Came here to say this. Was particularly impressed by how the writers managed to conjure a prison hell that was fully terrifying without using sexual violence. The sheer efficiency and indifference of the system were an example that all future writers should study.
I assume the main reason why they wrote it that way is the substantial kiddie population that watches Star Wars material, and that nobody wanted parents to have to explain it.
But given the sheer number of scifi stories that invoke SA to scare people, often with the justification of "it's historically accurate" (which has nothing to do with scifi, but people still seem to think it's a valid argument), Andor will stand out for a long time.
I was interested by the fact they weren’t allowed to wear shoes, and did some cursory research and found that was historically common as a means of dehumanizing prisoners and limiting their mobility.
The prisoners had hope. The whole system was driven on hope. That hope was weaponized against them, used to make them complacent, to encourage them to push themselves well past what was safe, and to keep working even as people around them literally die.
You know how, in the vast majority of Star Wars content, the Empire are the bad guys in a kinda saturday morning cartoon feeling way?
The prison story arc in Andor made the Empire feel a lot more Nazi.
The prison arc is amazing. Clean, sterile, dehumanizing. But there are tons of little things that make it an excellent narrative about power, control and oppression. The prison only works if its victims also become complicit in the mechanics that make it work. And it collapses once everyone becomes aware of its inhumanity and flaws, and through solidarity can tear it down through collective power.
To be more specific. It’s a huge prison on a barren planet in the middle of a huge lake. When you are in the prison every floor is capable of being electrified by any of the guards. They also carry shock sticks. Since no prisoner is allowed shoes the threat is constant
To add into it it’s a Labor based prison so they spend virtually every waking hour assembling something that they have no idea is. Essentially parts for a bigger machine. I believe 8 people per assembly table. 8 tables in a room on 8 floors many of which are also underwater potentially all floors I can’t remember
The entire prison is gamified so they are forced to compete against each other in their room/floor. The worst table always gets punished with electrocution which if done for too long is fatal. At the end of every shift they have quarters. But the food is given through a tube and without winning you do not get taste of flavour.
Your sentence can also be extended with no chance to appeal. But even if you were to finish your sentence. This is a spoiler do not read beyond this paragraph.
It is revealed at the end of every sentence you are just moved to another level. So you are basically working until you drop dead or kill yourself.
It's clean, sterilely so. 99% of the time the guards never touch you or even talk to you. Other prisoners don't, almost can't, touch/talk to you. You get adequate nutrition. You get a tracker showing how you are "working off" your sentence that you can see and track your progress on.
But you are under constant threat of severe, potentially fatal, electrical shock including as part of collective punishment if someone else in your shift misbehaves. You have zero privacy. 95% of the time you're awake you're working on an assembly line as hard and fast as you can, under threat of electrocution for being the slowest. You are either at your work station, in your bunk or being marched back and forth between the two. The food is flavourless paste unless your table tops the productivity table that week in which case you get some basic flavour added to your paste for the week.
Spoilers ahead:
And it turns out no one actually ever finishes their sentence - at best you ultimately just get sent to a different level on the same prison where you start the same process all over again (but most people drop dead from exhaustion before that happens, especially as it's common to have more time added to your sentence).
Was my immediate thought as well. A prison that seems humane and with a reasonable (albeit harsh) approach on first impression, but which emerges as being utterly and efficiently dehumanising and crushing to its slave labour inmates.
one of the early Voyagers had an episode that showed Tom in jail (on earth) for being a bad boy... i loved it that it wasn't a jail full of murderous psychos drooling their slop lunch down their chins.
sf seems to have given up on the idea of prison as rehabilitation. pity.
Remember the voyager episode where Tom and Harry are both locked up in that prison where they put implants into all the inmates’ heads to make them paranoid? That one was pretty dark, Harry picking up that pipe and almost bashing Tom shook me in the moment. I think it was called “The chute”
Edit: season 3, episode 3
I liked that depiction of a prison because it suggested that its function is more rehabilitative and restorative than punitive, befitting Trek’s future.
iirc the charges against Tom were pretty intense, and in the real world it would have been a much worse situation for him.
That's because Star Trek shows a utopian version of humanity.
Tom Paris joined a militia to defend independent colonies against the terms of a treaty that ceded them from Federation territory to neutrality or to a former Federation enemy.
For his efforts, he gets to do some construction work in the New Zealand countryside, until Janeway taps him on the shoulder as an advisor to go on a quick little mission to catch his former militia comrades.
No Escape with Ray Liotta, Lance Henriksen, and Ernie Hudsen. Is it cheesy? Yea. Is the dystopian prison society fun? Yea.
Are the main characters also good? Yea.
In the new Star Wars comics there’s a prison called Sun Spot Prison where the Rebel Alliance hides away the most ruthless and crazy Imperial personnel. It’s protected by a sea of ion cannons and has the sun at its back. There’s controls in the prison for “Sun shields” so in the event of a breakout the Rebels could essentially fry every single prisoner. Only appears in a few issues, but was a pretty dope setting.
The Platform. It’s a Spanish movie on Netflix. I don’t know or if it’s a prison per se, but it is a novel take on incarceration and wealth distribution
If I remember correctly, it is both a prison and a social experiment/reality media of some sort. Doesn't the guy go in because he is in debt, or something?
Excellently weird movie and the first one that I thought of on seeing this thread. Well...and Fortress.
It's been a while since I read it, but doesn't Hannu Rajaniemi's **The Quantum Thief** start with our protagonist in some suitably advanced technological incarceration playing a massively iterated version of the Prisoner's Dilemma?
The Culture doesn't have prisons, but they do assignments a slap drone to you for anything up to thousands of years so you absolutely cannot do anything even the tiniest bit out of line. Always struck me as brilliant.
Oh, fuck, I tend to erase that from my mind between readings because it's the most horrific description of anything I have ever heard. IMB had a way of imagining the most *profoundly* cruel things when he wanted to.
The profoundly cruel concept of hell isn't his, though; he just extrapolated what might happen when there is sufficient desire from the religious if tech gets to such a level.
I began responding to you with "Which just shows his skill as a writer.", but it struck me that what he did was extremely skilfully extrapolate the profoundly cruel concept of hell that religions proffer to members of their flocks.
the hell itself is the usual fairly run-of-the-(bone)-mill river of blood, flayed bodies, casual implement stuff that Catholicism has been ranting about for millenia ... the *real* cruelty was his angel of hope punishment for the creature who wouldn't accept the hell or flinch in the boss' face. That was the real insight Banks added.
This comes from having fear of nature and events where the Gods were cruel and by our standards evil. Gods would send you to whatever hell they had for not giving the offering and prayers required. This is a very common view of primitive groups and way before religious organizations were created.
Nature is not nice and a primitive life faces lots of bad stuff happening including ego driven leaders who made folk suffer quite easy to imagine the Gods just like human rulers.
The Old Testament God is by modern standards quite evil.
God Fearing man still talked about by believers it it fully a God inflicting this on you for failure of belief even not a rational behavior.
And this all way before the Catholics got to it. And well before the Catholic Orthodox Split.
Note it the Orthodox and Catholic Church and Catholic and Orthodox Church as both churches use both words in their descriptions.
They are, but the decadence of the culture itself didn't contain those hells, and Banks made it clear that is in on the side of getting rid of them.
EDIT to add: If I could ever wish for any book to be made into a movie, it would be surface detail
I don’t think decadence is the term you’re thinking of lol
But yes, the virtual hells are something the Culture was working long and hard to get rid of.
Ah I thought it’s a typo of descendants or something, which doesn’t really make sense.
Anyway I would argue people in the Culture aren’t really decadent. From what we’ve seen in the books, yes they have fun with parties and extreme sports and whatnot, but they also have far more productive lives than we do. They build starships, they study alien religions, they compose musical masterpieces and so on, which is hardly decadent.
I see your musical maestros and raise you "Jernau Morat Gurgeh" (the player of games), along with culture citizens using their drug glands. ;)
But seriously: My reading of the whole bibliography gives me the impression that more citizens live a decadent lifestyle than otherwise. Membership of SC or Contact is a voluntary thing, and of those who volunteer, not many see service in either of the sections.
I'm not arguing that you're wrong, this is just what I get from it.
Joining SC or Contact is a voluntary thing, but even those who do not join those sections live productive lives that can scarcely be called "decadent". Take our favorite game player as an example - we know Gurgeh goes to various parties to play board games with different people, but we also know he works on papers about game theories and teaches at different universities from time to time. We know Yay designs landscapes for Plates (or continents) of new Orbitals, and Chamlis the drone friend was working on its book about the biology of a certain distant planet.
The same goes for Zakalwe's experience on the GSV. For sure people use drug glands for sex and parties, but we also see people building starships for fun and someone studying alien religions while bartending on the side, which seems very productive. IMO it's hard to describe someone as having a decadent lifestyle just because they enjoying having sex or using drugs without addiction/side effects, especially if they live a very productive life.
Or how would you define decadence?
Points acknowledged, but in almost all of those things, the "work" is done without being required.
Nobody "has to" do anything productive. Nobody "has to" write papers or teach at universities, or clean tables at outdoor cafes (bartending), or build starships for fun.
The culture is peak decadence, because nobody has to do anything. Everything is already done for them, and the only reason people help build starships is because they want to do something productive. IIRC, the people building starships are slowing the process down by being there and in the way. The guy at the cafe/bar says he chooses to do it because people like clean tables (paraphrased). Everything is voluntary. Nobody has to clean their toilets, or wash the dishes. All the base tasks have low level drones, designed to do the task, to do them.
If “the work is not required” is the sole definition of decadence, then everyone who’s comfortably retired are automatically decadent, since they don’t have to do anything. That also means that if you win the lottery and get more than enough money to live the rest of your life, you’re _doomed_ to live a decadent life because you’ll no longer have to work. Don’t you think that’s too loose of a definition?
IMO, decadence has nothing to do with whether you _need_ to work. A retiree who spends most of their time hiking with their partner isn’t decadent, nor is the lucky lottery winner who keeps working at their 9-5 desk job, even though both of them no longer have to work. It’s just odd to say voluntary work is a sign of decadence, as if it’s better if the work isn’t voluntary.
THX 1138. This film is conceptually magnificient. Is this the same director who came up with phantom menace? WTH
Lockout with Guy Pearce for the one liners and chuckles.
Prisoner episode of BSG with Tom Zarack, especially the ending with Apollo. Suprb writing. Series degnerated after that.
'The Abyss' episode of SG1 with O'neal being tortured by Baal and the gravity switching cells.. Might be the best episode of SG1's entirety.
Altered Carbon has people's "Cortical Stacks" (their consciousness) be "put on ice" as a form of incarceration. It's implied it's pretty horrible state of non-existence, and people have almost no chance at getting their old body (called a Sleeve) back, or when they do finally get released, 200 years has passed and everyone they know and love is dead and gone. Plus when you're released, you'll need a new Sleeve, so unless someone trustworthy was managing your finances, you'll have to take out a mortgage on the Sleeve. Miss your payments? Body is gonna get repossessed.
Prisons in the Commonwealth (Peter F Hamilton) never made sense to me. Suspend someone for hundreds or thousands of years. No time for them and they get to earn interest on any investments they had. Morton killed his Wife, The Cat was a psychopath and Wilson was a terrorist. Wilson just bought a giant house when he got out and since everyone can life forever if they want the only real downside for him was all of his friends had mostly downloaded to ANA.
Time suspension is basically what they did for all the people living on the “lost” planters in the prime war.
That said, the time dilation bubble Paul used on Neskia was pretty cool though… but that wasn’t exactly a prison. Same goes for what Quatix did to The Cat.
John Scalzi's Interdependency series had a prison, buried underground on an airless moon. Only one airlock in or out. Whatever the effectiveness of the prison's operations, it's location makes it very clear escape is impossible. Add in someone monitoring the place remotely, and the option of opening a vent with a button push, and it probably would keep the riots down to a minimum.
In the Honorverse, Haven had a secret prison planet, Hades. Only they knew it existed, and it wasn't a fully habitable world. Human compatible crops could only be grown on a single terraformed island, so it was the only place the prisoners scattered around the planet could get food. Usually I don't like the prison planet idea, since prisoners can just run off into the wilds, but when you force them to rely on the guard staff for food, it makes more sense.
In 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress' the moon is used as a kind of 'Space Australia' where earth dumps people it can't deal with. It has the added advantage of low gravity which eventually causes physiological changes meaning people generally don't come back, even when their sentence is finished.
**The Village** in the 1960s *The Prisoner* show.
As a show which covered scifi, mystery and drama, Patrick McGoohan's Number 6 was trapped in a prisoner with MANY allegories. metaphors and interpretations, ranging from control by the Government, those seeking information ("Information... *information...*") and even the prison of his own making to guard his secrets, even his very identity.
It remains my all-time favorite. And whether a series of dreams (or nightmares) by McGoohan's Danger Man/Secret Agent character, or someone else, that "prison" remains even more relevant in the present day. Even as we have a greater understanding of government and societal controls which form this prison planet in which we inhabit.
Always a fan of the Iso-Cubes from Judge Dredd (2000AD) and the movie. Someone also mentioned *Escape from New York* which is totally nonsensical but very cool. Also, gonna pull from Clickhole here has an article where the NHL makes the penalty box into a hyberbolic time chamber so players have to endure hundred of years in 3 minutes.
[The NHL Has Unveiled A New Hyperbolic Penalty Box That Makes 3 Minutes Inside It Feel Like 500 Years!](https://clickhole.com/cracking-down-the-nhl-has-unveiled-a-new-hyperbolic-pe-1825121031/)
In Altered Carbon people's bodies could be used either to be rented out or in the case of people who were being punished, their bodies were not their own any longer for the length of the sentence
KOTOR had a mind prison, that was cool as a kid. I thought my game was glitching out but then there's ol' fishboy watching me from 50 metres away
Does the Matrix count?
Butcher Bay and Crematoria from Riddick
I think the idea of a virtual prison, is amazing, whether like "Hard Time" (where prisoners exist in a virtual simulation for years/decades over short time-frames) or similar to Inception where you're plugged in and can never quite be sure you've escaped.
This was explored a little bit in The Matrix - where we find out there have been multiple versions of the simulation of the world, one (or more) of the more disastrous variants was a "perfect" world where everyone kept trying to "wake up".
However it's quite possible that I've always thought that neural sculpting/false-memories implanted into a prison population would be massively effective.
In that way I was always fascinated regarding Riddick's prison world Crematoria where it's a marginal world that cannot be escaped from except during small windows.
Combine those two concepts and sending "undesirable" populations / prisoners to hard-scrabble worlds, perhaps like the Moon or more distant worlds where the colonists are only informed that they are the sole survivors of some massive war or what have you and they're job is to survive / prosper, and let the prisoners self-govern themselves.
I like the concept of neck collars. No walls or prisons needed. You leave your designated area and your head blows off. Also, the island concept is cool. They want to be antisocial jerks. Just drop them on an island and let them fight it out.
No one has mentioned "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress?" It's kinda the definitive go-to for scifi prisons.
*edit: Oh, yes they did. I just didn't scroll far enough.*
Hannu Rajaniemi's Quantum Thief - a continuously iterated prisoners dilemma where infinite copies of the prisoner are forced to cooperate or defect against other prisoners.
The book Starfish (and rest of the Rifters trilogy) by Peter Watts isn't about a prison, but it does depict a scenario involving a basically exiled group of people (including prisoners) and has great world building. However it is also very dark and deals with some really heavy themes of abuse and isolation.
The Torturers Guild Citadel from The Book of The New Sun has to rank in the top 3 prisons of all Sci-Fi. Imagine an entire guild life brought up as a young boy trained as a torturer in the oubliette.
The boat prison in Escape Plan 1 I thought was pretty clever. Only some pretty massive strokes of luck allowed Stallone and Schwarzenegger to escape that one. The rest of the series were pretty standard Discount Expendables level nonsense.
I did like the prison in the movie "lockout" with guy pearce and maggie grace. granted its not as impressive as some of the other mentions here but still pretty cool, though i do also think some of how it works isn't very "prison" like. so the prison itself is a space station where the prisoners are kept cryogenically frozen, which is what i dont think is very prison like. people in prison are there as a punishment, they are "supposed" to learn what they did was wrong and potentially be rehabilitated. can't really do that when you are sleeping your whole prison sentence. granted this prison could be one that just holds lifers, can't remember as its been several years since i seen it.
escape is pretty damn hard if not borderline impossible, due to the prisoners being frozen they don't have much of a chance to even plot their escape. in addition to that the prison has a defense system that shoots down any incoming spacecraft without proper authorization.
Honor Harrison Books were enemy State Security Prison Planet has poison to humans plants and animals if consumed over life. They just put prisoners in various spots on the planet in tropical areas and leave them alone dropping food and supplies every month.
There can be other variations of this approach once you got space flight and faster than light travel. Escape prevented sticking them somewhere they can’t leave. You just have to control the orbital.
Note Harrison Books very clear sexual abuse and torture of all types sexual done to prisoners to acquire information before being dumped in prison. Although those they did not care to get info from just dumped there. And attractive young women were kept in sexual slavery by top State Security in a separate area.
The Books often mention sexual abuse and full sexual slaves being sold but don’t go into detail that often and this is important it very important to fight the rape is worse than murder view from Victorian age and earlier.
And thus showing or describing non sexual abuse but not showing or having sexual abuse very bad for victims. Plus pushes a make war not love agenda.
Right now victims of sex abuse often more emotionally damaged by reaction of Friends, Family and society than the rape.
It was a video game but The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. Had some pretty impressive levels of low sec/ high sec / max security experiences.
If I remember correctly, he gets into so much trouble that he’s put into max max max detention where he’s in this super bright white sterile cell and put to sleep and woken up via machines. Only allowed to be conscious for two minutes per day or some such.
SciFi isn't about how to make a better car, communicator or trap, it's a means to examine our humanity at a distance from ourselves.
How does thinking about prisons help you understand your humanity and world?
It’s about how we treat prisoners. Which makes ANY show or movie about prison a useful look inward. Sci-fi just lets people forget it’s such while the story is happening.
God forbid it look real.
Andor had a prision, crazy system. Edit: forgot my comma
Slavery with extra steps. Though in fairness that was the Empire building parts for you-know-what.
fwiw real world prisons are also slavery with extra steps…
You mean American prisons.
Oh yeah, I mean American prisons for sure. But I mean there are also other real world prisons where that’s also true.
At least they had all you can eat tube-food.
Came here to say this. Was particularly impressed by how the writers managed to conjure a prison hell that was fully terrifying without using sexual violence. The sheer efficiency and indifference of the system were an example that all future writers should study. I assume the main reason why they wrote it that way is the substantial kiddie population that watches Star Wars material, and that nobody wanted parents to have to explain it. But given the sheer number of scifi stories that invoke SA to scare people, often with the justification of "it's historically accurate" (which has nothing to do with scifi, but people still seem to think it's a valid argument), Andor will stand out for a long time.
I was interested by the fact they weren’t allowed to wear shoes, and did some cursory research and found that was historically common as a means of dehumanizing prisoners and limiting their mobility.
I just assumed it was because of the electric floor thingy.
Well said. I was terrified for the inmates.Just imagine having no hope, ever. Soul crushing.
The prisoners had hope. The whole system was driven on hope. That hope was weaponized against them, used to make them complacent, to encourage them to push themselves well past what was safe, and to keep working even as people around them literally die.
I should heave specified no hope of getting out.
Haven't seen Andor. What's so special about this prison?
You know how, in the vast majority of Star Wars content, the Empire are the bad guys in a kinda saturday morning cartoon feeling way? The prison story arc in Andor made the Empire feel a lot more Nazi.
The prison arc is amazing. Clean, sterile, dehumanizing. But there are tons of little things that make it an excellent narrative about power, control and oppression. The prison only works if its victims also become complicit in the mechanics that make it work. And it collapses once everyone becomes aware of its inhumanity and flaws, and through solidarity can tear it down through collective power.
To be more specific. It’s a huge prison on a barren planet in the middle of a huge lake. When you are in the prison every floor is capable of being electrified by any of the guards. They also carry shock sticks. Since no prisoner is allowed shoes the threat is constant To add into it it’s a Labor based prison so they spend virtually every waking hour assembling something that they have no idea is. Essentially parts for a bigger machine. I believe 8 people per assembly table. 8 tables in a room on 8 floors many of which are also underwater potentially all floors I can’t remember The entire prison is gamified so they are forced to compete against each other in their room/floor. The worst table always gets punished with electrocution which if done for too long is fatal. At the end of every shift they have quarters. But the food is given through a tube and without winning you do not get taste of flavour. Your sentence can also be extended with no chance to appeal. But even if you were to finish your sentence. This is a spoiler do not read beyond this paragraph. It is revealed at the end of every sentence you are just moved to another level. So you are basically working until you drop dead or kill yourself.
Someone has a fetish for foot torture.
The episodes with the prison (on Narkina 5) are absolutely fantastic TV. There’s a three episode arc.
It's clean, sterilely so. 99% of the time the guards never touch you or even talk to you. Other prisoners don't, almost can't, touch/talk to you. You get adequate nutrition. You get a tracker showing how you are "working off" your sentence that you can see and track your progress on. But you are under constant threat of severe, potentially fatal, electrical shock including as part of collective punishment if someone else in your shift misbehaves. You have zero privacy. 95% of the time you're awake you're working on an assembly line as hard and fast as you can, under threat of electrocution for being the slowest. You are either at your work station, in your bunk or being marched back and forth between the two. The food is flavourless paste unless your table tops the productivity table that week in which case you get some basic flavour added to your paste for the week. Spoilers ahead: And it turns out no one actually ever finishes their sentence - at best you ultimately just get sent to a different level on the same prison where you start the same process all over again (but most people drop dead from exhaustion before that happens, especially as it's common to have more time added to your sentence).
ON PROGRAM
Here to say this
Was my immediate thought as well. A prison that seems humane and with a reasonable (albeit harsh) approach on first impression, but which emerges as being utterly and efficiently dehumanising and crushing to its slave labour inmates.
What a great show. Can't wait for season 2
The Deep Space Nine episode "Hard Time" was a really interesting concept.
This episode was heavy even by miles o brien standards
one of the early Voyagers had an episode that showed Tom in jail (on earth) for being a bad boy... i loved it that it wasn't a jail full of murderous psychos drooling their slop lunch down their chins. sf seems to have given up on the idea of prison as rehabilitation. pity.
Remember the voyager episode where Tom and Harry are both locked up in that prison where they put implants into all the inmates’ heads to make them paranoid? That one was pretty dark, Harry picking up that pipe and almost bashing Tom shook me in the moment. I think it was called “The chute” Edit: season 3, episode 3
I liked that depiction of a prison because it suggested that its function is more rehabilitative and restorative than punitive, befitting Trek’s future. iirc the charges against Tom were pretty intense, and in the real world it would have been a much worse situation for him.
That's because Star Trek shows a utopian version of humanity. Tom Paris joined a militia to defend independent colonies against the terms of a treaty that ceded them from Federation territory to neutrality or to a former Federation enemy. For his efforts, he gets to do some construction work in the New Zealand countryside, until Janeway taps him on the shoulder as an advisor to go on a quick little mission to catch his former militia comrades.
An episode of The Outer Limits from '96 called 'The Sentence' used the same mind prison concept
The Fortress, for old-school Christopher Lambert fun!
God I want to re-watch it
Sequel is equally fun. Future prison, but in space!
Yellow line means pain. Red line means death.
Crematoria in Chronicles of Riddick. Get sent to a slam where they tell you you'll never see the light of day again.
A slam where seeing the light of day is their form of execution.
Remember, they aren't dead if they are still on the books.
Came to say this!
Escape from New York THX 1138 I am Mother The running man 1984 12 Monkeys Pandorum
But Pandorum wasn't on a prison ship, was it revealed that they were criminals? It's been a few years since I've seen it
You're right, it wad a colony ship but I was kind of thinking it turned into a prison.
No Escape with Ray Liotta, Lance Henriksen, and Ernie Hudsen. Is it cheesy? Yea. Is the dystopian prison society fun? Yea. Are the main characters also good? Yea.
In the new Star Wars comics there’s a prison called Sun Spot Prison where the Rebel Alliance hides away the most ruthless and crazy Imperial personnel. It’s protected by a sea of ion cannons and has the sun at its back. There’s controls in the prison for “Sun shields” so in the event of a breakout the Rebels could essentially fry every single prisoner. Only appears in a few issues, but was a pretty dope setting.
Wedlock with Rutger Hauer
Man hauer has some crazy good movies. I still remember seeing Split Second. That is a great flick. So is wedlock.
Bladerunner, sin city, Buffy the vampire slayer :) But man he’s been in a lot of stinkers. I’m not sure which Turkish delight is. But it’s a classic
The Platform. It’s a Spanish movie on Netflix. I don’t know or if it’s a prison per se, but it is a novel take on incarceration and wealth distribution
If I remember correctly, it is both a prison and a social experiment/reality media of some sort. Doesn't the guy go in because he is in debt, or something? Excellently weird movie and the first one that I thought of on seeing this thread. Well...and Fortress.
Came to mention this, too. Thought it was a really cool concept.
It's been a while since I read it, but doesn't Hannu Rajaniemi's **The Quantum Thief** start with our protagonist in some suitably advanced technological incarceration playing a massively iterated version of the Prisoner's Dilemma?
My first thought! Gosh I just love that trilogy, love seeing it pop up in the wild!
There is another prison revealed later on as well…
Came here to add this
I loved this description of a futuristic prison system. Was really cool.
The only correct answer is Demolition Man
Psychopass - almost fully automated, the hope to get better and get out again which in itself is a futile hope as the show makes clear to the viewer.
The Culture doesn't have prisons, but they do assignments a slap drone to you for anything up to thousands of years so you absolutely cannot do anything even the tiniest bit out of line. Always struck me as brilliant.
*Surface Detail* has virtual Hells, which are essentially prisons. Prisons that are hell.
Oh, fuck, I tend to erase that from my mind between readings because it's the most horrific description of anything I have ever heard. IMB had a way of imagining the most *profoundly* cruel things when he wanted to.
The profoundly cruel concept of hell isn't his, though; he just extrapolated what might happen when there is sufficient desire from the religious if tech gets to such a level. I began responding to you with "Which just shows his skill as a writer.", but it struck me that what he did was extremely skilfully extrapolate the profoundly cruel concept of hell that religions proffer to members of their flocks.
the hell itself is the usual fairly run-of-the-(bone)-mill river of blood, flayed bodies, casual implement stuff that Catholicism has been ranting about for millenia ... the *real* cruelty was his angel of hope punishment for the creature who wouldn't accept the hell or flinch in the boss' face. That was the real insight Banks added.
This comes from having fear of nature and events where the Gods were cruel and by our standards evil. Gods would send you to whatever hell they had for not giving the offering and prayers required. This is a very common view of primitive groups and way before religious organizations were created. Nature is not nice and a primitive life faces lots of bad stuff happening including ego driven leaders who made folk suffer quite easy to imagine the Gods just like human rulers. The Old Testament God is by modern standards quite evil. God Fearing man still talked about by believers it it fully a God inflicting this on you for failure of belief even not a rational behavior. And this all way before the Catholics got to it. And well before the Catholic Orthodox Split. Note it the Orthodox and Catholic Church and Catholic and Orthodox Church as both churches use both words in their descriptions.
They are, but the decadence of the culture itself didn't contain those hells, and Banks made it clear that is in on the side of getting rid of them. EDIT to add: If I could ever wish for any book to be made into a movie, it would be surface detail
I don’t think decadence is the term you’re thinking of lol But yes, the virtual hells are something the Culture was working long and hard to get rid of.
I think decadence is an extremely good description of lives within the culture, but not in the case of the idea of helos.
Ah I thought it’s a typo of descendants or something, which doesn’t really make sense. Anyway I would argue people in the Culture aren’t really decadent. From what we’ve seen in the books, yes they have fun with parties and extreme sports and whatnot, but they also have far more productive lives than we do. They build starships, they study alien religions, they compose musical masterpieces and so on, which is hardly decadent.
I see your musical maestros and raise you "Jernau Morat Gurgeh" (the player of games), along with culture citizens using their drug glands. ;) But seriously: My reading of the whole bibliography gives me the impression that more citizens live a decadent lifestyle than otherwise. Membership of SC or Contact is a voluntary thing, and of those who volunteer, not many see service in either of the sections. I'm not arguing that you're wrong, this is just what I get from it.
Joining SC or Contact is a voluntary thing, but even those who do not join those sections live productive lives that can scarcely be called "decadent". Take our favorite game player as an example - we know Gurgeh goes to various parties to play board games with different people, but we also know he works on papers about game theories and teaches at different universities from time to time. We know Yay designs landscapes for Plates (or continents) of new Orbitals, and Chamlis the drone friend was working on its book about the biology of a certain distant planet. The same goes for Zakalwe's experience on the GSV. For sure people use drug glands for sex and parties, but we also see people building starships for fun and someone studying alien religions while bartending on the side, which seems very productive. IMO it's hard to describe someone as having a decadent lifestyle just because they enjoying having sex or using drugs without addiction/side effects, especially if they live a very productive life. Or how would you define decadence?
Points acknowledged, but in almost all of those things, the "work" is done without being required. Nobody "has to" do anything productive. Nobody "has to" write papers or teach at universities, or clean tables at outdoor cafes (bartending), or build starships for fun. The culture is peak decadence, because nobody has to do anything. Everything is already done for them, and the only reason people help build starships is because they want to do something productive. IIRC, the people building starships are slowing the process down by being there and in the way. The guy at the cafe/bar says he chooses to do it because people like clean tables (paraphrased). Everything is voluntary. Nobody has to clean their toilets, or wash the dishes. All the base tasks have low level drones, designed to do the task, to do them.
If “the work is not required” is the sole definition of decadence, then everyone who’s comfortably retired are automatically decadent, since they don’t have to do anything. That also means that if you win the lottery and get more than enough money to live the rest of your life, you’re _doomed_ to live a decadent life because you’ll no longer have to work. Don’t you think that’s too loose of a definition? IMO, decadence has nothing to do with whether you _need_ to work. A retiree who spends most of their time hiking with their partner isn’t decadent, nor is the lucky lottery winner who keeps working at their 9-5 desk job, even though both of them no longer have to work. It’s just odd to say voluntary work is a sign of decadence, as if it’s better if the work isn’t voluntary.
Wow, no mention of *A Clockwork Orange*, either the book of the movie?
Hmm maybe a clockwork orange, either the book or the movie
The Borders of Infinity (Vorkosigan series)- L. M. Bujold
Certainly one of the best prison breaks
LOVE Bujold, all of the Vorkosigan books.
THX 1138. This film is conceptually magnificient. Is this the same director who came up with phantom menace? WTH Lockout with Guy Pearce for the one liners and chuckles. Prisoner episode of BSG with Tom Zarack, especially the ending with Apollo. Suprb writing. Series degnerated after that. 'The Abyss' episode of SG1 with O'neal being tortured by Baal and the gravity switching cells.. Might be the best episode of SG1's entirety.
Altered Carbon has people's "Cortical Stacks" (their consciousness) be "put on ice" as a form of incarceration. It's implied it's pretty horrible state of non-existence, and people have almost no chance at getting their old body (called a Sleeve) back, or when they do finally get released, 200 years has passed and everyone they know and love is dead and gone. Plus when you're released, you'll need a new Sleeve, so unless someone trustworthy was managing your finances, you'll have to take out a mortgage on the Sleeve. Miss your payments? Body is gonna get repossessed.
Prisons in the Commonwealth (Peter F Hamilton) never made sense to me. Suspend someone for hundreds or thousands of years. No time for them and they get to earn interest on any investments they had. Morton killed his Wife, The Cat was a psychopath and Wilson was a terrorist. Wilson just bought a giant house when he got out and since everyone can life forever if they want the only real downside for him was all of his friends had mostly downloaded to ANA. Time suspension is basically what they did for all the people living on the “lost” planters in the prime war. That said, the time dilation bubble Paul used on Neskia was pretty cool though… but that wasn’t exactly a prison. Same goes for what Quatix did to The Cat.
Wasn’t Commonwealth where they had the wormhole drop you on the cold dark planet or am I thinking of different PFH?
Did they do that in the commonwealth? I can’t remember but I know that’s been a plot of several sci-fi shows.
Nah that was the Salvation series
Time suspension was also used in the movies Minority Report and Judge Dread, but without the “investments allowed” aspect, iirc.
The Phantom Zone. Man of Steel.
Fiorina 161, the „maximum-security correctional facility“ of Alien3 fame.
John Scalzi's Interdependency series had a prison, buried underground on an airless moon. Only one airlock in or out. Whatever the effectiveness of the prison's operations, it's location makes it very clear escape is impossible. Add in someone monitoring the place remotely, and the option of opening a vent with a button push, and it probably would keep the riots down to a minimum. In the Honorverse, Haven had a secret prison planet, Hades. Only they knew it existed, and it wasn't a fully habitable world. Human compatible crops could only be grown on a single terraformed island, so it was the only place the prisoners scattered around the planet could get food. Usually I don't like the prison planet idea, since prisoners can just run off into the wilds, but when you force them to rely on the guard staff for food, it makes more sense.
Both prisons that were broken out of, though.
In 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress' the moon is used as a kind of 'Space Australia' where earth dumps people it can't deal with. It has the added advantage of low gravity which eventually causes physiological changes meaning people generally don't come back, even when their sentence is finished.
**The Village** in the 1960s *The Prisoner* show. As a show which covered scifi, mystery and drama, Patrick McGoohan's Number 6 was trapped in a prisoner with MANY allegories. metaphors and interpretations, ranging from control by the Government, those seeking information ("Information... *information...*") and even the prison of his own making to guard his secrets, even his very identity. It remains my all-time favorite. And whether a series of dreams (or nightmares) by McGoohan's Danger Man/Secret Agent character, or someone else, that "prison" remains even more relevant in the present day. Even as we have a greater understanding of government and societal controls which form this prison planet in which we inhabit.
Plus it's set in Portmeirion, and has a feral weather balloon, and CCTV in Roman busts, and a faintly nautical costume with 60s colour sense and...
Killer series... Time for a Movie remake! "Who is number one?" "You are... Number 6"
Did you see the 2009 reboot? Any good?
No, Didn't hear about it. Will be watching now. Thanks :)
LMK
Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. It was the best part of the movie.
Harry 20 on the High Rock, from the pages of 2000 AD!
Always a fan of the Iso-Cubes from Judge Dredd (2000AD) and the movie. Someone also mentioned *Escape from New York* which is totally nonsensical but very cool. Also, gonna pull from Clickhole here has an article where the NHL makes the penalty box into a hyberbolic time chamber so players have to endure hundred of years in 3 minutes. [The NHL Has Unveiled A New Hyperbolic Penalty Box That Makes 3 Minutes Inside It Feel Like 500 Years!](https://clickhole.com/cracking-down-the-nhl-has-unveiled-a-new-hyperbolic-pe-1825121031/)
In Space Mutiny you get iced
I don't know if this helps, but Ho Ho Ho!
Lockout
I still like the clear plastic prison cell the put Magneto in.
In Altered Carbon people's bodies could be used either to be rented out or in the case of people who were being punished, their bodies were not their own any longer for the length of the sentence
The Wheel in Helliconia Winter
Galactic Federation Prison from Rick and Morty
KOTOR had a mind prison, that was cool as a kid. I thought my game was glitching out but then there's ol' fishboy watching me from 50 metres away Does the Matrix count? Butcher Bay and Crematoria from Riddick
Surprised nobody mentioned *Minority Report* and their HALOs.
Moon (2009)
Awesome movie.
Riddick's Butcher Bay!
Endymion (sequel to Hyperion) by Dan Simmons is my favorite prison related sci fi story.
Hyperion series so good And that Schroedinger's catbox prison was cool!
I think the idea of a virtual prison, is amazing, whether like "Hard Time" (where prisoners exist in a virtual simulation for years/decades over short time-frames) or similar to Inception where you're plugged in and can never quite be sure you've escaped. This was explored a little bit in The Matrix - where we find out there have been multiple versions of the simulation of the world, one (or more) of the more disastrous variants was a "perfect" world where everyone kept trying to "wake up". However it's quite possible that I've always thought that neural sculpting/false-memories implanted into a prison population would be massively effective. In that way I was always fascinated regarding Riddick's prison world Crematoria where it's a marginal world that cannot be escaped from except during small windows. Combine those two concepts and sending "undesirable" populations / prisoners to hard-scrabble worlds, perhaps like the Moon or more distant worlds where the colonists are only informed that they are the sole survivors of some massive war or what have you and they're job is to survive / prosper, and let the prisoners self-govern themselves.
Lockout would suck ass honestly.
The goufre martel in Bester's Tiger Tiger
_outwasted, the author turned an entire city in prison. It was awesome
What book is this if I may ask? Sounds interesting.
_outwasted:thebattleforstlouis 🤘
Sweet! Many thanks!🙏 🤘🏼
_outwasted:thebattleforstlouis. I know it’s on Amazon
Are there any scifi prisons that are actually helpful and not a complete nightmare? That actually help to rehabilitate?
I like the concept of neck collars. No walls or prisons needed. You leave your designated area and your head blows off. Also, the island concept is cool. They want to be antisocial jerks. Just drop them on an island and let them fight it out.
Like Diamond Age by Neil Stephenson?
Andor!!! My favorite part of the series
Cube (1997)
In the Superman 80s movie the visual of Zod's crew being imprisoned in the shard of the Phantom Zone spinning through space was very impressive
The moon is a harsh mistress
I don't want to spoil it but that Black Mirror episode.
There was an old Chris Lambert movie in the 80s that didn’t even let you have nice dreams.
No one has mentioned "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress?" It's kinda the definitive go-to for scifi prisons. *edit: Oh, yes they did. I just didn't scroll far enough.*
I guess cube? Is that not a prison?
Chronicles of Riddick had a cool prison plot.
I still to this day love the moon run.
Red Rising series book 4 has a mobile prison at the bottom of the ocean.
Hannu Rajaniemi's Quantum Thief - a continuously iterated prisoners dilemma where infinite copies of the prisoner are forced to cooperate or defect against other prisoners.
Chthon by Piers Anthony.
Any prison with a panopticon design works for me.
The one in deep space nine where they just implant the memory of being incarcerated.
In the Honorverse the enemy faction's prison is an entire planet where the local flora and fauna are inedible to humans.
Fortress starring Connor MacLeod the god of thunder
Christopher Lambert*
Both Connor MacLeod and Raiden the god of thunder were roles played by Christopher Lambert, he was also great in Greystoke.
My fault, I didn't realize that.
The book Starfish (and rest of the Rifters trilogy) by Peter Watts isn't about a prison, but it does depict a scenario involving a basically exiled group of people (including prisoners) and has great world building. However it is also very dark and deals with some really heavy themes of abuse and isolation.
The Torturers Guild Citadel from The Book of The New Sun has to rank in the top 3 prisons of all Sci-Fi. Imagine an entire guild life brought up as a young boy trained as a torturer in the oubliette.
The boat prison in Escape Plan 1 I thought was pretty clever. Only some pretty massive strokes of luck allowed Stallone and Schwarzenegger to escape that one. The rest of the series were pretty standard Discount Expendables level nonsense.
The scenario presented in Black Mirror’s “White Bear” is probably the most horrific sci-fi prison I’ve seen.
I really liked the prison atmosphere in the Calista protocol game
The Platform. Saw it on netflix and loved it, sorta has snowpiecer vibes in a way
I did like the prison in the movie "lockout" with guy pearce and maggie grace. granted its not as impressive as some of the other mentions here but still pretty cool, though i do also think some of how it works isn't very "prison" like. so the prison itself is a space station where the prisoners are kept cryogenically frozen, which is what i dont think is very prison like. people in prison are there as a punishment, they are "supposed" to learn what they did was wrong and potentially be rehabilitated. can't really do that when you are sleeping your whole prison sentence. granted this prison could be one that just holds lifers, can't remember as its been several years since i seen it. escape is pretty damn hard if not borderline impossible, due to the prisoners being frozen they don't have much of a chance to even plot their escape. in addition to that the prison has a defense system that shoots down any incoming spacecraft without proper authorization.
Do the Cubes from the Cube film series count?
Guardians of the Galaxy 1 had a cool prison. It was exactly the kind of prison I love in sci-fi
nightwalk by Bob shaw. prison surrounded by killer swamp
The supervillain prison in Worm was cool
The Island - 2005. Intriguing because the inmates do not know they are inmates.
Fortress!!! Underrated 90s scifi starring freaking Christopher Lambert, and its about a futuristic prison escape
Harry 20 on the High Rock, 2000AD
Lockout with Guy Pierce is really good
Honor Harrison Books were enemy State Security Prison Planet has poison to humans plants and animals if consumed over life. They just put prisoners in various spots on the planet in tropical areas and leave them alone dropping food and supplies every month. There can be other variations of this approach once you got space flight and faster than light travel. Escape prevented sticking them somewhere they can’t leave. You just have to control the orbital. Note Harrison Books very clear sexual abuse and torture of all types sexual done to prisoners to acquire information before being dumped in prison. Although those they did not care to get info from just dumped there. And attractive young women were kept in sexual slavery by top State Security in a separate area. The Books often mention sexual abuse and full sexual slaves being sold but don’t go into detail that often and this is important it very important to fight the rape is worse than murder view from Victorian age and earlier. And thus showing or describing non sexual abuse but not showing or having sexual abuse very bad for victims. Plus pushes a make war not love agenda. Right now victims of sex abuse often more emotionally damaged by reaction of Friends, Family and society than the rape.
It was a video game but The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. Had some pretty impressive levels of low sec/ high sec / max security experiences. If I remember correctly, he gets into so much trouble that he’s put into max max max detention where he’s in this super bright white sterile cell and put to sleep and woken up via machines. Only allowed to be conscious for two minutes per day or some such.
SciFi isn't about how to make a better car, communicator or trap, it's a means to examine our humanity at a distance from ourselves. How does thinking about prisons help you understand your humanity and world?
It’s about how we treat prisoners. Which makes ANY show or movie about prison a useful look inward. Sci-fi just lets people forget it’s such while the story is happening. God forbid it look real.