Science Fiction Ruins

This science fiction illustration is by the British artist Tony Roberts. It was published in the Heavy Metal Magazine in 1982.

Once more it’s Lady Liberty who bears witness to a bygone history of mankind.

Bone Architecture

Santiago Calatrava Valls is an internationally famous Spanish star architect and designer. In his native Valencia he designed the "Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències" (constructed 1996-2009).

Despite the gigantic museum is far from being something like a ruin, the whole construction resembles the skeleton of a whale and uses therefore the old romantic connection between ruins, skeletons, death and decay. Though Calatrava’s construction is of a clean, fresh washed white death and decay are omnipresent.

The Book of Eli

The Book of Eli is an upcoming post-apocalyptic action film starring Denzel Washington. The film is directed by the Hughes brothers and is scheduled to be released in January 2010.


The trailer and the images are stylish dark and are showing strong influences of Mad Max, Cyborg and Fallout 3. So let’s hope that it will be better than the last Terminator, but that should'nt be very difficult.

Borderlands

Borderlands is a science fiction shooter game developed by Gearbox Software for Windows, Xbox and PlayStation and released end of 2007.

The Background is set on the planet of Pandora where rich mines of minerals have attracted colonists. After the "gold rush" the colonists live in isolated settlements and many became bandits.



I dont’t want to evaluate the game here, but the scenery formed by abandoned industrial complexes and rests of alien ruins looks therefore a lot like that of post-apocalytic games. But above all it underlines the importance of a good ruin decoration for shooter games.

Landscapes With Ruins

Jan Asselijn was a Dutch Baroque Era Painter (c.1615-1652) who was specialized in landscapes. Like many of the artists of his time he traveled to Italy and must have been very impressed by the Roman ruins there.


His Italian landscape paintings are normally dominated by these enormous ruins. They seem to be a part of nature but also witnesses of a greater and glorious past.

Steampunk Ruins

The ironworks in Völklingen (Germany) were closed in 1986 and became later a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The gigantic blast furnaces and Cowper stoves are rusting and became slowly covered by vegetation.




A real impressive site.

After Mankind

Two nice covers of the U.S. science fiction magazine Fantastic Universe showing robots in typical human poses. To leave it clear that they are the heirs of mankind, who has not survived, the scenery is decorated with some human ruins.

Fantastic Universe (Dec. 1957)

Fantastic Universe (Aug. 1958)

Easy Booty

Maybe that today the most frequent connotation of ruins is that of misery and destruction. That’s how we see ruins nearly every day in the news and therefore these significations are much more common than any romantic or weird glorifications. Nevertheless there may be another meaning which is probably even older and that’s the banal view of ruins as easy booty.

Sure anybody is dreaming of hidden treasures, old weapons or precious statues, but reality is usually much more trivial. Since the beginning of civilization, meaning since the first ruins in history, these served above all as a resource of construction material. Probably already the Neanderthal men examined abandoned camps for timber, bones or useful stones.

Before mankind reached the modern western state of welfare there was no space for romantic reflections, ruins had to serve a certain purpose, they were used as quarries, as an easy resource of ready hewn stone.

Impressive ruins like the Heidelberg Castle were used over many years by the townsfolk to build their new houses. But the castle in Heidelberg was popular enough that the process was stopped already in 1800.

Many castles, monasteries, city walls, roman temples and aqueducts all over the world were not so lucky and disappeared in many completely from the map. Some where only saved by their huge amount of stones, so that there is still left something.

The gigantic Roman Colosseum served over centuries as a quarry for the new palaces in Rome. Maybe it would have been reduced to nothing with the faster construction in the 19th century. Fortunately already in 1749 the Pope declared it a sacred place by the blood of the Christian martyrs who perished there.

The famous Cluny Abbey for example, the largest church of Christendom until the construction of St. Peter in Rome, was sold as a quarry during the French Revolution and disappeared almost completely in some few years.

In older times there were no romantic feelings regarding ruins. Especially if construction material was needed urgently it was taken from what was near at hand regardless of any sentimentality. Nice examples could be seen in Greece, where Crusaders, Turks and Venetians constructed their fortifications with the remains of Greek temples.

Even the most impressive ruins of mankind like the Pyramids of Giza or the Great Wall of China were used over centuries as quarries.

The Pyramids of Giza were once covered by casing stones that formed a smooth surface. Some of the casing stones that once covered the whole structure can still be seen at the top, probably because they were there out of reach. But the most were used to build mosques or the immense Citadel of Cairo.

Despite being the tourist attraction and a UNESCO World Heritage Site parts of the Great Wall of China are still used as a resource of construction material. For example the magnificent wall surrounding Beijing was torn down during the Cultural Revolution, the stones were used for newer buildings.

Sure that there may be ruins hiding treasures, housing memories or representing a glorious past, but that’s all luxury. Normally ruins are simple resources of stones. In the aftermath of World War II when great parts of Germany were destroyed many women were conscripted as so called "rubble women" (Trümmerfrauen) to clean the cities of all the debris. Another important task was to convert as much as possible of the debris into acceptable bricks.

The New Art of Making Ruins

Fascinating documentary about the decay of Havana. There are many ruins in Havana, some are still inhabited. The documentary shows incredible scenes and also interesting interviews of people living there, who are explaining their situation with a certain kind of grim humour, which may be the only way to survive under circumstances like this.

Post Apocalytic Companions

Probably everybody, who saw in the film "I Am Legend" (2007) Will Smith walking though New York with his German Shepherd "Sam" as his last and only friend, was reminded of a very similar scene in the "The Road Warrior" (1981) with Mel Gibson.

Without any doubt the image of a man and his dog is already an icon and has older role models:



Dogs are good companions faithful and most loyal to their masters, so that they are even called sometimes "the oldest friend of man". Maybe here’s the root for their popularity in post apocalyptic movies. If they are the oldest friends maybe they should also be the last ones.

Two more examples of dogs in post apocalyptic movies :

A Boy and His Dog (1975) - maybe this was the inspiration for Mad Max.

Downstream (maybe next year)