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"Does it open a new horizon for my thinking? Does it lead me to think new kinds of thoughts, that I would not otherwise perhaps have thought at all? These qualities are what [make] science fiction ...unique."
- Frederik Pohl

Refrigeration Tape  
  A strip of material that can be used to keep large tracts of tundra nicely frozen.  

The Tower of Glass is being built in the tundra west of Hudson Bay in Canada.

From the tower's huge octagonal base radiate wide silvery strips of refrigeration tape, embedded fifty centimeters deep in the frozen carpet of soil, roots, moss, and lichens that is the tundra. The tapes stretch several kilometers in each direction. Their helium-II diffusion cells soak up the heat generated by the androids and vehicles used in building the tower. If the tapes were not there, the tundra would soon be transformed by the energy-output of construction into a lake of mud; the colossal tower's foundation-caissons would lose their grip, and the great building would tilt and tumble like a felled titan...
Technovelgy from Tower of Glass, by Robert Silverberg.
Published by Gollancz in 1970
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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Tower of Glass
  More Ideas and Technology by Robert Silverberg
  Tech news articles related to Tower of Glass
  Tech news articles related to works by Robert Silverberg

Refrigeration Tape-related news articles:
  - Arctic Cities Crumble As Permafrost Melts
  - Melting Permafrost Endangers Infrastructure

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