Looking for stories set in worlds with modern levels of technology/culture, but not based on our Earth, so different landforms, cities, countries, history etc. Anyone know any?
What medium?
Ooh, Neal Stephenson, I’ll check that out.
I was thinking books, but movies or TV would be OK too. Slightly lower tech, e.g. steampunk, is also good.
If you’re talking about tech alone, there’s Brazil.
In literature, Jasper fforde’s Thursday Next (The Eyre Affair, etc.) series is set in a present day with some major technological differences in among the general weirdness.
Is Brazil not set on earth?!
There’s Ada by Vladimir Nabokov, with Victorian/Edwardian level of technology (albeit very slightly different) and with the same land masses as the Earth, and similar political structures, but the countries are in completely different places from where they are on Earth.
But the general societal and technological feel is very similar to Earth in that until the characters make a phone call or turn on the lights, which you do with slightly different tech, you forget you’re not on Earth.
It’s an alternate history, which means it’s an alternate world in everything but geography (and since we don’t see much of the geography, it’s possible that’s different, too).
As I read the op (“different landforms”) he is looking for works set on worlds that are not Earth. I don’t think there’s anything in *Brazil to indicate that it’s not set on Earth. The way I read the OP, he’s looking for things explicitly set on non-earth worlds. (You could assume Brazil isn’t set on Earth and there’d be nothing inconsistent about that, but nothing about the film forces this assumption.)
Actually, while the world superficially resembles our own, they have some very advanced technology lying around - “New Matter” and stuff like that.
Maybe so… it has been a long time since I read it. I don’t even remember what “new matter” is. My recollection was that there was an only slightly advanced level of tech in that book, but I may be wrong.
Interestingly enough however, while when it was written Snow Crash featured a lot of sci-fi tech as the years go by it becomes more and more mundane.
We might not have Rat Things or Magnapoon’d Kouriers quite yet, but not only is the World application in essence “just” a real-time Google Maps, the creation of Google Maps was directly inspired by it. Similarly, strip away its VR display aspect and the Metaverse is basically Second Life or WoW, if there were WoW booths in the streets of L.A. The Library of Congress and its countless gargoyles ? Wikipedia, YouTube, Blogger and Google, essentially - except Wiki’s gargoyles work for free :).
Perdido Street Station by China Miéville, perhaps?: