Simon Stålenhag: The Extraordinary Inside the Everyday

A closer look

Study the relationship between ordinary terrain and invented machinery, the scale of figures, broad atmospheric values and small signs of wear. This guide discusses visual principles; its AOI illustrations are independent interpretations, not works by Stålenhag.

An artist and author, not a generic science-fiction filter

Stålenhag's official portfolio groups images by projects including Tales from the Loop (2014), Things from the Flood (2016), The Electric State (2017) and The Labyrinth (2020). His publisher describes the alternate late-twentieth-century worlds of the early narrative books. Those sources establish the projects; they do not imply that every image belongs to one interchangeable setting. [1][2]

Start with the particular book or image rather than a catch-all label such as retrofuturism. An illustrated narrative develops meaning through recurring places, changes of scale and the relationship between text and image. A single spectacular machine isolated from that sequence can miss the quieter human situation that gives the scene its weight.

Let the ordinary carry the impossible

One useful way to analyse this imagery is to ask which elements establish everyday credibility before the speculative element appears. Road surfaces, houses, vegetation and the distribution of practical objects give the viewer familiar distances and uses. The unfamiliar technology becomes more unsettling when it shares those same weather and lighting conditions.

For an original exercise, make an ordinary location convincing before adding anything fantastic. Establish where a vehicle could turn, where people would stand and how a structure meets the ground. Then introduce one invented object. If it floats without affecting scale, shadow or the behaviour of nearby people, it may read as a pasted-in prop rather than part of a world.

Scale is an emotional relationship

A small figure beside a large structure can suggest vulnerability, curiosity or indifference. Size alone does not decide which. Posture, distance and direction of attention do that work. A person continuing an everyday task beside an enormous machine tells a different story from a person pointing at it in amazement.

Try reading a composition without its smallest details. Locate the horizon, the main silhouette and the human point of reference. Decide where the eye enters and where it pauses. Empty ground or sky can make the central encounter stronger; filling every gap with machinery removes the interval in which the viewer senses distance.

Atmosphere should connect the scene

Light is a way to make unrelated objects inhabit the same air. Reduce contrast with distance, keep cast shadows consistent and let local colour respond to the overall weather. A subdued field can make one warm window or small warning light significant without turning the entire scene into neon spectacle.

This is an analytical approach, not a fixed recipe for all of Stålenhag's work. Compare individual images in the official portfolio: ask where the sharpest edge occurs and whether the strongest colour belongs to the technology, the landscape or a human detail. Those observations are more useful than assuming every scene needs fog, snow or a desaturated blue cast.

Wear implies time, but it needs a cause

Surface damage becomes narrative when it follows plausible use. A maintenance hatch, a patched seam, a worn path and vegetation around an abandoned structure suggest different histories. Random scratches distributed evenly across everything provide texture without explaining how the place was used.

In your own worldbuilding, write a short practical history for the invented object: what it once did, who serviced it and what stopped working. Show only two or three consequences. The image does not need to answer every mystery. It does need enough internal consistency for the unanswered questions to feel intentional.

Books, adaptations and independent exercises

Use the artist's books and official portfolio when attributing an image or researching a project. A screen adaptation involves additional filmmakers and design decisions; do not automatically credit its frames to the book artist or use it as proof of a painting's appearance. Likewise, generated studies on this page should never be presented as newly discovered Stålenhag originals.

The most productive creative brief describes its own location, social situation and visual constraints. For example, an ordinary coastal service road, a retired weather-monitoring structure and two workers discussing repairs offer a specific narrative without borrowing a recognisable scene. Test three views: distant context, the human encounter and one functional detail. Each should reveal something different while belonging to the same invented world.