Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

China Mieville

Page: 1 2(3)4 5

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:30 / 19.10.04

Well like I said, when the action takes place in the city, that's all well and good.

By the way, Stoatie, would you be interested in making and carrying an "Iron Council's steaming home!" banner for the next demo we attend?

Our Lady Has Left the Building

16:34 / 15.11.04

Hmmm. I think I share most chavs feelings of slight ambivelence to this book. It seemed a little too long, while the flashback to the start of the Iron Council was so long I lost track of the rest of the story. Perhaps as flashbacks between the other chapters, although that might have been too distracting.

It also didn't help that I didn't realise until halfway through that this was some thirty/forty years after PSS and tS. Maybe my own inattention there. And Mieville was obviously having far too much fun inventing things like colour bombs and other weird things without explaining what they are.

Still a good story though. Amazingly bleak. Anyone understand what the Weaver was on about, in it's small appearence?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

14:58 / 16.11.04

Flyboy- Oh yes.

Regrettable Juvenilia

15:08 / 16.11.04

I actually thought the Weaver worked better here than it did in PSS (heresy!), in that in that one Isaac is able to persuade it to go along with his mad plans just because it likes his style, and while it fucks with Isaac and co a bit (mild mutilation, dumping them in sewers, etc), it doesn't capriciously eviscerate them and anything like that. I always thought it was a bit too easy for Isaac to get this particular deus ex machina to jump through hoops... though the newspaper-boat with the advert will never be beaten.

In IC, it's a bit more scary and fascinating: it turns up right at the moment when something interesting is about to happen, when the "weave" of the universe is about to become more aesthetically beautiful, and by turning up and just showing itself to people, it helps make things happen.

13:38 / 29.11.04

China interviewed (sort of) in the Observer magazine this week.

His first crush was Purity Brown from Nemesis in 2000AD, apparently.

unheimlich manoeuvre

21:20 / 24.12.04

'Tis the Season

Tryphena Absent

00:43 / 25.12.04

He's speaking about voting at the ICA in January, just in case anyone's up for it!

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

01:39 / 25.12.04

That's a wicked story.

ICA could be cool, too...

I'd love to see some kind of panel featuring Mieville and Ken McLeod on the role of socialism in sf and vice versa...

No star here laces

07:30 / 28.12.04

That's quite horrifying. About Purity, that is. Me, I used to vacillate between her and Psi-Judge Anderson...

No star here laces

07:34 / 28.12.04

And by the way, Flyboy, love the way you analysed the reason for the council freezing. that's totally spot on and I wish I'd thought of it. Big up. It's just like the miner's strike, or something.

No star here laces

07:34 / 28.12.04

And by the way, Flyboy, love the way you analysed the reason for the council freezing. that's totally spot on and I wish I'd thought of it. Big up. It's just like the miner's strike, or something.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:12 / 29.01.05

Great interview in the latest Interzone (#196)-

For the artist who is a radical or revolutionary, the stakes on a moral or political level are so high. It becomes a centre of gravity for a lot of things that are important to the way you live your life and the way you see the world. It also becomes terrifying to depict. This is why Marx wrote that you don't write cookbooks for the future. If we were to go through a revolutionary situation we would be changed by it as we were changing things. We would become people capable of living in it and thinking it. But at the moment we're not those people...

...It always struck me that the Golem of Prague is a desperately melancholy story. You know, the idea that the golem is still waiting, ready to rise up and defend the Jewish community of Prague when it's threatened. Because of course you cannot hear that story without thinking of the Holocaust. There's something incredibly sad and poignant about a story so desperately and clearly the kind of utopian protector myth thrown up by an oppressed people, which we can't read except in the shadow of the most monstrous historical event ever.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

06:06 / 04.02.05

Don't know if any of the essays here are of interest to anyone? I haven't actually read them yet...

18:43 / 05.02.05

I just this moment and that might say something for the shallowness of this kind of writing. Nonetheless, it was v. fun to read, and I'm going to go hunt down the rest of Mr. Mieville's books right this moment. Thank you, Barbelith.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

11:40 / 10.02.05

In this essay, on a different subject, the writer casually mentions that 'Toro' is a character from an earlier book. Anyone cleverer than me and able to work out who ze was?

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:08 / 11.02.05

In Perdido Street Station, Derkhan (sp?) mentions that she saw a magistrate sentence a woman who had killed her baby to have the baby's arms grafted onto her head.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

22:57 / 11.02.05

I assumed that was her- for some reason, that throwaway description from PSS stuck with me, so I noticed it.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

07:02 / 28.03.05

Mr Mieville was just on Start The Week on Radio 4- presumably available from their website. He talked about HG Wells- apparently there's a new edition of First Men In The Moon with an introduction written by Mr M. He was also infuriatingly good at discussing the other guests' subjects with them, too (I've always liked the format of that show, but often the mix of guests isn't right, and the bits where they're asked to engage with each other's topics fall a bit flat).

Is it just me, or is China Mieville starting to occupying that prized slot previously inhabited by Iain Sinclair? You know, the one which means Radio 4 get you in whenever they need someone clever to talk about stuff? He seems to be on an awful lot at the moment... not that I'm complaining, mind.

17:28 / 28.03.05

He seems to be on an awful lot at the moment... not that I'm complaining, mind.

I've noticed that as well, not that I'm complaining either mind. Does make me wonder where he finds the time to write though. Whilst we are on the subject of his writing, his novel Iron Council has just been nominated for Best Novel in the 2005 Hugo Awards.

09:55 / 12.05.05

I was in Streatham library the other day to see whether "Hinterland" by Sax off of Barbelith had arrived (it hadn't, but is on order) when I saw from a flyer that China Mieville, together with Jon Courtenay Grimwood, will be giving a talk at Brixton library on 25 May. The talk, entitled Talking About Science Fiction, is part of the Lambeth Readers and Writers Festival 2005 and will be at Brixton library from 7.30-9 p.m. on 25 May.

I probably won't be able to make it because getting the young Jacksons bathed and tucked up in bed usually takes until 7.15, but I thought that others here might be interested.

Keith, like a scientist

17:04 / 13.05.05

i'm thinking of trying these books out.

i see they are a series? Is King Rat the first of the series, or is Perdido the first one?

19:30 / 13.05.05

King Rat is a stand-alone, set in London. Perdido Street Station, The Scar, and Iron Council are set in the same world, with some overlapping characters and situations, but are not really a "series," per se.

Reading King Rat would not have made me want to go seek out the others, so my personal recommendation would be to start with Perdido....

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:06 / 14.05.05

I really enjoyed King Rat... some of it was a bit clunky, but overall it worked and was a lot of fun. But it does seems as though it was written by an entirely different person.
Perdido Street Station, on the other hand, totally blew my fucking head off. It has a ludicrously high "ideas per page" ratio, and many of the ideas are completely mental in themselves.

16:06 / 14.05.05

I'm just wondering if Mieville plans to keep going with the Bas-Lag universe or end it here and start going with other ideas. Frankly, I'd like to him move beyond that into different areas.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

22:40 / 14.05.05

Have you read "The Tain"? It's quite different again, and very good.

01:15 / 16.05.05

I know The Tain is a short story, is there a place you can find it?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

08:59 / 16.05.05

It was originally published as a limited edition novella (for fuck loads of money- fortunately, I found a water-damaged one so I got it cheap)- then (I can't remember the publishers... maybe Legend?) did a series of books containing the stories from this format... one was called "Cities", I think, and had The Tain in it, along with four other city-related stories by different writers. (I know some other of those stories have been appearing in double-header paperbacks- Ken MacLeod's "The Human Front" for one, so it may turn up in one of those at some point).

Our Lady Has Left the Building

13:57 / 16.05.05

China won the 2005 Arthur C. Clarke award! Dressed up in a suit he looks like King Mob! Squeee!

01:20 / 23.05.05

I'm suprised that they gave the award for that piece of tripe Quicksilver

Regrettable Juvenilia

09:54 / 23.05.05

Then why not go and express your criticisms of that novel in an intelligent and perceptive manner in the thread on the subject?

10:17 / 23.05.05

I'm halfway through reading Perdido Street Station now, and I've actually been having nightmares about those bastard moths... I think it's their little fingers that does it, I really don't like the idea of giant moths that can unlock windows and creep into your room at night... Brrr....

Our Lady Has Left the Building

16:00 / 23.05.05

The Zarbi have ruined giant moth people as scary for me I fear...

20:53 / 25.05.05

Cheers, Cash. Went to this tonight and he is a total legend. Bright as fuck and humble with it. Also incredibly funny. Wish I could transcribe the whole thing here but I find myself as verbally constipated as I was in the Q&A (why does awestruck always imply dumbstruck for me?). Jon Courtenay Grimwood is also ace. They both read from their latest and I was (almost physically) blown away by the power of their imaginations. Even down to the annoying know-it-all in the front row who didn't understand what magic realism was, it was a great night. AND my bike was still outside Ritzy when I left. May the Lord bless you and keep you, Barbelith.

22:59 / 25.05.05

Whilst I don't think it was quite in the same league as Perdido Street Station or The Scar, I did think Iron Council was pretty fine - and it's one of those books that gets better after you've read it and sat down and had a think. The colossal metaphor of the frozen train is brilliant, and the kind of thing that fantasy so rarely throws up. It's fairly obvious to whine on about how utterly adolescent and bobbins the vast majority of modern fantasy is, but...well, it's still true: it IS mostly abysmal, but Mieville is writing on another level. It's high adventure, well-written, with some thinking material tucked in there as well.

The Scar stands out as my favourite though, mainly cos it's got pirates.

King Rat feels like it was written by another man - if I'd read that first I would never have sat down to read the Bas-Lag stuff.

As someone earlier in the thread pointed out: he often gets compared to Peake, but the difference is he can actually write a readable story, not churn out 1000 pages of rambly guff enlivened only by some truly corking character names.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

07:23 / 26.05.05

One of the US/Lovecraft publishers (prob. Chaosium or Arkham House, but I don't remember) has recently (well, in the last few months/year) published one of those "new writers doing the Mythos" anthologies which has a Mieville story in. I saw it in FP a while back, but didn't have enough cash on me (it was about twenty quid) and then got drunk and forgot the title.

Anyone read it?

Even though I think Mieville's largely ace because of the toys HE comes up with, it'd be interesting, and probably even fantastic, to see him playing with HP's Lego, just the once.

Page: 1 2(3)4 5