Municipal Darwinism is a fictional concept featured in Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines Quartet. It refers to the practice in the post apocalyptic world described in the series, in which large mobile metropolitan areas, known as Traction Cities, consume one another by gathering other, smaller cities in large hydraulic "jaws". The larger metropolises consume smaller cities, which consume towns, which consume villages, hamlets and stationary settlements.[1]
Captured cities are dragged inside the body of the predator city, where they are then melted for fuel or salvaged for parts. Their citizens either resettle in the city they were just eaten by, or - in less ethical cities - are enslaved, often to work in the predator city's engines. Technology and small goods of value are taken for museums and later usage as well.[2]
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Although the planet eventually calmed down, Traction Cities have been moving for so long the people have forgotten why they moved in the first place, and it is now considered normal.[3] At the beginning of the series, Municipal Darwinism has been in practice for approximately a thousand years.
Municipal Darwinism may be considered a satire of Survival of the Fittest.
The parody is not limited to the predator/prey relationship; the positions of scavenger and parasites are also filled. During Mortal Engines, the main characters find an empty and abandoned city being slowly stripped of goods and scrap metal by scavenger crews from small towns and airships, reminiscent of a decaying carcass being decomposed by bacteria and insects.[4] In Predator's Gold, airships are seen hovering around a large city and sifting through its exhaust smoke to recover minerals, similar to flies hovering around a larger animal.[5] Later in the book, a small aquatic vessel secretly attaches itself to the underside of Anchorage like a barnacle or limpet, and the crew sneak into the city at night to pilfer valuables.[6] Also mentioned is that some smaller towns rely on natural resouses such as mineral deposits and forests, similar to a carnivore/herbivore split between towns
Municipal Darwinism is the centre of life for the people of Traction Cities, and is shown as having religious elements. It is considered dirty and wrong to set foot on bare earth, and "unnatural" for cities to be stationary. The first first engineer to mobilize a city is celebrated in an annual holiday known as "Quirkemass", while Thatcher is mentioned as the god of Unlimited Municipal Darwinism.
Municipal Darwinism is opposed by such groups as the Anti-Traction League, which sees Traction Cities as obstacles that hinder the recovery of the Earth to its natural state, and view their citizens as barbaric. Likewise, the citizens of Traction Cities also view Anti-Tractionists as barbaric, often using the derogatory term "mossie" as in a rolling stone gathers no moss, or in this case a moving town gathers no "moss" and a still (static) one does, to describe them.[7]
From the beginning of the series, it is made clear that the amount of "prey" available has been dwindling in recent years, it is suggested that Municipal Darwinism is not sustainable living.[8][9]
Events come to a head in the final two books in the series, in which the Traction Cities and Anti-Tractionists go to war. The war ends in a stalemate, but many tractionists realise that their way of living cannot go on forever, and some become static settlements.[10] The Age of Traction, where cities plagued across the Earth, was at an end. Great cities such as Manchester, London, Panzerstadt Winterthur and many others had been destroyed, and the deaths were so many the inhabitants of the last traction settlements stopped and became static.
The epilogue of A Darkling Plain, the last book in the series, takes place centuries into the future. It is implied that the Traction Cities have long-since become static, and were partially disassembled to create some of the infrastructure, at least in the static settlement shown.
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