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(Jon sez:)

Your Writer: Jon Kilgannon Here we have a Martian skyscraper standing atop a large bridge over the river. Only a ridiculously advanced society would think of building a structure on a bridge, right?

Not exactly. In fact, some medieval and Renaissance bridges like London Bridge had houses and even shops built atop them, making the bridge look more like a regular street than our modern conception of a major bridge as a large wire sculpture crossing a river.

Mind you, Renaissance Londoners wouldn't have built a skyscraper atop a bridge. Putting aside the difficulties inherent in keeping a skyscraper from falling over in a high wind without anchoring it in the bedrock, which one can presume the Martians have solved by using advanced materials in making the bridge, we have the problem that skyscrapers couldn't be built until steel frame buildings were designed in the late nineteenth century in Mark's town of Chicago.

(Mark sez:)

Your Artist: Mark Sachs All right, the next time I think it would be a good idea to draw a cobblestoned street or an intricately carved gothic anything, will someone please smack me hard? Thanks. Gerhard I am most definitely not.

Yes, you heard Caprice right: Mars does not have a government, except for show. But before you anarcho-libertarians out there get all excited, let me remind you that since Mars is all one person it has no use for a government -- a situation which is unlikely to prevail here on Earth any time soon. Just to twist the knife, allow me to also point out that since Mars is all one person it has no use for an economy either.

Those of you with excellent skyscraper-fu will undoubtedly recognize the inspiration for this Martian tower (it does have a name, but I can't give it away quite yet) as the Tribune Tower here in Chicago, Illinois.