Carl Abbott represented three different types of migratory cities, namely hunter-gatherers, cities riding the rails, and distributed cities. Hunter gatherer, taking the walking city in Ron Herron’s book as an example, is a huge self-contained min-city that looks like a combination of giant building cranes, robots, and praying mantis, with the core features of flexibility ad motion. Cities riding the rails, often taking train or spaceship as a carrier to realize the movement of the city along rails. But it is questionably a city because it has no hinterland, no trade, no interactions with a large world. Distributed city, such as the Swarm in Alastair Reynolds’ novel, is one those neighborhoods and districts are widely parceled out over space and form a unit by interacting over distance. All these kinds of cities are constantly moving in search of resources, trade or living space.
In my opinion, science fiction is an extension of reality on another dimension. Although the proposal of these migratory cities are quasi-utopian thought experiments, they are actually a reflection on the environmental pollution, resource waste and even class differentiation of modern industrial cities. In these artworks, the portrayal of lacking resources or environmental pollution should be reflected.
Name: Fanyu Liu
UID: 3035534397
Appreciate your well-articulated summary of Abbot’s text. Science fictions are definitely critiques of cities in reality. Well done.