# Red Skies in fiction **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 30, 2013, 6:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-skies-in-fiction/659692 "2013-05-30T06:52:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2013, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-skies-in-fiction/659692/21 "2013-05-31T17:21:58Z")
It is an image used to great effect an an image in the movie Ran. > [@](#): > > “Ran” is one of the cinema’s greatest works, a film of true tragic vision. The final image – a blind man teetering on the edge of a cliff, before a blood-red sky – is, Kurosawa says, an image of himself and all of us: humanity adrift in the age of possible nuclear apocalypse. Yet it is not an entirely hopeless vision. Hidetora and his family did not have to destroy each other. The fact that we often let greed and the lust for vengeance rule our lives, is, sadly, what fuels the cycle of war. [http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2000-09-29/entertainment/0009290063\_1\_akira-terao-mieko-harada-lord-hidetora-ichimonji](http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2000-09-29/entertainment/0009290063_1_akira-terao-mieko-harada-lord-hidetora-ichimonji) ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2013, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-skies-in-fiction/659692/22 "2013-05-31T20:20:18Z")
In the original _Battlestar Galactica_, the Colonials encounter Count Iblis on a planet with red sun, red sky, and red vegetation. ---
**Author:** ![Renifer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/71c47a/32.png) [@Renifer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Renifer)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2013, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-skies-in-fiction/659692/23 "2013-06-03T01:42:22Z")
Red skies sometimes appear in scenes of awe-inspiring sunsets in Africa or Australia. (Example: _The Lion King_) Green skies, OTOH, are usually menacing. (Example: _The Chernobyl Diaries_) ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2013, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-skies-in-fiction/659692/24 "2013-06-03T14:31:40Z")
Are songs fiction? [Red Skies by The Fixx](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXfc7VMyj94) ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2013, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-skies-in-fiction/659692/25 "2013-06-03T17:31:06Z")
> [@drewtwo99](#): > > For some reason I’ve always found red skies to be particularly unsettling. I would even go so far as to say I might have a phobia of it. Whenever I’m playing a video game or watching a sci-fi show or something that involves a red sky, I freak out on an instinctual level a little bit. > > I think the first encounter I had with a blood-red sky was the video game Doom for the PC. Not all the levels had red skies and not all levels even had a sky at all that you could see (many of them were indoors completely), but I remember [at least one level](http://xkvplq.bay.livefilestore.com/y1pRFf77oallhCD3xs6wF3f7IsLjEKhuCjAcAC_07F_MvSpOsaVXkHI89r5h5Imlz2HG-xIqJ66A4vOBLmpDF12zNDetxJExGbk/Screenshot_Doom_20100202_165900.png) that had a deep blood red sky that always frightened me as a kid. > > So do you have any examples of red skies in fiction? Pictures are appreciated but descriptions are great too. > > If I ever woke up and saw the sky blood-red like in that photo I linked, I would probably start sobbing like a baby and maybe even go insane. \<\_\< > [@Hail\_Ants](#): > > The reason for the red sky in Doom 1 is that it’s supposed to take place on Mars (and I’m sure because it also looked hellish!) I don’t recognize the linked screenshot- which version of Doom is that? None of the levels of the first Doom take place on Mars: episode one takes place on Phobos, presumably inside an atmospheric enclosure since the sky is a milky white. The second and third episodes show the sky (_ **ceiling??** _) of Hell. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-skies-in-fiction/659692.md?page=1)