1. The Lost Planet of Nice
Many children's and some adults' fiction that appears to be set in our world is actually possible only on the Lost Planet of Nice. It's a delightful place. Everyone tries to be kind, not just using the expectation of kindness to override what women, children, or subordinates of any kind really want. If you drop a hundred-dollar bill on the street (in the part that resembles the US) and other people see it, they might even bump into each other, apologizing profusely, in the scramble to be the first to grab it and return it to you. Quite a few thefts and murders are committed on the Lost Planet of Nice, but always and only for understandable and nice reasons. Even the extroverts on the Lost Planet of Nice never look at somebody and think "Eww, different from me, must make it go away by any means necessary." Even people who've been speaking their own language for five thousand years will learn yours. The primary sexual taboo is feeling attracted to someone whose affections have already been claimed, which disgusts everyone so much that just learning that you have a Significant Other will cause people to relate to you in a platonically friendly way. Some people on this planet have less money than others, but they don't mind because homeless people get to camp on the beach. The cows have not been bioengineered to tell people they want to be eaten, because as Douglas Adams observed that would be off-putting, but they walk into the slaughterhouse chute looking as if they were sure they'd wake up in a better life.
Only an emotional bond with someone in our world ever motivates anyone to come back from the Lost Planet of Nice. There is probably a catch to staying on this planet, but nobody has found what it might be. After returning from the Lost Planet of Nice people often show abnormally nice behavior until they meet an unpleasant member of our own species.
2. Piers Anthony's Xanth
During the reigns of the more or less human Iris, Irene, and Ivy. Xanth exists in a realm of magic not science, and looks very similar to Florida, only without the mosquitoes or mosquito spray.
3. Harriette Simpson Arnow's Eastern Kentucky
A short drive or long backpacking hike from my home, in space. Less polluted, in time. I could spend a whole summer just hiking there, if I didn't have to go home and feed the cats.
4. Frances Hodgson Burnett's Lennox Manor
I'm not a great gardener. My method of maintaining fresh greens and pretty flowers has always been to live in a place where they grow naturally and need to be cut back. But I would like to see Mary Lennox's Secret Garden.
5. Elizabeth Enright's upstate New York
The Melendy Family and Gone-Away Lake are set within a short drive of Al Capp's Dogpatch, but I feel no need to visit Dogpatch. Reclaiming a late Victorian magnate's summer house, complete with 1890s newspapers, button-top shoes, and horse-drawn vehicles, would be too much more fun.
6. Carol Kendall's Land Between the Mountains
I always imagined Minnipins to be about the height of the book's intended audience, about four feet, but if the author's vision hadn't changed since she used that name in an unrelated short story, they're the size of gnats. Whatever To themselves they're life-size, as their middle-grades readers are.
7. C.S. Lewis's Narnia
Despite the risk of having to travel with mice that never stop talking.
8. C.S. Lewis's Perelandra
Who wouldn't want to spend a few days on a livable floating island?
9. Marge Piercy's Mattapoisett
Even for (not bioengineered but selectively bred) nonviolent humans of the future, I don't believe Piercy's brand of Green populism would work...but such lovely energy!
10.P.G. Wodehouse's Castle Blandings
In a pleasant rural part of England, like England-on-the-Planet-of-Nice only funnier, that gets much less rain than the rest of that country. Castle Blandings gets more sunshine even than Virginia and somehow stays lush and green anyway. Of course getting there tends to involve some sort of romantic relationship with a Wodehouse hero, which might be less fun, but it's my fantasy and I can be hired to work for one of the older characters if I want to.
Those all sound lovely, though I'm deep agreement with you over the perils of romantic relationships with Wodehouse heroes.
ReplyDeletePerelandra is a good pick!
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a kid, I used climb into the large wooden wardrobe in my bedroom and pretend I was emerging into Narnia. The irony. 😂 These were some great choices!
ReplyDeleteNarnia is a popular choice. Nice also sounds like a great place. Thanks for sharing and for visiting my blog.
ReplyDeleteGreat picks, some I had never heard of. I debated putting Narnia on my list, it is a place that would be neat to visit.
ReplyDelete