He explained that "on the one side I'm trying to play by the ivory-tower rules, and on the other side people are playing by a different set of rules".
"The twin towers ruled over Lower Manhattan as more than just symbols of economic power," she wrote.
Even Metropolis, in which wealthy intellectuals in dazzling towers rule machine-wielding workers living in abject poverty below, was about "today" rather than "tomorrow".
One is Asgard, a haven of golden towers ruled by Thor's father, the one-eyed Odin (Anthony Hopkins), and closely modelled on the cover of every mid-seventies concept album you wished you'd never bought.
The twin towers ruled over Lower Manhattan as more than just symbols of economic power; standing side by side for almost 30 years, they could also seem romantic, the architecture of companionship.
Investigators from the Air Accident Investigation Branch are trying to establish what caused the eight-seater AgustaWestland 109 to clip the crane attached to the side of the St George Wharf tower, despite rules requiring aircraft to stay at least away 500ft from all structures.
The Buildings Department notified concrete contractors at high-rise buildings this week of what its top crane regulator called "new requirements" for erecting, dismantling and raising tower cranes — rules that construction industry officials called onerous ones that would hamper building activity in New York.
The drug bust in question centres on a gargantuan tower block ruled by villain Ma-Ma (Lena Headey), who rules with an iron fist while hooking up the inhabitants with (apparently) high-quality supplies of the intoxicant slo-mo.
But by some standards, the allowances were quite generous: London had only just begun tinkering with its 100-foot limit, while Paris (despite the Eiffel Tower) had ruled itself off at 65 feet.
Although the sculptor, Stephen Shaheen, and his supporters had intended the piece for the lonely dunes of Sandy Hook, symbolically filling the void once occupied by the twin towers, federal rules bar memorials and monuments from national park land.
What it can't solve are the underlying problems of Alex Garland's script, which traps world-weary Dredd and rookie judge Anderson Olivia Thirlbyy) in a tower block ruled by a fiendish drug lord (Lena Headey), whose home-brewed narcotic "slo-mo" causes time to crawl for the user – much like the fictional drug cake, about which prankster Chris Morris infamously had questions asked in the House.
