Wednesday Wordage, Utopian Edition

Of course, Utopia was imaginary, situated (by its name) nowhere.  Lately I've been attracted to a couple of modern, well-developed and well-imagined no-places.  One, Night Vale, exists in the desert Southwest, in a parallel dimension; it projects into this dimension via a podcast, every two weeks.  The other, Discworld, exists on the back of four giant elephants astride the back of the giant space turtle A'tuin who swims through the stars in an odd dimension of the universe, and was projected into this world by the late, great Terry Pratchett.

I've been trying to figure out what I find attractive in these imaginary lands.  Neither of them is a paradise; both are haunted, both are plagued by some of the same ills--war, corruption, hatred--that plague our world.  What's more, they are afflicted by demons, monsters, and evil of every sort.  People do stupid, cowardly, or hateful things.  Fate is capricious.  People die (Death himself makes at least a cameo in every Discworld story).

Yet, I really like letting my imagination go to those places.  Ultimately, they both have something that is very right, and that is sadly too rare in this less demon-haunted world.  In both, at the end, there is a certain acceptance of the "other."  People learn.  In Night Vale, the mysterious Glowing cloud that controls human minds (All hail!) and rains animal corpses completes a story arc, and is a member of the school board.  In Discworld, everybody of one species pretty much hates everybody of every other species--dwarves hate trolls, humans hate goblins, everybody hates vampires--but the bustling city of Ankh-Morpork is home to all of them, bumping shoulders but not coming to blows (very often).  It's lovely to spend time in these places, if you feel at all different, or wish this world were more welcoming to the "other."  It has become all the more so, since our government has been seized by a party that, for now, is based largely on demonizing the "other."

So, check them out.  Welcome to Night Vale is a podcast, you can get it where you will.  The Discworld is found in a whole series of, what, thirty-some novels; the first three introduce some recurring characters, but weren't really written with an eye towards establishing a whole series--but read the whole lot, they're good.  Better than the news, for sure.