Entertainment in the gyrealms is shaped less by distance from Earth — which imposes no meaningful delay at L5 — than by the fact that every interior surface can be a display, and that the habitat’s own rotation supplies a spectacle no planet can.

The turning sky#

Because a habitat completes a rotation in a few minutes, an exterior view rendered on an interior sky is in constant motion. Venues sited for the view make this the entertainment. In a ballroom oriented for it, Earth rises at one side of the room and arcs slowly over the band while the Moon sets at the other; a minute and a half later the Moon takes its turn, rising from the far side and making its own tour of the room before setting in the west. When the habitat is pointed near Earth, the Moon appears to orbit it every few minutes.

The effect is unremarkable to residents and reliably disorienting to visitors, and venues that trade on it are a standard item on any tourist itinerary.

Screen entertainment#

Domestic screen entertainment is broadly continuous with the terrestrial tradition, including its genres of anxiety. Horror concerning runaway self-replicating machinery is a durable form — the film Nanotor’s Revenge is a well-known example of the type — which is a notable inversion given that self-replicating factories are the technology that made the habitats affordable and that the audience’s homes are their product.