testing is done after an embryo has been created.

I went through IVF and I can't make babies that have my particular mutation in them (even though it's not apparently disease causing and unknown to science) unless I sign a shit ton of paperwork.

So, we have to go with the Gattaca-y genomincally perfect embryos. Or conceive in the back of a car or something.

There are genetic screens for a few congenital disorders. A friend’s daughter was genetically screened for galactosemia and by catching it they almost certainly helped her have a normal life.

But since Gattaca was released, we’ve just continued to learn that it’s likely impossible to predict the full capability of a person from only DNA. There are too many variables in how genes are expressed, and the social context in which each person finds themselves.

That said, the real story of Gattaca is unjustified discrimination, and there are already plenty of technologies for that. So in that sense I think you’re right that it’s already among us. Just as it was in 1997… Gattaca is a pretty transparent allegory.

In this tough world, bringing in a child with Down syndrome is committing to their lifelong care and carefully planning who will take over the job of caring for them when you die. Don’t do it.

I think Gattaca is also fascinating for its freshman part in Andrew Niccol's opening "trilogy" as writer (and mostly director). More people remember the sophomore work The Truman Show (in part perhaps because it was the film that Niccol didn't direct), and Simone is mostly forgettable but still worth mentioning in the way it sort of caps the "trilogy".

I think that bittersweet hopefulness and a sense of lightness (humor) in the dystopian darkness of that opening "trilogy" is partly what Niccol seems to have lost as his career has progressed from those first three efforts. It's possible to even blame Simone's critical failure for that, he leaned harder into the humor and got burnt at the box office and maybe over-corrected too hard back to even grimmer, more bland, and more action focused movies. Hard to blame someone doing what sells, but interesting to miss the weirdness and also the bittersweet hope of the opening salvo.

One 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

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

OH! 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-RiddleyWal...

This reminds me The Meaning of Liff by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Meaning_of_Liff

Similar 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.

Probably 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

Whenever 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.

One 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).

If anybody can swing a visit to Valencia - do it. I can't wait to go back some day.

It was prominently featured in Westworld (the HBO series) from season 2 onwards as the headquarters of Delos Inc.

Here I would love to visit IMAX.

I 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.

Robocop 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.

> 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.)

> 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.

Children of Men [0] briefly put Bexhill [1] on the map again.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Men [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bexhill-on-Sea

Interesting 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.

The book is very different from the movie; the book is post World War 3 while the movie isn't.

Well, a very mild WW3, so it hardly matters. It's not like it was in a Fallout/Road Warrior style wasteland.

very 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...

I 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.

I think the exclusion of Mercerism from the movie is criminal.

I 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-...

Mad Max locations would be a good addition to this article.

The "Halls of Justice" and the underground parking at Melbourne Uni come to mind.

Not 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.

the 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.

It should be mentioned that the Atlanta’s Marriott Marquis Hotel lobby is also used in Loki as the headquarters Time Variance Authority.

I'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.

This 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.

Valdez 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-na...

Disappointed to not see A Clockwork Orange and Thamesmead

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange_(film)

Atlanta’s Marriott Marquis Hotel is easily one of my favorite designs in a hotel.

I 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

Billion Dollar Brain (starring Michael Caine) was filmed in Helsinki. The 18th century house I was born into acted as KGB headquarters in Moscow.

I expected, from the title, to see locales in the world where predicted dystopias came to pass… not movie sets.

I'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.

What real locales are you thinking of?

Many locations in the former USSR and Eastern Bloc? North Korea?

see the problem here is you somehow associate socialism -- i.e. socialist urbanism and architecture -- with dystopia

Actually, I associate not the political philosophy, but the reality of everyday life in 20th century communist countries with dystopia.

The reality of everyday life in the 21st century for many people in capitalist countries is dystopian. GP is right, you're showing your bias.

Ironically a lot of these locations are beautiful and idyllic in the world that we actually live in

It 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.

Ennis house

Los 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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