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Cities Without People

Jacob Geller · 1.7M views · 2020-09-18 · 25:08

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Overview

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.

On Hacker News

HN points to Geller's essays as accessible companions to literary works and as a good summary of a story.

Recommended by 2 HN people across 2 months · HN mentions 2021–2025

Topics

Gaming culture & analysisTransit, cities & urban planningLiterature & writing craft
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jacob gellervideo essayinvisible citiesgamesclimate

What people said

haiku2077 · 2025-06 · Recommendation

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 [VIDEO] In his words: "It is in my opinion one of the best sci-fi stories ever written."

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bsanr2 · 2021-10 · Recommendation

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] [VIDEO] [LINK]

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cyrialize · 2023-12 · Reference

"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 Khan of the cities within his kingdom. I was introduced to this book by Jacob Geller's video essay "Cities without people" [3]. "Ring" by Koji Suzuki [4]. One of my first horror book reads, and also the first in the Ring series. The "Ring" movies are based off of this book. I also read the 2nd one, which provides a very different view on the series and gives the horrors in the book a scientific backing. This year for me has been the year of strange novels. [0]: [LINK] [1]: [LINK] [2]: [LINK] [3]: [VIDEO] [4]: [LINK]

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Sources

Video by Jacob Geller, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

HN summaries and labels may contain AI errors. HN dates refer to discussions, not video publication.

HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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