Kim Stanley Robinson

Two parallel rows of white pillars ran down the side of the canal; each pillar was a Bareiss column, semicircular at top and bottom but with the half-circles rotated 180 degrees to each other.  This simple maneuver created pillars that looked completely different depending on where you were when you looked at them, and the two rows of these pillars had a strange tumbledown look, as if they were already ruins, although the smoothness and whiteness of their diamond-coated salt belied that.  They stood off the grass as white as sugar cubes, and gleamed as if wet.