New varieties of Gowdy space-times

Gowdy space-times are generalized to admit two commuting spatial local Killing vectors, and some new varieties of them are presented, which are all closely related to Thurston's geometries. Explicit spatial compactifications, as well as the boundary conditions for the metrics, are given in a systematic way. A short comment on an implication of their dynamics toward the initial singularity is made. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics.