Cities Without People

For those who don't have time to... "read"... this great story, Jacob Geller provides a fun and effective summary within this video at 9 minutes in ▶ this video In his words: "It is in my opinion one of the best sci-fi stories ever written."

"Southern Reach Trilogy" by Jeff VanderMeer [0]. I absolutely loved every book. "Annihilation" is probably my favorite. What hooked me about the series were two things: 1) It was very, /very/ weird and 2) it often times felt like the characters had no power. "Bliss Montage" by Ling Ma [1]. The short stories felt dreamy - drifting in perspectives, places, and times. Many of the stories had a supernatural aspect to them. "Invisible Cities" by Italo Calvino [2]. This book is a puzzle. You could read it front to back, or you could read it in the various different orders. There is no intended order. Again, very dreamy and weird. This book is a conversation, where Marco Polo is telling Genghis Khan of the cities within his kingdom. I was introduced to this book by Jacob Geller's video essay "Cities without people" [3]. "Ring" by Koji Suzuki [4]. One of my first horror book reads, and also the first in the Ring series. The "Ring" movies are based off of this book. I also read the 2nd one, which provides a very different view on the series and gives the horrors in the book a scientific backing. This year for me has been the year of strange novels. [0]: link [1]: link [2]: link [3]: ▶ this video [4]: link

Video (game) essayist Jacob Geller did a few videos which mentioned this work. link link They're quite interesting, I think. The abyss really gets him going. And a few more I really like: link link ▶ this video link