Comment by thaumasiotes
2 days ago
In Hyperion, the character Martin Silenus is rich enough that he lives in a novelty palace where all the rooms are connected by teleporters. As a joke, the bathroom is a wallless raft on an ocean world.
Outside of the realm of science fiction, my sister followed a TV show for a while that was basically a set of advertisements for a modular home company. One episode featured the installation of a small home on a remote British island; the shower was a pipe outside the house itself.
We installed an outdoor shower at our house. There's nothing as nice as a cold shower outdoors on a really hot day. It feels so luxurious that I can pretend I'm a rich person instead of lower- to mid-middle class.
We live way out in the boonies, so that helps.
Also really good for a house that has beach access.
We once stayed in a beach house with an outdoor shower in South Africa. One morning I got up, took a shower (without my glasses, I am very short sighted) and went in for breakfast. About 20 minutes later my sister-in-law comes running into the house shouting that "there is a huge snake in the outside shower"
I wasn't expecting to read a Hyperion reference in this thread, such a great book.
(And if you haven't read the book you can guess what could possibly go wrong with this setup.)
I feel like that house was a _bit_ of a Chekhov's gun; I think it was the first point in the story where what was going to happen became clear to me.
(This wasn't Simmons' invention, incidentally; Larry Niven did it first.)