Uglyville, New Pretty Town, Crumblyville are
all parts of the city. Once you see those names,
you realize how divided the city is. People of
different ages live in different parts of town, and
rarely interact. (Littlies live with their
crumblies, of course.)

The Smoke is where the rebel Smokies live, and
it’s called that because in the future, only
runaways who’ve rejected the cities would burn
wood for heat.

Trivia: In the early industrial age, London was
nicknamed “The Smoke,” because its factory
smokestacks filled the sky with gray clouds. Are
the Smokies headed back to that benighted
era?

Rusties are the oil-dependent culture that destroyed itself three hundred years before
the books take place. They are, of course, us.
Everyone calls them Rusties because that’s all
that’s left of them: rust-covered ruins.