If you mean “Jinx is where there are Bandersnatchi”, then yes; but they’re in the equatorial regions where atmospheric pressure is inconveniently high for humans (but survivable if you really want to hunt Bandersnatchi).
It’s only a satellite, not a world, but Charles Sheffield’s The Web Between the Worlds features a ball of water encased in a covering that is home to aquatic life in orbit.
Yes, thanks Malacandra. <pronoun trouble> That’s what I meant. Not a lot of stories about Jinx, but mentioned in passing that the Bandersnatchi negotiate the equipment allowed to be used to hunt them, (high pressure capable tanks if I recall), so that the Bandersnatchi ‘win’ at least one out of every three encounters.
The last words of the (momentary) survivor of a pair of dueling magicians who gave the world of Orbix, in Esther Freisner’s Majyk series of books, a case of morphological hiccoughs, where it changes shape at random intervals. At the time of the series the world had been flatish from what I recall.
How you doin’?
Speaking of video games, a huge number of RPG’s have to take place on planets shaped like donuts. Not only do they loop from east to west, but north to south. Fly an airship or balloon or sail a ship or whatever off the top of the map and you pop up on the bottom. That doesn’t happen on a spherical world.
I second this.
What about The Inverted World by Christopher Priest? There is a twist that might disqualify it, but it seems that it might fit the spirit of your question and does involve some interesting geometry.
Are they frumious?
Another one might be Orphans of the Sky by Heinlein, but there’s nothing especially notable about the physics of the universe. What is notable is that there is a primitive civilization living inside of a cylindrical generational starship who think that the ship is all there is in the universe. They are descendants of the original crew and/or passengers and remember mythologized fragments of their history. The disaster that destroyed the societal order has been re imagined as a religious origin story with “Accursed Huff (apparently a sabateur or mutineer), the first to sin!”
Heinlein was certainly not the only one to write about the Lost Generation Starship (although he might be the first – I don’t know any previous examples). In any event, I mentioned such cylindrical artificial habitats in my first post back at the beginning of this thread.
Quite.
To go back to Anthony’s Phaze/Proton, wasn’t it actually something like a hemispherical shell around a black hole, and the curtain and magic/fantasy duality were due to some handwaving with the black hole’s gravity? I think that came into the picture with Phaze Doubt, the last book (that I know of).
KW Jeter’s Farewell Horizontal is set in/on a vast cylindrical tower, with people living (mostly) on the floors inside but also on the outside of the tower. The people outside stick to the tower face with special equipment and basically live at 90º to the force of gravity.
I only read the original trilogy. I believe that story line ended (as I recall) with the two worlds being separated.
For Athena’s sake, DO NOT READ THE REST OF THAT SERIES! At least, not unless you are being paid to do so.
Found it, it’s actually in the section “Wonder as I Wander”, and this particular short-short is called “The Stars Down There.”
*gro…
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pe Ethilrist*
Bob Shaw’s Orbitsville is set inside a Dyson Sphere.
I’ve just read Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds, part of which is set in a large structure called The Structure, which is definitely not spherical. Pushing Ice - Wikipedia
And there’s Eon and Eternity by Greg Bear, set in a rotating asteroid and something much larger attached to it…
I must admit to a certain predilection for non-spherical worlds myself…
Nehwon, the setting of the Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories by Fritz Leiber, is described as being on the one side of the interior of a bubble rushing upward through the waters of infinity. The stars visible in the night sky (and the sun in the daytime) are supposedly visible through the openings at the center of giant waterspouts on the other side of the bubble; in the story “Trapped in the Sea of Stars,” F. and the G.M travel to that area by boat and see the waterspouts.
The manga BLAME! is set inside The City, an ever-expanding megastructure that extends from at least Earth’s orbit to beyond the orbit of Jupiter. I understand at one point the main character treks across a vast room that apparently used to hold Jupiter, before it was disassembled (good thing he’s immortal).