HackerTubewatch
Surprise me
Frame from Cities Without People Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

Cities Without People

Jacob Geller
Commentary
YouTube
2 HN users recommended this commentary2 months2021–2025 score 2
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

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

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.

“Jacob Geller provides a fun and effective summary within this video at 9 minutes in” (HN, 2025)

2 recommendations · 1 citations · Commentary

3 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@bsanr2 Oct 2021 Recommends
on HN thread Borges: The Library of Babel [pdf]
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] [this video] [link]
Jacob Geller video essay related to Borges' work
@haiku2077 Jun 2025 Recommends
on HN thread A Mysterious Website I Stumbled Upon
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 [this video] In his words: "It is in my opinion one of the best sci-fi stories ever written."
Fun, effective summary of a story by Jacob Geller

Citations, criticism and jokes

@cyrialize Dec 2023 Cites it
on HN thread Ask HN: Books you read in 2023 and recommend for 2024
Read more
"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]: [this video] [4]: [link]
Video essay that introduced the commenter to Invisible Cities

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

Keyboard shortcuts

/
Search
j k
Next / previous video
r
Surprise me
l
Like (video page)
w
Watch later (video page)
?
This help
Esc
Close