Saturday 2 February 2019

Above The Future City

My attention has been elsewhere because I have become involved in a philosophical discussion on my Religion and Philosophy blog. See Human Immortality IV.

Meanwhile, in Poul Anderson's Shield, the megalopolis stretches from Boston, Massachusetts, to Norfolk, Virginia, and also to Pittsburgh and toward the Chicago complex. Visible above are:

"...sunset embers..."; (II, p. 12)
skyscrapers and Centers still reflecting daylight;
Venus;
relay satellites;
aircars on twenty traffic levels;
a trancontinental liner "...bound for Cape Cod seadrome." (ibid.)

There has been a nuclear war and there is now a Protectorate but also continued conflict with China.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

The heavily urbanized northeast of the US is pretty much a megalopolis already, what some call the "BosWash" (Boston and Washington, DC) corridor.

And the US, in some ways, is already at conflict with mainland China. And I hope we still manage to dodge a nuclear war! And the Protectorate in SHIELD arose as one of the consequences of the nuclear war mentioned in that book. I remember Koskinen thinking it was a lousy solution to international chaos, except that sometimes a lousy solution is the best we can hope for.

Sean