Readers to Chronicle: What About Tatooine and Shangri-La?
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 10.29.07 | 7:31 AM ET
We recently noted the San Francisco Chronicle’s list of its editors’ favorite fictional places, which included Cicily, Alaska from “Northern Exposure” and Brokeback Mountain. Editor John Flinn wrote this week that plenty of Chronicle readers were disappointed with the choices, and particularly the decision to exclude places from science fiction and fantasy such as Tatooine, Vulcan and Hogwarts.
Retorted Flinn:
Esteemed readers, you missed the point of the exercise. We sought to illuminate fictional places that were based on real-life destinations we could direct you to. As much as we yearn to hang with the Ewoks on the forest moon of Endor, there’s sadly no equivalent here on planet Earth. Trust us: If we discover such a place, you’ll be the first to know.
A number of readers also complained that the list failed to include Shangri-La, the mythical land featured in James Hilton’s 1933 novel, “Lost Horizon.”
Wrote Flinn:
Several of you campaigned for Shangri-La, that magical mountain hideaway where people—and travel cliches—live forever, even though we specifically excluded it in the story’s introduction as seriously overexposed. But since I’ve done some research on the topic, I’ll mention that while lots of Himalayan places claim to be the inspiration for “Lost Horizon,” my money is on Rongbuk, a lonely Buddhist monastery at the foot of Mount Everest in Tibet.
Don’t tell that to the tourists flocking to another Shangri-La, the Chinese town formerly known as Zhongdian.
Related on World Hum:
* 10 Greatest Fictional Travelers
* Shangri-La: It’s Real, and It’s a Successful Marketing Ploy
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Jim Benning is the editor and co-founder of World Hum.
