- Concrete — Thumbnail History (historylink.org)
The town of Concrete in northern Skagit County is located on the Skagit River at the mouth of the Baker River. Nestled in the foothills of the Cascade Range, Concrete is known as the gateway to the North Cascades. A few homesteaders began settling the area in the 1870s and 1880s, and more arrived over the next couple decades as two communities grew up, Baker on the west side of the Baker River and then Cement City on the east side…
- Utopian and dystopian fiction (Wikipedia)
Utopian and dystopian fiction are subgenres of science fiction that explore social and political structures. Utopian fiction portrays a setting that agrees with the author’s ethos, having various attributes of another reality intended to appeal to readers. Dystopian fiction offers the opposite: the portrayal of a setting that completely disagrees with the author’s ethos. Some novels combine both genres, often as a metaphor for the different directions humanity can take depending on its choices, ending up with one of two possible futures. Both utopias and dystopias are commonly found in science fiction and other types of speculative fiction.