Reporters got a test drive of the U3-X today in Tokyo. According to Associated Press:

Honda's new "personal mobility" device looks like a unicycle, but all you need to do to zip around in it — sideways as well as forward and back — is lean your weight into the direction you want to go. The U3-X ... was designed to take up the same amount of space as a human being to be safe and unobtrusive enough to mingle with pedestrians, according to Honda Motor Co.

Photo by AP/Shizuo Kambayashi

The whole thing is an ad for Rolling Thunder's own services, of course, and all the CG was done in house. It does all look very shiny, and we're suckers for glowing blue cityscapes with weird-shaped buildings and flying vehicles. At the same time, the trailer tries to mock the pomposity and grandeur of American trailers, but the satire actually rebounds onto the whole "Dubai is so futuristic" argument, by showing just how fake those pretty images really are.

And as various commenters have already pointed out, you can see some spaceships from Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica and other shows flying around Dubai. Do they know something we don't?

The SharedWorlds project sends teens on a two-week camp focusing on science fiction and fantasy, at Wofford College in South Carolina. Assistant director and instructor (and io9 contributor) Jeff VanderMeer curated the discussion, asking the authors, "What's your pick for the top real-life fantasy or science fiction city?"

Those four authors listed above, plus Elizabeth Hand, weighed in, and the evocative descriptions will make you want to dust off your passport and go traveling. The five chosen cities couldn't be more different from each other — some (like London) are shiny and high-tech, others (like Venice) are ancient and crabby.

In the process, you learn a lot about what each author considers fascinating about cities. Le Guin and Moorcock both seem to find the weight of history, settling onto a city or driving it into the ground, compelling and fecund with storytelling possibilities. Miéville seems to find London's lack of planning, its crazed ad-hoc development, exciting. Nalo Hopkinson finds Kingstown's mix of high and low technology, cobbled together, to be futuristic in a William Gibson-esque way. And then there's Hand's forceful argument that Reykyavik is like an outpost on an alien world.

Most fascinating of all? No cities in the United States — and none in Asia, either. I would have expected somebody to reach for Shanghai or Mumbai, which are being touted as the most "futuristic" cities by many observers. My personal pick? Hong Kong. I lived there for many years, and its crazily shifting landscape (buildings constantly being torn down, put up, torn down again, and tons of bizarre business schemes blossoming all over) felt like a future megacity at times.

The full list, with each author's comments, is well worth checking out. [Shared Worlds]

Deus Ex 3 is a prequel to the other two Deus Ex games. In it, you're Adam Jensen, a private security officer working at a company that develops biomechanical augmentations for the human body, just one stepping stone towards the nanotech augmentations of the other games. Jensen witnesses an attack on his company, and has to investigate. Besides Shanghai, the game will take you to future versions of Detroit, Montreal and two other cities.

Here are some more bitchin images:

[EIDOS Forums]