London, or Reykjavik? Marrakesh, or Venice? "Even the strangest made-up place can have some real-world spark," believes fantasy author Jeff VanderMeer. So over at Shared Worlds he's asked five authors in the genre, from Ursula K LeGuin to China Miéville, for their top real-life fantasy or science fiction city – and they've each come up with a gem.
LeGuin plumps for Venice – "it isn't hard to imagine a city that's built on a marsh in a lagoon, and is slowly but inevitably sinking back into the marsh, but it's the details that count; and some of the details require an active fantasy" – while Miéville picks London. Looking out of my window at this moment, it's hard to see why – it's all very prosaic – but he has his reasons, and they're pretty convincing. "London is a chaotic patchwork of history, architecture, style, as disorganised as any dream, and like any dream possessing an underlying logic, but one that we can't quite make sense of, though we know it's there. A shoved-together city cobbled from centuries of distinct aesthetics disrespectfully clotted in a magnificent triumph of architectural philistinism." Alright, then.
Elizabeth Hand, whom I haven't read yet, but who's on my list, chooses Reykjavik, which is "more like an off-world colony than any place on Earth", while Nalo Hopkinson picks her home town of Kingston, Jamaica, which every time she visits "seems more and more futuristic, in that gritty, William Gibson, China Miéville, Blade Runner kind of way". No-one goes for Tokyo, for all its gleaming towers, and I'd have been tempted to consider São Paulo, as well, particularly after reading Ian McDonald's Brasyl.
But it's Michael Moorcock (for whom I've had a soft spot ever since I picked up an ancient copy of The Jewel in the Skull years ago – a Black Jewel is inserted in Dorian Hawkmoon's forehead; if he's treacherous it will EAT HIS BRAIN, proclaimed the jacket copy) who wins for me with his choice of Marrakesh, where "you will discover all the romance you ever yearned for". "Old maps of Europe always showed Jerusalem as the centre of the world and symbolically, of course, this is understandable; but for me Marrakesh is the centre, where so many of the old trade routes met and where, still, Mercedes limousines, camels, donkeys and overloaded Peugeot trucks struggle to enter the narrow gates of a walled city which, rather more often than Casablanca, was where world leaders came to argue over the fates of millions," he writes. "It's where the Taureq, swathed in indigo and riding white camels, come in their haughty magnificence to trade with the Rif and the Bedouin, where privileged tourists lounge beside the pool at the Mamounia hotel, hardly aware of the long and bloody history which everywhere surrounds them."
What about you – agree? Disagree? Should Dubai be included? Prague? Los Angeles? Or do you concur with Neil Gaiman, who told Shared Worlds that "I think as I get older I get more convinced that it doesn't matter what city you pick, they are all fantastical. It just means you have to look at them right, or pick the right time of day"?
