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
 |
Hotel Room Of The Future Is German, Retrotastic
This hotel room of the future video shows that German engineers have not totally forgotten about retrotastic movies of the 1960's. Is this the future of the hotel room experience? See the video.
(Hotel Room of the Future video)
I'm trying to figure out what movie these guys were high on while they were putting this thing together. Sleeper, maybe? Or possibly the orbital lounge scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Anyway, the idea of what kind of space we will live in is a common theme for science fiction exploration; maybe I should have titled this article "The Exploration Of Personal Space."
I'd start out with a classic; the single room apartment occupied by Vashti in the fin de siecle classic The Machine Stops (1910), by E.M. Forster.
Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An armchair is in the centre, by its side a reading-desk--that is all the furniture. And in the armchair there sits a swaddled lump of flesh--a woman, about five feet high, with a face as white as a fungus. It is to her that the little room belongs...
(Read more about the machine apartment)
Robert Heinlein thought about automated hotel reservations in 1941. The luxury hotel described in his 1956 novel Double Star included amenities like a hush corner.
Here's another detail of a push-button living room, from Larry Niven's 1969 novella Death by Ecstasy:
A King bed was invisible behind a wall. The kitchen alcove, with basin and oven and grill and toaster, would fold into another wall; the sofa, chairs and tables would vanish into the floor. One tenant and three guests would make a crowded cocktail party, a cozy dinner gathering, a closed poker game. Card table, dinner table, coffee table were all there, surrounded by the appropriate chairs; but only one set at a time would emerge from the floor.
I'd be remiss if I didn't include a brief quote from William Gibson's Neuromancer; remember the coffin rack hotels?
The New Rose Hotel is a coffin rack on the ragged fringes of Narita International. Plastic capsules a meter high and three long, stacked like surplus Godzilla teeth in a concrete lot off the main road to the airport. Each capsule has a television mounted flush with the ceiling.
(Read more about Gibson's coffin rack hotels)
Check out the U-Stor-It apartments from Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.
Hiro Protagonist and Vitaly Chernobyl, roommates, are chilling out in their home, a spacious 20 by 30 in a U-Stor-It in Inglewood, California. The room has a concrete slab floor, corrugated steel walls separating it from the neighboring units and - this is a mark of distinction separating it from the neighboring units - a roll-up steel door that faces northwest, giving them a few red rays at times like this, when the sun is setting over LAX.
(Read more about U-stor-it)
At least those German engineers were trying to give it some luxury. Do you have a favorite sfnal future hotel space in mind? I might have it filed under Living Space.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 1/2/2009)
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 ( 0 )
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
Factories In The Sky Will Surpass Those Of Earth
'The thirty-odd miles of The Factory’s circumference...'
Sleeper Drones Lie in Wait
'Wandering mines, you took them out on the edge of the desert, set them down and activated them.'
Warfare Goes Underground In Ukraine
'Once in the very first weeks of the war, before everyone had been evacuated from the surface...'
3D Printed Organs From Space
'For a while your colonists will have to come up to the [orbital] Hospital...'
Robot Bees 3D Printed By Festo
'At first I was struck by the large size of these bees..'
DIY Robot Scorpion Crushes It
'...it raised its front end off the ground and waved its antennae at them, then raised one armoured claw as if to snip them out of the sky.'
How To Settle An Argument Between Two Robots
'Henry... assumed the curious absent look of a robot talking on the TBR circuits.'
The Wind Phone Calls Those Who Have Passed On
'Only I heard that!'
Don't Want To Wear A TIght Shiny Bodysuit?
'He looked a good bit like an elderly, fat beetle.'
Light Society: Simulates Earth-Scale Society With A Billion AI Agents
'The king, an old hand in the running of tyrannies, instantly grasped the directions...'
Satyress Centaur Robot Horror Reminds Everyone Of Something
'Fess was very dutiful'
When Colds Threaten You Can't Do This - Or Can You?
'...a hemispherical force field enclosing his head.'
Beautiful Visualization of Dawn Spacecraft
'Then he became aware of a gentle pressure pushing him away from the ship.'
Biological War: A Scenario
'And now they wre busily transforming all their companions, and so on, and so on...'
Pole-Dancing Stripperbot Robot
'Why, a clockwork dancer, or, better still, one that would go by electricity and never run down...'
Collective Superintelligence Is At Hand!
'Maybe the individual intelligence of each Cubic pools into a group intelligence...'
