Mortal Engines Re-imagined

It seems like the best sci-fi books and movies never get picked up for sequels. I find myself wanting to explore these worlds more. I use Midjourney along with Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects to create rough fantasy illustrations for clients. I just couldn't help trying out these tools for one of the stories I wanted to see more imagery of. So let's explore more of what the world of Mortal Engines might have looked like:

What was the evolution of the traction city? How did they get there? Perhaps there were bigger trains at first, massive trains and tracks. Then they started building massive war machines to destroy each other's cities. Eventually there were no more permanent cities, only traction cities and predator cities.

One thing that bothered me is the idea of only massive tracks or wheels to move the cities as they would be hemmed in by mountain ranges and large rivers. Walking machines would be more practical for war in many cases. Perhaps they were more evolved during the wars and then declined to probably traction cities later on.

Perhaps maybe air cities were explored but then mostly abandoned during the wars.

And so it begins.

Early particle weapons used to attack stationary cities.

The evolution of the cities from terrestrial to traction.

Intercity war.

Early nomadic cities.

South American cities.

South American or Asian predator city designed to cross jungle, mountains and rivers.

Development of the cyborg "stalkers".

How many more suffered like Shrike, looking for themselves, looking for their past selves?

Hester Shaw evading, searching for London.

Particle weapons advance leading to the mass destruction of civilization as we know it.

A world war using particle weapons leads to a near extinction event of people, technology and knowledge. People in traction cities have to dig through the past to try to rediscover what humans once knew.

Dispersion and isolation.

Fin