Addendum to Cities

As an addendum to my last post about the Cities, I would like to add there there is a book called Cities that I've seen around in the book stores. Its a collection of short stories by a bunch of different authors that depicts different categories of fictional cities. I haven't read the book but China Miéville has his short story in there which is what got me interested. I have read his Perdido Street Station as well as The Scar and both of those stories feature cities that are truly remarkable.

In Perdido Street Station the city is is a giant metropolis built upon the carcass of a giant beast. The rib cage of its skeletal remains are reference points within the city which is itself dominated by a large network of above-air train system. There is a fresh water river that flows into the city which is the lifeblood. The residents use the river and the water it contains, they consume it and then expel their waste back into it. The city is like an organism that consumes and excretes. The train rails and the roads are the arteries. The human residents mere cells in the giant living organism that is ever growing and evolving.

The above image is what the artist Alberto Gordillo imagined New Crobozon, the city in question, would look like (io9)

The Scar depicts an equally organic and beautiful city. The city is a a floating city that drifts across the waters of the world. Every ship or boat that it comes across it consumes it and that new boat or ship becomes a new addition to the city. The city itself is structured by all the ships and boats that are linked together. Traveling from ship to ship you are essentially traveling from one sector of the the city to another. There are entire ships that serve as the market, as a library, a garden, residential quarters. Each ship has its own character that the city incorporates into itself to make something new, to add to itself, to grow into something else.

The above image is the cover of The Scar by Edward Miller.

Although both the cities described above are fictitious and very different from John Hartman's paintings, it just seemed like an appropriate parallel to draw between the images that he paints and the images that these authors are capable of conjuring within their readers. These fictional cities are alive with life, they are active and beautiful. You can smell the streets and see the colors as you read about them. It is the same when looking at Hartman's paintings. The still image of the city before you comes to life. There is movement in that still image, there is a sense of the humanity that lives there and industry that supports it.