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Yes, we’ve had vertical cities with economic class strata, but have we had frigid vertical cities with economic class strata? This is an incredible innovation in the dystopian novel genre.

N = 2 (this and judge dredd) right now, but was there a rise in fiction in the 70’s/80’s where they did the ‘people live their whole lives in a skyscraper and didn’t come out’ thing? Is there some underlying societal fear I’m not super aware of? Or am I making too much of two examples?

🆘Bill Cole 🇺🇦

@Soyweiser It was a bigger theme earlier: 50s/60s. Asimov, Bradbury, and I think Heinlein all used it.

I recall reading quite a few of those, but don’t recall any specific building ones, esp not which much themes of ‘people stop interacting with the outside world’.

@Soyweiser Not as a primary focus, but as a background fact, e.g. Trantor in Foundation.

The Caves of Steel was basically named for it, with a major plot point revolving around the fact that everyone is too agoraphobic to have committed the murder because of generations spent living in giant domed cities kept isolated from the natural world.

Also James Blish, in the of-their-time-but-still-worth-reading Cities in Flight series.