Noah’s Ark ain’t got nothing on these giant walking cities…

Almost 1300 years ago the earth became nearly uninhabitable. The result? Millions of human beings are confined to live in giant shielded walking cities, ever evading massive storm systems and scouring the earth for the raw materials to maintain their lives. But now, resources are becoming scarce and an organization calling themselves, ‘The Children of Gaia’ have appeared, vowing to cleanse the earth of all walking cities. War is brewing and a battle for survival has begun.

What is Upon Stilted Cities?

When I started writing Upon Stilted Cities, I was in graduate school for Anthropology. I was spending a lot of time out in the Nevada desert doing research with representatives from Native American tribes of the great basin. The Nevada desert is beautiful but in some places, life would be difficult in the outdoors. I started thinking to myself, what would it be like to persist out here if the conditions were unlivable? What lengths might human beings go to survive if the entire earth turned to a barren wasteland?

I thought about what I knew about human nature from studying anthropology and other cultures. One thing I have frequently noticed is that humans will do everything they can to put off culture change, this is especially the case when you have powerful individuals or groups controlling everything. Which made me think of how long human beings put things off, we wait until the last minute to fix things. So I thought, what would the world look like if we put climate change off as long as possible. What kind of technology and solutions would emerge? What lengths would humans go to put off the necessary changes that are required to deal with global problems?

The cities in this story are moving Arks, they are a way for humans to preserve the luxury and indulgence of wealth even though the world has crumbled around them. If your wealthy in these cities, you can live for an undetermined number of years and some residents have been alive since the cities began their migration.

Unfortunately, nothing lasts forever.