Rub' Al Khali - in Fiction

In Fiction

• The desert features in H.P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu": "Of the cult, he said that he thought the centre lay amid the pathless desert of Arabia, where Irem, the City of Pillars, dreams hidden and untouched."
• Rub' al Khali is one of the settings for the PlayStation 3 video game Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, in which protagonist Nathan Drake searches for the Iram of the Pillars.
• The Empty Quarter plays an important role in Clive Barker's Jericho, and in his novel Weaveworld, and in Tim Powers' Declare.
• It also serves as the site of Machine City, Zero-One, in the Matrix series.
• Gerald Seymour's novel Unknown Soldier is almost entirely set in the Rub' al Khali.
• Jack Higgins sets much of the action in his novels Edge of Danger and Midnight Runner in the Empty Quarter.
• The Empty Quarter is also mentioned several times in The Black Stallion series of books from Walter Farley.
• Much of the SIGMA Force book Sandstorm by James Rollins takes place in the Empty Quarter.
• The Empty Quarter serves as the setting of the fictional "Ocean of Fire" horse race in the 2004 film Hidalgo. Filming of the movie actually occurred at various locations in the U.S.A. and Morocco.
• In the Japanese light novel series Zero No Tsukaima, Rub' al Khali is thought to be the place of origin of the main character, Hiraga Saito.
• In Daniel Easterman's second novel, The Seventh Sanctuary it is the location of the lost city of Iram, where the eponymous seventh sanctuary is situated.
• The Fremen people of Frank Herbert's novels on Dune are said to stem from tribes of the Rub' al Khali.
• Josephine Tey's novel The Singing Sands (1952) investigates the murder of a young man who believes he's discovered the fabled city of Wabar while flying over the Rub' al Khali.