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"My feeling is that the chance of our surviving into the twenty-first century as working civilization is less than fifty percent but greater than zero."
- Isaac Asimov
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| Municipal Darwinism | ||
| The process by which smaller towns were eaten by larger ones. |
Traction Cities rumbled across the landscape, seeking their natural prey - other cities.
| The little town was so close that he could see the antlike shapes of people running about on its upper tiers. How frightened they must be, with London bearing down on them and nowhere to hide! But he knew he mustn't feel sorry for them. It was natural that cities ate towns, just as the towns ate smaller towns and smaller towns snapped up the miserable static settlements. That was Municipal Darwinism, and it was the way the world had worked for a thousand years, ever since the great engineer Nikolas Quirke had turned London into the first traction city. |
| From Mortal Engines,
by Philip Reeve. Published by EOS in 2003 Additional resources -
|
You know what they say - "it's a town-eat-town world."
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Tech news articles related to Mortal Engines
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Municipal Darwinism-related
news articles:
- Smart Homes And Municipal Darwinism
| Is It Better To Be Short? |
| The Coming Hell Of ChatGPT Salesbots |
| Holly+ Processes Your Singing In Holly Herndon's Voice |
| Megachurches Catch Up To Heinlein |
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Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
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'It was about five feet long, a silver flexiprene-covered body like a fat snake...'
'The tape-recorded synthetic voice spoke with its usual dispassionate calm'
'The pokkecon rang again. *The coffee’s for him?* Tsuyoshi said.'
The Jetsons imagined so much future.
'Rod placed the brain inside the panel... the horse raised its head, wiggled its ears, blinked twice, gave a tentative whinny.'
'Pina2bo would have to operate full blast for many years to put as much SO2 into the stratosphere as its namesake had done in a few minutes.'
'Chain of hotels that specialized in non-human service.'
'But then... not every bulldozer operator works on the Moon.'
