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"The trouble with too much genre SF is that it's so obviously the product of the conscious mind."
- William Gibson
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| Sky Ceiling | ||
| Ceilings that consist of large screens, on which are presented images of the sky. |
This is one of the cooler features of the Hogwarts castle from Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone; however, it appeared in this novel by Stanislaw Lem more than a generation earlier.
These ceilings are intended to solve a problem in a very organized future society; how do you have multi-level cities, while still making sure that everyone has the feeling of being outdoors?
| "How do they work it so that the sky is visible at every level of the city?"
She perked up. "Very simple. Television - that is what they called it, long ago. On the ceilings are screens. They transmit what is above the Earth - the sky, the clouds..." "But surely the levels are not that high," I said. "Forty-story buildings stand there..." "It is an illusion," she said, smiling. "The buildings are only partly real; their continuation is an image. Do you understand?" "I understand how it's done, but not the reason." "So that the people living on each level do not feel deprived. Not in any way." |
| From Return from the Stars,
by Stanislaw Lem. Published by Not known in 1961 Additional resources -
|
I'm wondering if there are any earlier examples of this, either in sf or in the design world. The idea of a flat display the size of a wall is present in the parlor walls from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, which was published in 1953. I also remember flat panel displays used as 'windows' (with a picture presented from outdoors) within an enormous city-in-a-building (an arcology) from Oath of Fealty, a 1981 novel by Niven and Pournelle.
Compare to Robert Heinlein's simulacrum window from Tunnel in the Sky (1955), the sky ceiling from the 1961 novel Return From The Stars by Stanislaw Lem, the ersatz window from the 1969 novel Galactic Pot-Healer by Philip K. Dick and the window wavelength from the 1969 novel Super-Toys Last All Summer Long by Brian Aldiss.
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