Metropolitan

Metropolitan is a fantasy novel by American writer Walter Jon Williams, first published in 1995. A sequel, City on Fire, was published in 1997. Setting Metropolitan is set on an unnamed world where, in the distant past, some agency or agencies enclosed the planet in a barrier known as the Shield. The Shield emits light and heat, incinerates all matter that rises above a certain altitude, and absorbs all electromagnetic energy directed into it. As a result, the world has no day, night, or seasons (although it does have weather phenomena like clouds and rain). Its inhabitants divide time into "shifts", which appear to correspond to about eight hours (as they are referred to as "work", "service", and "sleep" shifts). The nature of who placed the Shield around the world, and why, is a major part of the theology of the world's many religions. Over the millennia the population of the world has grown and all available land surface has been covered with a single city, divided into areas called metropolises that are analogous to nations. The metropolises have governments that span the gamut from democracies to dictatorships; "Metropolitan" is used as a title for powerful individuals who rule entire metropolises.