The Electric State is a beautiful nightmare. I… don’t know how else to describe it. I could say it’s an artbook by the brilliant
artist Simon Stålenhag that explores an alternate version of the United States in the late 90s. This is true. I could say it’s a story where a young woman
and a small robot venture across a ruined landscape littered with the skeletons of terrifying
machines. This is also true. I could say it’s a poignant warning of how
runaway consumerism can have apocalyptic consequences. This, I believe, is true as well. Yet none of these descriptions tells the whole. So, for this entry into the archive, I’ll
dive deep into this masterpiece of sci-fi worldbuilding. And like my video on Stålenhag’s other
series, Tales from the Loop, you can purchase the artbook using the links in the description. Now, let’s enter the world of The Electric
State. The Electric State begins in 1997, with a
mysterious girl and a strange yellow robot venturing across the Mojave Desert — moving
towards their distant destination somewhere on the western coast. Much of The Electric State is centered around
their journey through the collapsing nation, turning the narrative into a kind of apocalyptic
road trip. This strange duo forms the emotional core
of the artbook, the beating heart of a world where everything is increasingly mechanical… On the side of a dusty road in the Mojave
Desert, clothes blow from the roof box of an empty sedan. The car’s owners are now dried husks still
dressed in their vacation clothes — a portrait of a family vaction gone horribly awry. Virtual reality headsets called neurocasters
still cling to their heads — likely the cause of their death. Manufactured by the company Sentre, Neurocasters
are a reoccurring visual in The Electric State. These face-swallowing devices were designed
for military use, but soon became a common household item as people lost themselves within
a blissful virtual network. The side effects weren’t noticed until too
late. More and more consumers never took their headsets
off, and would wither away into lifeless shells, their mouths sometimes still moving as if
trapped in a dream. “- starts behind the eyes, goes behind the
head. My head is just getting tighter -” The concept
of people losing themselves to a simulated nightmare is mirrored in David Cronenberg’s
eXistenZ, a sci-fi horror film that despite being released in 1999 feels painfully modern. Like The Electric State, eXistenZ is an unsettling
meditation on how technology shapes and manipulates human beings, where virtual reality offers
no salvation but oblivion. And in the Electric State, the Neurocasters
prove to be quite literally apocalyptic. The exact cause of the Neurocasters’ malfunction
is unknown, but there are rumors that in connecting so many brains through the headsets, an ‘Intercerebral
Intelligence’ emerged — a hive-mind with an agenda of its own… “-I feel clear headed again-” Finding
a car and beginning a long drive across California, the girl and robot witness the surreal wreckage
of a collapsing civilization. In one image, huge yellow ducks rise from
the sand like bizarre monuments — their bodies riddled with impacts from large-caliber
rounds. It seems the region was once some kind of
shooting range, although it has long been abandoned. Elsewhere off the highway, a giant metal mascot
erodes away into a metal skeleton, its painted expression frozen in a permanent smile despite
the devastation surrounding it. How the animatronic reached its resting place
is left ambiguous, although the framing of the image makes it seem like this machine
walked here on its own… In a dusty town emptying of people, another
machine sits in silence — its body a nightmare of tangled wires. There’s a fascinating incongruity between
the extraordinary goliath and its ordinary surroundings — a fundamental incompatibility
that evokes a strange sense of loneliness. Yet at the same time, there is something undeniably
threatening about these childlike and cartoonish machines, that seem to appear more and more
frequently as the girl and robot creep ever closer to their destination. In these illustrations, Stålenhag proves
himself an expert in the uncanny, creating machines just abnormal enough to instill uneasiness. Where these machines came from and what they
truly are is a mystery that can only be solved by venturing deeper into The Electric State… “- Wherever you are this summer could be
a very cool place -” Advertisements also loom large over The Electric State. In one snapshot from this post-apocalyptic
road trip, an immense inflatable sun smiles and throws up a peace sign in bitterly amusing
dissonance to the end of the world. In another, a giant heart-shaped mascot rusts
under the California sun, promoting financial solutions for people with terminal conditions. The macabre juxtaposition between the upbeat
marketing and grim subject matter is a repeating motif throughout Stålenhag’s illustrations
of advertisements — a reflection of a culture that pretended ‘everything was fine’ until
it was too late. On a passing billboard, a slogan proudly proclaims
that Neurocasters win both design awards and wars — showing that warfare is seen as just
an opportunity for marketing. And given the devastation the Neurocasters
caused, there’s a grim unspoken implication that this advertisement would have been taken
down — if there were anyone left to do so. Where the electrical grid still functions,
gargantuan towers of corporate logos overshadow the homes of residential neighborhoods. These literal monuments to suffocating commensalism
cut through the fog, with Stålenhag’s exceptional eye for atmospheric lighting making the scene
particularly melancholy. Cityscapes like this echo the visuals of sci-fi
films like Blade Runner, whose iconic setting is similarly awash with neon light from skyscraper-sized
advertisements. There’s undeniable familiarity to these
striking visuals. The invasive billboards of The Electric State
and Blade Runner are exaggerations — but not by much. Across the U.S., how many landscapes are clogged
with a mishmash of commercial signs? How many major cities overload the senses
with a blur of fluorescent advertisements? The United States that The Electric State
depicts is a nation seen through a cracked lens — where the specifics are distorted
but the overall impression remains uncomfortably close to reality. One piece of media that can help us better
understand The Electric State’s relationship to reality is the sci-fi pixel art game Norco. Released by indie developer Raw Fury in 2022,
the melancholy point-and-click adventure takes place in an alternate version of Norco, Louisiana
— where advancements in robotics and industry have created a land of desolation and alienation. The urban sprawl of real-world Norco has been
shaped by the petroleum industry and has twice experienced catastrophic explosions, events
that the game feels in painful conversation with. There are moments where the pixel art fades
into live action footage of the region, blurring the line between fiction and reality. Like The Electric State, Norco’s vision
is both unfamiliar and recognizable — a long-lost acquaintance you come to recognize
the more you speak with them. “- This advanced technology helps to diagnose
arthritis. But to effectively relieve the minor pain
of arthritis, use this -” As the girl and the robot continue their journey, they spot
crowds of people wandering through fields — the red glow of their neurocasters like
giant, unblinking eyes. These silent masses seem to no longer have
a will of their own, having themselves become drones piloted by a mysterious intelligence. In the mists of the western coast, they work
to assemble a disturbing new class of machines. Glimpses of these monstrous mechanical beings
appear throughout The Electric State. In one piece, a smiling face peers out from
the darkness of an abandoned barn. Something about the image pulls you in, making
you curious what the rest of the creature looks like. Later in The Electric State, we get a better
look at these incomprehensible beings. A titanic drone looms over a parking lot,
its face and raised arm scavenged from an old advertisement animatronic. Bundles of cables pour from its head like
the tentacles of an octopus, spilling down to the ground. A crowd of Neurocaster-controlled onlookers
watch the tentacles slither across the asphalt and into a parked minivan — witnesses to
some dark ritual. While these monsters of wire and steel are
nightmarish, there is a quiet awe that some of these pieces evoke. Like wandering into the forest and coming
face to face with a gigantic animal, witnessing these beings can instill a kind of dark wonder
in the viewer. The term ‘Eldritch’ comes to mind, a word
used to describe something otherworldly or incomprehensible. In this regard, these beings are reminiscent
of the unfathomably vast, shambling terrors glimpsed in films like The Mist, which instill
a similar mix of dread and wonder. Stålenhag also experiments with light and
condensation in many of these scenes, creating portraits that feel like you’re looking
through the rain-soaked window of a car. The blurred light imbues these otherwise unsettling
scenes with a kind of nostalgia, bringing you back to time spent looking out the car
window as a child, watching the world distort through droplets of rain. In scenes like these, it almost seems like
if you shut your eyes, the apocalyptic devastation will fade away. A massive Neurocaster network tower casts
red light into the fog like a grim lighthouse, making this region feel all the more like
a gothic nightmare. Yet perhaps even more notably, this section
of The Electric State is set within Marin County, California — the same region as
the 1995 sci-fi horror film Village of the Damned. Directed by John Carpenter, the film tells
the story of a group of creepy children with creepier haircuts, who are connected to each
other via a hive mind. A remake of a 1960 movie of the same name,
both stories explore the loss of humanity to a collective intelligence — a concept
that is similarly central to The Electric State… “- Your family can take advantage of this
exciting new world, like ours has -” The mechanical infection in The Electric State
takes another, less perceptible form. Yellow service robots waddle across the roads
as the Girl and Robot drive onwards, hauling massive cable rollers. These machines spread a dark network of signal
wires across the United States, connecting more and more regions to the Neurocaster hivemind. In the snowy mountains, massive spherical
buildings serve as local hubs for the Neurocaster network — their sides still plastered with
advertisements. Millions of interconnected minds bounce around
inside each hub, the power required to keep them trapped in a digital fantasy melting
the snow. While Neurocasters never flooded the consumer
market in our timeline, there was another network of interconnectivity that became massively
widespread in the mid-90s. “- You’ll learn how the net can entertain
you, transport you to far off locations, help children with their school work, and make
working at home easier -” The internet and the Neurocaster network reflect each other
— with both connecting people in incredible ways… and leading to serious unforeseen
consequences. When viewed through the lens of the internet,
the dark network of The Electric State feels uncomfortably familiar — with stories of
people losing themselves to a blissful digital oblivion and becoming dependent on a digital
network taking on new meaning. “Why, you can even plan a family adventure
on the net!” At various points in The Electric State, the
girl and the robot make rest stops much like one would on any normal road trip. Like real world liminal spaces, these near-empty
parking lots and motels have an unsettling quality that is hard to place. There’s a sense of time crawling to a stop
in these illustrations, which don’t require mechanical monsters to be unnerving. Yet these narrative breaks also give the storyline
a chance to breathe and deepen the viewer’s understanding of the protagonists. The more you follow the girl and the robot
on their journey, the more you empathize with their characters. Stålenhag does an outstanding job using minimal
text and subtle visual cues to demonstrate the bond the two have — as the world around
them becomes increasingly dangerous. In one of the most memorable points of the
voyage, the girl and robot drive past a forgotten war memorial. A hillside ravaged by bombs emerges from the
clouds. Two gargantuan military vessels simply called
‘drones’ sit in silent vigil atop the hill — a class of machines that played a
huge role in the backstory of The Electric State. While in the present of The Electric State
drones are little more than bloated metal carcasses, these machines once spearheaded
the nation’s military. In a nameless war, these unmanned vessels
fought each other in a strategy game played out over seven years. Though the drone technology was praised for
preventing meaningless loss of life, the collateral damage was catastrophic — not just in terms
of civilian casualties, but in terms of unforeseen technological consequences. For the drones were controlled by pilots wearing
Sentre headsets — with the war spurring the invention of the Neurocaster technology
that would eventually go on to doom the nation it was supposed to protect. It’s difficult to convey the sheer power
that Stålenhag’s art gives these machines, which feel so enormous they become part of
landscape, looming in the distance like artificial mountains. In one image, a drone seems to have been converted
into a makeshift dwelling, with a Californian flag and string of laundry hung from its side. Once trophies of victory, these colossal wrecks
are now bitter consolation prizes. A painful reminder that though the nation
won on one front, the triumph came at the price of losing everything to a mechanical
nightmare. There is another narrative hidden within The
Electric State. Running parallel to the story of the girl
and the robot is a fragmented storyline of a mysterious agent who seems to be headed
towards the same location. While their true mission doesn’t come to
light until the final pages of The Electric State, the agent is a source of constant tension,
as they seem to be on a collision course with our protagonists. In the last stretch of The Electric State,
the girl and the robot arrive at an overgrown childhood suburb that has fallen to ruin. In this final section, less and less text
accompanies the images, with the breathtaking scenes speaking for themselves. On the side of the road, two figures shamble
through the night like nocturnal animals towards the warm light of a distant window. At this point of The Electric State, it’s
difficult to tell if they’re people wearing Neurocasters, or entirely mechanical beings. Bird-like drones called Scrappers pick through
the remains of this coastal wasteland, laden with bags and bundles of cables. These artificial vultures work tirelessly
to collect mechanical parts — perhaps for themselves, or perhaps for something else… Above the overgrown lawns of the decaying
houses, more colossal beings stand in silence, their dominion over this region absolute. In these suburbs where families once lived,
machines are now born from twisted, giant fetuses. There’s a sense in these images that the
plague of machines has become a critical infection, and nothing will ever be the same… Yet The Electric State is more than just a
story about hopelessness. Even at its darkest moments, there is always
a faint glimmer of humanity — a spark of compassion kept alive by its two lead characters. And everything builds to a resolution that
I found at once both unexpected and perfectly in tune with the themes Stålenhag had established
throughout the rest of the volume. While I don’t think I should give way all
the specifics of The Electric States final pages, if you’d like to know more, you can
check out the book for yourself… In the end, The Electric State is quite literally
a story that’s as much about the journey as it is the destination. What at first seems like an almost alien world
over time develops into something uncomfortably familiar, as the parallels between The Electric
State’s timeline and our own become more and more apparent. Like Simon Stålenhag’s other most well-known
work, Tales from the Loop, it is a haunting, poignant book that pulls you deeper into its
atmospheric depths the more you read… and stays with you long after the pages end. If you find this world as interesting as I
do, you can purchase the artbook using the links below to get the full story, and follow
Simon Stålenhag on social media. As always, thanks for watching. If you enjoyed this entry, please lend your
support by liking, subscribing, and hitting the notification icon to stay up to date on
all things Curious. See you in the next video.
