Today, in Alaska, there is much debate over building a bridge over Knik Arm from Anchorage to the largely undeveloped Point MacKenzie. This infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” has garnered national attention for being an example of government waste. Today, there is very little around Point MacKenzie. Supporters of the bridge say that this will change with a bridge, which will allow development that will pay for itself. While the ultimate outcome of the Knik Bridge argument is uncertain, it is interesting to note an idea that sprung from Alaska’s early oil days 4 decades ago in the same spot. This was Seward’s Success.

Seward’s Success was the ultimate futurist idea. A city of 40,000 located at Point MacKenzie in a glass, climate controlled structure. Touted as the world’s first enclosed city, it was a dream thought up during the rush of money expected from the discovery of oil in Prudhoe Bay in 1968. The idea was developed by Tandy Industries of Tulsa, with designers from Los Angeles. Seward’s Success would feature offices, shops and restaurants, an indoor sports arena, and housing units. The temperature would be kept at 68 degrees all year round, with natural gas providing the power supply. 

Transportation between Seward’s Success and Anchorage would initially be a high speed tramway across Knik Arm. Eventually, a monorail would connect the two cities and provide transportation within Seward’s Success (cars were not to be allowed in the city). Within the city, moving sidewalks would allow residents to move around the city.

So why is there no futuristic city at Point MacKenzie. Ultimately, the idea was short lived. In the early 1970s, the building of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline was held up in court. With the expected onrush of people and dollars held up, the subcontractor could not make the payment on the lease. And the dream of a glass city across from Anchorage fell away. In all likelihood, the city would have been a failure. Alaskans (or anyone else) would probably not go for living in what would basically be a gigantic shopping mall. Seward’s Success stands out as a social experiment that would have likely failed. Still, it is fun to sit look northwest from downtown Anchorage across the two mile strait and wonder.

Many an architect has dreamed up visionary plans for city centers, but few have actually seen their designs come to fruition in a real live urban setting. And while many such unbuilt concepts are technically viable, others are wacky, fanciful or downright bizarre. These 13 vintage urban design ideas for the future, from perfectly symmetrical egalitarian communities to the egotistical demands of a deranged dictator, will probably never become reality – and in many cases, we’re better off that way.

Gillette’s Metropolis

Before his name was inextricably connected to safety razors, King Camp Gillette had a utopian vision for the future which revolved around a waterfall-powered tiered city he dubbed ‘Metropolis’. All residents of this imagined city would have access to the same amenities including rooftop gardens in the perfectly round, precisely divided multi-functional buildings in which they would live, work, play and eat. Like many of Gillette’s ideas, the design never went anywhere, but it’s notably similar to many very modern 21st-century concepts for sustainable urban centers.

Broadacre City

Like Gillette’s Metropolis, Broadacre City was meant to be an urban utopia. But when renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright imagined the picture-perfect society of tomorrow, he saw not highly compact and efficient high-rises, but sprawling self-sustainable homesteads. Originally conceived in 1932, Broadacre City puts each homeowner in a self-built single-family home on an entire acre of land brimming with gardens. Complete with multiple cars per family, it would almost be an accurate prediction of future suburbia if not for the airplane in every front yard.

Atomurbia

If giving each and every family in America an acre of land seems impossible, imagine what life would be like if ‘Atomurbia’ had come to pass. This concept, published in a 1947 issue of Life magazine, detailed how to atomic bomb-proof America by spreading the population across the land in a geometric grid and relocating all industry into underground structures so that any single bomb would do a minimum of damage. The whole plan would have cost a measly 5 trillion dollars in today’s currency, and the authors – atomic scientists from Chicago – thought it could be pulled off within a decade.

Hotel Attraction

Antoni Gaudi’s architecture defines Barcelona, Spain even today with its fluid curves, reflective surfaces and organic shapes – but it would stick out like a sore thumb in the comparatively staid cityscape of Manhattan. Perhaps that’s what he had in mind for ‘Hotel Attraction’, commissioned in 1908 and also known as the Grand Hotel. The rounded, spaceship-like form would have risen in the exact spot where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were later built, but the idea was ultimately abandoned. Gaudi’s unrealized design was actually considered as a possibility for the Ground Zero memorial after the attacks of September 11th, 2001.

Welthauptstadt

We all know that Adolf Hitler had many an ambitious plan that (thankfully) never came to pass – but few are aware of ‘Welthauptstadt’ (German for ‘World Capital’), the Fuhrer’s design for a new Berlin to be constructed after his expected victory in World War II. Taking elements from other empires around the world, Hitler imagined a broad ‘Avenue of Victory’ down the center as well as his very own ‘Arch of Triumph’. A test structure constructed in 1938 to determine whether Berlin’s marshy ground could have even held up such heavy Romanesque architecture (verdict: nope) still stands today.

Palace of Soviets

The Palace of Soviets would have been the world’s tallest structure at 100 meters high and crowned with a brightly lit hammer and sickle as a monument to Lenin on the site of the demolished Cathedral of Christ the Savior, if only the Nazis hadn’t invaded in 1941, putting a stop to construction. Its steel frame was disassembled for use in fortifications and bridges, and its foundations served as the world’s largest open-air swimming pool for a while before 1995 when the whole thing was filled in so that the cathedral could be rebuilt.

Ville Contemporaine

The architect known as Le Corbusier was an essential figure in the development of what we now know as modern architecture, and his many theoretical urban design projects aimed to make life better for residents of cramped cities. Displeased with the chaos of big cities, Le Corbusier designed ‘Ville Contemporaine’ as an orderly home to three million people where housing, industry and recreation all occupied distinct areas connected by roads that emphasized the use of personal vehicles for transportation.

Seward’s Success

If it was Seward’s Folly to purchase Alaska from the Russian Empire in the first place, perhaps Seward’s Success – a huge climate-controlled, glass-enclosed city for 40,000 people – could have made up for it. Or not. Proposed in 1968 and nixed in 1972, this unbuilt community was dreamed up after the discovery of oil reserves at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska when developers imagined droves of people coming to the area. The crowning jewel of the perpetually 68-degree dome would have been a 20-story Alaskan Petroleum Center, surrounded by housing, offices, retail space and an indoor sports arena.

Triton City

If not for a certain tell-tale 1960s aesthetic, Buckminster Fuller’s ‘Triton City’ could easily fit among today’s designs for floating eco-friendly cities. The futurist, architect and inventor was ahead of his time as usual when he imagined this tetrahedronal metropolis for Tokyo Bay, a seastead for up to 6,000 residents. Fuller wrote about the possibility of desalinating and recirculating seawater “in many useful and non-polluting ways” and using materials from obsolete buildings on land, which were hardly popular ideas at the time.

Future New York, “The City of Skyscrapers”

By 1925, many of New York City’s skyscrapers were already present, but futurists of the time envisioned not only a great deal more but a sort of aerial civilization complete with elevated train platforms and perhaps a rather unsafe number of aircraft flying around all at once.

New York City’s Dream Airport

All the airplanes in that 1925 postcard would definitely require a monumental airport in New York City, and what better location than right smack in midtown Manhattan? This concept for “New York City’s Dream Airport” featured an astonishingly large – and some say ugly – runway platform. But for all of the prime real estate that this monstrosity would have devoured, it seems as if it could only handle a handful of planes at a time with absolutely zero margin of error, sending errant planes straight into Central Park or the East River.

Slumless, Smokeless Cities

How do you build a city so egalitarian that slums are eliminated entirely, and nobody ever has to breathe in pollution? Sir Ebenezer Howard, the father of the garden city movement, believed that a careful layout with six satellite garden cities connected via canals to a densely populated central city would do the trick. Thoughtfully, the design included specially designated spaces for “Eplileptic Farms”, “Homes for Waifs”, “Homes for Inebriates” and an insane asylum.

Boozetown

“Just imagine a resort entirely centered on the culture of alcohol. A boozer’s paradise built expressly to facilitate drinking and the good times that naturally follow. Where the bars, clubs and liquor stores never close.” Mel Johnson’s ‘Boozetown’ was an entirely sincere proposal with street names like “Gin Lane” and “Bourbon Boulevard” that would have begun as a resort town in Middle America and eventually expanded into a full-sized adults-only city with permanent housing and its own suburbs. After many obsessed years of struggling for financing, Johnson gave up on his dream in 1960 and died in a mental hospital in 1962.

Final Fantasy X is one of the most popular games in the series to date, and many fans would say that it’s the greatest Final Fantasy ever released. It was the first Final Fantasy for the PS2, having a huge graphical upgrade, and being the first in the series to feature voice acting for the major characters. In it, players take control of Tidus, who suddenly gets pulled from his home in Zanarkand and taken to an unknown land. He joins a Summoner named Yuna on her Pilgrimage to save the world from Sin, while also trying to find a way back home. With its amazing story, strategic turn-based combat, and highly customizable Sphere Grid system, Final Fantasy X is a great entry in the series for both old and new fans.

Final Fantasy X-2 is the first direct sequel in the series and made a lot of big changes from the original game. The story takes place two years after the events of FFX and follows Yuna as she begins a new journey. The tonal shift may be off putting to some, but the game expands on the world of Spira, and allows you the freedom to explore it as much as you’d like. The combat for X-2 is much more fast paced compared to its predecessor, featuring an ATB (Active Time Battle) system, and the Dressphere system, allowing characters in your party to change their roles mid battle. While not as highly regard as FFX, its sequel is a fun game that’s worth playing, and its multiple endings and New Game+ even encourage multiple playthroughs.

The Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster bundles both of these games into one package and adds many new features to the game to give even veterans a fresh experience.

Graphical and Music Upgrades

Probably the most obvious improvement from this remaster is the graphical upgrade. Since this isn’t a full remake, the PS2 models are still used, but everything is retextured and smoothed out, adding much more detail to the environment, and making all of the character models look much better. Major characters are also remodeled, but the only thing that suffers from this are the faces. Some of the faces feel off compared to the original, and their eyes look less expressive, especially when the camera zooms in on them.

The music for Final Fantasy X has been given a complete overhaul. Just about every song in the game has a new arrangement to it, giving a new feel to areas and cutscenes. If you prefer the original versions of the music, you can easily toggle between the original and new soundtracks within FFX’s menu.

Added Content

The most exciting thing about the remaster is that we get the International versions of both X and X-2. These versions were Japan exclusive re-releases for the PS2, where many features, bosses and even story content were added.

FFX adds the Expert Sphere Grid. This is a complete reconfiguration of the Sphere Grid, where all of the characters start near the middle, and their paths are a lot more intertwined. This makes it a lot easier to build your characters off of their standard path (for example, Yuna can learn Black Magic spells much earlier in the game). Many new superbosses were also added, now giving you the option to fight Dark Aeons and Penance.

FFX-2 adds new Dresspheres (Festivalist and Psychic), and a Creature Creator system, which allows you to capture enemies and recruit them as your party members, along with a Monster Arena. Also added is the Last Mission, which is a new side story set three months after the events of X-2, featuring all new gameplay.

We even get some extra story content with Eternal Calm, a short movie set one year after the events of FFX, and Final Fantasy X -Will-, a 30-minute audio drama set after the events of FFX-2. PC players also get some optional boosts for both games. The main draw here is 2x/4x speed, which is really helpful when wanting to grind levels or farm materials. Other boosts include Supercharge and the ability to grant all items and abilities if you want to have a more casual playthrough.

For some reason, the remaster did not add the ability to skip cutscenes in either game. This can be frustrating if you get stuck in a boss fight because you will have to watch a potentially long cutscene before every attempt at the fight.

Replayability

With all of the added features, there is a ton of replay value in both X and X-2. For FFX, you can do another playthrough using the Expert Sphere Grid, or you can build the perfect party in order to take on the Dark Aeons and Penance. X-2 already had a lot of replay value for players who wanted to see all of the endings and try the countless party configurations using different Dresspheres. Now with the Creature Creator and Monster Arena, you can spend hours trying to build the perfect team and take on the new superbosses, or try to catch every monster and watch their story. Between both games, you can easily spend hundreds of hours in the world of Spira.

Verdict

Final Fantasy X is an amazing and highly influential game, while Final Fantasy X-2 is a really fun experience for those that don’t mind a huge change. With both titles being bundled together, having a great graphical upgrade, and having all of the International content included, I would highly recommend picking this up if you’re a fan of RPGs. Even if you played these before, there are plenty of new things to discover in the remaster, and if you’re looking to get into Final Fantasy for the first time, FFX is one of the best games to get you into the series.

“The Greatest Science Fiction Novel of All Times and Our Time – ‘Dazzling’ — Time.” This statement appears on the cover of 2001. I won’t argue with Time magazine.

If you are a member of the National Space Society and have never read a science fiction book, this is the one science fiction book you should read. And you have to watch the movie which I consider to be one of the best ten movies ever made. Clarke wrote in the edition I reviewed [the ROC 1993 edition] that 2001 “has been called one of the most influential movies ever made and almost invariably turns up in the list of the all-time top ten” [p. viii]. It made my top ten.

This book is odd because of the way it was written. In the beginning section of this book, Clarke writes that in 1964 Stanley Kubrick, a movie producer and director, asked Clarke for an idea to make the “proverbial good science fiction movie” [p. vii]. The screenplay for the movie was a cooperative effort between Clarke and Kubrick, and when the movie was in production, the two of them were changing the screenplay as the film was being shot. Clarke writes that “toward the end [of the movie, the] novel and screenplay were being written simultaneously, with feedback in both directions” [p. xi]. The way movies are made, normally the novel is written first and separately, then a screenplay is developed from the novel. For 2001, the novel and screenplay were produced at the same time, therefore “odd.”

The movie has four distinct parts, whereas the novel has a discrete beginning, a middle and an ending, all blending into a single story. There are differences between the movie and the novel, but I would consider them to be minor.

The novel begins with man-apes fighting with each other. These man-apes discover a smooth black monolith but they have no interaction with this monolith.

Moving to 2001, Dr. Floyd is sent to the moon to investigate a smooth black monolith found there. This is a solid rectangular object with 1:4:9 dimensions, the squares of the first three integers. The geologists learn that the monolith is three million years old. Then the monolith sends a powerful signal aimed at Saturn (changed to Jupiter in the movie).

Discovery, a manned spacecraft, is sent on a mission to Saturn to see if the signal to Saturn would reveal something about the monolith. The active crew of this spaceship consists of two men, Frank Poole and David Bowman, as well as three others who are in hibernation. The astronauts in hibernation are expected to be brought to life when the spacecraft reaches the vicinity of Saturn. The entire mission is under the direction of a human-like computer, HAL 9000.

HAL 9000 has secret information about the mission that Frank and David do not have. HAL discovers a plot between Frank and David to reduce HAL’s capability and HAL, fearing for the mission, is able to dispatch Frank into space. David, in his attempt to save Frank, is shut out of Discovery by HAL. But David is able to return to the ship and disables HAL.

Frank then goes on a short space journey in his attempt to learn more about the monolith and becomes part of the monolith. Frank’s statement as he enters the monolith is, “it’s full of stars.” The last twenty-eight pages describe Frank’s journey through space and time. It seems that Frank becomes a “Star-Child” without a physical body.

Arthur Clarke at first thought that this would be the end of his effort with the black monolith, and his characters. He writes in the introductory material that “I indignantly denied that any sequel was possible or that I had the slightest intention of writing one” [p. xii]. However, the scientific and photographic results from spacecraft of the solar system bodies led Clarke to change his mind.

2001 ended up being the first in a series of four books. Each book describes some aspect of space flight into the solar system and a meeting with the monolith.

This first in the series describes the adventures of astronauts as they venture to Saturn in search of the identity of the black monolith.

Part of me wants to run counter to all the hype surrounding this game. “Look” I want to scream “It’s just another rooms and corridor 3D shooter. It isn’t doing anything that revolutionary. The AI isn’t as good as F.E.A.R. Half of the gameplay is straight out of Deus Ex and System Shock 2. The DirectX 10 enhancements aren’t all that great. Isn’t all the waffle about interactive art and moral choices getting a little bit out of scale?”

But the simple fact is that I can’t. Bioshock isn’t a game you can compare with others in terms of technical features, graphics and AI. The only way you can judge it is to take the experience as a whole. And frankly, on those terms, it’s out in a league of its own.

By now, you’re probably at least dimly aware of the basics. The game takes place in Rapture: an undersea city built as a utopia by a rich industrialist and a gaggle of intellectuals looking to escape the political and moral strictures of the surface world. Sadly, Rapture’s dream has gone horribly wrong. A mixture of deep-set corruption and dangerous substances has brought about its ruin. As you – the lone survivor of a mid-Atlantic aircrash – enter, Rapture is falling apart. Its tunnels are collapsing, leaks are everywhere, and its denizens have gone utterly, barking mad, splitting into gangs of ‘splicers’ who roam the halls and corridors in search of ‘plasmids’, ‘Eve’ and ‘Adam.’

Here things get a little murky. To survive in and escape from Rapture, ordinary weapons are not enough. For one thing, ammo is hardly in plentiful supply. For another, the splicers are so numerous and ferocious that it’s hard to pin them down with bullets alone. The only way to stay alive is to use the plasmids, genetic enhancements that enable you to harness the forces of fire, ice and electricity, create air traps or enrage splicer gangs so they fight one another, or use telekenisis to catch and throw objects around the room.

The problem is that plasmids rely on supplies of Eve to keep running, and on Adam if you want additional powers or upgrade your existing ones. Eve can be found just about everywhere, but Adam is a little more tricky. The only reliable source is to ‘harvest’ it from Little Sisters: the weird, child-like creatures you’ll see wandering around. This leaves you with two dilemmas. The first is physical – the Little Sisters are guarded by Big Daddies, hulking, armoured automatons with formidable offensive capabilities. The second is moral – is it ever right to do away with something that looks like a little girl, even if you’re told they’re not human and you never actually see what ‘harvesting’ entails?

All this is only the beginning, and I desperately want to avoid telling you anything that might spoil the experience for you. The storyline here isn’t imposed on you in countless cut-scenes, which are used sparingly and from the same first-person perspective, when at all. It’s drawn together from a dozen or more recorded voices, from the radio messages sent to you by the main cast of oddball characters, and just from the jingles, posters and public announcements that haunt Rapture’s private places and abandoned public spaces. If you just want to shoot things and destroy them in ever more inventive ways, Bioshock lets you wreak havoc with a vengeance, but there is something deeper going on here. I’ve played games where I’ve been gobsmacked, pumped with adrenaline or shivering with fear, but I haven’t encountered many that can manage to shock or disturb; that can make you feel pangs of guilt or pity or even something approaching tenderness. It’s not simply a case of creating atmosphere – Bioshock wants you to connect both emotionally and intellectually with its world.

Doing so isn’t difficult. Running on a tweaked version of the Unreal 3.0 engine with a lot of heavily customised shaders, Bioshock has to be seen to be believed. The water effects have got a lot of attention, and quite rightly so: the ripples that cloud your vision when you step through a sheet of pouring water is going to be imitated a lot over the next twelve months, and the reflection and displacement effects are completely and utterly wondrous. The lighting, too, is beautiful, with everything illuminated by harsh incandescents or an understated neon glow. Yet none of this would matter without one of the most cohesive and constantly impressive prolonged feats of production design I’ve ever seen in a video game.

From the masks and costumes worn by the splicers to the art deco architecture and the authentic period furniture littering every room, Rapture feels like a real underwater city in an advanced state of decay. While other FPS developers seem stuck in a stagnant relationship with industrial landscapes, jungles, barrels and crates, or forever feeding off inspiration from Aliens or The Matrix, the Bioshock team have let themselves go and create a world all of their own imagining. It draws on the work of Ayn Rand, the architecture of pre-War New York and the designs of Nazi architect, Albert Speer, but at no point does it feel totally indebted to any one influence. What’s more, the game packs in more variety than you might expect, with the glossy civic areas of Rapture covering a number of industrial zones, and some surprisingly beautiful scenery in the areas designed for leisure purposes.

What’s more, you can’t ignore the cinematic skill with which it’s all presented. Other games – The Darkness, Half-Life 2: Episode 1 – have done wonders with décor, lighting and motion to create a brooding tension or a sudden feeling of deep unease, but Bioshock takes it to a whole new level. This, you can’t help feeling, is what a truly great game is meant to be: not some dozy semi-interactive movie, but a world where your interaction is the biggest part of a rich, fully-realised experience.

Kudos, too, to the audio team – so much of Rapture’s rich atmosphere is conjured by the period music sounding out from slightly tinny speakers, or from the evocative voices that rise from abandoned recordings, or the radio messages that dish out guidance, mockery or assistance. In the early stages of the game, the mad mutterings of the various lurking splicers are a constant source of terror, to the point that the sudden appearance of the blood-crazed freak is practically a relief. And the lines they utter when they’re standing over your twitching corpse are packed with pitch-black humour.

You’ll get the latter more than you might like, but don’t worry. Bioshock eschews checkpoints or the usual save/reload nonsense in order to keep you constantly in the game and in the world. On dying, you instantly respawn with meagre quantities of health and Eve in a local ‘Vita-chamber’, meaning you don’t lose anything but your self-respect and a little time while you retrace your tracks. This is typical of the way the game handles its mechanics. You don’t organise your plasmid powers and passive abilities by pausing the action and going into some arcane status screen – you find a machine and get it to reprogram your mind and body. You can buy health and ammo from vending machines, or upgrades from a gatherer’s garden. At times, you can almost forget you’re playing a game.

And like Deus Ex, Thief and System Shock, Bioshock gives you freedom to do things your own way. It’s only on a second play through that you’ll truly realise how much scope the Plasmid system gives you to create your own character to match your own style and play. You scan specialise in hacking machines and security systems (done through a simple pipeline puzzle game) or in melee combat or in offensive Plasmid-based techniques. You can try to play using stealth, cunning and misdirection, or you can simply concentrate on all-out assault. As with Deus Ex, if you play through just the once you’ll only get to grips with half the game, if that.

Some people have a lukewarm response to the combat, but I think the creative use of Plasmids and the sheer viciousness of the splicers – particularly later variants tooled up with Plasmids of their own – makes up for the lack of what you might call advanced collaborative AI.

To be honest, if you can play Bioshock and you choose not to, then you’re as mad as the nuttiest splicer Rapture holds. Have your head examined before it’s too late. On the 360 it’s a no-brainer, and on a moderately specified PC – in one case an Athlon X2 3800 with an ageing Radeon X1800 GPU – a few detail concessions result in a smooth and still stunning experience. I was lucky enough to try it on a Quad Core system with an Asus GeForce 8800GTX, and it’s easily the best thing that I’ve ever seen.

Yet at risk of reiterating a point, it’s not the technology that matters here, but the fiction. Moments of Bioshock will haunt me for months to come, and I don’t believe for a second that I can resist Rapture’s lure and not return. Only time will tell where Bioshock sits in the pantheon of all-time greats, but if you buy one game this month, this year – let’s be clear, this whole decade – this is the one you shouldn’t miss.

The finest game of the current generation. Other games may match or surpass it on technology or features, but it’s hard to imagine anything competing in terms of storytelling prowess or overall vision. A masterpiece!