You couldn’t be more right. I think Mieville is all about difficult moral decisions. I can’t imagine someone reading his books and walking away saying, “Well, THAT lacked moral nuance!” Too many examples to be listed here, esp. in a thread that is suppsed to be spoiler-free, but there’s one good example from Perdido that Daniel mentioned. Bellis’ decision in The Scar, and that of her co-conspirator, is riddled with agonizing moral dilemmas about what is right. Judah Low is also tortured by how to fill his role as company man gone native.
Yeah, the authority figures are usually either assholes or crazy, but then, I find that to be true in real life as well.
> Which brings up another troubling point about Mieville-- his stupid name. I had
> no idea that “China Mieville” was supposed to be male until I read one of his
> books’ cover copy. No wonder the poor bastard’s a terminal socialist, as he was
> obviously raised by hippies.
Although his parents were indeed hippies, that’s not entirely why they named him “China.” In cockney slang, you can call a friend “My old China.” Cockney slang is formed by dropping the last word in a phrase that rhymes with the word that the slang phrase stands for. So “mate” becomes “China plate,” which becomes “China.” His politics weren’t formed particularly by his mother’s politics (and he hardly knew his father at all). As far as I can figure out from his interviews, he didn’t, for instance, wear Mao T-shirts or do anything else particularly political in his early childhood. He says that as a child he was somewhat of a nerd. He looks to me (the couple times I’ve seen him) rather imposing, so I can’t imagine anyone beating him up.
Let me note that I’ve only read Perdido St. Station, so I can’t say anything about his other books.
The deck is stacked against authority as far as reader sympathies are concerned. In Meiville’s wold, the authorities can never, ever do anything good, beneficial or wise, not even by accident.
Take the Mayor, for instance. For a while there, at least to me, he’s the most admirable character in the book. Besides being refreshingly free of self-righteousness, he’s also good at his job. When he learns of an impending disaster he and immediately gets on the task, allocating forces, making plans, thinking ahead - which is more than you can say about the socalled “heores.” The man even risks his life with the Wever to help his city.
And of course, nothing he does works. At best his attempts simply fail, and at worst they actively get in the way, like in the climactic gunfight with the police (who after all are on the same side as the protagonists). And even that’s not enough. The author, fearing that even after all his efforts we might still not be convinced that the man and everything he represents his pure 100% evil, he tacks on a ridiculous sub-sub-plot of his going around stealing peoples’ eyeballs! It’s practically something out of Soviet propeganda.
Now compare this to Partchett’s wonderfully intricate interplay between Ankh-Morporkh leaders Patrician Vetinari and Commander Vimes, both of them authoritarians with very reserved attitudes towards personal freedom. Mievelle would have made Vimes a pedophile and Vetinari a vampire.
Maybe, but not being aware of how OTT your approach is suggests a certain disconnect with reality. I’ve haven’t seen much self-criticism or self-mokery in his work - he seems to take his politics far too seriously for his own good.
There are some ambivalent authority figures in the other two books, which mostly take place outside New Crobuzon. If you’re just talking about PSS, then you’re talking about Mayor Rudgutter.
Yes… turning criminals into Remade, brutally suppressing free press, abduction and torture of suspects without trial, all done via executive fiat. I think the term “Mayor” is rather euphemistic, since he’s Mayor for a long time.
He made the trains run on time… sure. But New Crobuzon is quite corrupt.
If his administration hadn’t been doing, um, questionable things, there never would have been a problem in the first place. Remember where Isaac got the worm in the first place, before you feel bad for Rudgutter.
Obviously he’s not pure evil, since we do see him making efforts to help the city, which you yourself enumerated. As for stealing eyeballs, it’s par for the course in a place where justice is meted out by attaching random machine and animal parts to people as punishment, creating an untouchables class in the city.
I think this is an unfair and inaccurate comparison, but you’re entitled to your opinion. The vampires in the book are actually rendered rather interestingly in The Scar, but you haven’t read it.
Where do you want to see the self-criticism and mockery? He’s not a humorous writer like Pratchett, so to compare their tones is just a statement of preference for a style of writing on your part, not actually a criticism of Mieville. His world is grim and dark, not light-hearted. If you don’t like that, don’t read him, because he does not do feel-good, goofy, or uplifting. Then again, I don’t like that either, which is why I don’t read Pratchett. Chacon a son gout.
I had an accidental introduction to Mieville and, apparently, his works and others have been lumped into a “steampunk” category. Good concept, interesting interpretation into the world of fashion for goths. So far, I like Mieville, but I tend to thoroughly enjoy distopian universes and fantasy-satire; if it makes fun of reality or just can’t possibly end well, I can find a route of contemplative escapism while reading it.
I rather enjoyed reading Perdido Street Station and The Scar; however, I must admit a few things come up as “issues” with Mieville’s work that I’ve read so far:
Perdido Street Station is a long book, and gets tedious if you don’t finish it within a few weeks. Although it’s good, there’s just a ton of it, and it can be demoralizing to realize you’re only halfway through and the ending is nowhere in sight. This is definitely not a work that’s meant for bedtime reading. If you’ve read House of Leaves, you’ll know how to treat the work; it’s the same kind of “get engrossed and let it keep you up at night” work.
Although he creates all these different races of creatures, he doesn’t always give you a very detailed description of them and how they work. Yes, this would make long novels even longer, but sometimes I would like to learn more about the unique features of an individual fantasy world.
I certainly liked Perdito and The Scar, but I don’t believe his stuff is as ground-breakingly wonderful as many appear to; in particular, the influence of Gormenghast is heavy, though admittedly based in a sort of fantasy super-Dickensian London.
I found Iron Council a very difficult read, not as entertaining as the other two.
His socialist politics do indeed get in the way, I found, and particularly in Iron Council. I do not think that a deeply political person (of whatever political stripe) can’t write good fantasy, but they do run a great risk - of creating cardboard characters and plot as a backdrop to their political concerns.
My personal opinion is that Mieville skirted the edge in the first book, mostly avoided that problem in the second, and fell off the wagon in the third.
The amusing thing about it is that his particular Trotskyist-tinged brand of socialism is just about as archaic in real life as the “one true king” monarchism implicit in much of fantasy, and against which he’s seemingly set his face; there is thus no particular reason it cannot work just as well or better as fantasy. The difference is that he seems to believe in his policical idée fixe.
He does seem to go off on Heinlein-style monologues at times, and creates a few cardboard characters solely as platforms to sound off on some point or other (just like Heinlein does). To me, it isn’t annoying or heavy handed like say Ayn Rand is, and it still falls perfectly into the context of his world that he spins. What do you expect in a world where the underground free press is painted as the most noble and heroic of roles?
Well, it certainly didn’t overwhelm the first two books in my experience - I did enjoy them; but I found it increasingly grating in the third, to the point where it was actively annoying.
Certainly not as annoying as Rand, but then, I never thought Rand’s fiction was at all enjoyable. Anyway, he’s a better writer than her, regardless of political orientation.
This frankly seems like a lot of work just for slang. Is there some sort of centralized Cockney Slang Bureau that administrates these expressions? Otherwise it seems like there’s rather a lot of room for individual interpretation. What if I call someone “China” for “china doll,” which rhymes with “ball,” signifying “testicle?”
“doll” doesn’t rhyme with “ball” in any civilized English dialect.
Malthus, while I can see and agree about Gormenghast, another clear influence on Miéville is the Borrible trilogy by de Laribeitti. A great read in itself.
Mieville talks about Gormenghast as an influence. I should try reading those again: I got about 200 pages into the first one before saying, “GAH! When is something going to happen?!” and putting it down. The writing was beautiful, but my God it was slow.
As for the politics: I agree with Mieville’s politics for the most part, and even I found The Iron Council overly polemic in this respect. I really enjoy politics when it’s submerged in the narrative, but I don’t enjoy reading books where I feel I’m being lectured.
He’s not as irritating to me in this regard as Heinlein. That may be because I hate Heinlein’s politics, or because Mieville’s a better writer (or at least writes shit I like more), or because his characters are more nuanced than Heinlein’s. But Iron Council definitely goes off the rails a few times.
Terrifel, here’s an article on Cockney rhyming slang:
Whether you like it or not is irrelevant. It exists, and that’s how it works. Basically slang terms arise because someone starts using it and it slowly spreads out in use over the Cockney dialect area. Doubtlessly similar such terms have started being used but for no particular reason didn’t happen to catch on.
Some further examples are “butcher’s” for “look”, which comes from “butcher’s hook,” “loaf” for “head,” which comes from “loaf of bread,” “boat” for “face,” which comes from “boat race,” and “bread” for “money,” which comes from “bread and honey.”
GAH! What the hell did I just step into?! “Whether I like it or not…?” How on earth did my mildly expressed incredulity at the intricacies of Cockney slang provoke such a terse, confrontational response? Oh christ, did I accidentally use a rhyming insult? What did I say… “ball…” That would be, erm… “ball park,” which would mean… lark? Bark? Fark? Cutty Sark?
Fine. You know what? Screw Cockney slang! If that’s the way you want it, then it’s war. That’s right, I’m taking a stand right here to stamp out all Cockney slang everywhere! Right here, right now. Cockney slang is going down, baby. You heard it here first. Cockney is the virus, and I’m the cure. I’m coming after you, Cockney. All your convoluted idiomatic expressions and comical working-class charm and forelock-tugging and and hansom cab-driving in Sherlock Holmes movies and calling everyone “Guvn’r” even when they obviously AREN’T governors, because how many goddamn governors do you people think there even ARE? Don’t you realize the rest of us are all SICK OF YOU?
You’re doomed, Cockney slang. Time to die.
Oh yeah, and thanks for the link Wendell Wagner. A very interesting tradition! Too bad IT MUST BE DESTROYED.
Step one: attack Cockney-processing brain structures with English words that have NO RHYMES. Possibility: paint London’s East End purple and silver?
Hmm–the response was a little snarky, but unless you’re just having fun with the histrionics (which is totally fine, natch), I think you’re overreacting to a smidge of snark.
Really? When I say the words to myself the endings sound the same in my brain.
When I looked at Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, the second pronunciation for doll and the one for ball seem to have the same phonetic spelling for the end of the word. What am I missing?
