China Mieville's Perdido Street Station

[Nyther]

This really should be Sanford's thread since he is the one who turned me on to Mieville.  It fraggin' rocks!  I'm 300 pages in in just two days of start-stop reading.  OMG!  It is the literary version of Kelly's "Shoes!"  Seriously, it is awesome.  Someone likens it to Kafka (there is a race of beings whose females are normal humans until you reach their heads, which are scarabs.  The males are just scarabs, so I guess that makes it Kafka-esque, though I quibble with the comparison), Dickens (the setting is a post-industrial, pre-modern world with people with names like Rudgutter or Teafortwo.  For me, there has to be a little more to it than setting and naming conventions to make something Dickensian), and Neal Stephenson, whom many of you have read and seemed to have liked.

I have already bought "The Scar" and "The Iron Council," his other two books set in New Crobuzon, in anticipation of finishing "Perdido Street Station."

[Zur]

I'd say "Perdido Street Station" is the best fantasy I've read in 15+ years. And "The Scar" isn't far behind.

In addition to Kafka and Dickens, it seems like Mieville owes a debt to folks like Lovecraft, Michael Moorcock and M. John Harrison (all of whom he has talked up in interviews).

He's one of those writers who spins off ideas every few pages that could well be expounded into books of their own.

[Nyther]

His use of language is, right now in fantasy, unparelled.  While the following is a shallow admission, it is true.  I was first taken by the photo on the back of the book.  Mieville looks like an English chulo.  I had no idea that they even existed.  If I ever were to meet a guy who looked that good and with a dic. . . I mean vocabulary that big, he, and then I, in quick succession, would be in trouble.

Words I have learned reading Mieville:

termagant: shrew, harridan
louche: dubious, shady
epigone: an unremarkable protege

Just to name a few.

[Zur]

His use of language is, right now in fantasy, unparelled.  While the following is a shallow admission, it is true.  I was first taken by the photo on the back of the book.  Mieville looks like an English chulo.  I had no idea that they even existed.  If I ever were to meet a guy who looked that good and with a dic. . . I mean vocabulary that big, he, and then I in quick succession, would be in trouble.

Words I have learned reading Mieville:

termagant: shrew, harridan
louche: dubious, shady
epigone: an unremarkable protege

Just to name a few.

He made me look up puissance.

And to my surprise, it didn't mean "smelling of pussy."

[Nyther]

Found this in an article in which Mieville lists 50 SF writers every socialist should read.

Kim Stanley Robinson -- The Mars Trilogy (1992-96)
Probably the most powerful center of gravity for Leftist SF in the 1990s. A sprawling and thoughtful examination of the variety of social relations feeding into and leading up to revolutionary change. (It's also got some Gramsci jokes in it.)

[Mr. Woodhope]

Found this in an article in which Mieville lists 50 SF writers every socialist should read.

Kim Stanley Robinson -- The Mars Trilogy (1992-96)
Probably the most powerful center of gravity for Leftist SF in the 1990s. A sprawling and thoughtful examination of the variety of social relations feeding into and leading up to revolutionary change. (It's also got some Gramsci jokes in it.)

Cool...how about a link? Or was it an analog article?

[Nyther]

My bad:

http://oat.tao.ca/node/view/218

He also suggests Charlotte Perkins Gilman's work "The Yellow Wallpaper."  Short story, easily readable in one sitting, creepy shit.  Oh, and written in the 19th Century.  You can read an online version: http://itech.fgcu.edu/faculty/wohlpart/alra/gilman.htm or I am sure I have one or two in different anthologies.

[Zur]

Cool list. Quite a few interesting books I had never heard of. He's obviously a well-read feller.

How does he have the time to plow through so much heady literature while finishing his PhD at the London School of Economics, writing sprawling novels and working out to keep his biceps so huge?

He's obviously a better time manager than I am. (Man crush revealed.)

Incidentally, he's right on with these...

Stefan Grabinski -- The Dark Domain (1918-22; trans. and collected 1993)
Brilliant horror by this Polish writer. Unusually locates the uncanny and threatening within the very symbols of a modernizing industrialism in Poland: trains, electricity, etc. This awareness of the instability of the everyday marks him out from traditional, "nostalgic" ghost story writers.

M. John Harrison -- Viriconium Nights (1984)
A stunning writer, who expresses the alienation of the modern everyday with terrible force. Fantasy that mercilessly uncovers the alienated nature of the longing for fantastic escape, and show how that fantasy will always remain out of reach. Punishes his readers and characters for their involvement with fantasy.

H.G. Wells -- The Island of Dr Moreau (1896)
Like a lot of Wells's work, this is an uneasy mixture of progressive and reactionary notions. It makes for one of the great horror stories of all time. A fraught examination of colonialism, science, eugenics, repression, and religion: a kind of fantasy echo of Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Octavia Butler -- Survivor (1978)
Black American writer, now discovered by the mainstream after years of acclaim in the SF field. Kindred is her most overtly political novel, the Patternmaster series the most popular. Survivor brilliantly blends genre SF with issues of colonialism and racism.

Philip K. Dick -- A Scanner Darkly (1977)
Could have picked almost any of his books. Like all of them, this deals with identity, power, and betrayal, here tied in more directly to social structures than in some other works (though see Counter-Clock World and The Man in the High Castle). Incredibly moving.

[Loken]

Oh good I've read a few of those, I feel less illiterate.

[Nyther]

Of the works that Sandford listed, Mieville says that the most interesting monsters, he believes, are the beastmen of The Island of Dr. Moreau.

[Mr. Woodhope]

Of the works that Sandford listed, Mieville says that the most interesting monsters, he believes, are the beastmen of The Island of Dr. Moreau.

Boy, it's been a long time since I read that.

[Zur]

Of the works that Sandford listed, Mieville says that the most interesting monsters, he believes, are the beastmen of The Island of Dr. Moreau.

Boy, it's been a long time since I read that.

Or seen the shitty Michael York movie!

(Actually it wasn't THAT bad.)

[Loken]

What about that fine version with Val Kilmer and Marlon "Bananas" Brando.

[Zur]

What about that fine version with Val Kilmer and Marlon "Bananas" Brando.

Never saw that one. Any good?

[Nyther]

What about that fine version with Val Kilmer and Marlon "Bananas" Brando.

Never saw that one. Any good?

No!  It sucked ass (although Val was kinda hot).  The Michael York one has been playing repeatedly on MonsterHD.  I really kinda like it.  Wasn't the Michael York version a re-make of an earlier version?  I rememer a black & white version that played when I was a kid.  The cool thing about it was whenever something scary was about to happen a tiny bell would ring.  The bell was for the benefit of the viewing audience who may become too frightened by what was coming up.  Even as a kid, I though that was hilarious.