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Photo: Pete Young, 2007 (CC by-nc-sa 3.0).
The distinctively bohemian Chelsea Hotel, at 222 West 23rd Street, New York, was opened in 1884 as one of the city’s earliest cooperative apartment houses. It became a hotel around 1905 and is now on the US National Register of Historic Places. Artists and writers who have lived here over the years include Brendan Behan, William Burroughs, Arthur B. Davies, James T. Farrell, Robert J. Flaherty, O. Henry, Arthur Miller, James Schuyler, John Sloan, Dylan Thomas, Virgil Thomson, Thomas Wolfe... and Arthur C. Clarke, who first stayed here in 1956, and again in 1964 while writing 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Photos: publicity shots, © 2005 Hanson Robotics, all rights reserved.
The PKD-A Android, also known as ‘RoboPhil’ and built by Hanson Robotics, converges numerous machine perception and AI technologies to mimic Philip K. Dick’s conversation style and facial movements. RoboPhil also had his own living environment known as ‘Club VALIS’, and has since attended several conventions, including Comic-Con in July 2005 at which he appeared as a panelist. ‘RoboPhil’ went missing in January 2006: he was packed for a flight to California, was last seen being loaded onto the plane, and has still not been recovered.
Photo: © 2003 Bobbi Lane, used by permission.
‘Dr. Evermor’ is the 19th Century alter ego of former scrap metal dealer Tom Every, who has spent many decades demolishing hundreds of major industrial machines while at the same time turning them into the science fictional landscape known as the Forevertron, the worlds biggest sculpture, situated seven miles south of Baraboo, Wisconsin.
The Forevertron is Every’s improvised monument to late 19th century scientific ingenuity that blends flights of fantasy with reality, and among other things incorporates the Apollo program’s decontamination chamber. As might be expected of a project carried out on such a grand scale the Forevertron also has its own spacecraft known as the ‘Graviton’ – a giant glass ball inside a copper egg – that will take Dr. Evermor to his final face-to-face meeting with God when he “highballs it to heaven”.
