Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
Domed Cities - For Earth?
Domed cities are a well-known sf staple. But do we need to start planning them for use on Earth, due to climate change? Supposed benefits, in addition to protection from drastic climate change, include reduction of costs for extreme weather and shifted costs for climate control of buildings.
(From Houston city dome proposed)
This picture is taken from a Discovery Channel program discussing the possibility of putting all of Houston, Texas under a protective dome.
Update 07-Feb-2025: The earliest reference to the idea of covering a city with a glass dome was from Mrs. Maberly: Or, The World as it Will be (1836), by an Anonymous Author:
On looking upwards, in order to behold what in other towns would have been the open space of the firmament - and which, in ancient London, would have been mysteriously veiled over by a dense and awful canopy of eternal smoke, - an airy and elliptical dome of glass, fashioned and pointed like the cupola of a Moorish temple, reared itself to an immeasurable height.
(Read more about the domed city)
End update.
In his 1905 story A Modern Utopia, H.G. Wells refers to the idea of covering at least parts of cities with sturdy glass domes:
One will come into this place as one comes into a noble mansion. They will have flung great arches and domes of glass above the wider spaces of the town, the slender beauty of the perfect metal-work far overhead will be softened to a fairy-like unsubstantiality by the mild London air.
Ordinarily, the idea of a domed city is usually applied to planets or moons with a really good reason for a dome - no air, for instance. As far as I know, the first person to suggest using a clear dome to cover an entire lunar city was Ray Cummings in his 1931 story Brigands of the Moon.
The Grantline camp stood midway up one of the inner cliff walls of the little crater. The broken, rock-strewn floor, two miles wide, lay five hundred feet below the camp. A broad level shelf hung midway up the cliff, and upon it Grantline had built his little group of glassite dome shelters…
(Read more about Cummings' glassite dome shelter)
Another early use for the idea of a kind of dome over an Earth city - like, for example, Scranton, NJ, was in James Blish's classic series Cities in Flight. A device called a "spindizzy" produced a force-field dome over earth cities (and also allowed them to defy gravity and take off into space!)
(Cities in FLight cover)
Read more about similar projects in a very nicely done article on Next Big Future.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 6/29/2009)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 9 )
Related News Stories - (" Living Space ")
Why Not Move A Warehouse District?
'Did you never see a moving house before?' - Jane Webb Loudon, 1828.
Amazon Will Send You Heinlein's Knockdown Cabin
'It's so light that you can set it up in five minutes by yourself...' - Robert Heinlein, 1940.
Elegant Bivouac Shelter Produces Water And Electricity
'There was nowhere on the planet where science and technology could not provide one with a comfortable home...' - Arthur C. Clarke.
AI-THu Shapeshifting Transformer Home
'Its slack walls tightened, bulged, were crossed by ripples and waves of movement.' - Fritz Leiber, 1943.
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.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
Grok And The City Fathers From 'Cities In Flight' By James Blish
'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
Why Not Move A Warehouse District?
'Did you never see a moving house before?'
Will An AI Found A New Religion?
'You must decide how you will worship Me.'
Terraformer Industries Make Methane
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
I Need An Outdoor Spherical Display
'Usually a spherical display hovered in the centre...'
Worm Disrupts Physics Simulations Undetected For A Decade
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
Muxcard Redditor's DIY Credit Card-Sized Computer
It's a computer, but just barely.
'Soft Assembly' Fashions That Fashion Themselves On The Wearer
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
Orwell's Nightmare Of AI-Written Novels Comes To Pass
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
ISS Plagued By Leak - Again!
'There were perhaps a dozen bladder-like objects in the tunnel...'
Ridiculous 'Ghost Murmur' Tech Still Science Fiction
'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'
Outdoor Video Screens Can Be Arbitrarily Large
The Shape of Things To Come
Infrared Contact Lenses To See In The Dark
'I can see in the dark, Case.'
What'll You Have? Extinct Animals Returned, Or Synthetic Eggshells?
'...a new plastic with the characteristics of an avian eggshell.'
Sunbird Pulsar Fusion Like Leinster's Space Tug
'It was a pushpot, which could not possibly be called a jet plane because it could not possibly fly. Only it did.'
RentAHuman App Lets AI Agents Hire Humans
'She wouldn't stop until Antar had told her everything he knew about whatever it was that she was playing with on her screen.'
