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"Does it open a new horizon for my thinking? Does it lead me to think new kinds of thoughts, that I would not otherwise perhaps have thought at all? These qualities are what [make] science fiction ...unique."
- Frederik Pohl
 |
| City of Glass | ||
| An entire city made of unique structural glass and ceramic. |
In the story, the young of an intelligent species must be born in the sunlight on their jungle planet.
| “Your city—I saw very tall buildings. Of what do you build them?”
“In your tongue, glass,” Tanub said. “The engineers of the Delphinus said it was impossible. As you saw, they are wrong.” Stetson’s voice came hissing on the carrier wave: “A glass-blowing culture! That’d explain a lot of things.” A glowing of many lights grew visible through the giant tree trunks. It brightened as the sled crept through the jungle’s edge and emerged in cleared land looking across about two kilometers of open space at the city. Orne stared upward in awe. The Gienahn city fluted and spiraled into the moonlit sky, taller than the tallest trees. It appeared a fragile lacery of bridges, glowing columns and winking dots of light. The bridges wove back and forth from column to column until the entire visible network seemed one gigantic dew-glittering web. “All that with glass,” Orne murmured. |
| Technovelgy from The Godmakers,
by Frank Herbert. Published by Berkley Medallion in 1972 Additional resources -
|
Compare to tower of glass from Tower of Glass (1970) by Robert Silverberg, metalloglass from Buck Rogers, 2430 AD (1929) by Nowlan and Calkins and plani-glass from Crystalized Thought (1937) by Nat Schachner.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Godmakers
More Ideas
and Technology by Frank Herbert
Tech news articles related to The Godmakers
Tech news articles related to works by Frank Herbert
City of Glass-related
news articles:
- 3D Printed Glass Uses Stereolithography Techniques
| Harvard Metamaterials Change Structure Instantly |
| Nano-Chainmail 2D Mechanically Interlocked Polymer |
| Goldene - A Two-Dimensional Sheet Of Gold One Atom Thick |
| FlexRAM Liquid Metal RAM And One Particular SF Movie Robot |
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'... oblongs were all over the floor and surfaces.'
'If you're one of those rarities who haven't attended a rocket-polo "carnage", let me tell you it's a colorful affair.'
'They filed clumsily into the battleroom, like children in a swimming pool for the first time, clinging to the handholds along the side.'
'a walking balloon proceeded with long strides of its aluminum legs...'
'There was nowhere on the planet where science and technology could not provide one with a comfortable home...'
