Still puttering at the website. But it’s functioning and working (for the most part) fine. Not sure what will happen with the subscriber list, if i can transfer it over or need to start it from scratch. I’ll keep you posted.
Spent the day coloring “Little Dee,” and… um… hm. That’s really about it. 🙂
If the land area of Earth was divided into 2,000 square foot parcels, there’d be around 81 billion of them. The current population of Earth could all fit within the borders of Texas with around 1,500 square feet per person.
Or they could all go Stand on Zanzibar. A novel by John Brunner in 1968, set around now, wherein it is mentioned that if all the people were on the island of Zanzibar it’d be standing room only.
If you want to cover a planet with a city, or even a dense collection of skyscrapers, with people packed in really tight… you need some really large population numbers to justify the building.
For example, cover all the land on Earth. Ground floor for power generation, automated manufacturing, recycling, waste management and all the other stuff a city needs to operate. The next two floors for living space, with 50% of each floor taken up for hallways, wall thickness, HVAC, plumbing, public spaces, light shafts etc. Put farms, solar and wind power generation and outdoor recreation on the roof.
If you allow only 200 square feet per human that arrangement on Earth would provide around 270 trillion habitation units. Combine as needed for families.
So far in all the reading I’ve done (I’m 43 so that’s 30+ years) I’ve only ‘met’ one world completely covered in city that has a population large enough for it to make sense. It’s in the “Dark Space” series but has as yet only been lightly explored by the author. I will say there’s a very good reason for the planet to exist, which also explains why it needs so much room for its inhabitants.
The most famous such worlds, Trantor, Helior, Coruscant… they all have far too much city for the depicted population. I don’t recall if the architecture of S’uthlam is mentioned or if there’s anything like a number for the population. In the “Spinward Fringe” series there’s a giant space station that has a “walkable surface area” half that of Earth yet the protagonist lives in a literally closet sized apartment. WTH is using up 90% of the space? The author never says yet the station population is far too low to require stuffing people into little boxes.
There’s a book I wish I could remember the name of so I could find it to read. I recall a review of it which mentioned multi-story buildings a mile square at the base. I remember doing a quick bit of math then deciding to pass on it because the author failed to do the same math.
Neat! Yeah, in this case the thought process was: the planet is having problems at 7B. By 30B, we’re probably in big trouble. Like a car having difficulty on the highway doing 70mph, then you push it to 300mph. 🙂
Such a good luck both species speak the same language!!!…
(sorry, I had to mention it…)
Ah this is the page I saw in Don’s website, I was wondering when we were gonna reach it…
So the aliens are Dutch? Actually that sorta works.
That crew picture looks like it’s inspired by the One Way crew.
Lol no herandar the aliens aren’t Dutch. You’ll see. Maybe a similar linguistic history, or maybe not.
@Karlos F. Hahahahaha! Excellent point. Might tweak the dialogue, add something like “,and after bridging the language barrier, it was discovered that they were traveling under similar circumstances.”
What, you mean everyone in the universe *doesn’t* speak English? Damnit!
Ha ha, yes I had to mention it, (I couldn’t help it) but maybe we can’t be so drastic…
Let’s just say that they’re like the aliens in the simpsons: Both languages just happen to be alike.
What would the language equivalent of panspermia be?
Possible “The World Inside” by Robert Silverberg?
Heh. Wrote a story where there’s an interstellar ‘civilization’ of sorts. Whenever two species meet for the first time, the messages start with a header of ‘protocols’ that are designed to establish a common language or pidgin. (Translated to audio, it sounds a lot like a dialup 56k modem, where encryption protocols are checked, line quality determined, sample data passed and the like. It lasts a bit longer, though.)
Humans, not knowing what the message header is for, and trying to establish communications, are doing the old ‘1 1 2’ pulse signals. Preceded by the header.
The aliens think we’re either exceedingly dim, or intentionally obtuse.
(Look for ‘Blue Shift Special’ if you’re a Kindle Unlimited subscriber.)
@Galane, the book you’re thinking of is “Oath of Fealty” by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. It describes an arcology located in Los Angeles but being separate from it. Arcologies are supposed to be self-contained cities — nice in theory, but yet to be accomplished in practice.
An interesting book, one I would enjoy seeing being made into a film.
“Panglossia.”
The word arcology was coined by Paolo Soleri. Look up Arcosanti. It’s a rather slow moving project in Arizona to build a town projected to eventually house 5,000 people. Ground was broken in 1970, the last major building was completed in 1989. There’s a heck of a lot more to build.
As for Earth arks, I stumbled across an old TV series from the 1970’s, “The Starlost”. Filmed in Canada, only lasted 16 episodes. Looks like all the episodes are on Youtube.