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"[Science fiction is] anything that turns you and your social context, the social you, inside out."
- Gregory Benford
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Town In One Building |
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This is the basic idea behind an arcology, or other single structure that is intended to provide living space and mall. |
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A thing Graham had already learnt, and which he
found very hard to imagine, was that nearly all the
towns in the country, and almost all the villages, had
disappeared. Here and there only, he understood,
some gigantic hotel-like edifice stood amid square
miles of some single cultivation and preserved the
name of a town -- as Bournemouth, Wareham, or
Swanage. Yet the officer had speedily convinced him
how inevitable such a change had been. The old
order had dotted the country with farmhouses, and
every two or three miles was the ruling landlord's
estate, and the place of the inn and cobbler, the
grocer's shop and church -- the village. Every eight
miles or so was the country town, where lawyer, corn
merchant, wool-stapler, saddler, veterinary surgeon,
doctor, draper, milliner and so forth lived. Every
eight miles -- simply because that eight mile marketing
journey, four there and back, was as much as was
comfortable for the farmer. But directly the railways
came into play, and after them the light railways, and
all the swift new motor cars that had replaced waggons
and horses, and so soon as the high roads began to
be made of wood, and rubber, and Eadhamite, and
all sorts of elastic durable substances -- the necessity
of having such frequent market towns disappeared.
And the big towns grew. They drew the worker with
the gravitational force of seemingly endless work, the
employer with their suggestions of an infinite ocean of
labour.
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Technovelgy from When the Sleeper Wakes,
by H.G. Wells.
Published by The Graphic in 1899
Additional resources -
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Compare to the cubic city from The Cubic City (1929) by Louis Tucker and the checker-city from The Star-Roamers (1933) by Edmond Hamilton.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from When the Sleeper Wakes
More Ideas
and Technology by H.G. Wells
Tech news articles related to When the Sleeper Wakes
Tech news articles related to works by H.G. Wells
Town In One Building-related
news articles:
- Dubai Ziggurat Carbon Neutral Pyramid Arcology
Articles related to Living Space
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