A BRIEF HISTORY OF MUNICIPAL DARWINISM
By Deputy Head Historian Chudleigh Pomeroy
An Editor's Note: The following is a wonderful early essay by author Philip Reeve, offering deeper insight into the world of Mortal Engines from the perspective of London's own Chudleigh Pomeroy. While likely not strict canon, it serves as a fantastic primer on how Traction Cities came to be!
Pomeroy was wonderfully played by veteran British actor Colin Salmon in the 2018 film. To explore the events of this era in greater detail, check out Reeve's prequel series, starting with the novel Fever Crumb.
This work was originally hosted on Reeve's own site and was recovered via the Wayback Machine. All rights belong to Philip Reeve.
(Re-published by kind permission of the Guild of Historians.)
1: The World After The War
After the Ancients destroyed themselves in the Sixty Minute War, there were several thousand years when Nothing Much Happened. These were the Black Centuries. Mankind was reduced to a few thousand individuals; scattered bands of savages who hid in cellars and caverns to escape the plague-winds and the poisoned rain, and survived on the canned goods they managed to dig up from the ruins of their ancestors' great cities. It was a savage age, when life was cheap, and most people would happily have sold their own children for a tin of rice pudding.
Even when the ash-clouds thinned and the sun returned, bringing new growth to the scorched earth, humanity was still beset by famines, pestilence and other types of unpleasantness. Vast upheavals and rearrangements of the Earth's surface were underway. Whether these were due to the lingering effects of the mighty weapons which the Ancients had used in their war, or were merely a natural process, we cannot know.
What is certain is that mighty new mountain ranges arose (the Shan Guo uplands, the Deccan Volcano Maze and the Tannhauser Mountains being the prime examples). At around this time, among other great changes, some violent storm or convulsion in the planet's crust caused the western edges of the island called 'Britain' or 'Uk' to sink beneath the Atlantic, while the North Sea drained away entirely, leaving Britain attached by a land-bridge to the rest of Europe. (This was one day to have great consequences for a miserable, ruinous city called London, which clung on, barely inhabited, to a place beside the muddy river Thames.)
2: New Shoots From The Ashes
Life in the Black Centuries was difficult, disagreeable and generally pretty short, and it would be many thousands of years before anyone had the time or inclination to set about building a new civilization. In most parts of the world, all knowledge of the past had been swept away, and human beings lived little better than animals. Indeed, some were not truly human at all, for lingering poisons from the war had caused mutant off-shoots of humanity to arise; chief among them the warlike Scriven and the sinister Nightwights.
In Africa, however, where the plague-bombs and orbit-to-earth atomics had not fallen so thickly, a certain amount of learning had been preserved, and it was here that the first flowers of civilisation began to bloom afresh. The so-called 'Spring Cultures' of Zagwa, Ogbomosho and the Tibesti Caliphate eventually grew into great trading cultures whose merchants and missionaries helped to restore civilisation to the rest of the world.
3: Of Nomad Empires and the Dawn Of Traction
In none of these new societies did anyone attempt to match the technological achievements of the Ancients. Most, indeed, prohibited science and the building of complex machines, which they blamed for the disaster of the Sixty Minute War. In the northern part of Europe, however, certain remnants of the old world were revered. Slowly, cultures arose that did not just worship the old machines, but tried to make them work again.
These were eventually swept away by the rise of the Nomad Empires, rowdy hordes of barbarians who used whatever technologies they could find or steal. They built armies of 'Stalkers' or 'Resurrected Men', and their mobile battle-platforms and 'traction fortresses' have been seen as the fore-runners of the Traction Cities we live upon today. One of these Nomad Empires was the Scriven, a mutant race from the high north, famous for their speckled skin and spectacular cruelty. They were gradually driven south and found their way at last to London, a squalid trading-post.
They conquered it easily, and ruled it for almost two hundred years. Under their rule London began to thrive. Merchants and scholars were drawn to the city by the relics from the Ancient world which scavengers dug up. The Scriven even set up the Order of Engineers, a fore-runner of our present-day Guild. But the Scriven line was growing weak, and they were overthrown. There then followed a brief period of independence before new nomad conquerors swept in from the north. These new arrivals called themselves the Movement, and their arrival marks the beginning of a new age; the Traction Era. For they were led by the genius who would transform our city, the immortal First Helmsman Nikolas Quirke.
When the notion of Traction Cities first came to him, none now can say. Whatever the origin of the plan, Londoners soon came to see its wisdom - especially when it was pointed out to them that a mobile London need not just flee its enemies; it could conquer them! Over the following few years the city was torn down and rebuilt in the form of a gigantic vehicle. Today's Londoners would scarcely recognise the city on which their ancestors first set forth. Far smaller than modern London, it rolled on wheels instead of tracks, it had no jaws yet, and its three tiers were protected with armour.
At this time we see the beginnings of the Guild system. All the Guilds met together in council to decide on the city's future course. The Navigators who were responsible for steering it, and the Merchants who helped fund it quickly came to dominate. Historians, while lacking political power, were greatly respected, for they had already begun to create the London Museum. It is interesting to note that London's engineers had very little power at that time. It would still be several more centuries before they achieved the dominion over London affairs which they presently enjoy.
4: The 'Traction Boom'
As London increased its size and speed, other cities began to copy its lead. Quirke-ite thinkers explained it thus: The Great Quirke has brought about a new phase of history. From this time on all civilised people will wish to live aboard towns which move. Those that are strong and swift will eat up those which are slow and weak. In this way the affairs of men will come into harmony with the natural world, where the fittest survive. The theories of the Ancient philosopher Chas Darwin had recently been re-discovered, and the new system was quickly labelled Municipal Darwinism.
There then followed the period known as the 'Traction Boom', during which cities and settlements of every size were compelled to 'go mobile', or to face being eaten. Some added tracks like London's, others experimented with inflatable wheels, systems of rails, or even, in the case of the short-lived Pogo-city of Borsanski Novi, some large springs. Others rebuilt themselves as rafts and took to the seas. Some, like Airhaven, became airborne. Even the icy polar wastes are traversed by cities, and the floors of the oceans have become the hunting grounds of submarine towns.
As Municipal Darwinism spread, the static cultures soon began to wither away. Today they survive only in mountainous regions, such as Shan Guo, where the warrior-monk Batmunkh founded his Anti-Traction League. In Africa, the degraded remnants of the Spring Cultures still protect their heartlands, but even with the League's help, their territories grow smaller every year. Despite such League atrocities as the sinking of Marseilles, most people believe firmly that moving cities are the future, and that Municipal Darwinism will triumph.
I wonder what Mr Pomeroy knows about the history of Thunder City or how to watch the X-Men films in chronological timeline order.
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