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"None of us, no matter what continent or island or ice cap, asked to be born in the first place, and that even somebody as old as I am, which is 80, only just got here."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
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| Traction City Gut | ||
| The area of a Traction City used for taking apart and consuming captured prey cities. |
Big Traction Cities preyed on smaller ones; a captured city was "consumed" in the Gut.
| The Gut was where London dismantled the towns it caught; a stinking sprawl of yards and factories between the Jaws and the central engine rooms. Tom loathed it. It was always noisy, and it was staffed by workers from the lower tiers, who were dirty and frightening, and convicts from the Deep Gut Prison, who were worse. The heat down there always gave him a headache and the sulfurous air made him sneeze and the flicker of the argon globes that lit the walkways hurt his eyes. But the Guild of Historians always made sure some of it staff were on hand when a town was being digested, and tonight he would have to join them and go about reminding the tough old foremen of the Gut that any books and antiques aboard the new catch were the rightful property of his Guild and that history was just as important as bricks and iron and coal. |
| Technovelgy from Mortal Engines,
by Philip Reeve. Published by EOS in 2003 Additional resources -
|
Recycling meets Municipal Darwinism.
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'... making the point that their likenesses, every move they made, were being transmitted.'
'But the stars are only atoms in larger space, and in that larger space the star-atoms could combine to form living matter, thinking matter, couldn't they?'
'...to build up a video picture would require, say, ten million decisions every second. Mike, you're so fast I can't even think about it. But you aren't that fast.'
'The area affected was five hundred kilometres across, and perfectly circular.'
'Hasan always pitched a Gauzy - a one-molecule-layer tent, opaque, feather-light, and very tough.'
'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
