So, my frequent-buyer account at one of the used bookstores that I frequent entitles me to big discounts on my next purchase and they have two novels by Mieville: The City and the City and The Iron Council.
I haven't read anything by him except his Bestiary entry in Kingmaker and an interview in the International Socialist Review--anyone have any recommendations between the two books above?
Other than "the cheaper one."
Well, that seals it. Thank you!
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...he did a Bestiary entry in Kingmaker? Where?
I have read The City & The City, and I haven't read Iron Council. However, I have read Perdido Street Station and The Scar, the first two books in the Bas-Lag series.
Iron Council is in Bas-Lag, a fantasy world that is just plain incredible. Everything is over-the-top different. The City & The City takes place (ostensibly) on Earth, and so it's much more grounded in reality. There's no magic, no weird races, no way-out-there things--just a single out-of-the-ordinary concept that binds the story together.
The City & The City is an excellent book, and I recommed it. I enjoyed it more than Perdido Street Station, to be honest.
So, my frequent-buyer account at one of the used bookstores that I frequent entitles me to big discounts on my next purchase and they have two novels by Mieville: The City and the City and The Iron Council.
I haven't read anything by him except his Bestiary entry in Kingmaker and an interview in the International Socialist Review--anyone have any recommendations between the two books above?
Other than "the cheaper one."
I haven't read "The City and the City", but since "Iron Council" is the third (and, in my opinion, the worst) of a series, you should probably avoid it.
I just finished his "Kraken", which was quite good, but trying hard to be "Neverwhere", I think.
...he did a Bestiary entry in Kingmaker? Where?
I don't remember which issue, but it was a race of fish-people. I think it was one of the early ones, because I don't remember reading the last bunch.
I picked up TC&TC but who knows when I'll get a chance to read it. Thanks for the advice IVV & WB!
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I picked up TC&TC but who knows when I'll get a chance to read it. Thanks for the advice IVV & WB!
Post about it when you're done! I'd love to discuss it. Lots of reviewers I read went in one direction with the interpretation and overarcing theme of the book, but I don't think the book's about what the reviewers thought, at all.
I picked up TC&TC but who knows when I'll get a chance to read it. Thanks for the advice IVV & WB!Post about it when you're done! I'd love to discuss it. Lots of reviewers I read went in one direction with the interpretation and overarcing theme of the book, but I don't think the book's about what the reviewers thought, at all.
Alright, I'll put in the queue between The Eyes of the Overworld and The Merry Wives of Windsor.
@Mr. Scholz--Fish-people, right?
V1 Ab
The Ceratioidi designed by China are found on p80 & 81 of AP32 "Rivers Run Red"
somewhat off-topic, but does anyone know the correct pronunciation of the author's full name?
I picked up TC&TC but who knows when I'll get a chance to read it. Thanks for the advice IVV & WB!Post about it when you're done! I'd love to discuss it. Lots of reviewers I read went in one direction with the interpretation and overarcing theme of the book, but I don't think the book's about what the reviewers thought, at all.
Ready when you are!
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Comrade indeed: China Miéville
Okay, so a lot of critics I read about saw the dichotomy between Besźel and Ul Qoma as a parable on segregation. However, those critics are typically Americans with urban cosmopolitan attitudes. Miéville, on the other hand, is British and spent a year in Cairo, earning him a fascination in Arab culture. Furthermore, one of the overarcing themes of Miéville's writing is an exploration of boundaries--witness crisis energy in Perdido Street Station, for example. He is interested in understanding what causes something to be one thing and not another. This background changes the way he sees how the concept of the two cities function.
Segregation is a process by which an overclass prevents an underclass from possibly partaking of overclass resources through official channels. However, there is no overclass or underclass between Besźel and Ul Qoma. In the time frame of the novel, Ul Qoma is seen to be more successful, but that this is also viewed as a temporary state of affairs, and at different times in history Besźel has been better than Ul Qoma. Neither city uses this position to sequester resources from the other, so segregation isn't the situation between the two cities. Indeed, there are more connections between the overclasses of both cities via Copula Hall, suggesting that the overclass/underclass dichotomy is not the true story here.
Instead, what we see is the process by which we willfully ignore segments of our own society. Anyone viewing Besźel and Ul Qoma from the outside sees a potentially continuous fabric. This is not as much a story about how one group keeps another apart, as much as how one group chooses not to notice certain aspects of itself. If there's any connection with the underclass, it is more in how the homeless are "unseen," or in how we try to ignore what the end effects of our policies truly are.
Furthermore, the story is a parable in how we often feel that the walls we put up between ourselves are helpful, good, and right, when in truth they have no substance and are actually rarely helpful--they're really just blinders. It should be clear rather quickly that there is no Orciny per se--tourists would have seen and noted it by now. Instead of Orciny, there is Breach, an organization that can only possibly hold power in keeping the two cities separate, and ultimately gets little more than the opportunity to get fresh Ul Qoma coffee with a Besźel pastry in the morning.
The triumph of The City & The City is that it leads us to question how and why we decide to accept or ignore certain aspects of our own perception. Are we actually doing ourselves a favor?
Well, I'm afraid this conversation is going to be a little bit boring, because I agree with everything you wrote.
I think you're absolutely right. When he started describing the huge convolutions that were necessary in order to exist in the city--how the citizens dealt with traffic, or emergency vehicles, or the part where Borlu remembers Ul Qomans stepping over copulating, stoned Beszels--it became clear that the whole story was about how we have to put blinders on to maintain our sanity in this society. Ignoring the homeless is a good example; the way that most of the industrial world's citizens ignore the fact that their countries are only able to maintain their cushy positions by exploiting the "Third World" would be another one.
The way he describes the training that tourists and immigrants have to undergo before they're allowed into the cities further bolsters your reading. It's not about race or class; it's about the mental contortions we have to inflict upon ourselves in order to live in this world without going bonkers.
I have to admit that I totally fell for the Orciny red herring, though. Even after Borlu and Breach had dismissed it and shown how Mahalia had given up on the thesis, I was still hoping it was true.
On the whole, I was greatly impressed with the book. The blurb from the dustjacket that I quoted in the other thread is right on. Throwing around Kafka and Orwell sets a pretty high bar; I thought Mieville triumphantly lived up to such high expectations. I don't know when I'll get the chance to read something else by him, but I look forward to it!
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Actually, the Orciny red herring is important. A part of us keeps believing in Orciny because we want Orciny to be true. But why? What do we gain from the existence of Orciny?
Orciny's an odd duck, because it represents an escape from the blinders we accept, but only by more greatly enforcing those very blinders. It's kind of how we might hope for conspiracies; the world makes more sense if the problems we face are not only external, but personified. Not only can we delude ourselves into thinking ourselves pure, but we can define a devil to hate. A world that has no devil, no Orciny, no Utopia, requires that we accept our own failings.
Furthermore, I don't personally believe that our own blinders are truly necessary to maintain sanity. Yes, we can look at how we're taking a greater share of world resources than would be allotted us on a per capita basis, and we can note that we really don't deserve this, but then... we have to change our world view to convince ourselves that we do deserve this, for some reason? Or can't we just turn around and say that yes, it's true, we don't deserve it, but we have it anyway, and that's that.
Of course, this position might all just be a result of growing up with conditions that made me an outsider. I learned to say, "Yes, I'm a monster, so what?" at an early age.
But that's a really important question: why do we want Orciny? What do we expect to be there, and why?
Your comments on Orciny are more perceptive than my own thoughts. At the beginning of the novel when the parameters of the world were being set down, I thought Breach were going to turn out to be aliens or some supernatural such--genre expectations and all. Knowing that he was a writer of fantasy and sf, I figured that only fantastical explanations would suffice for the conceit of the novel; but, of course, I was wrong.
I was well aware of Mieville's membership in the Socialist Workers Party (I, myself, at the tender age of 16 was a founding member of the Nashua, NH, branch of the International Socialist Organization, the SWP's American co-thinkers) going into the book. Not that one would necessarily have to be a socialist in order to write The City and the City, but, in retrospect, it seems understandable that, in the end, Mieville would deny any classical science fiction-y explanations and stick with man-made reasons for the peculiarities of Ul Qoma and Beszel. It probably also had something to do with his decision to make Borlu become a Breach avatar at the end of the book--once he actually glimpsed the artificialty of the world, instead of becoming a unificationist rebel he becomes an enforcer of said artificiality.
Chubbs is right.
I am only vaguely aware of the thinkers Comrade Hawkshaw mentions (well, actually, only the first two; I have no idea who Bauman was). I also don't know anything about string theory. I claimed I did (or, rather, that goblins could understand it) in other threads when fighting against the racist canard that goblins can't read, but that was empty braggadocio.
The City and the City is just an excellent, excellent book; it's the only thing by Mieville I've ever read and DUDE I was blown away.
There's a similar-but-not-at-all-the same book by C. J. Cherryh called Wave Without a Shore, sadly out of print now.
Check your local library for Wave Without a Shore. It also has a society that purposely ignores its neighbors.
That, plus the linguistics emphasis in Embassytown, makes me think Cherryh has influenced Mieville a lot.
But that might be because I REALLY like Cherryh and think she is often very underappreciated. For example, I hear a lot of people go on and on about the world building of Herbert's Dune, and it is totally shallow compared to the world building of Cherryh's Union-Alliance universe, or even the Foreigner universe for that matter. And she wrote about 10 times as many books as him.
And I hope she keeps on writing.
Same with Mieville.
Check your local library for Wave Without a Shore. It also has a society that purposely ignores its neighbors.
That, plus the linguistics emphasis in Embassytown, makes me think Cherryh has influenced Mieville a lot.
But that might be because I REALLY like Cherryh and think she is often very underappreciated. For example, I hear a lot of people go on and on about the world building of Herbert's Dune, and it is totally shallow compared to the world building of Cherryh's Union-Alliance universe, or even the Foreigner universe for that matter. And she wrote about 10 times as many books as him.
And I hope she keeps on writing.
Same with Mieville.
Dude, I'd say we were separated at birth, but it was my mother who turned me on to Cherryh, so that has to be genetic, right?
And yeah, her world building is so rock-solid that I know turn into the worst kind of nerd every time a new science fiction movie comes down the pipe (looking at you Avatar and Phantom Menace...)
They should totally do a Chanur movie or Foreigner movie....or series! Each novel could be a season on HBO!
I read the income tax act on a daily basis and I have to say, I think Cherryh can get a bit dry at times. But I haven't really read her since I was a teenager, so maybe I need to revisit.
Okay, but you didn't give your opinion of the income tax act, so who knows what you like :P
But seriously, i'd say give her a try again, but be warned that her writing voice varies a lot depending what sort of story she's telling (fantasy vs science fiction for instance). "A bit dry" is one of those things that happens on the way from the book to each reader's brain, and if you don't like her style I won't be able to convince you, no insult.
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I read the income tax act on a daily basis and I have to say, I think Cherryh can get a bit dry at times. But I haven't really read her since I was a teenager, so maybe I need to revisit.Okay, but you didn't give your opinion of the income tax act, so who knows what you like :P
But seriously, i'd say give her a try again, but be warned that her writing voice varies a lot depending what sort of story she's telling (fantasy vs science fiction for instance). "A bit dry" is one of those things that happens on the way from the book to each reader's brain, and if you don't like her style I won't be able to convince you, no insult.
Reading the income tax act is very similar to reading one of HP Lovecraft's fictional mystical texts. It has sinister purposes, secret incantations, and it drains SAN points. But on the other hand it holds the keys to wealth and eldritch power, and once you really start reading it, you have to continue.
Of course, why you are reading a piece of writing is as important as how it was written I find. I don't read the ITA for escapist purposes the way I read sci fi and fantasy.
I'll give her another shot next time I get some free time.
Yeah, Cherryh's style can change depending on the type of story. I'm not a big fan of her fantasy novels....they tend to vague. But her SF is really, really good.
The Chanur series a space opera written from a truly alien perspective, but really exciting. The lone human IS the alien.
Her Foreigner series is about an ambassador/translator embroiled deep in the politics of a truly alien culture.
Cyteen is about the development of a clone in an experiment that is trying to re-construct her predessor's psychology EXACTLY. And parallel to that, is the development of another clone that is raised as the son of his predessor, without trying to make him be an exact duplicate. It's REALLY interesting.
I enjoy the fantasy as much as the SF, but see how the dissimilarity could be jarring.
Her SF is (putting aside the FTL drives) hard science fiction, whereas her fantasy worlds go back to bronze/iron age superstition rather than a codified magic system; Vague is sorta built into the story at a very basic level is my point.
That said, The Paladin is very interesting. It's set in a pseudo-asian world, and there isn't one example of magic in the book, but wow are those some superstitious times...
Also, Cuckoo's Egg is an interesting precursor to the Chanur stuff; that thar is how the Jedi Academy should have been!
Wasn't this thread about China Mieville once upon a time?
Wasn't this thread about China Mieville once upon a time?
It's alright, it's my thread and I like threads that meander.
Also, it's inspired me to pick up some Cherryh books. There's always tons of them at the used bookstores I frequent, so now I'll pick one or two up!
She also wrote the Lois and Clark novel adaptation of the TV Show... :-P
Tha Paladin was really good too. Downbelow Station, of course.
Her "Rider at the Gate" and "Cloud's Rider" are really good summer reading, but is so evocative of winter's chill it isn't a good winter read without some extra blankets and sweaters!
The Chanur series is 5 books long, and Foreigner is 12 books long so far (supposed to end at 15, I believe), so try to read those in order.
And the Chanur series is part of her Alliance-Union universe, which is about 20 or so books, including Downbelow Station, Cyteen, Regenesis, 40,000 in Gehenna, Serpent's Reach, Tri-Point, etc. etc. etc. Lots of political hard SF with strong characterization.
Don't forget the Morgaine Cycle; that might look like fantasy, but given the intro of Gate of Ivrel, she's definitely sent by the Union!
A moot point now, but IRON COUNCIL isn't really the third book in a series. It's set in the same world as PERDIDO STREET STATION and THE SCAR, but thirty years or so further on with a new cast and a stand-alone storyline. There are some references back to the events of the two earlier novels that you'll get if you've read the earlier two books, but that's about it. It's definitely not a trilogy.
Mieville's next novel, RAILSEA, will be out in May 2012.
A moot point now, but IRON COUNCIL isn't really the third book in a series. It's set in the same world as PERDIDO STREET STATION and THE SCAR, but thirty years or so further on with a new cast and a stand-alone storyline. There are some references back to the events of the two earlier novels that you'll get if you've read the earlier two books, but that's about it. It's definitely not a trilogy.
Mieville's next novel, RAILSEA, will be out in May 2012.
Good to know--my frequent buyer dollars are back up again!
As can see above, I loved The City and the City, but I'd still be interested in seeing what Mieville does with epic fantasy.
Good to know--my frequent buyer dollars are back up again!
As can see above, I loved The City and the City, but I'd still be interested in seeing what Mieville does with epic fantasy.
The Bas-Lag books aren't epic fantasy. Probably closer to steampunk than anything else, but even that doesn't get across their full strangeness.