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"SF looks towards an imaginary future, while fantasy, by and large, looks towards an imaginary past."
- Frederik Pohl

Coffin Rack Capsule Hotel  
  A hotel with very (very!) small rooms.  

Looking for an inexpensive place to stay? In the city in Japan? You might want to try a coffin hotel. Lots cheaper than a regular room - maybe because a coffin hotel is a room stripped down to the bare essentials - the parts you use the most.

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. I spend whole days watching Japanese game shows and old movies.
Technovelgy from The Science Fiction Yearbook (ed. Jerry Pournelle), by William Gibson.
Published by Omni Publications in 1984
Additional resources -

Perfect for Gibson's future urban sprawl dramas. The name of the short story is New Rose Hotel. It was made into a movie in 1988.

And, just to clear things up, Gibson did not invent the idea of a coffin hotel. They are real hotels that date from at least the early 1970's. I also remember the original hotel in Walt Disney World in Orlando; each room was a fully constructed "shoebox" that was hoisted into place.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Science Fiction Yearbook (ed. Jerry Pournelle)
  More Ideas and Technology by William Gibson
  Tech news articles related to The Science Fiction Yearbook (ed. Jerry Pournelle)
  Tech news articles related to works by William Gibson

Coffin Rack Capsule Hotel-related news articles:
  - Tokyo's Nakagin Capsule Tower Tear-Down, Neuromancer's Coffin Hotel Lives Forever

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