LOS ANGELES does not, perhaps, get enough credit for feeding the imaginations of science fiction writers. Our original cinematic visions of imagined futures — often dystopian wastelands — were shaped by their film locations on what was then undeveloped land outside Los Angeles. Even the futuristic worlds on soundstages called back to Los Angeles, a city whose rapid growth was multi-pronged and haphazard. But despite the sprawl and isolating car culture that fueled dystopian fancies, the city has certainly not been a dystopia. When we talk about the pace and occasionally impractical results of LA’s development, often conducted without long-term considerations, we tend to overlook the beauty, inventiveness, and quirky charm of so much of LA’s architecture. It’s no wonder Los Angeles has long been a home to writers who found comfort, space, and privacy to let their minds wander through the thicket of human experience.
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To the extent architecture is mentioned in science fiction, it is typically in the shape of megalopolis cities, often characterized by cold, faceless, soulless structures, both informing and reflecting the denizens’ temperament. These cities are usually stripped of greenery and surrounded by wasteland. In the 1950s and 1960s, this scenario was primarily prompted by the images of nuclear devastation and fears of the Bomb. Brutalist architecture and pre-fab housing — cheap, fast, utilitarian — provided more fodder for a dystopian-inclined imagination. But even the elements that were widely hailed as improvements in the postwar era — the development of suburbs where there had previously been farms and forest, and the rise of electronic entertainment and other comforts drawing families indoors, rather than out amongst the community — gave authors much to think about when considering a future that seemed to be approaching more rapidly than ever before.
The short-term planning epitomized by urban mansionization and speculative housing is in effect an outgrowth of the sort of binary thinking that distinguishes much of the American psyche and culture. Today’s speculative housing — in the shape of corporate-designed, swiftly erected mansions — provides quick money to developers and perceived status to its buyers, with little regard for communal integrity or long-term infrastructure. It provides the wealthy a swift reward, furthering the already Gilded Age-like income inequality characterizing modern society. Speculative literature, on the other hand, is a way of criticizing binary thinking, in part by insisting on long-term thinking. It posits an idea of how current modes of operation might result if they carry on without alteration. It invites — even begs — us to think beyond the immediate and to consider the consequences of our actions. It intrigues and frightens us because it reminds us how fragile is the world we presume solid.