Maybe this is what Deep Purple meant?

7:45am on Lake Monona, 5°F. Note the ice forming along the shore in the foreground.

…I’ve been having dreams about buying a van and driving up and down the coasts, shooting pictures of, well, tugboats. Perhaps a few other working boats, but mostly tugs. If anyone can find a copy of On the Hawser, I’d love to see it.

Science fiction writers often do remarkably well at predicting the future. Just as many of the things that early writers predicted (even invented) has already come to pass, much of the sci-fi that I read as teenager is starting to become reality. James Gorman (writing for The New York Times) agrees, and in exactly the same terms: When Fish Fluoresce, Can Teenagers Be Far Behind?. I for one look forward to the time when not just glow pills and retinal displays, but bionic and genetic enhancements, and wholesale body modifications — even for purely cosmetic reasons — are commonplace. Read Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix Plus for his (entirely plausible) vision of a Shaper/Mechanist future, or China Melville’s Perdido Street Station for an equally entrancing, if less “possible” picture.

I can’t place the reference, but it seems that someone must have predicted the Tholos — “a 3-metre high, 360-degree screen that sends and receives images between two locations, in effect providing a window between the two cities.” While The Economist finds the idea “wacky” (yes, they used that word), I think it’s absolutely brilliant. Friends will embark together, to seperate destinations, only to be able to experience the Tholos. Maybe Ray Bradbury?