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Perdido Street Station
The action takes place entirely in a city, New Crobuzon, and it's a large city.
There are loads of things here that are taken from outside the standard fantasy mould. Lots of the inhabitants of New Crobuzon are not human. This isn't revolutionary in itself, but they are far from the normal Tolkien-influenced critters. There are khepri, a weird species that doesn't even look the same for both sexes. The males are rather small and look like beetles while the females are as large as humans and look like a mixture of humans (lower half) and beetles (upper half). They can't talk, but communicate with scents and sign language. There are garuda, which are a kind of bird men. There are walking cacti. There are vodyanoi who live in water and can shape it to sculptures.
One day, Isaac Grimnebulin get a visit from Yagharek, a garuda who has had his wings taken off for some offense that he doesn't want to talk about. He wants Isaac to help him fly again. Isaac takes on the job in a very thorough way and starts investigating various other animals that can fly to find out how it's best done.
This is different from most fantasy. Normally, magic is the only science there is (and often that isn't treated like a science either). In New Crobuzon this isn't the case at all. There is magic, but it isn't the only thing. There are also photography (of sorts), printing presses for underground newspapers, intelligent cleaning robots, air ships and mechanical computers, all together. As if all this wasn't enough to make you think of science fiction, towards the end there's even an example of prime Star Trek technobabble, but in a fantasy mode.
In spite of its bulk, Perdido Street Station is a pretty fast read. The plot as such isn't too complex, but it drives the story forward nicely. What I think really stands out are the descriptions: China Miéville is very good at conjuring moods and environments and getting the reader to realize exactly how something looks, even in an entirely alien environment. China Miéville claims Mervyn Peake as one of his favorite authors, and the similarities to Gormenghast in feel are sometimes striking.
Perdido Street Station feels quite a bit like cyberpunk in a fantasy setting. Most of the common signs are there: a somewhat run-down city environment, technology development in a guerilla manner, drugs, computers, body modification (through surgery and magic instead of gene technology, but still) and quite a bit of attitude. I'm looking forward to see if this book will leave as much of a footprint in the fantasy genre as Neuromancer did in the science fiction genre.
You can purchase Perdido Street Station at bn.com. You can read your own book reviews in this space by submitting your reviews after reading the book review guidelines.
what does this all have to do with cellular automata?
This book has been around a while. I'm wondering what the need for a review is exactly. I did enjoy the book, but something else is going on here, or am I just imagining things?
Now that's out of the way, this book is similar to "Angel Station" by Walter Jon Williams. If you like the reviewed one, you'd most likely enjoy AS..
Pretty crummy website.
You'd think that by now publishers would have ensured they were on top of what must surely be their most important marketing medium.
You think humans look the same for both sexes? I'm glad I don't hang around in the same circles you do.
Personally, I would define this book as "steampunk." The science/tech seems to be fairly driven by gears and such-- its a very low-tech kind of tech, but with high tech implications. What I mean by that is- they use very simple technological concepts like gears, steam, etc. to deliver high tech ideas like artificial intelligence and robots.
I highly enjoyed the book myself and I'm anxiously awaiting the next book, set in the same world, The Scar.
Fantastic book. One of the better things about it is that it has a great cover. Most fantasy (and don't let that term spook you, this book is very urban, and has been acclaimed by both the horror and steampunk crowds) have covers that look like they were done by the Harlequin romance cover artists. It's nice to be able to read a fantasy book in public without shame.
A good interview with the author is here.
-adso
thaumaturgy - The working of miracles or magic feats. According to dictionary.com.
BlackNova Traders
This book has been around for ages (more than a year) so why is it being reviewed on Slashdot, source of cool up-to-date news, now?
-- http://www.strontiumdog.net
I read this a while back, and agree with pretty much everything the reviewer wrote. I'm not sure he covered quite how disturbing some of the ideas in the book are. The mix of magic and technology is quite well done. The machine they use to go to Hell (literally) and the technician's narrative sticks in my mind.
--
E_NOSIG
I'm sorry, but this review doesn't really cut it. I've just finished reading the book, and there's a lot more involved than this thin (and inaccurate) plot synopsis indicates.
Perdido Street Station presents an intricately detailed world. The world may shock and repulse you (as it did me). It will certainly make you scratch your head. You may even wonder what the author was smoking to come up with creatures like the khepri and the Construct Council.
I would not want to inhabit this author's dreams.
In some ways, New Crobuzon and it's inhabitants remind me of "The Difference Engine", rolled together with a bit of "Brazil" and "Dark City". It is worth a read and well deserving of the Hugo nomination it just received. Even if you say nothing else about it, you will have to admit that it is not run-of-the-mill SF.
"Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped." --Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)
First of all, how exactly is a review of a two year old fictional novel news for nerds?
Secondly, did the person reviewing this even bother to research the genre whatsoever? They make several blatantly false blanket statements about the fantasy genre.
This is different from most fantasy. Normally, magic is the only science there is (and often that isn't treated like a science either).
There are many novels in the genre where science and magic co-exist. Any of the Urban fantasies intermingle modern day science with magic (pick up nearly anything by Charles DeLint or American Gods by Neil Gaiman for examples of this). There are also several novels which have both magic and futuristic technology mixed (Look into Anne McCaffery and L. E. Modesitt Jr. for some good Sci-Fi/Fantasy crossover novels).
This review is poorly written. From uninformed generalizations to details about the story which are taken out of context and do not serve to provide any useful information to the reader. Why this made its way to the front page of Slashdot is beyond me.
A new book by China Miéville called The Scar is coming out June 25. It can be pre-ordered from Amazon.
/ qid=1022258634/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/103-1216150-55022 13#product-details
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345444388
From the editorial review:
The Scar begins with Miéville's frantic heroine, Bellis Coldwine, fleeing her beloved New Crobuzon in the peripheral wake of events relayed in Perdidio Street Station. But her voyage to the colony of Nova Esperium is cut short when she is shanghaied and stranded on Armada, a legendary floating pirate city.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
..by James Clavell.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I haven't read the book, so I won't comment on its merits. pinkunicorn, however, does seem to be a bit mistraken about what makes good science fiction.
True science fiction--at least good SF--has nothing to do with technobable. Rather, science and technology are important characters in the story.
For example, Larry Niven takes the idea of a Star Trek style transporter, and examines what it would do to society. Perfect murders go unsolved, protests and riots spontaneously appear and disappear, pickpockets run rampant.
Timothy Zahn creates a super-soldier with implanted weapons and sends the soldiers home. They're feared and hated, develop terrible wasting diseases, and eventually flee to create their own society.
James Hogan explores virtual reality and the effects of total immersion in an unreal world. Alan Dean Foster creats a society of fanciful aliens with a specialized socialst structure and then throws humans into the mix. Frank Herbert creates a self-aware computer that becomes God--or is it the Devil?
There are related genres. Good space opera, like David Weber's works, is classic adventure storytelling set in a detailed and internally consistent technologically-advanced future.
Star Wars and friends is perhaps best classified as science fantasy. The story may be entertaining, but it makes no attempt at basing itself in reality. What psuedo-technology there is serves as colorful background. If Star Wars were truce science fiction, it would have spent more time on the Endor Holocaust than the (admitedly entertaining) final swordfight between Luke and Vader.
So don't expect me to get excited about a story just because it has intelligent cleaning robots and mechanical computers, especially if the plot isn't too complex. If I want intelligent cleaning robots, I'll read Doug Adams and get a great plot and good laughs. If I want mechanical computers, I'll read William Gibson and get a great plot, social commentary, and a fascinating exploration of human nature.
Why SF and fantasy are lumped together is beyond me. What Tolkein and Vernor Vinge have in common besides great creativity and command of the English language escapes my attention.
</rant>
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
Perdido Street Station won the 2001 Arthur C. Clarke award for the best science fiction novel of the year.
"Information wants to be paid"
Randall Garret's Lord Darcy stories and novels were doing this years ago. A parallel Earth (with a couple of historical differences) where "magic" is the technology of the day and is used more as background (the stories tend toward Sherlock Holmes-type mysteries).
Technically fantasy but written to the rules of hard SF such that the stories used to be published in Analog back under John W Campbell, when that magazine had such a reputation for hard SF it was often referred to as "the one with rivets".
-- Alastair
This is as good a time as any to plug Octocon 2002 - China Miéville is the Guest of Honour this year. Time for a trip to Ireland?
Octocon always has a great many guests, and is one of the most fun SF conventions in Europe - doesn't take itself quite as seriously as the large British or American cons, yet it's large enough to attract an impressive lineup.
See you there...
This would have made Chip from Futurama happy. I'm thinking of the Futurama episode where Chip falls in love with a mermaid. After a great romancing phase, the passion derails when they get into bed and Chip suddenly comprehends that he will never again have sex as long as he is in a relationship with a mermaid. As he sprints in terror from her house he wonders "...why oh why couldn't she have been the opposite, with the human part down below and the fish part on top?!?"
.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
What did it for me was the ending. He's far too preachy. Not to spoil it, but after Yagharek has played an instrumental role in saving the city and Issac is ready to give him wings, another garuda shows up and explains what his crime was in the first place. All very well and good, but doesn't saving a city of over a million inhabatants count for something? Surely saving a million lives outwieghs (spoiler!) the rape he committed years ago. Mielville seems to chicken out (no pun intended) at the end and refuse to allow that any rapist could ever be redeemed.
From a literary view, that's my beef with the book. In a post-Christian literary environment, rejecting redemption is like a throwback to Greek drama. His archaic moral, therefore, jives with the steampunk (a better phrase might be "gas-lamp fantasy"), technology-forward fantasy world he's created. A vivid read, but a let-down ending.
Plus, the monsters were rather unoriginal, I thought.
I never have frustrations, the reason is, to wit:
If at first I don't succeed, I quit!
Obviously, what the two authors have in common is a prodigious imagination coupled with a patient intellect capable of exploring an entirely mentally constucted world through many levels and editing it for self-consistency.
Tokien used his vast research of european mythology to make a world of his imagination (middle earth) feel real to the reader, just as Vernor Vinge uses his scientific knowledge to make the universe of his imagination in "Fire Upon Deep" feel plausible (in parts).
Fantasy and science fiction *are* very similar. Both are excellent when the author has imagination, knowledge, and mental discipline to shed insight into our culture, and both are utter trash when all the author has is rehashed ideas, a bad love story, and a colorful front cover.
I found this review more helpful. I haven't had a chance to read this book yet, but it's on my list!
I found this book review through Locus Magazine , which is the best online source of sf and fantasy news that I've found.
Read a good book lately?
I'll have to do a review of The Epic of Gilgamesh or The Book of the Dead one day.
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews