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A City That Walks on Giant Actuators
India's Walled Cities Resemble Neo-Victorian Enclaves of "The Diamond Age"
This City Will Never Drown Again

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hopskipper
02/20/09

In reply to A City That Walks on Giant Actuators
In one of the Star Wars books there was a city on a planet so close to a sun that it had to stay on the dark side all of the time. They took a bunch of AT-ATs seized after the fall of the empire and built the city on top of them. They slowly kept walking to keep the city in the shade. I always thought that was an interesting concept.
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lazyeight
02/20/09

@hopskipper: There was a city on Mercury in 'Saturn's Children' that was similar in concept, but ran on rails.
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Pope John Peeps II
02/20/09

@hopskipper: there was a lot of dumb shit in the star wars books.

i.e. a ship that flies INTO a sun then blows it up.

Oh, also a race of stupid mongoloid insect-borg people from outside the galaxy who are immune to the mystical energy field that binds together all living things. Oh but it turns out they're not. Oh and their planet is sentient. Oh and now I want to fucking kill myself.
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Annalee Newitz
02/20/09

@lazyeight: Loved that bit in Saturn's Children, especially when the heroine is tied to the railroad tracks. Genius!
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Grey_Area
02/20/09

@Annalee Newitz: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Stross did that too? I'm sure it's a complete coincidence that Kim Stanley Robinson did something Very Similar in a great SF Mystery story called "Mercurial"(1985) from the collection Planet on the Table.
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SanfordGadgtastic
02/20/09

In reply to A City That Walks on Giant Actuators
There is a great book called Mortal Engines that uses this technology as a background. Awesome fiction!
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calculoid
02/20/09

@SanfordGadgtastic: Mortal Engines, another book to add to my pile.

I was just at the bookstore yesterday and saw a reissue of Inverted World by Christopher Priest which is about a city that moves on rails through a devastated land. I haven't read it, but it sounded cool.

What a coincidence that a story about walking cities comes up the next day...
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Grey_Area
02/20/09

@SanfordGadgtastic: Yes, the 1st book of "The Hungry Cities Chronicles" by Phillip Reeve. An excellent YA series! Old farts like me enjoy it too.
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Evil Tortie's Mom: R.O.A.C.H.
02/20/09

@calculoid: I liked Inverted World A LOT until the last chapter.
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♠ Final ♠
02/20/09

In reply to A City That Walks on Giant Actuators
I haven't had a car with power windows that haven't failed on me yet. Good luck walking that thing through the antarctic following the penguin migration.
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crashedpc - Haifisch
02/20/09

@Final is Werewolf Nat Turner.: *crunch*

"Oh, shit. Who's up for some penguin rigatoni?"
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crashedpc - Haifisch
02/20/09

In reply to A City That Walks on Giant Actuators
As cool as these ideas seem in anime and colonies on hostile planets, I'd think that a roaming city would be somewhat devastating to the local ecology. Just a pack of roaming goats is enough to strip grass, increase erosion, sterilize the land, etc etc, imagine the trail (literally) of devastation a roaming city would create. Plus, giant trails of poop. Unless the technology to recycle human poop was also integrated into the city.
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Omaxem
02/20/09

In reply to A City That Walks on Giant Actuators
I'd love to walk my house to work, but wouldn't parking become a problem?
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Pope John Peeps II
02/20/09

@Omaxem: Well obviously you'd walk your own parking space with you! Come on, man. Think!
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