I first discovered the work of Simon Stålenhag back around 2016. His first artbook ‘Tales from the Loop” had me completely hooked, each painting and story vignette leaving me filled with wonder and curiosity. Taking inspiration from his upbringing in 1980s Sweden, and entwining it in an alternate history filled with retro-futurism scratches that exploration itch in my brain that draws me to the sci-fi genre in general.
In this book nostalgia juxtaposes with unknown sci-fi technology seamlessly. Kids listening to cassette tapes on their Walkman ignore the giant cargo vessels harnessing the earth’s magnetic field to hover above their homes – as mundane to them as the microwave heating their ready meal back home.
The other books build on this, with both Things from the Flood and The Electric State showing how this world has evolved. Without spoiling anything there’s plenty of dystopian elements explored here, as all this marvellous technology is left strewn across the countryside, rusting away.
It’s these wide panoramic vistas he creates where Simon Stålenhag really shines for me. He is a master of creating atmosphere, using muted tones and hyper realistic lighting to create compelling visual stories. This isn’t some shiny utopia, it’s rusty around the edges, well worn, and in some places completely broken down. It’s somehow all still so familiar feeling, despite the fact I have never visited Sweden, and only briefly visited west coast USA where The Electric State is based.
Some days in the winter I can look out over a heathland here in the UK, and through the haze see the red glowing lights of some industrial complex in the distance. I can imagine some robot stripped of its parts laying in the marshland, slowly sinking into the boggy waters while giant mag-lev ships haul cargo slowly across the sky before me. Simon Stålenhag has done an incredible job of making this fantasy world so utterly relatable and believable that I think we could all learn a lot from his world building.
After recently re-reading the 4 artbooks I will try and give you a brief spoiler free review of them individually, and hopefully you’ll be as captivated as I was when I first read them.
Tales from the Loop
Tales from the Loop is the most fragmented of the books in terms of narrative, with each short segment of text used to tell a mini story, contextualising the associated artwork within this world. Each vignette gives an insight into one portion of the world around ‘The Loop’ (think Large Hadron Collider with a splash of sci-fi) with a lot of stories based around the kids growing up in this universe.
There’s some real ‘kids on bikes’ (think ‘The Goonies’ or ‘Stranger Things’) narratives here, and you can quickly see why Free League made it into a TTRPG. I also think the short sweet vignettes leant well to what Amazon Prime did with the TV show, and while it wasn’t the break away hit there were a couple of episodes that gave us fans of the book a little more of this world to explore, and for that I am truly grateful.
This book will hit you with the nostalgia then throw your mind into a curious spiral of intrigue as you try to discover the secrets of ‘the Loop’ and its effects on the local environment.
Things from the Flood
Fast forward to the early 90s and the Loop has fallen into disarray. For the people growing up in the shadows of its cooling towers there’s an element of ‘keep calm and carry on’. The story follows a teenager adapting to these changes, coming of age while a mysterious ‘machine cancer’ ravages the technology. There’s certainly elements of biological horror within this story, and the imagery toward the end becomes more and more haunting and dark.
I loved seeing the evolution of the world here, but couldn’t help but find myself nostalgic for the 1980s of the first book, where things weren’t quite so bleak and terrifying. I can’t help but feel that having us yearn for an alternate history that never was might have been Simon’s intention here all along.
The Electric State
Visually this might be my favourite of Simon Stålenhag’s books. It’s vivid, colourful and filled with fantastic drawings of intriguing craft, drones and robotics. The story follows a young girl and her robot sidekick trying to make their way across the west of the United States.
I love this book for the characters, the bold bright colours and the questions it left me wondering around the war that took place there, the people living on the fringe of it and scraping by, and humanity’s spiral as everyone seems to be glued to their VR-like headsets as they slowly degrade.
Please do yourself a favour and ignore or distance yourself from the movie – it was so loosely based on the original story it’s not even worth comparing. In my opinion the movie did a poor job of recreating Simon’s subtle sci-fi elements.
The Labyrinth
His latest visual novel ‘The Labyrinth’ is the most narratively focused of them all, and feels a lot like one of the more haunting episodes of Black Mirror, where the dystopian world is a mere backdrop for an altogether very human story. It’s dark and gritty, a firm departure from the vibrant colour of his previous book ‘The Electric State’, with its bright blue skies of west coast USA.
The story is gripping, and Simon explored working with a lot more darkness than previous works, both in the text and the accompanying artwork. For me the central focus of it taking place mostly within the walls of one research centre meant it was more limiting in its scope. What I love about Simon Stålenhag’s work is the curiosity his art builds and the way it makes me want to explore those worlds more. The focus in this book helped drive the narrative, but left me wanting to know a lot more about the wider world, both above and below the surface.
Where next?
Ultimately, I think Simon Stålenhag’s work is incredible, and I hope to see more and more of his work, in whatever medium come to light. Can we get a video game please? The closest thing we’ve had is Generation Zero – which was heavily inspired by Simon’s worlds but was essentially just a survival game where you shoot lots of robots. Simon Stålenhag’s worlds deserve so much more than that.
Swedish Machines is the latest book from Simon Stålenhag – recently completing funding on kickstarter and hopefully appearing on our bookshelves very soon!