A colleague told me he read a pre-1970s science fiction short story or novel involving a male astronaut who approached a planet or small moon. When the space traveler landed, he discovered that the world was a hemisphere: one side flat, the rest curved. I am not sure of the flat surface was made up of a maze of structures.

This was not "The Men and the Mirror", in which a huge surface turns out to be perfectly concave. And this was not the Arthur C. Clarke story in which a satellite of one of the Gas Giants in our solar system turns out to be a roughly spherical alien artifact.

A note about physics: above a certain size, such a shape would, as a practical matter, be impossible. Reason: hydrostatic equilibrium. Unless it is an extraterrestrial-produced artifact. Perhaps the story or novel explains how the half-sphere came to be.

A colleague told me he read a pre-1970s science fiction short story or novel involving a male astronaut who approached a planet or small moon. When the space traveler landed, he discovered that the world was a hemisphere: one side flat, the rest curved. I am not sure if the flat surface was made up of a maze of structures.

This was not "The Men and the Mirror", in which a huge surface turns out to be perfectly concave. And this was not the Arthur C. Clarke story in which a satellite of one of the Gas Giants in our solar system turns out to be a roughly spherical alien artifact.

A note about physics: above a certain size, such a shape would, as a practical matter, be impossible. Reason: hydrostatic equilibrium. Unless it is an extraterrestrial-produced artifact. Perhaps the story or novel explains how the half-sphere came to be.

A colleague told me he read a pre-1970s science fiction short story or novel involving a male astronaut who approached a planet or small moon. When the space traveler landed, he discovered that the world was a hemisphere: one side flat, the rest curved. I am not sure of the flat surface was made up of a maze of structures. (This was not "The Men and the Mirror", in which a huge surface turns out to be perfectly concave. And this was not the Arthur C. Clarke story in which a satellite of one of the Gas Giants in our solar system turns out to be a roughly spherical alien artifact.) Can anyone identify the story or novel about the world that was one half of a sphere? (A note about physics: above a certain size, such a shape would, as a practical matter, be impossible. Reason: hydrostatic equilibrium. Unless it is an extraterrestrial-produced artifact. Perhaps the story or novel explains how the half-sphere came to be.)

A colleague told me he read a pre-1970s science fiction short story or novel involving a male astronaut who approached a planet or small moon. When the space traveler landed, he discovered that the world was a hemisphere: one side flat, the rest curved. I am not sure of the flat surface was made up of a maze of structures.

This was not "The Men and the Mirror", in which a huge surface turns out to be perfectly concave. And this was not the Arthur C. Clarke story in which a satellite of one of the Gas Giants in our solar system turns out to be a roughly spherical alien artifact.

A note about physics: above a certain size, such a shape would, as a practical matter, be impossible. Reason: hydrostatic equilibrium. Unless it is an extraterrestrial-produced artifact. Perhaps the story or novel explains how the half-sphere came to be.