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"My feeling is that the chance of our surviving into the twenty-first century as working civilization is less than fifty percent but greater than zero."
- Isaac Asimov

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.

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

Articles related to Materials
Your Martian Dream Home, Made By Fungi
3D Printed Glass Uses Stereolithography Techniques
Engineered Living Building Materials
Unsinkable Metal Latest Gates Obsession

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