This seems right, but I just want to be sure. I am brainstorming how future cities might work and what they might look like. I''m trying to come up with cool themes, interesting attributes... you know, the kind of stuff you''d see in OMNI magazine. So, if you''ve run across cool cities in SF reading, movies or gaming, or have some you''d like to see in a game, I''d be happy to hear them! The laundry list so far: Thematic Cities --------------- Floating in the clouds (Bespin of Star Wars) Domed under water Mile high skyscrapers (Vertical city in Jedi Knight) Cities set within craters Orbital "can" cities (Babylon 5) Hollowed out asteroids Cool / Weird Buildings ---------------------- Orbital Elevator / Beanstalk Human Recycling Center (Ack! Soylent Green!!!!!) VR Amusement Park Odd Infrastructure ------------------ Moving walkways Sealed tunnel bullet trains Landing pads on the roof of homes What else? -------------------- Just waiting for the mothership...

Jeru and Zalem in Gunnm (Battle Angel Alita in the USA I think). Basically they are geostationary (sp?) cities floating in the sky (Zalem is at at the limit of the atmosphere and Jeru is in space) and linked to the ground by huge cables. There is a lift to travel between the cities. This is kind of like the sky city in Star Wars but I thought I''d throw it in.

For a really cool and detailed example of a far-future city, read _Don''t_Bite_the_Sun_ by Tainith Lee. It features a place where you can dream programmed dreams, complete bodysculpting, lotsa good stuff.

if you weren''t afraid of reading french, I would advise to read the whole saga of the Incal as well as the Metabarons (ed. Les Humanoides Associés), and in general anything done by J.Gimenez (for the drawing).
Another one is the saga of Valerian (the artist for these comics did the design of the Fifth Element), plentiful of alien worlds, and a race of aliens that will rtade *anything* (I would think that someone in the StarTrek writing team read those when designing the Ferengi !)

In english, William Gibson, as father of the cyberpunk genre, has some very cool urban settings (especially that lotech tribe abd their bridge ... cf Johnny Mnemonic, it was taken from the short stories book called "Burning Chrome").

mmmh, I am thinking that you could do some pretty cool setting by expanding a little bit your range of climates. Desert (Tattoine), Snow (Hoth), Marsh, Lake (Venice), Mountain (swiss army bunkers), Island (James Bond), Mining Colony (Total recall), Lunar Base (Cosmos 1999, AlienS), Jail colony (Alien 3), Hive cities (Necromunda, from Games Workshop) ...

well, that seems like a good beginning, I''ll try so see what I have got for weird buildings and other stuff

just curious, but ahw, is Valerian the name of the creator of this saga you mentioned, or is it the name of the protagonist?
If so, could it propably be "Les aventures de Valérian & Véronique"?
I dunno how it''s with the US, but this series has been published in Germany, too.
If it''s something different, please gimme a hint!

thx
pi~

Well, there''s the giant ring from the upcoming Halo (and possibly ripped off from some book I''ve not read, so I''ve heard...)

There''s the Dison Sphere from that one episode of Star Trek NG, where a massive sphere was built around a star, and the habitat was on the inside of it.

Then there are "imaginary" worlds, like in The Matrix, Neuromancer, and certain other things...

the_pi-eht : oh yes, I was refering to "les aventures de valerian" I don''t remember the name of the girl, but veronique seems to ring a bell And if you know that saga, do you know which aliens I am talking about (that the ferengi are very similar to ). The author did I dunno how many episodes, and each is on a different planet, with different concepts (one of which being the city you can see in the Fifth Element).

landfish : yes, Gibson has some pretty cool ideas, I personally love the Moon station, which is a paradise for extremely rich persons.

I think the ring you are refering to is form the book "the Ringworld" by Larry Niven. There was a game done on that one, wasn''t there ? I think it was very similar to the idea of Babylon 5 actually, with plenty of species gathering in one place to try to solve all there problems.

youpla :-P

In french it is "les aventures de Valérian et Laureline". Great and wonderfull stories
You can find some info and pictures here
Jack Vance is also a good source of inspiration, with a world where they grow the spaceships and a city where people work to gain eternal life.
There is also another french writer by the name "Roland C Wagner" wich is very original, with a planet wich from space looks like a face.
Jack Williamson also, with nice terraformed asteroids.
David brin with a fractal variation on the Dyson sphere.