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"I long ago realized that I could reach far more people by writing something, than by walking down the street with a banner."
- John Brunner
 |
| Machine City | ||
| A city that is a self-maintaining whole entity. |
This is a very early reference to the idea of a city that is really one large, complex machine. It is self-maintaining; it is designed to exist forever, without any intervention by man.
| The city was divided into two sections, a section of many strata where machines functioned smoothly, save for a deep humming beat that echoed through the whole city like a vast unending song of power.
Seven or even seventy million years don't mean much to old Mother Earth. She may even succeed in wearing down those marvelous machine cities... When the builders made those cities, they forgot one thing. They didn't realize that things shouldn't go on forever. |
| From Twilight,
by John W. Campbell. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1934 Additional resources -
|
Readers familiar with Robert Silverberg may recall the city on Lemnos, from his novel The Man in the Maze; also, in Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles he refers to cities that kill invaders and clean up after themselves.
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More Ideas
and Technology from Twilight
More Ideas
and Technology by John W. Campbell
Tech news articles related to Twilight
Tech news articles related to works by John W. Campbell
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news articles:
- Songdo IBD Smart City
- UK's Self-Repairing Cities
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| Rosemont Hotel Dubai Has Lobby Rainforest |
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'Our ancestors... thought to make the very sand beneath their feet intelligent...'
'A mimetic poly-alloy... 'What the hell does that mean?''
'Now I will tell you how Octavia, the spider-web city, is made.'
'Fortunately, the old orbital forts were superbly equipped for this task.'
