Apparently residents of Beijing can watch the sunrise again thanks to a giant LED screen that broadcasts a live feed of the sunrise from somewhere that isn’t covered in permasmog.

This is disquietingly similar to a plot point in Hugh Howey’s e-book series Wool, part of the Silo series, which I have been reading lately. Without giving away any spoilers, the books are about a group of people who live in a massive underground silo. They are forbidden from even talking about the outside, which has apparently suffered some sort of massive disaster that makes the outside air deadly to anyone who sets one foot out of the silo. On one of the highest levels, i.e. nearest to ground level, a viewscreen displays a live feed of the outside, which is a dead, lifeless world with a ruined city visible in the distance. The clouds part occasionally, allowing residents of the silo to see the sun and the stars. It’s the only view they get of the rest of the world.

It’s supposed to be science fiction, though.

Photo credit: By Brian Jeffery Beggerly (originally posted to Flickr as IMG_0549) [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.