In 1950, a U.S. Army psyops officer named Paul Linebarger used a pseudonym to publish a science-fiction story titled “Scanners Live in Vain” in a pulp magazine. It was about a man named Martel who works for the “deep state” in the far future as a mysterious “scanner,” or starship pilot, and whose mind is manipulated by evil bureaucrats.
Historians have always assumed that the medieval city of Angkor, today located in Cambodia, was huge, simply based on how much land its kings commanded. From the ninth to the 15th centuries, Angkor was the capital of the Khmer empire, which at its zenith stretched across modern Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam.
If you’ve ever seen a picture of a lost city—maybe in the pages of National Geographic or in the first Tomb Raider movie—you were probably looking at the crumbling temples and immense, empty canals of Angkor, the former capital of the Khmer empire in present-day Cambodia. Thick tree roots have wrapped themselves around massive blocks of stone in its legendary palaces. Flowers grow from cracks in hundreds of ornate towers carved with the Buddha’s serene face.