alt Hacker NewsReport on an Unidentified Space Station
Comments
I can recommend the excellent novels Concrete Island [0] and High-Rise [1] from the same author.
Making a modern analogy, reading this feels kinda similar to reading about the Backrooms, but with a bigger, existential dread. Amazing.
Reads like an early SCP exploration log.
Although, I'm not sure if I get it. They end up making a religion out of it, but does that have a deeper meaning?
Really enjoyed reading this, but kind of lost on what the deeper meaning might have been, if any.
I didn't get anything out of this. Felt very simple and not very mind-bending. Should I feel something?
> Our voices echoed away into a bottomless pit [of the elevator shaft]
Would voices actually "echo away" in a literally bottomless pit?
For context, Ballard wrote this in 1982.
We all live in Ballard's future now. I encourage you to check out some of his interviews on YT.
This was a big moment for me, but I now believe it's fictional.
Thanks Ballard
it's fictional
Always loved this one
Tower of Babel by Ted Chiang is another comparison worth mentioning
Annoying nitpick:
> Our solar system and its planets, the millions of other solar systems that constitute our galaxy, and the island universes themselves all lie within the boundaries of the station. The station is coeval with the cosmos [...]
> Estimated diameter: 15,000 light years.
Uhmm..
Yes I know, the entire construction is not striving for realism and neither should be taken literally.
I feel this should have a note that it's fictional in the title. I clicked this expecting to read about some kind of space race development with China or Russia.