Domed city

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The domed city is a kind of urban complex or space habitat that appears repeatedly in science fiction.

Contents 1 Concept 2 Examples 2.1 Real life 2.2 In fiction 3 Notes

[edit] Concept

Since the Moon and other planets do not have breathable atmospheres, a habitat must be enclosed and pressurized. In the 1950s science fiction writers proposed to accomplish this by enclosing entire cities in domes (usually transparent to allow visualization). This would be a startling engineering feat even today, so it gave stories a degree of fascination and excitement at possibilities. The covers of magazines like Astounding Science Fiction showed fantastic domed cities in a more or less regular fashion.

Some designers looked at the possibility of constructing real enclosed cities. Buckminster Fuller appears to have made the first specific proposal in 1965. Claiming that the geodesic dome had no practical limit on its size, he described a glass-panelled dome 3 km in diameter and 1.6 km tall spanning a portion of Manhattan Island; he claimed that it would reduce air pollution and provide comfortable weather all year. The dome would not fully enclose the area beneath it, as with most fictional domes, but would float on air at roughly the height of a contemporary skyscraper.^[1]

Taken to extremes, domed cities on inhospitable planets could grow to encompass large "wilderness" areas as well; this is known as the "worldhouse" concept or paraterraforming.

[edit] Examples

[edit] Real life

• Part of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station consists of several buildings enclosed in a 50 m geodesic dome.
• Walt Disney, drawing inspiration from Fuller, imagined EPCOT as a domed city.

[edit] In fiction

• The TV series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century featured a domed city called New Chicago.
• In the film Logan's Run, humans have retreated into a domed city to escape war and pollution.
• The Tripods series of books by John Christopher describes aliens who live in pressurized domes on Earth.
• In the film The Truman Show a domed city serves as a television filming set.
• In the science fiction series Doctor Who the Thals and Kaleds lived in huge protective domed cities on the planet Skaro (as seen in Genesis of the Daleks).
• The city of Diaspar in Arthur C. Clarke's The City and the Stars
• Isaac Asimov's science fiction novel The Caves of Steel features an Earth where people live in domed warren-like cities and are emotionally unable to contemplate living "outside". Many thousands of years later, the planet Trantor has grown to resemble this.
• In Ben Bova's City of Darkness New York City is placed under a dome to keep the criminal population contained.
• The domed city of Empyrion (a.k.a. Dome) in Stephen R. Lawhead's Empyrion duology.
• The cities of the anime Ergo Proxy by Geneon Entertainment
• Omikron, a city under a crystal dome in the game The nomad soul
• Tent cities and crater cities in the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson
• In The Simpsons Movie, a dome is placed over Springfield. However, this dome surrounds the city all the way to the ground, preventing anything from getting in or out.
• In the game G-Police, the human space colonies of Callisto and other extraterrestrial locations, are domed cities. However, probably because of the 3D engine, the 'domes' are cuboidal on the inside.
• In Total Recall, people live in domes on Mars.

[edit] Notes