I just returned from the national conference of the American Christian Fiction Writers in Nashville. The conference was held at the Gaylord Opryland Resort. Over 2,000 rooms and three giant conservatories filled with plants are covered with gigantic domes, which means the climate is regulated to perfection. The photo above shows a boat with tourists who are being told about the surrounding plants. A restaurant sits above it. I did not take this photo outside. This entire river scene is under the dome.

The man-made river encircles a man-made island with shops and walkways, as you can see in the photo below.

This artificial city got me to thinking about speculative fiction stories set in cities under  domes. Like in the scifi movie Logan’s Run. Or more creepy, the home of Prince Prospero in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Read Death. In that story, the evil prince of a land ravaged by plague holes up in his abbey with a few hundred best friends, and they party it up while disease runs its course and wipes out the rest of the population.

If you wrote about life in the city under the dome, what would be the reason for sealing off the population? Who would be your main character?