Towers spread around the curve of the planet and Terra "...was a single city." (p. 44) See also here.
Maybe someone could write a definitive sf novel about the history and destiny of cities from Babylon to an ultimate future megalopolis? Isaac Asimov does not do this in The Caves Of Steel or the Trantor passages in Foundation. James Blish's and Norman L. Knight's A Torrent Of Faces, a possible source for The Caves Of Steel (see here) describes the life of a child growing up "...deep down inside Great London...":
"'Until I was six years old I had never seen the sky, or sunrise or sunset.'"
-James Blish and Norman L. Knight, A Torrent Of Faces (New York, 1967), 6, p. 124.
She attended school three corridors away. Then her class visited:
"'...a children's hostel on the roof, where we could see the outside.'" (pp. 124-125)
This idea of living not in streets under the sky but in corridors under a roof is taken even further by Asimov whereas Anderson's Terra is covered in towers but they can be viewed from outside them. Anderson assumed and described future cities but did not write that definitive sf novel that I think cities deserve.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I also thought of David Wingrove's 12 volume CHUNG KUO series, set in a timeline where China conquered all Earth and the Son of Heaven decreed almost all mankind had to move into towering, colossal Cities.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
That might meet my requirements.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
The CHUNG KUO series might interest you, albeit I thought thought the first volume not as good as the next seven (I only read the first eight, due to a long hiatus in the others being published).
Ad astra! Sean
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