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"I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled 'Science Fiction' and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
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| Domed City | ||
| A vast city covered entirely by a vast covering of glass. |
As far as I know, the first reference to this idea.
The reader is introduced to the amazing city of Vitrea, so-called because it was entirely covered by glass.
| 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.
So transparent was every pane which composed it, that you could see those delicate rose-coloured clouds, which are so frequent in an arctic climate, sailing through the clear blue sky: - so vast was the space it bestrode, so immense the body of air it enclosed, that there seemed ample room to make a balloon excursion within its mighty circuit. The architect, as if in sport, had here and there inserted single squares of coloured glass, at distant though regular intervals; and as the sun gleamed through the translucent patches, its rays, tinged with their various hues, formed over-head a sort of coloured net-work. The pillars which supported this crystal cupola rose lightly from a massive circumscribing wall: they were really of solid iron, but they were gilded, and wreathed round with light fantastic ornaments of vermilion: the ribs and framework of the cupola were also finished off, and burnished in the same fanciful style. In short, no effort of man has ever surpassed this model of mechanical skill, either in grace or in magnitude; and the spectator's most permanent impression was, that it seemed the work of Nature herself, that it was a created thing, and coeval with the mountains around it, and not the slow and laboured production of a race of such despicable and yet such wondrous pigmies as ourselves. |
| Technovelgy from Mrs. Maberly: Or, The World as it Will be,
by Anonymous Author . Published by John Macrone in 1836 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the glass dome from A Modern Utopia (1905) by HG Wells and the glassite moon dome from Brigands of the Moon (1930) by Ray Cummings.
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and Technology from Mrs. Maberly: Or, The World as it Will be
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and Technology by Anonymous Author
Tech news articles related to Mrs. Maberly: Or, The World as it Will be
Tech news articles related to works by Anonymous Author
Domed City-related
news articles:
- Domed Cities - For Earth?
- Glass Dome Cities On Mars, Dreamed By Elon Musk
| AI-THu Shapeshifting Transformer Home |
| With Mycotecture, We'll Just Grow The Space Habitats We Need |
| Vast Apartment Living Will Get Even More Vast |
| LiquidView Ersatz Windows, ala Philip K. Dick |
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'He found a barber shop which, he thought, would be good for an idle hour.'
'Thirty rounds of fighting is tough work. Even for machines.'
'...the excavations were already in progress, for he saw gray slopes of rubble.'
'...the walking mills of Puffy Products began to tread delicately on their centipede legs across the wheat fields of Kansas.'
'Here is a Clerk that would work incessantly, and neither eat, sleep, want payment, or grumble.'
'ZARNAK, YOU'RE TO COMMAND A SCOUTING EXPEDITION --- FIND OUT WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT!'
'These are your rudimentary seed packages... Some will combine in place to form more complicated structures.'
