Science, Technology and Magic
New Crobuzon's technological capabilities are decidedly steampunk/clockpunk: difference engines, advanced clockwork "constructs", helium-balloon airships, firearms, primitive photography and coal-powered trains and ships all abound in the three Bas-Lag novels. Yet despite all this, the citizens of New Crobuzon seem, by the 18th century, to merely be utilizing the inventions left to them by their ancestors. They apparently do not have the know-how necessary to repair the city's aeromorphic engine, for example, and widespread fear of artificially-intelligent machines prompts the New Crobuzon government to destroy its population of constructs between 1780 and 1805. New Crobuzon seems to be limping along in terms of scientific and technological achievement, having devolved significantly since its heyday hundreds of years prior. Occasionally, a new technology may be rediscovered, and it is suggested in Iron Council that the phonograph may be an example of this.
Where science fails, however, magic steps in. New Crobuzon harbors a large population of magic-users — broadly referred to as "thaumaturges" — who are capable of earning a substantial living from their craft. The Militia utilizes thaumaturges, as does organized crime and private industry. Bio-thaumaturges often find work as ReMakers; their skills allow them to do virtually any transplant or alteration without causing lethal trauma to the victim, potentially making them master surgeons. Such a practitioner is yet to be seen, however, and the post seems to attract sadistic psychopaths who relish the opportunity to inflict a fate worse than death on sentenced criminals. In the pirate city of Armada, though, there exist Remakers whose craft is not used for punishment but for bodily augmentation. The arcane is treated like a science, with courses available on the subject at New Crobuzon's eponymous university; senior members of the faculty are often tied to the higher level of government.
Following the purge of constructs, golemetrists – thaumaturges specialising in the construction of golems – have risen in demand. Golems in New Crobuzon and Bas-Lag can be made of any substance or abstract concept. In Iron Council there are golems made of (among other things) water, light, sound, corpses, railway tracks, stone and even time. A somewhat similar brand of magic is the ability to summon and control elementals, performed by thaumaturges called elementarii. Some of the more bizarre types seen in Bas-Lag include moonlight and flesh elementals.
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