Cities Without People
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN points to Geller's essays as accessible companions to literary works and as a good summary of a story.
What it is
Jacob Geller's video essay on empty cities and what they say about our relationship to places, using games, literature and aerial imagery. It touches on works such as Invisible Cities.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2021 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Recommends bsanr2 · 2021-10 · on “Borges: The Library of Babel [pdf]”
Video (game) essayist Jacob Geller did a few videos which mentioned this work. [LINK] [LINK] They're quite interesting, I think. The abyss really gets him going. And a few more I really like: [LINK] [LINK] [this video] [LINK]
Recommends haiku2077 · 2025-06 · on “A Mysterious Website I Stumbled Upon”
For those who don't have time to... "read"... this great story, Jacob Geller provides a fun and effective summary within this video at 9 minutes in [this video] In his words: "It is in my opinion one of the best sci-fi stories ever written."
Cites cyrialize · 2023-12 · on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2023 and recommend for 2024”
"Southern Reach Trilogy" by Jeff VanderMeer [0]. I absolutely loved every book. "Annihilation" is probably my favorite. What hooked me about the series were two things: 1) It was very, /very/ weird and 2) it often times felt like the characters had no power. "Bliss Montage" by Ling Ma [1]. The short stories felt dreamy - drifting in perspectives, places, and times. Many of the stories had a supernatural aspect to them. "Invisible Cities" by Italo Calvino [2]. This book is a puzzle. You could read it front to back, or you could read it in the various different orders. There is no intended order. Again, very dreamy and weird. This book is a conversation, where Marco Polo is telling Genghis Kha