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"Conspiracy theories are big because they're comforting. Any conspiracy is infinitely less multiplex than the real deal, which is multiplex to the point of being unknowable."
- William Gibson
 |
| Can City | ||
| A cylindrical space habitat. |
This item appears mostly as a single term; it is not defined by the author. Science fiction fans, however, will recognize the reference to large cylindrical space habitats that are spun about their axes to create the semblance of gravity on the inner wall of the structure.
| Kassad could hear the squid shaking and beginning to break up as he hung on a pivot ring and all but accepted the fact that the Ousters had not wasted money or space on such low-probability rescue devices for their squids. Why should they? Their lifetimes were spent in the darkness between star systems; their concept of an atmosphere was the eight-klick pressurized tube of a can city. |
| Technovelgy from Hyperion,
by Dan Simmons. Published by Doubleday in 1989 Additional resources -
|
The canonical example of this kind of habitat is Rama, from Arthur C. Clarke's novel of the same name. The earliest example of this that I can find is city of space, from a Jack Williamson story in 1931.
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'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
'The car had no steering wheel, and no one drove!'
Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
'It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct...'
'...he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
'On went the electric-yacht faster and still faster.'
'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'
'...he realized that it was not quite a clear lens. Speckles of colored brightness swirled and gathered in it.'
