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pkd3001 posted:Oh, wow. Did you like Solaris? Yeah it's really good, the only issue I have with it (and it goes for a lot of other books by Lem) is the narrative/science tangents that are interesting but completely derail the narrative thrust of the story (i.e. whenever Kris goes into the library). But it's a minor complaint, as the book's still very effective on an emotional level. I got into legit sci-fi through Dick as well and, as much as I still like him, Lem operates on a much higher level in terms of characterization, clarity of thought, and general profundity. Know you've already got a bunch of books on your plate, but definitely check out The Star Diaries at some point if you end up liking Solaris. Probably the best book I've read from him so far. It's a collection of short stories about a space pilot named Ijon Tichy - written over a period of decades, they range from really funny satire to more philosophically intense stuff and are a good representation of his various writing styles. The Seventh Voyage is the first story from it and it hooked me immediately.
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Jun 23, 2011 02:37
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Roybot posted:Yeah it's really good, the only issue I have with it (and it goes for a lot of other books by Lem) is the narrative/science tangents that are interesting but completely derail the narrative thrust of the story (i.e. whenever Kris goes into the library). But it's a minor complaint, as the book's still very effective on an emotional level. I got into legit sci-fi through Dick as well and, as much as I still like him, Lem operates on a much higher level in terms of characterization, clarity of thought, and general profundity. Oh, cool, man. Thanks a lot for the advice. Yeah, I am looking forward to Solaris, because I heard he is sort of a Russian version of Dick, but from your perspective he seems like a better writer than Dick which is cool. Yes, the one problem with Dick was that he was messed up on drugs all the time so some of his writing is awful. I think when Dick was sober he was so great and unique, but sometimes you can tell his thought pattern is not quite lucid. Ironically I think one of Dick's best novels is "A Scanner Darkly," which became an anti-drug novel, among other things. Dick actually knew quite a bit about philosophy, in general, but as a pure writer, I mean his prose, can sometimes be lacking in quality. Thanks, though for the recommendation.
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Jun 23, 2011 07:30
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http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/566606-ask-china-mi-ville China went and answered a bunch of questions people on Goodreads asked. There's tons of questions and lots of good answers. In one of them he mentions that The Scar and Iron Council will both become audiobooks 
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Jul 6, 2011 15:12
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I just finished the audiobook for Embassytown, and I liked it quite a bit. I was curious though, are the alien words represented in any strange superimposed way in the book? In the audiobook, they actually play two words superimposed over eachother to represent the alien words and names when they are spoken in the alien language. Its a cool effect, but a bit disruptive to the reader's flow. There is one particular paragraph where an alien's name is used 5 or 6 times, and the effect sounds like a computerized phone message that has disjointed tones because the words were recorded seperately and without the contextual flow of the sentence. I have only read (listend to) three of Mieville's books (PSS, TC&TC, and Embassytown), but I've enjoyed them all. I felt that PSS and TC&TC were fairly "normal" stories placed in very bizarre settings. As in, if you abstract the story plot points, they really don't hinge too heavily on the uniqueness of the setting (even TC&TC, which I'll admit is arguable, but see my reasoning below). But Embassytown is definately a very unique story that is completely dependant on the unusual setting and very unique alien culture/society/physiology. For my thoughts on TC&TC: (spoiler for much of the plot) In the beginning of the story, I had the impression that the two cities somehow existed in some sort of phase-shifted reality, and the crosshatched areas were locations where the boundary between the realities was weak enough to cross. This also led me to believe that Breach was some sort of alien superpower that was tasked with policing this boundary with a self-imposed limitation of having minimal interferance with the humans where breaching did not occur. The fact that the people living in the city thought of Breach as an enigmatic and nearly mystical power reinforced this impression. But by the end of the book, I was struck by the thought that nothing described actually required sci-fi/mystical physical laws to exist. Everything could be explained by mundane science in a physically normal city with a completely hosed up political/social division and irrational territorial boundaries. Areas fully "in" one city or the other could merely be areas where ownership was absolute. Crosshatched areas could simply be shared areas (probably required to connect the fully owned areas) where the citizens are required to police themselves. By the end of the book, Breach was revealed to be MUCH less mystical and all-powerful than originally thought by us, the reader (through the eyes of a normal citizen of the setting). It was still implied they had technology that was significantly above the level of the two cities... but nothing that seemed too sci-fi to me. In fact, the level of technology in the two cities themselves seemed to be a little low by 2010 standards, and the difference between what they had and what Breach had didn't feel much greater than the differences between now and 1990 (and everything is filtered through the eyes of a city citizen, so the "advanced" stuff is deliberately vague and mysterious to him). So I came away from the book with the impression that maybe these two cities just had a really bizarre, hosed up political division (and Breach was some sort of mediator, but their purpose was never fully explained), and the entire story could have been quite contemporary. The city division was like a social/political commentary or thought experiment taken to an illogical extreme, but Mieville's style is to make it always be in the background of the story even if it was the "real" point of the book. The mystical/mundane ambiguity actually made me enjoy the book much more, but it was the kind of thing I could only appreciate after completing it. Much like how my personal enjoyment of Bladerunner is based around the ambiguity of Deckard and the questions it makes you think about, instead of trying to prove the "real" answer to if he is or isn't a replicant.
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Jul 6, 2011 18:31
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To me TC&TC was more of a commentary on disputed areas like Israel/Palestine or Cyprus - how you can have two very similar cultures that still have a huge disparity between them. China just slammed them together to really emphasise how ridiculous conflict between two fundamentally similar cultures are.
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Jul 6, 2011 18:40
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Paragon8 posted:To me TC&TC was more of a commentary on disputed areas like Israel/Palestine or Cyprus - how you can have two very similar cultures that still have a huge disparity between them. China just slammed them together to really emphasise how ridiculous conflict between two fundamentally similar cultures are. Whilst I personally think there is an element of truth to this, Borlu mentions this at one stage in the book himself. I don't have the direct quote, but it's basically the bit where he says he attended a conference. The comparison of Bezel and Ul Quoma to places like East/West Germany and Ireland/EIRE were seen as immensely over simplistic and borderline racist.
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Jul 6, 2011 19:30
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I read Perdido Street Station about a month ago on the recommendation from an acquaintance. I was told it was a a different, interesting, and good story. I'll give it the different part. Really, the only thing I liked about the book was the setting. I loved the feel of the dreamworld/fantasy/steampunk. However, everything else seemed to just piss me off as the book got closer to the end. Things seemed to happen simply to push the story along, seemingly with no motivation, and the main point I have in mind is David's betrayal of Issac. It just seemed to make no sense to me as why he would do it when he was featured so little in the story beforehand. The next thing that pissed me off was the Weaver. I loved the concept of the character, and he had this badass voice in my head while I was reading the story. But his seeming appearance from nowhere to save the day not once, but twice, was too much to stomach for me. Next, during the fight on the roof of Perdido Street Station testing the crisis engine, Jack shows up. What? Where did he come from, and why did he care? Again, I was left thinking that the author simply needed something to move his story along a little bit more to save his pathetic characters from the authorities. And then at the end of the book, two things pissed me off. The first one was the appearance of the random Garuda. The second thing was the what the Garuda told to Isaac to do, and then Isaac goes and follow that advice, rather than honor his committment. There was no reason for it, he did not understand the law that Yagharek had broken. He could have simply packed up and left (which they did), but continued on with his research and complete the wings. Why the betrayal? Overall, this book just left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Not because of anything political, but the content and writing of the story.
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Jul 6, 2011 19:33
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Captain_Indigo posted:Whilst I personally think there is an element of truth to this, Borlu mentions this at one stage in the book himself. I don't have the direct quote, but it's basically the bit where he says he attended a conference. The comparison of Bezel and Ul Quoma to places like East/West Germany and Ireland/EIRE were seen as immensely over simplistic and borderline racist. You're right - I did really enjoy that touch. From a protagonist perspective I'd expect Borlu to have that reaction - I'm sure if you compared Kashmir to Gaza in front of an Israeli or Palestinian you'd get the same reaction and vice versa. Everyone thinks their conflict is more unique and special - which is evidenced when the Americans just sort of treat it all as an oddity - that in the global scale of things The Cities don't really matter much. That despite the supernatural elements separating the cities, it's essentially a common human problem with just a touch of flair.
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Jul 6, 2011 19:43
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Paragon8 posted:That despite the supernatural elements separating the cities, it's essentially a common human problem with just a touch of flair. Doesn't it turn out that there is nothing at all supernatural about the situation?
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Jul 6, 2011 19:49
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withak posted:Doesn't it turn out that there is nothing at all supernatural about the situation? Well I mean if you take supernatural as merely to be beyond natural then the situation is supernatural
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Jul 6, 2011 19:53
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FuSchnick posted:I just finished the audiobook for Embassytown, and I liked it quite a bit. I was curious though, are the alien words represented in any strange superimposed way in the book? They're printed one above the other with a line between them, like a fraction.
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Jul 6, 2011 20:10
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withak posted:Doesn't it turn out that there is nothing at all supernatural about the situation? I agree -- the way I read it implied that there's nothing at all about shifted realities, it's just a big clusterfuck of "this is how things are done", with the Breach making sure that it remains that way.
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Jul 7, 2011 02:00
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNTzgAbtPxQ Here is a really fascinating half-hour interview where Miéville talks about all his books, his inspirations, and defends Embassytown against some of the criticism it's gotten re: its ideas about language. He says that just because a theory might be discredited doesn't mean it can't be a fascinating peg for fiction. He also talks about politics in his work, and how people shouldn't take the politics of his fiction so seriously. God I could listen to him talk all day 
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Jul 7, 2011 04:00
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RoboCicero posted:I agree -- the way I read it implied that there's nothing at all about shifted realities, it's just a big clusterfuck of "this is how things are done", with the Breach making sure that it remains that way. Yeah, it's pretty clear that there's nothing supernatural/sci-fi involved and it's not meant to be ambiguous. Whether you're meant to be confused by this at the start though, I'm not sure.
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Jul 7, 2011 11:11
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Just finished Embassytown, loved it, it really felt like reading PSS for the first time. I really want to see a drawing of the Hosts as i have a hard time imagining what they look like. Only thing i didnt like was how selfish all the humans came off as, they made addicts of an entire race and their solution while waiting for help was to make them even more addicted and kill the ones waiting for a fix. Even during the end it feels like the Hosts were violated with how much their language changed.
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Jul 8, 2011 13:17
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Paragon8 posted:Here's a spoiler comment about Embassytown Interesting, i remember that part of the book but seem to have completely missed the meaning of it. I was wondering why she didnt show up for the rest of the book.
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Jul 8, 2011 13:19
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Oasx posted:Only thing i didnt like was how selfish all the humans came off as, they made addicts of an entire race and their solution while waiting for help was to make them even more addicted and kill the ones waiting for a fix. What else were they supposed to do? Embassytown was surrounded by the Host city and the Hosts (I think) far outnumbered humans. The only thing the humans could do to keep from being wiped out was to feed the aliens' addiction to pacify them and buy more time to come up with a plan. As for killing the addicted, I think it was pretty clearly self-defense. Also I don't know where you're getting this idea that a language that changes is a bad thing. Do you have any idea how much real languages change over time? Besides it wasn't the humans' intention to alter Language; in fact it was a faction of Hosts themselves who wanted to be able to lie in the first place.
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Jul 10, 2011 02:52
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pakman posted:
I thought the bit at the end was great! It puts Issac in an impossible situation with no 'right' answer: does he admit the essential justice in Yagharek's punishment and interfere no further in the situation, or does he close his eyes to the darker side of Yagharek's character, say "gently caress it, this guy's my buddy now" and carry on regardless? Whatever option he chooses, he's going to hurt somebody dreadfully. In fact, the situation strikes me as the sort of thing a sadistic DM would spring on his players: "You've got two lovely choices here but you've got to take one of them!" Did Mieville ever play D&D in the past? I bet he did.
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Jul 13, 2011 22:15
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Umiapik posted:I thought the bit at the end was great! It puts Issac in an impossible situation with no 'right' answer: does he admit the essential justice in Yagharek's punishment and interfere no further in the situation, or does he close his eyes to the darker side of Yagharek's character, say "gently caress it, this guy's my buddy now" and carry on regardless? Whatever option he chooses, he's going to hurt somebody dreadfully. Not only has he played, but he's said that his primary inspiration for the vodyanoi and other adventurer dudes was an RPG party and that he saw them as being mostly after gold and exp. There's even a Bas-Lag RPG in the works: quote:The terribly shrewd Adamant Entertainment is teaming up with Miéville himself to create Tales of New Crobuzon, and is hoping to give the dystopian weird wonderful city nestled in between the ribs of a long-forgotten enormous creature "the level of detail and attention that it deserves." The last I can find about it on Adamant Entertainment's website is a news post in 2010 saying that they hope to release it "this year", though. Jack the Lad fucked around with this message at 14:05 on Jul 15, 2011 |
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Jul 15, 2011 13:52
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Jack the Lad posted:There's also a Bas-Lag RPG in the works: Unfortunately that's been announced since like 2007 and it still seems like the project is floundering.
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Jul 15, 2011 14:05
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At the New York signing for Embassytown he mentioned that it was coming out either this fall or winter 2012, IIRC.
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Jul 15, 2011 16:14
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Jack the Lad posted:There's even a Bas-Lag RPG in the works Why do this when Bas-Lag is basically just a hodgepodge of Dark Sun and several other generic D&D settings?
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Jul 15, 2011 20:07
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Umiapik posted:I thought the bit at the end was great! It puts Issac in an impossible situation with no 'right' answer: does he admit the essential justice in Yagharek's punishment and interfere no further in the situation, or does he close his eyes to the darker side of Yagharek's character, say "gently caress it, this guy's my buddy now" and carry on regardless? Whatever option he chooses, he's going to hurt somebody dreadfully. Yeah, I though the ending was really well done too. But then again, I like a good non-happy ending.
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Jul 16, 2011 02:14
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Sexpansion posted:Why do this when Bas-Lag is basically just a hodgepodge of Dark Sun and several other generic D&D settings? Because campaign settings are always something new and nifty to add to a game. I bought many books in my youth just for the flavour / rulesets of a novel setting. Also I picture it way more a Planescape inspired thing than anything.
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Jul 17, 2011 07:46
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Sexpansion posted:Why do this when Bas-Lag is basically just a hodgepodge of Dark Sun and several other generic D&D settings?
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Jul 18, 2011 22:40
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Sexpansion posted:Why do this when Bas-Lag is basically just a hodgepodge of Dark Sun and several other generic D&D settings? Bas-Lag is way more interesting and original than anything D&D-related I've read.
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Jul 21, 2011 13:52
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Just finished King Rat, pretty good. Its basically what I had wanted from Kraken, and much the better book. The DnB stuff was pretty asinine, and very very late '90s, but it didn't get in the way too much.
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Jul 24, 2011 00:20
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I'm reading Perdido Street Station for the first time at the moment, and I must say, somewhere around half way through, Bas-Lag really reminds me of a badly organized Ankh Morpok from Discworld. They're both Fantasy Race Insert Londons, yes, but still. Keep thinking if Vetinari were in charge of this crap he'd be having the extradimensional spiders and demons making his crosswords and he'd not give any shits ever. I suppose that'd defeat the entire point of them but it's an amusing thought that arises what due to the similarity of the settings beyond the entirely divergent tones.
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Jul 25, 2011 04:33
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Oh my god, China needs to write a Discworld-like farce set in New Crobuzon for his next book.  He loves undermining genre conventions, so it would be genius if he went and undermined his own world.
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Jul 25, 2011 05:01
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Also I'd read a book just about the Weaver trolling people for its ridiculous artistic bullshit Love That Spider
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Jul 25, 2011 05:53
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pakman posted:However, everything else seemed to just piss me off as the book got closer to the end. Things seemed to happen simply to push the story along, seemingly with no motivation, and the main point I have in mind is David's betrayal of Issac. It just seemed to make no sense to me as why he would do it when he was featured so little in the story beforehand. Wasn't David the one who was frequenting a ReMade brothel and was effectively being blackmailed by the City? There's your motivation right there. quote:The next thing that pissed me off was the Weaver. I loved the concept of the character, and he had this badass voice in my head while I was reading the story. But his seeming appearance from nowhere to save the day not once, but twice, was too much to stomach for me. The Weaver was getting pissed with the slake moths loving up its poo poo and he had a vested interest in making sure that Isaac and Co. took them out. The Mayor tried to deal with the Weaver and it saw that the City was very much incapable of dealing with the slake moth threat. While it gets a little deus ex machina-ey, it's perfectly understandable why it'd be following Isaac around quote:Next, during the fight on the roof of Perdido Street Station testing the crisis engine, Jack shows up. What? Where did he come from, and why did he care? Again, I was left thinking that the author simply needed something to move his story along a little bit more to save his pathetic characters from the authorities. His appearance was really random, but he was built up throughout the novel, so to think that he wasn't going to show up just didn't seem right. I'm assuming Jack was adopting 'enemy of my enemy is my friend' line of thinking. There was that whole series of subplots with unions and the Runagate Rampant that may have drawn him in. quote:Overall, this book just left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Not because of anything political, but the content and writing of the story. I'm not trying to be a dick here, but were you expecting a happy or 'good' ending? The ending of the book is very bleak, which I know has been a turn off for other people who read it.
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Jul 27, 2011 05:54
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David : David was trying to do the right thing, Isaac had accidentally let lose a monster, and David thought that it was important to tell the authorities so they could deal with it.
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Jul 27, 2011 08:29
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Right. It's been a while since I've read those books.
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Jul 27, 2011 16:00
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Perdido posted:ing to be a dick here, but were you expecting a happy or 'good' ending? The ending of the book is very bleak, which I know has been a turn off for other people who read it. I have no problem with bleak endings. I have a problem with how he got to his ending. How was the other Garuda able to find Isaac and the others in the sewers? It had been a while (I assume) since he had left his lab and apartment. You couldn't find him by asking at the University. It's been a while since I've read the book, now, but I don't think Jack was really mentioned all that much during the book. HE was built up as a creature of myth, but there's a lot of stories with creatures of urban legend and myth that don't show up to save the day either.
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Jul 27, 2011 19:59
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Q&A on CBS News websitequote:JG: What's next for you? Always slow for Miéville news around this time of year. We'll probably get a title reveal in Sept/Oct, then a release date announced by the end of the year. I'm betting it will be May again, as always.
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Aug 4, 2011 17:06
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I'm a bit past halfway into Perdido Street Station, and it's been utterly fantastic so far. Flowery and overwritten at times, but fantastic nonetheless. And it's surprisingly horrific. The setting is unsettling on multiple levels. Do any of the author's other works expand on his horror writing? Because he's got a knack for it.
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Aug 5, 2011 00:23
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ConfusedUs posted:I'm a bit past halfway into Perdido Street Station, and it's been utterly fantastic so far. Flowery and overwritten at times, but fantastic nonetheless. Both The Scar and Iron Council have several sequences apiece that are particularly horrific. Iron Council in particular is chock full of disturbing stuff. I loving love it. Also, his short story collection Looking For Jake is mostly horror stories, and very good. I definitely recommend it. I really want China to write a straight-up horror novel at some point. He would be brilliant at it.
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Aug 5, 2011 03:07
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Hedrigall posted:Both The Scar and Iron Council have several sequences apiece that are particularly horrific. Iron Council in particular is chock full of disturbing stuff. I loving love it. That's good to know! I'll probably end up buying both of those.
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Aug 5, 2011 13:44
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I can't wait to hear your reactions on the "chewing" scene in IC 
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Aug 5, 2011 14:19
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All of the Cacotopic Stain sequences in IC are amazing; I didn't want them to end. Inchmen 
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