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"Writing about the future, I have a vested interest in there being a future for me to write about."
- John Brunner
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| Nanotech Buildings | ||
| Enormous buildings built with nanotech fibers. |
The scale of the buildings is left to the reader's imagination. However, if nanotechnology provides us with materials that combine exceptional strength with lightness, buildings can grow much taller.
| We were uncertain how you might feel about new buildings.
You mean the nano tech buildings? Layne had been struggling to keep his eyes open.
Yes some people find them disturbing. He knew their sheer brutality of scale from constructs, but virtually had failed to convey the peculiarity of their apparent texture, a streamlined organicism. They are like Giger's paintings of New York, Yamazaki had said but the reference had been lost on Laney. Now he sat on the edge of his bed staring blankly out at these miracles of the new technology, as banal and as sinister as such miracles usually were, and they were only annoying; the world's largest inhabited structures. |
| From Idoru,
by William Gibson. Published by Putnam in 1996 Additional resources -
|
If we ever get the one-dimensional diamond crystals that Arthur C. Clarke dreamed about for building a space elevator, we might get nanotech buildings.
For another look at life in very large structures, see the reference to arcology, from Oath of Fealty, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
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Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
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'A worker replaced by a nubot... had to be compensated.'
'... forcing the energy transfer which allowed him to regrow his lost fingers.'
'The car surged and lifted, clearing its top by a negligible margin.'
Science fiction authors are serious about sleep, too.
'I had explained," said Nessus, "that our civilisation was dying in its own waste heat.'
'Just what did I want Flexible Frank to do? - any work a human being does around a house.'
SF writers have thought about this since the 19th century.
