If only...

My "ideal place" is (still) the late anarchist and novelist Iain M. Banks' galaxy-spanning civilization The Culture developed and explored through nine space opera novels and one collection of short stories (start here).

Reply to Vera Mont

I used to hang out on Twitters with the like-minded people years ago, but now it is totally transformed into a gigantic marketing arena with the new ownership and new name "X". I abandoned the sinking ship X, and just watch youtube these days.

Quoting 180 Proof

start here

:up:

Reply to 180 Proof
Thanks! It's on my "get" list.
I was quite keen on Pern at one time , and long before that, my first taste of an imagined utopia was Islandia (Not Huxley's Island; that was pedantic.)

Reply to Vera Mont I've never heard of Islandia so thanks for that. I guess I liked Huxley's Island when I read it as a high school freshman. A few years later I read Ursula Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea trilogy, and though I was mad for Tolkien's "Middle Earth" back then (re: my fantasy roleplaying games days), the only fantasy world that was ever an "ideal place" for me was the archipelago-world of "Earthsea" – especially the islands of "Roke" & "Gont" – which became more real to me with each subsequent book.

Btw, a sister of my best 'non-jock' friend in high school was a huge fan of both Anne McCafferty's Pern & Andre Norton's Witch World series, IIRC – I never got past the first volume of either series. Now that I think of it, my earliest "ideal place" during the '70s even before "Earthsea" was probably Clarke/Kubrick's alt-"Earth" in 2001: A Space Odyssey (though I was (still am) a '60s Star Trek obsessive too – "The Federation" was cool but not "science fiction-y" enough even for my grade school nerdiness :nerd: ).

Not exactly science fiction or fantasy but,...............................Point Place, Wisconsin.
:wink:

Quoting 180 Proof

Ursula Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea trilogy,

I had forgotten. I guess it was a long time ago and I only read the first two, though I enjoyed other LeGuin books. I was anything but methodical in my selections: whatever the SA thrift store had for $.25 or Coles dumped in the sale bin would end up in my satchel.

Reply to Sir2u
While I consider Wisconsin so beautiful that I placed a good chunk of my own utopian story there, that particular location is surprising.... unless someone very special lives there.

Reply to Vera Mont People from the 70's

People have long thought of the "paradise". Even coming up with drawings and paintings.

Reply to Vera Mont

If I recall correctly, Pern is a planet where floating acid stuff regularly rains down and must be burned up by dragon riders before it reaches the ground and destroys whatever it lands on.

Not the kind of place that I’d prefer to call home. :brow:

Quoting praxis

Not the kind of place that I’d prefer to call home

No place is 100% safe. It's a rule of utopian literature that there should be some external threat. Threadfall is the occasional interruption to a peaceful, happy existence. Plus, you get to ride a dragon.

Reply to L'éléphant
Or Eden, yes: either the perfect place from which we have been excluded for doing wrong, or the perfect place to which we may be admitted if we do enough right. That's a religious idea, not a political or sociological one. You never get to live there: it's only available to the dead.

Reply to Vera Mont :up:

Lucid daydream/s of a (not-dystopian) post-singularity, posthuman f u t u r e is my "ideal place". My damn novel (series), however, just hasn't gotten – let itself be – written yet.

Quoting 180 Proof

The damn novel (series), however, just hasn't gotten – let itself be – written yet

That all depends... I understand it's boring and slow: the most frequent critique of the first volume was "nothing happens".

Quoting Vera Mont

Plus, you get to ride a dragon.

That’s a definite plus.

My utopian world is a spin on Forbidden Planet. It’s a world with civilization so technologically advanced that all instrumentality has been made obsolete. They can create with mere thought. In Forbidden Planet 2.0 the inventors were wise enough to foresee the potential devastation of “monsters from the id” and circumvented the fate of the Krell. They achieved this by only allowing aesthetic thought and experience to activate the power of the machine, so FP 2.0 is sort of like living in a magical musical or Harry Potter + Schmigadoon!

Reply to praxis That reminds me little of

The Dancers at the End of Time

I don't know how doing nothing can make people happy.

Dartmoor (Devon, England) would be a beautiful place to live. Got to stay on the moor for seven days in a cabin next to a thatched cottage with an AGA stove (those behemoths that would seem unliftable and never go fully cold). Walked a 10 mile circuit, from Tor to Tor across what might as well be a celestial plain. Sat under a frigid waterfall. The entire landscape was a novelty to me. The stone rows and circles, vestiges of the Neolithic, also contribute to ancient mystique. Though I'm sure the weather, and work, would cause the novelty to evaporate if I felt trapped there.

While sitting on a Tor I encountered a member of the British aristocracy (maybe some rich asshole role playing now), dressed in fox hunting uniform, prancing about on a handsome horse. He was doing roll call with a huge pack of svelte hounds. Each dog would respond to its name call by submissively touching the horse. A scene that really stands out in memory.

Reply to Vera Mont :cool:

I guess this thread should really have been about happiness. English - or, for that matter, Japanese or Canadian or Estonian countryside can inspire happiness, as Reply to Nils Loc recalls. My own fantasy island was quite real: Montserrat in the 1970's - long before the volcanic eruption - two weeks of feeling completely at ease, completely at home.

Inside spaces can do it, too. I have a book of architecture by Christopher Day called Places of the Soul and I know what he means. I also have an image of happy people in my head: three men raising the main beam of a storage shed with just ropes and a pulley. The challenge itself was mundane; the process of working it out together was both hilarious and supremely rewarding.

Quoting Vera Mont

You never get to live there: it's only available to the dead.

Are you talking about the purgatory for people who were bad while on Earth?

Anyway, my ideal place actually existed years ago. I won't divulge where it was, I don't know if it still exists. There were 6 of us close friends who went out one night and they had an idea where to lounge and eat pizza. I thought, cool. It was a secret place within the group. I was the last one to know that this was their hang out. It was a second floor unit in an old city building. The place was run by guys who decorated the place like it was a seedy tavern. We had a couch, ottoman, armchair, easy chair and a coffee table in one corner. Dimmed lights. The stairs leading to that unit was narrow and steep and dark. The place was clean despite the ambience. Funny, we couldn't order alcohol, of course. We spent the night chatting, relaxing, and eating. Clean fun.

Quoting L'éléphant

Are you talking about the purgatory for people who were bad while on Earth?

I was only talking about Paradise. Purgatory is all of this.

Quoting L'éléphant

Anyway, my ideal place actually existed years ago.

And that's what I mean by a place for which we feel homesick - a place where we found happiness. It doesn't seem to take very much, does it?

Quoting Vera Mont

And that's what I mean by a place for which we feel homesick - a place where we found happiness. It doesn't seem to take very much, does it?

I think when we search for comfort we search for that -- a simple place.

Quoting 180 Proof

A few years later I read Ursula Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea trilogy, and though I was mad for Tolkien's "Middle Earth" back then (re: my fantasy roleplaying games days), the only fantasy world that was ever an "ideal place" for me was the archipelago-world of "Earthsea" – especially the islands of "Roke" & "Gont" – which became more real to me with each subsequent book.

Earthsea, specifically Gont, is the place I would go if I could go anywhere. I paid an artist to paint the Old Mage's house. After 40+ years, I finally have a gorgeous depiction of it. I occasionally tried myself over the years. Alas, I can't draw a stick figure that's recognizable as a person.

I feel like reality is perfect as it is, even though it is often so horrible. Fantasy is flawed in its very nature, and leaves us wishing for something we will never have.

Reply to Lionino
Oh, Lucky Man!

Reply to Lionino "Fantasy" is what we make out of the "reality" we find, no?

Fantasy is also the first step in changing reality for the better. You imagine what you would like it to be and then work toward that ideal. (in theory...)

The world within Samuel Sagan's books is immensely satisfying to me. Extremely complex (to the point that a Film of most of his books would be impossible to make) and philosophically fulfilling, for a younger person.

Note: You have to get past his potentially delusional Cosmology and read these as pure fiction. As any reasonable person would.