Holy shit! That's what I get for posting something bizarre and then staying
away from an internet connection for a couple of days.

Without being too far behind on this cavalcade of discourse, I can reveal
the following:
Yes, it's a cylindrical space habitat which rotates for centrifugal gravity.
It is mostly based on descriptions from Peter F Hamilton's 'Night's Dawn'
series, which featured both hollow-asteroid and 'bitek' habitats (the
latter grown from seeds in orbit around convenient gas giants). However, as
discussed wholesale, this is simply one of the more recent incarnations of
an old idea.

Incidentally, I re-read 'Ringworld' only last week, which was the partial
inspiration for this WIP. Oh, and in response to the unnecessarily heated
Dyson sphere gravity debate, surely if you were sufficiently advanced to be
able to hammer flat everything in your system larger than a pebble and wrap
it all round your sun, gravity wouldn't be a problem? You'd just bolt a few
trillion no.8 gravity generators to the outer surface and hey presto! Or at
least follow the Ringworld lesson - spin the sphere up and live on the
equator.

Anyway, don't think all these allusions have gone unnoticed. Rama might be
the earliest version of this idea - I personally haven't read anything
earlier. Greg Bear's Thistledown provided some of the best descriptions
I've ever read of cylindrical habitats like these, although IIRC that
cavern-space was extremely large. Iain Banks makes reference to similar
stuff, but only as background ammo, most of his action tends to take place
in deep space, or on planets or orbitals.

My habitat is about 20km long and 10km in diameter. There is a light source
at the centre, which will eventually be a 10km plasma tube along the axis.
It's bloody difficult making landscapes that look good and detailed from
above, so I don't know how far this will go, but I'm going to put some
buildings etc in to help with the sense of scale.

Anyway, here's a better version, a bit bigger, and a bit hazier.

Bill

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