# Immigration to a Fictional World **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 9, 2003, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-to-a-fictional-world/212263 "2003-11-09T18:27:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Loneraven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c0e974/32.png) [@Loneraven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loneraven)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2003, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-to-a-fictional-world/212263/41 "2003-11-10T17:54:02Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by MindWanderer \* > \*\*I’d go with Brave New World, despite being a dystopia it doesn’t seem bad. Its the most utopian dystopia I think. > > Although being one of the low castes wouldn’t be fun I suppose. \*\* You’d be conditioned to like it whatever caste you were in. I don’t know about Discworld - Ankh-Morpork in all its foetid glory doesn’t sound quite where I’d want to live. I’d go for Iain M. Banks’ Culture, as has already said. It’s a real utopia and it really doesn’t seem to have any flaws except boredom. ---
**Author:** ![bughunter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/aeb1de/32.png) [@bughunter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bughunter)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2003, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-to-a-fictional-world/212263/42 "2003-11-10T19:51:14Z")
OK, now I’m surprised no one has mentioned Elf Sternberg’s Pendorwright, the setting of his [url=“[http://www.drizzle.com/~elf/journals/](http://www.drizzle.com/~elf/journals/)”]Journal Entries\* stories… It’s legendary net lit. It’s science fiction. It’s erotica. It’s furry fantasy. It’s Not Safe For Work! Very. ---
**Author:** ![bughunter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/aeb1de/32.png) [@bughunter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bughunter)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2003, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-to-a-fictional-world/212263/43 "2003-11-10T19:57:09Z")
D’oh! I closed a URL tag with an Italic tag… Here’s the link again. I promise. [The Journal Entries](http://www.drizzle.com/~elf/journals/) (Not Safe for Work) ---
**Author:** ![Lobelia\_Overhill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/54ee81/32.png) [@Lobelia\_Overhill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobelia_Overhill)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2003, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-to-a-fictional-world/212263/44 "2003-11-10T21:27:39Z")
Star Trek World ---
**Author:** ![Fern\_Forest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/71c47a/32.png) [@Fern\_Forest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fern_Forest)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2003, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-to-a-fictional-world/212263/45 "2003-11-10T22:02:43Z")
I like the quiet life. I’d move to the quiet little village next to the waterfall from **The Secret of Mana**. I think I’d fish a lot, hike a lot. Fight off a few rabbites and raise a small family. Ummmmm, hammock. Although I did always want to wander through the infinit forest in the Narnia books. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2003, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-to-a-fictional-world/212263/46 "2003-11-10T22:46:14Z")
> [@](#): > > _Originally posted by A Curious Writer \* > \*\* But, while I don’t remember Pogo, “Peanuts” world would be so cool! There are adults, of course, we just don’t see them, and I could keep working as a Sunday School teacher and sutff. Very relaxing place._\* Yeah, but could you really deal with sounding like a trumpet? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2003, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-to-a-fictional-world/212263/47 "2003-11-10T23:19:03Z")
Well, Xanth wouldn’t be too bad. I have a high tolerance for arbitrary puns, and it’s an easy place to live. Why work, when you can just eat fresh-grown pies straight from the tree? Plus, every common Joe in Xanth has some magical ability or another, not just the elite (although the elite have better powers, as a rule). Going along with the Pogo suggestion, it’d be nice to live in Bloom County. But sadly, I think that world is lost and gone forever. And if we’re allowed to bring whatever we can carry, then it’d be very tempting to pack up thirty or forty pounds of mithril, and live like a king in Middle Earth. But I’d have to be very careful to find a buyer before I got robbed of it. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2003, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-to-a-fictional-world/212263/48 "2003-11-10T23:53:52Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by bughunter \* > \*\*D’oh! I closed a URL tag with an Italic tag… > > Here’s the link again. I promise. > > [The Journal Entries](http://www.drizzle.com/~elf/journals/) (Not Safe for Work) \*\* Thanks for nothing. Damn site was so screwed up, it kicked me right offline. :mad: ---
**Author:** ![cajela](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9de0a6/32.png) [@cajela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cajela)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2003, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-to-a-fictional-world/212263/49 "2003-11-11T03:10:00Z")
Assuming I get to be just a normal person, not a hero, can I move to Lois McMaster Bujold’s Beta Colony? Good health. Basic human decency and human rights and stuff. Sexually liberated. Democratic. And then if I want adventure, I can take a spaceship somewhere else for a look around. (NB: Not going anywhere remotely NEAR Jackson’s Whole. And I’d be pretty dubious about living on Barrayar, too.) ---
**Author:** ![StGermain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stgermain/32/2868_2.png) [@StGermain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StGermain)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2003, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-to-a-fictional-world/212263/50 "2003-11-11T03:38:57Z")
I’d like to live in the world of Katherine Kurtz’s **Deryni** novels. StG ---
**Author:** ![Fern\_Forest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/71c47a/32.png) [@Fern\_Forest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fern_Forest)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2003, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-to-a-fictional-world/212263/51 "2003-11-11T04:49:24Z")
I was going to go there **StGermain** except all the times I want were pretty dangerous for the Deryni. Although I suppose the coming reign of Kelson should be much better. I think I’d choose to work in the household of Morgan, Duke of Corwin. Amber & Riverworld would also be high on my list. Plus with the latter who really cares if you die. As long as it wasn’t too painful. Actually I think I’ll change my previous choice. I bet it would be a lot of fun to live in TunFaire. As long as I was too young to have gotten drafted into that war down in the Cantard. I’d get a job in the royal library. Quiet and calm around me. Fantasy chaos around that. Plus nearly every woman in that realm seemed to be a real hottie with lots of redheads. ---
**Author:** ![racinchikki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/eada6e/32.png) [@racinchikki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/racinchikki)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2003, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-to-a-fictional-world/212263/52 "2003-11-11T06:31:42Z")
Pern seems like a nice place. ---
**Author:** ![Doomtrain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/0ea827/32.png) [@Doomtrain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doomtrain)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2003, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-to-a-fictional-world/212263/53 "2003-11-11T19:14:35Z")
What I like about Pern is, even if you’re poor, you’re not THAT poor, and it seems like there are ample opportunities to be involved with cool stuff like the Harpers and Dragonriders, especially with all the changes going on in the last few books. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2003, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-to-a-fictional-world/212263/54 "2003-11-11T20:41:38Z")
Posted by **Achernar** (discussing David Wingrove’s _Chung Kuo_ novels): > [@](#): > > Is all manner of natural light blocked out by solar collectors? Are food and drink replaced by protein supplements and vitamin-enriched water? Are the only forms of dress gray jumpsuit and light gray jumpsuit? Are people artifically kept from biological signs of aging until their death? Are the only plants and animals accessible by citizens in quarantined recreation zones? Are the most aesthetically pleasing buildings only half-covered with external machinery and billboards? > > If so, sign me up! > > I’m such a romantic… Almost, but not quite. People of the Cities have practically no access to natural beauty. There are a few planted gardens, but there’s a long waiting list even to visit them and you have to rank pretty high to get on it. On the other hand, the people eat real food grown in old-fashioned, outdoor fields, worked by effectively enslaved “peasants.” (That’s one thing I found highly implausible about the series: That the few remnants of open land not covered by the Cities could produce enough food for their populations, numbering in the hundred of billions.) Society is not so regimented as to require uniforms, and the economy is pretty much free-enterprise. If you want a true dystopia, you might want to try the world of S.M. Stirling’s _Domination of the Draka_ series, which is a utopia for the elite and a dystopia for everyone else. If you’re not familiar with this, it’s an alternate-history scenario: During the Revolutionary War, the British seized control of the Dutch Cape Colony in Africa (much earlier than they gained the Cape in our timeline); after the war, American Loyalists and Hessian mercenaries were settled there (not in Canada, as in our timeline), swamping and assimilating the less numerous population of Dutch colonists. The new colony was named the Dominion of Drakesland, after Francis Drake. The settlers, faced with a vast and martial native black population, set about conquering and enslaving the blacks – and that gave their culture its lasting shape. Eventually the Draka, as they came to call themselves, conquered all of Africa and kept on conquering and enslaving everyone on their borders, regardless of color; they modeled their society on classical Greece and Rome in many ways; and they developed a might-makes-right ethic that glorified power and the domination of the weak. All these tendencies were reinforced at the end of the American Civil War, when the slaveowning aristocrats of the South relocated en masse to Draka Africa, taking some of their slaves with them. When the first volume – _Marching Through Georgia_ – opens, the Domination has conquered all of Africa and the Middle East, and is readying an invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe. The Domination is a slave society. Only descendants of the original settlers, plus some whites who were accepted as voluntary immigrants during the nineteenth century, are free citizens. They form a military aristocracy, comprising less than ten percent of the total population. Draka citizens are raised from the age of five in military boarding schools and live under a scientific diet-and-training regimen which enhances their bone density and their physical strength and speed. (Whether such a thing would be possible in real life, I don’t know.) The system is consciously modeled on the Spartan agoge, although among the Draka both males and females are so trained (in separate schools). In adulthood, Draka serve in the Citizen Force army. In short, they are lifelong soldiers, like the male citizen caste of ancient Sparta. But unlike the Spartans, when at home they live in sybaritic luxury. Most of the population are slaves, called “serfs” from the early 19th century to evade the British Parliament’s ban on slavery. (Later the Dominion declared independence from the British Empire and renamed itself the Domination.) Serfs live narrow lives of work and more work – on plantations, in mines, in factories, in domestic service, and in the masters’ beds where the more attractive are routinely used as concubines. (Female Draka can amuse themselves with serfs too, but they are only allowed lesbian sex with the wenches, to keep the Race pure.) Serfs receive only so much education as is necessary for their intended functions. Otherwise, as valuable property the serfs are well cared for, with adequate food and clothing and modern medical treatment. Serfs are serfs for life and cannot be emancipated. In fact, ideologically the Draka are taught to view all foreigners as “feral serfs,” born to be serfs but not yet caught and tamed. This is a “high-tech” society, with manufacturing, transportation and military technology equal to that of the Western nations, but there are few labor-saving devices – a Draka dishwasher is a serf. Farming is done with hand tools; tractors are noisy and smelly and would disturb the master. There are no serf uniforms as such – they dress however their masters choose to dress them – but a lot of them wear work overalls. And every serf has an identification number tattooed on the left side of his or her neck. If a male serf is lucky he might get drafted into the Janissary corps, an army of serf soldiers, who have slightly more privileges than ordinary serfs. The Janissary corps is never allowed to be more than twice as large as the Citizen Force – the Draka figure that’s the maximum number of serfs they can safely arm without inviting rebellion. The Draka live in constant fear of serf rebellions because they are so far outnumbered. There is a vast Security Directorate, mainly devoted to keeping the serfs down and spying out plots before they are executed. Any attempt by a serf to rebel, or strike a free citizen, or even defy an order, is punishable by death, usually by impalement on a stake, Vlad-Dracula-style. The Domination’s government is an “aristocratic republic” – that is, only Draka citizens can vote or hold office. Otherwise it is fairly democratic, except that even a citizen can only get away with supporting a limited range of political views. Any citizen who agitated for the abolition of serfdom would get an unwelcome visit from Security. Christian belief among the citizen population has declined to almost nothing. Some are “Asatru,” worshipping the old Norse gods, but that never really caught on except as a fad. Most Draka are atheists, but with a quasi-religious devotion to the State and the Race. The standard daily greeting among citizens is “Service to the State!” Reply: “Glory to the Race!” It’s scaaary! It’s scaaary! However, by some of your criteria for a dystopia, the Domination fails. The Draka are environmentalists of a kind. They love nature, mainly because they love to hunt. (Their favorite form is “catsticking” – hunting lions with spears, from horseback.) Manufacturing zones are carefully separated from everything else so that nobody but the factory-serfs even has to look at them. Most serfs live on plantations, with as much contact with earth and sky as any serf of medieval Europe. As for the towns and cities – nobody would think of putting up vulgar advertising billboards! The Draka are self-conscious landed aristocrats with the esthetic values of landed aristocrats. Dystopian enough for ya? ---
**Author:** ![Delly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Delly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Delly)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2003, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-to-a-fictional-world/212263/55 "2003-11-11T22:00:20Z")
Middle Earth- I love the magic and mystery of that place. ---
**Author:** ![Syntropy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/65b543/32.png) [@Syntropy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Syntropy)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2003, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-to-a-fictional-world/212263/56 "2003-11-11T22:27:26Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Jonathan Chance \* > \*\*Heinlein’s Future History. Set me during the time Lazarus Long and company established Tertius and wait for Gay Deciever to show up. > > 1. I get to live forever through rejuvenation. > 2. Redheads abound. > 3. With the multiverse I can visit all the others. > What’s to dislike? \*\* A man after my own heart. Sign me up! ---
**Author:** ![Achernar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e274bd/32.png) [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2003, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-to-a-fictional-world/212263/57 "2003-11-11T23:54:22Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by BrainGlutton \* > Dystopian enough for ya? No way would I live there. That sounds scary. I just wanted maybe a bit of authoritarianism, some brainwashing, and a good measure of creativity-quelling. Not any real, physical danger. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Ecks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/bcef8e/32.png) [@Johnny\_Ecks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Ecks)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2003, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-to-a-fictional-world/212263/58 "2003-11-12T00:03:35Z")
creativity-quelling? How about the “Leave it to Beaver” 50’s style world? I think that that atmosphere would start to seem pretty distopian after a short while. Life with a laugh track would be hell. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2003, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-to-a-fictional-world/212263/59 "2003-11-12T00:56:26Z")
This is a hard one! There are several worlds I’d like to live in, so, starting from #5 and working up to #1 1. A world with Callahan’s bar _and_ Lady Sally’s 2. On Babylon 5 3. H. Beam Piper’s future history, on Zarathustra, Fenris, or, best of all, New Texas. 4. Narnia in the golden years 5. The Shire, in Hobbiton preferably ---
**Author:** ![teleute12](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3d9bf3/32.png) [@teleute12](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/teleute12)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2003, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-to-a-fictional-world/212263/60 "2003-11-12T07:47:41Z")
This is tough, since a lot of the worlds I’d want to live in, wouldn’t be interesting unless you knew the main charichters. I think I’d choose to live in the world of LJ Smith’s Night World books (angsty vampires are always fun), or in Highlander if I could be an immortal (preferably with a decent teacher, so I’d last a while). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-to-a-fictional-world/212263.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-to-a-fictional-world/212263.md?page=4)