Category: Science fiction

The ultimate future city; 1984, Part 2, the slums of poverty

4 September, 2009 (09:43) | Cities, Science fiction, Speculation | No comments

[Continued from yesterday's Part 1].

 
Yesterday’s exploration of 1984 (a devastating movie, by the way) developed the poverty of slums: how Winston Smith and all his like were ground into subservience by squalid living conditions, deliberate under-maintenance, and oppressive overt surveillance – where both work and home are merely a low-grade prison.
 

Big Brother is watching you
 
Early [...]

The ultimate future city: 1984, Part 1, the poverty of slums

3 September, 2009 (12:01) | Cities, Housing, Science fiction, Slums, Speculation | No comments

Continuing our occasional series on the Ultimate Future City:
The Caves of Steel, by Isaac Asimov, 11/07
The Naked Sun, by Isaac Asimov, 11/07
The World Inside, by Robert Silverberg, 12/07
Diaspar, The City and the Stars, by Arthur C. Clarke, 3/08
Cities in Flight, Part 1 and Part 2: 8/08
 

 
Perhaps the most famous year in fiction begins in the [...]

The ultimate future city: Cities in Flight: Part 2, city economics

8 August, 2008 (09:41) | Cities, Ecosystems, Housing, Science fiction, Speculation | No comments

 

Continuing our occasional series on the Ultimate Future City:
The Caves of Steel, by Isaac Asimov, 11/07
The Naked Sun, by Isaac Asimov, 11/07
The World Inside, by Robert Silverberg, 12/07
Diaspar, The City and the Stars, by Arthur C. Clarke, 3/08
 
Opinions change with age; otherwise, what is age for?
– James Blish, in The Triumph of Time, page [...]

The ultimate future city: Cities in Flight: Part 1, the city and its stars

7 August, 2008 (09:22) | Cities, Ecosystems, Housing, Science fiction, Speculation | No comments

Continuing our occasional series on the Ultimate Future City:
The Caves of Steel, by Isaac Asimov, 11/07
The Naked Sun, by Isaac Asimov, 11/07
The World Inside, by Robert Silverberg, 12/07
Diaspar, The City and the Stars, by Arthur C. Clarke, 3/08
 
“What city has two names twice?”  380
 

 
That question is posed, to a fellow spacefaring mayor, by John [...]

The ultimate future city: Arthur C. Clarke’s Diaspar

19 March, 2008 (09:21) | Cities, Ecosystems, Housing, Science fiction, Theory | 4 comments

 
 
Author’s note: Sir Arthur C. Clarke, the last of science fiction’s original Big Three, died yesterday at the age of 90.  Three weeks ago, I was in Colombo, where Clarke lived, and in the very brief period when I wasn’t working with the Slum Dwellers International folks, several colleagues and I strolled to dinner at [...]