Voici une question posée à des auteurs anglais : Many world-building science fiction and fantasy writers get their inspiration from real-life places. What real-life city seems the most fantastical or science fictional to you?

Parmi les réponses, Micke Rescnik, Alan Dean Foster, Ian McDonald et Kage Baker

Le lien

Voici celle de Ian McDonald
"I think all cities are inherently science fictional as ours is an urban genre. Utopia is a city, not a county. Mind you, so is Dystopia. But I think the human story of the Industrial Revolution onwards has been of human migration to the cities, and the culture and cultures that evolve there. We reached the natural halfway point some time ago, when over half of humanity lives in cities, but the trend toward urbanisation still continues. I'm fascinated by cities that are still growing, that are reaching that megalopolis level -- a deep, core skiffy thrill, Megacity One -- but at the same time I'm also fascinated by cities that are older than nations --the two are not necessarily exclusive. Istanbul is a great example of both. It's been through four empires and many more cultures.

I like cities with layers: sedimentary cities: the present always contains the past, and the future must always contain the present, in some form or other. I love London particularly for that layered feel, for its glorious haphazardness and its unique personality, which Peter Ackroyd personisifes as William Blake's Glad Day: a radiant youth with his arms outstretched against rainbow light.

At the same time, because no city is like any other city, I love the urban sprawls of the New World: I genuinely find LA glorious and haunting, those clusters of towers rising out of the smog. It's very Italo Calvino, the city that is a suburb of itself.

Moving south, Rio de Janeiro is the least probable city I've ever visited: it's an act of bravura urbanisation, a modern city draped over a coastal mountain range. It's so romantic: as if someone said, it's lovely here, let's just build the city anyway. Forested peaks rise from residential areas, beaches curve everywhere, the poor have the best views. I learned there to think of favelas as a solution to urban living. It's big, scary and beautiful.

Sao Paulo is big, scary and not at all beautiful. It's intellectually thrilling and terrifying at the same time, even more than LA it seems like city-without-end; endless skinny tower blocks and hurtling traffic.

Manaus, on the junction of the Rio Negro and the Solimoes, where both become the Amazon, is another example of the Brazilian machismo of dropping a city in the least likely place; in this case, a city of three million with only three roads -- frequently impassible -- connecting it to the rest of the country. A thousand miles up the Amazon, with a port for deep water tankers -- that's how the big stuff gets in and out, by water. It felt bizarrely isolated -- yet, when I was there. The next week Ozzie Osborne was playing in the Teatro Amazonas -- yet it was an enormous free trade zone where a sizeable proportion of the country's electronic goods were made. It felt like a first colony on another world, yet friendly and with a sense of purpose and energy at the same time.

I love cities, I love to go to cities, I love to spend time in them and try to get to know them to discover the things they keep for themselves, the little revelations of their spirits. A few years ago we had a weekend in Paris where we went with no plans, no preconceptions, just stepped out of the front of the hotel and let the city guide us. It took us to an insane Brazilian Night after a bizarre journey across the city in search of a ticket shop that mightn't be there; the next day to the catacombs and a fencing display in the Luxembourg Gardens. I can't think of any I've ever hated."