Re: Cones in Art & Literature
 

"On the circular bandstand a brass band had moved in; a little kid with a reedy voice and a cowboy hat sang into the mike. Kids were still swarming everywhere.

He walked to the corner, ducking the ones coming out of the corner drug store dripping ice cream cones and greasy popcorn. He crossed over to La Fonda, only because there weren't kids there."

Re: Cones in Art & Literature
 

"When the cube struck the earth, he wrote, the ruling terrestrial species was a huge, cone-shaped race surpassing all others before or since in mentality and achievements. This race was so advanced that it had actually sent minds abroad in both space and time to explore the cosmos, hence recognised something of what had happened when the cube fell from the sky and certain individuals had suffered mental change after gazing at it."

Re: Cones in Art & Literature
 

"The cone-shaped terrestrial beings kept the one existing cube in a special shrine as a relique and basis for experiments, till after aeons it was lost amidst the chaos of war and the destruction of the great polar city where it was guarded. When, fifty million years ago, the beings sent their minds ahead into the infinite future to avoid a nameless peril of inner earth, the whereabouts of the sinister cube from space were unknown."

Re: Cones in Art & Literature
 

"Down a winding corridor he raced, up a twisted stair, through a carved door, and the same instincts that had brought him there told him he had found what he sought. He was in a circular room with a domed roof from which shone a livid blue light. A strange structure rose in the middle of the rainbow-hued floor, tier on tier, each of a separate, vivid color. The ultimate tier was a purple cone, from the apex of which a blue smoky mist drifted upward to a sphere that poised in midair - a sphere that shone like translucent ivory."

Re: Cones in Art & Literature
 

"It may be well to remark in passing, that in none of the treatises on the subject of this paper which have fallen under our cognizance, have we observed any suggestion of a method- other than those which apply alike to all ciphers- for the solution of the cipher by scytala. We read of instances, indeed, in which the intercepted parchments were deciphered; but we are not informed that this was ever done except accidentally. Yet a solution might be obtained with absolute certainty in this manner. The strip of skin being intercepted, let there be prepared a cone of great length comparatively- say six feet long- and whose circumference at the base shall be at least equal the length of the strip. Let this latter be rolled upon the cone near the base, edge to edge as above described; then still keeping edge to edge, and maintaining the parchment close upon the cone, let it be gradually slipped towards the apex. In this process, some of the words, syllables, or letters, whose connection is intended, will be sure to come together at that point of the cone where its diameter equals that of the scytala upon which the cipher is written. And as, in passing up the cone to its apex, all possible diameters are passed over, there is no chance of a failure. The circumference of the scytala thus ascertained, a similar one can be made and the cipher applied to it."

- "A Few Words on Secret Writing," Edgar Allan Poe

Re: Cones in Art & Literature
 

"I raised the shell with both hands. This time I closed my eyes, and as the sounds of the ancient wind and water echoed in my ears I saw a sudden image of the lonely bay millions of years earlier. High cliffs of white shale reached to the sky, and huge reptiles sidled along the coarse beaches, baying at the grotesque armoured fish which lunged at them from the shallows. Volcanic cones ringed the horizon, their red vents staining the sky."

Re: Cones in Art & Literature
 

"We were up on the lounge deck of the observatory, looking out at the sand-reefs and fossil cones of the volcano jungle glowing in the false dusk, the great 250-foot bowl of the telescope humming faintly in the air above us.

"Tell me, Quaine,' Tallis suddenly asked, 'where would you like to be when the world ends?'"

Re: Cones in Art & Literature
 

"During the next few days, as we checked the stores and equipment inventories and ran over the installation together, I began to wonder if Tallis had lost his sense of time. Most men left to themselves for an indefinite period develop some occupational interest: chess or an insoluble dream-game or merely a compulsive wood-whittling. But Tallis, as far as I could see, did nothing. The cabin, a three-storey drum built round a central refrigerating column, was spartan and comfortless. Tallis's only recreation seemed to be staring out at the volcano jungle. This was an almost obsessive activity - all evening and most of the afternoon he would sit up on the lounge deck, gazing out at the hundreds of extinct cones visible from the observatory, their colours running the spectrum from red to violet as the day swung round into night."

Re: Cones in Art & Literature
 

"The observatory soon fell behind, obscured by the exhaust dust. I passed the water synthesizer, safely pointed at ten thousand tons of silicon hydrate, and within twenty minutes reached the nearest cone, a white broad-backed giant two hundred feet high, and drove round it into the first valley. Fifty feet across at their summits, the volcanos jostled together like a herd of enormous elephants, separated by narrow dust-filled valleys, sometimes no more than a hundred yards apart, here and there giving way to the flat mile-long deck of a fossil lava lake. Wherever possible the route took advantage of these, and I soon picked up the tracks left by the Chrysler on its trips a year earlier.

I reached the site in three hours. What was left of the camp stood on a beach overlooking one of the lakes, a dismal collection of fuel cylinders, empty cold stores and water tanks sinking under the tides of dust washed up by the low thermal winds. On the far side of the lake the violet-capped cones of the volcanos ranged southwards. Behind, a crescent of sharp cliffs cut off half the sky."

Re: Cones in Art & Literature
 

"Round the clock for three days, with only short breaks for sleep hunched in the Chrysler's driving seat, I systematically swept the volcano jungle, winding slowly through the labyrinth of valleys, climbing to the crest of every cone, carefully checking every exposed quartz vein, every rift or gully that might hide what I was convinced was waiting for me."