Hello, SFIA audio listeners. In this month's Nebula exclusive, big alien theory,

we're asking the reason alien civilizations might be rare is because most aliens are huge.

To hear it and every episode early and ad-free, plus hours of bonus content,

check out go.nebola.tv slash Isaac Arthur and use my code, Isaac Arthur.

We often picture vast megacities in the future and wonder if there will be utopian

garden scape arcoologies or horrid hives of filth populated by gangs of mutants and cannibals.

Personally, I don't see why you'd have to pick either or.

So today we'll be looking at the concept of mega cities, both from the science fiction

perspective, which is often dystopian hives of crime and despair, and the potential future

of giant cities and how they might be anything but such dystopias and how they might

do that.

In truth, we rarely see large cities as very nice places in science fiction. Negative

examples like Megacity 1 from the Judge Dreddic comic book series or the various high

cities like Necromunda from Warhammer 40,000 show extreme examples of crime and decay,

and the entire cyberpunk genre is basically built

on crowded dark metropolises, but even the more positive examples are fairly dark.

This may not be surprising, a lot of the cyberpunk genre, for instance, is strongly influenced

by mid-20th century film noir, literally black film or dark film, frequently featuring hard-boiled

detectives investigating crimes in dark and crime-ridden cities, those works tend to be heavy

on pessimism and fatalism. Indeed, maybe the nicest example I know of is Isaac Asmos' classic

novel, The Caves of Steel, set in a future New York City that has sprout out over much

of New Jersey and is under a steel New York City that is spout out over much of New

...