Help finding story about a tree

[ams4k]

I'm trying to find a classic sci-fi story (probably from the 1950s or earlier) in which the earth has been "cleaned" by machines to the point that only one tree or a little bit of nature is left, preserved under a dome, and images of it are projected into people's homes so they can remember what nature used to be. Does that sound familiar to anyone? Thanks so much for any help!

Andy

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

Yes - I think. I can't remember much about the book but it's a dystopia where the entire world has been covered with city and there is one last square mile of park left. I'm thinking it may be Clarke.

Having said that similar scenarios have been used by Anne McCaffrey in her Doona books, Silent Running of course, and several others.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[ams4k]

Thanks for this, Greg. I am still searching. Silent Running has the same theme, but the story I'm looking for definitely had that "projection" element, where images of the park/tree were visible to people elsewhere. I don't THINK I'm confusing it with the great sci-fi story, "Light of Other Days," about "slow glass." If you have any other thoughts, I'd be really grateful.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

I think it's the Doona books. In them the Earth has become so over crowded that only a few square miles of park exist and everyone lives in steel cities which cover the globe. That's just the background to the story - the motivation for the very few people who want to, to settle on another world. And from memory every colonist who was sent to Doona had to spend time in the "parks" to see if they could deal with living in them. I can't remember whether people projected images of the parks into their homes, but maybe they did.

And as another thought, you might consider the Foundation series - Asimov. It's many years since I read them but Trantor was another of these worlds completely covered by a city.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Trantor had one park, the Emperor's Garden