#simon stalenhag

[vintagerpg]

The Labyrinth (2020) is tough, man. Like damn. There is something about the brutal violence that’s at the heart of this book, and how it falls on people just doing their best to survive, and how that violence begets more violence that…it isn’t entirely senseless, but it certainly doesn’t help anything or anyone. I find it all extremely upsetting.

The world of this book is pretty grim, too, even by the standards Stalenhag set with The Electric State. The particulars of what happened aren’t really explained, nor are they important in a factual way. Earth drifted into a dominion beyond our understanding. Floating black spheres changed things. Strange coral forests overtook the cities. Humanity fled underground. These events give the story a framework of despair and loss, and a bit of context I guess, but it really feels to me like stage dressing for a tale of four people crashing violently into each other.

Stalenhag is really top of his form here, in terms of palette and mood. There are three sorts of environments in the book: the ruined surface, the ultra-clean underground and the flashback glimpses we see of the frantic unraveling of human society. All of them are equally bleak and oppressive in different ways. His experiments in sequenced art from past books (where the same basic painting, with small but important changes revealed by turning pages) is extremely effective here. Honed like a knife, even. It really says something when five views of the same sink leave a horrible psychological impression on you, you know?

But eesh, be careful with this one.

[spacenoirdetective]

Swedish people get in the way of perfectly innocent dinosaurs, from artist Simon Stalenhag.

[racsow]

after seeing the godawful trailer, I did a reread of the Electric State and i cannot physically understand how the russo brothers did not "see potential" in the story

i'll admit, i underappreciated the writing on my first read! going over it again there is so much richness to the character building and the dread of the atmosphere. There's a vibe that I can only describe as desiccated americana and i love it. The world is rotten and dying, and there is really nothing left to do but go on for going on's sake.

anyway i'm doing a very large essay on Stålenhag's whole body of work, but the Electric State holds a special place in my heart as the first of his books I discovered and the most resonant to me, so i just had to share my thoughts right after the reread.

This is less about the artwork, which i could talk about for ages, and more just a general overview of the story themes specifically!

(Moderate general spoilers? i don't go into much detail, and it's not a story overly reliant on its plot twists anyway)

The hopelessness of The Electric State is rather unique among Simon Stålenhag's works - his other books, set in Sweden, are much more fondly nostalgic, though they of course offer strange horrors of their own - but of a much more physical, immediate level.

The Electric State is different. It takes place in an alternate 90s US even more drowned in consumerism and blind greed than our own. A civilization that is crumbling, not from nuclear war or global crises or meteors, but by its own hand, by capitalism driving itself into the ground. The perfect pleasure machine, the neurocaster headset, leaves people twitching, comatose creatures whose minds lie in vast Silicon Valley servers as their bodies are left to starve.

Michelle does not have the privilege of escapism. She is one of the few left to wander a silent world, an apocalypse without people to see it. She is privy to the horror of watching the inevitable trajectory of a world falling to its death, and feels only recognition that it's probably better this way.

Michelle is never sad about the end of America. She doesn't ever reminisce about how good things used to be, or how we should have "appreciated it while we had it." But she certainly does reminisce.

She has the memory of her foster parents, who derided the government "coddling neurine addicts" like Michelle's mother. She has the memory of her grandfather coughing himself to death in their tiny apartment, irradiated from his lifetime of underpaid work assembling gigantic war drones. She has the memory of her mother overdosing on a drug the government hooked her on during her service in the military. She has the memory of her first and only love, a love which the world hated, how it kept her alive in her foster home of Soest City, and how it was ripped from her by the pastor.

Unlike Stalenhag's other stories, there is no element of nostalgia or quiet undertone of hope. Only disgust for what came before, and quiet fear for what comes next.

The horror of the Convergence, the eldritch machine god hivemind, is not even very relevant to the story - if anything, it's a side plot. When Michelle faces actual danger, it's never from giant robot gods in the mist; it's from cops and hotel clerks, from doomsdayers hoarding guns and a FBI agent hunting her down. She lives in fear of other people, of people who say they want to protect her.

But when she sees the gigantic silent machines wandering through the mists of Oregon, she isn't afraid. It's almost peaceful. The Convergence is beyond understanding. It grew out of the servers where millions of minds seeking oblivion from the world went to escape, and they converged into something unknowably vast who wanders the world in a hundred million thoughtless bodies. It's otherworldly. It does not fear, it does not dream, it does not hope, it does not hate. Maybe that's better.

I was scared. But I also felt something else when that thing stepped out of the mist in front of our car. I can't think of a better word than awe. Like when you suddenly become aware that you've walked into the wrong part of the woods and come face-to-face with a gigantic wild animal. Beyond the grotesque, there was also something else - something majestic.

And in its wake, the citizens of Point Linden, hundreds of people linked together, their neurocasters connected to the oily god in the mist, floated across the ground in front of the car, and they looked almost happy. Calm and peaceful, they moved past the car and formed a single group again behind us, and soon disappeared into the mist again.

[victusinveritas]

[anchimayen]

I felt inspired to draw something a bit inspired by Simon Stålenhag, I really liked working in this style (however drawing cars is a real pain)

[olvaheiner]

The Electric State (2025)

[pedroam-bang]

Simon Stalenhag - The Electric State (2017)

[bbl1te]

Electric state (netflix) and Electric state art book comparisons

Cat

VR addicts

Canoe

Big omnipresent structures

Ducks

Heart Billboard

what do you think?

[collectivelyacoward]

Oh yeah, I finally read The Electric State BOOK so yeah..

And it was awesome sauce <33

[redlettermediathings]

[vintagerpg]

It suddenly occurs to me that I have skipped Things from the Flood and I am OK with that. Maybe some other time. This is Simon Stalenhag’s third narrative art book, The Electric State (2019). It is maybe my favorite of the four I’ve read to date.

Where Tales from the Loop is a sort of series of memoir-like, nostalgia-filled vignettes that build a world, this is more narrative forward. The worldbuilding is still important, though. There are lots of evocative moments that serve the world rather than the narrative. Compared to The Labyrinth, where the world seems distinctly secondary (more on that tomorrow). This world is on the verge of collapse after a war that was mainly fought with big robot drones. The virtual reality drone-piloting tech was also used for civilian purposes, and then the machines gained a kind of sentience and, well, there’s a lot of VR thralls and VR mummies out there. But society still functions in some way.

The protagonist and her robot are traveling with a purpose, but for the most part the book is a road trip tale. The final climax, which, when it comes, seems horribly melancholy, even manages to end on a hopeful, if ambiguous note. I’m keen to see this one transform into the forthcoming RPG. The movie, not so much.

Good light throughout. I’d expect nothing less from Stalenhag at this point, honestly. His narrative constructions are getting better. There is a really cool sequence of paintings that imply a terrible kind of movement that I’m still impressed by. He builds on this in The Labyrinth in cool ways.

[spacenoirdetective]

Simon Stalenhag

Robot zombie is a pretty creepy concept. I'd tell Hollywood to get on that, but they ruin everything so on second thought, please don't.

[racsow]

I need to get everything Simon Stalenhag has ever drawn framed (read: tattooed)

[the-critter-beast]

hate when this happens

[humanspinelbrainrot]

numbing the emotional turmoil this book wrought with funnny hahas

[tilbageidanmark]

I may have forgotten to turn off the oven, by Jocelin Carmes