Lightspeed

Arthur C. Clarke on near-lightspeed travel, from Childhood's End:

    "The important fact was that I knew how far they had to travel, and therefore how long the journey took. NGS 549672 is forty light-years from Earth. The Overlords ships reach more than ninety-nine per cent of the speed of light, so the trip must last forty years of our dine. Our time; that's the crux of the matter.
    "Now as you may have beard, strange things happen as one approaches the speed of light. Time itself begins to flow at a different rate-to pass more slowly, so that what would be months on Earth would be no more than days on the ships of the Overlords. The effect is quite fundamental; it was discovered by the great Einstein more than a hundred years ago.
    "I have made calculations based on what we know about the Stardrive, and using the firmly-established results of Relativity theory. From the viewpoint of the passengers on one of the Overlord ships, the journey to NGS 549672 will last not more than two months-even though by Earth's reckoning forty years will have passed. I know this seems a paradox, and if it's any consolation it's puzzled the world's best brains ever since Einstein announced it.

Continuum, an Agorist Review

Statism comes in all flavors. While Continum appears, on the surface, good science fiction, it comes off more as what happens when the government produces art. Remember Sandman, from Post-WWII Germany? 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ojzpuMdSxc&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Continuum, while having a 90s feel in its writing, also has a slightly "off" presentation. Such anti-capitalist sentiments are only felt on the statist side, with anything but an aesthetic delivery. Corporatism is hardly acceptable, my Che Guevara was hardly more than a criminal thug with moral aspirations. Oh, the irony. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW1bFY11tFQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Travis: anyone that smart is actually smart. 

Continuum

You're welcome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDzP72R1wus&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Future Sights of London

London of the future, from Arthur C Clarke's Childhood's End:

"London had changed enormously in the last fifty years. It now contained scarcely two million people, and a hundred times as many machines. It was no longer a great port, for with every country producing almost all its needs, the entire pattern of world trade had been altered. There were some goods that certain countries still made best, but they went directly by air to their destinations. The trade routes that had once converged on the great harbours, and later on the great airports, had finally dispersed into an intricate web-work covering the whole world with no major nodal points."

"Yet some things had not altered. The city was still a centre of administration, of art, of learning. In these matters, none of the continental capitals could rival it-not even Paris, despite many claims to the contrary. A Londoner from a century before could still have found his way around, at least at the city's centre, with no difficulty. There were new bridges over the Thames, but in the old places. The great, grimy railway stations had gone-banished to the suburbs. But the Houses of Parliament were unchanged; Nelson's solitary eye still stared down Whitehall; the dome of St. Paul's still stood above Ludgate Hill, though now there were taller buildings to challenge its preeminence."