History WretchedHive / Literature

* An interesting variant in the ''Literature/HyperionCantos'': Settlements on [[HeavyWorlder Lusus]] are all underground and called "Hives"; most of them are quite nice. However, there are definitely bad -- nay, [[IncrediblyLamePun wretched]] -- areas, in which drugs abound and [[BackAlleyDoctor doctors of questionable qualification and dedication to the Hippocratic Oath]] are everywhere.

* Cenaria, capital of Cenaria, in ''Literature/TheNightAngelTrilogy''. s have a large amount of snarky banter.
* WretchedHive: Taken to its logical conclusion. [[spoiler:What happens when the hive becomes so wretched that the local criminal organization, the Sa'Kage, grows so powerful that its corruption and influence extend everywhere in the city and government? The city and government become very vulnerable to infiltration and invasion by hostile foreign nations]].

%%* Tarbean in ''Literature/TheKingkillerChronicle''.

%%* Cenaria, capital of Cenaria, in ''Literature/TheNightAngelTrilogy''.

* Creator/DanBrown's ''Literature/DigitalFortress'' inexplicably depicts ''[[DanBrowned Seville, Spain]]'' as one of these. Its description was so over the top that [[http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4159/is_20050828/ai_n14899886 Seville's local government actually invited Brown to visit the city]] to prove him wrong. Bizarrely, he claims to have done so before writing the book.

* ''Literature/SpaceAcademyDropouts'': Rand's World is a ultra-libertarian world run by pirates, criminals, and unscrupulous corporations. It is mostly desert due to being poorly terraformed and lacks most of the basic social services that are taken for granted on Earth and other Community worlds.

* ''Literature/AClockworkOrange'' takes place in one of these, which certainly doesn't bother our SociopathicHero Alex at all, until the police [[NiceJobBreakingItHero try to]] [[RestrainingBolt make it]] [[ColdBloodedTorture better]]...

* King's Landing, the capital of the Seven Kingdoms in ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'' is a vice layer cake of a city. Parts of it are pretty on the surface and even escape the smell thanks to careful landscaping, but it is still a ''very'' dangerous and nasty business trying to navigate those corrupt political waters. Other layers are fairly typical for what is the largest city in a country not known for stirling community services or civic pride in general; not safe and quite corrupt, but not unusually so -- but, hey, it boasts sewerage systems (that feed into the bay and still stink to high heaven)! Other districts, like Flea Bottom or the newer parts outside the city walls, live much closer to truth in advertising by wearing their incredibly ad hoc, lawless, dangerous and squalid natures quite openly, thank you very much.

* Literature/SpaceAcademyDropouts: Rand's World is a ultra-libertarian world run by pirates, criminals, and unscrupulous corporations. It is mostly desert due to being poorly terraformed and lacks most of the basic social services that are taken for granted on Earth and other Community worlds.

* In Creator/AngelicaGorodischer's ''Literature/KalpaImperial'', Mesziasdar sees the Font of Five Rivers, an artistic but somehow libertine city, as a wretched hive, so he seizes it and transforms it in a military garrison.

* ''Literature/MarkDelewenAndTheSpacePirates'' has Mark qouting 'A wretched hive of scum and villainy' as he enters the Ondoog system; due to it housing a spaceyard that catered to criminals.

%% This page has been alphabetized. Please add new examples in the correct order.

* An interesting variant in the ''Literature/HyperionCantos'': Settlements on [[HeavyWorlder Lusus]] are all underground and called "Hives"; most of them are quite nice. However, there are definitely bad--nay, [[IncrediblyLamePun wretched]]--areas, in which drugs abound and [[BackAlleyDoctor doctors of questionable qualification and dedication to the Hippocratic Oath]] are everywhere.

* The entire [[AncientRome Roman Empire]] (with special mention given to the [[ViceCity cities of Rome and Ephesus]]) is portrayed as this in ''Literature/TheMarkOfTheLion'' trilogy—sexual deviance and debauchery are the norm for all social classes, [[AristocratsAreEvil especially the aristocracy]], infidelity, domestic abuse, and divorce are unremarkable, religious intolerance is rampant, murder is easily hushed up, and then there’s the GladiatorGames and the fact that the vast majority of citizens are totally accustomed to the violence, sometimes even bored by it.
* ''Literature/MaximumRide'' has the City of the Dead (official name), which is always ruled by a tyrant. Yet no tyrant has lasted more than a few months before someone shanked them and the cycle began again. The City's inhabitants are like that- fearless. In the eponymous book, a local hero suggests that it be renamed "the City of Survivors", and that renaming is the first thing all the citizens have agreed upon in a while.

%%* ''Literature/{{Nightside}}'': The titular Nightside. Certain neighborhoods within it- like Freak Fair, the badlands, and Rats' Alley- rate as this even by Nightside standards.

** The Dipple--a refugee camp featured in several novels, such as ''Literature/{{Catseye|1961}}'' and ''Judgment on Janus''. Its ugliness is thrown into sharp relief by the fact that it is located in Tikil, the only city on the pleasure planet of Korwar.