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.
I mean it's pretty obvious from the very first paragraph, isn't it?
> By good luck we have been able to make an emergency landing on this uninhabited space station. There have been no casualties. We all count ourselves fortunate to have found safe haven at a moment when the expedition was clearly set on disaster.
Lots of short stories on HN have just their original title with nothing like [Novella] or whatever, seems fine.
> 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 can recommend the excellent novels Concrete Island [0] and High-Rise [1] from the same author.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_Island
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Rise_(novel)
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.
I mean it's pretty obvious from the very first paragraph, isn't it?
> By good luck we have been able to make an emergency landing on this uninhabited space station. There have been no casualties. We all count ourselves fortunate to have found safe haven at a moment when the expedition was clearly set on disaster.
Lots of short stories on HN have just their original title with nothing like [Novella] or whatever, seems fine.
Making a modern analogy, reading this feels kinda similar to reading about the Backrooms, but with a bigger, existential dread. Amazing.
> Our voices echoed away into a bottomless pit [of the elevator shaft]
Would voices actually "echo away" in a literally bottomless pit?
We all live in Ballard's future now. I encourage you to check out some of his interviews on YT.
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?
For context, Ballard wrote this in 1982.
I didn't get anything out of this. Felt very simple and not very mind-bending. Should I feel something?
Reminds me of Borges
And Piranesi
And House of Leaves
This was a big moment for me, but I now believe it's fictional.
Thanks Ballard
Tower of Babel by Ted Chiang is another comparison worth mentioning
Always loved this one
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.