Ccs posted:

Whaat, China Mieville is a professional-level illustrator as well? How multi-talented is this guy?!

Good for him though, any way he can get his imagination out there into the world.

Edit: Wait, that byline on the Amazon page doesn't suggest he's illustrating it at all. I think that blog author has bad reading comprehension, or the byline was changed.

Grand Prize Winner posted:

Twenty bucks says Mieville gets the ampersand.

Table of contents posted:

A: “The Auricle” by Gio Clairval
B: “Bartleby’s Typewriter” by Corey Redekop
C: “The Counsellor Crow” by Karen Lord
D: “Daydreamer by Proxy” by Dexter Palmer
E: “Enkantong-bato” by Dean Francis Alfar
F: “The Figmon” by Michael Cisco
G: “The Guest” by Brian Conn
H: “Hadrian’s Sparrikan” by Stephen Graham Jones
I: “Ible” by Brian Evenson
J: “Jason Bug” by Joseph Nigg
K: “The Karmantid” by Karen Heuler
L: “The Liwat’ang Yawa and the Litok-litok” by Rochita Loenin-Ruiz
M: “Mosquito Boy” by Felix Gilman
N: “N—– (Bolus Barathruma)” by Reza Negarestani
O: “Orsinus Liborum” by Catherynne M. Valente
P: “Pyret” by Karin Tidbeck
Q: “Quintus” by Michal Ajvaz
R: “Rapacis X. Loco Signa” by L.L. Hannett
S: “Snafu” by Micaela Morrissette
T: “Tongues of Moon Toad” by Cat Rambo
U: “The Ugly-Nest Rat” by Eric Schaller
V: “The Vanga” by Rikki Ducornet
W: “Weialalaleia” by Amal El-Mohtar
X: “The Xaratan” by Rhys Hughes
Y: “Yakshantariksh” by Vandana Singh
Z: “Zee” by Richard Howard
&: “Ampersand” by Karin Lowachee

(Not shown: a creature whose name begins with invisible letter, written by an anonymous writer who is not one of the editors…)

Hedrigall posted:

And the .co.uk version:

Mike N Eich posted:

God drat how obviously evil Silas is, and how silly it is for Bellis to sorta kinda fall for him. It feels kind of sloppily out of character for her to delude herself in working with him, and its not like she's into his bad-boyishness, she's completely and totally blind to how unscrupulous the guy is. I mean yeah she's lonely, but drat.

Hedrigall posted:

RoboCicero posted:

June can't come soon enough!

paint dry posted:

Just finished The Scar. Some thoughts:

I think I liked it more than Perdido Street Station. The characters were certainly more interesting, although once again the most uninteresting and dislikeable character happened to be the main character. I'm sad that I can't read a whole book about Uther Doul because I really want to know what his deal is.

The setting was definitely better than Steampunk London. World-building is definitely his greatest strength. Plot, not so much. I'm past the age where I need every little piece of exposition spelled out to me and treating every twist as if it isnt extremely predictable is just laughable.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun with the first two books but I might leave off on Iron Council for a while. Also, if I ever see the word "puissant" again I am going to have a stroke.

paint dry posted:

Anyway, I had a lot of fun with the first two books but I might leave off on Iron Council for a while. Also, if I ever see the word "puissant" again I am going to have a stroke.

Benson Cunningham posted:

Any word if any of the short stories will be set in Bas-Lag?

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

"Puissant" has a specific meaning in the Bas-Lag context, though, it isn't just vocab for the sake of vocab.

paint dry posted:

Yeah, I get that, but I don't remember it turning up in Perdido Street Station so much. I guess there wasn't so much magical stuff in Perdido though.

Karnegal posted:

I just finished The Scar via audiobook and found myself a bit underwhelmed. It felt a bit plodding, and I wasn't a huge fan of any of the main characters.

That said, I really liked Perdido Street Station and I'l like to read or listen to another one of his books. Any advice on which direction to go? Should I just do the Iron Council or move onto something more recent and not Bas-Lag?

Karnegal posted:

I just finished The Scar via audiobook and found myself a bit underwhelmed. It felt a bit plodding, and I wasn't a huge fan of any of the main characters.

That said, I really liked Perdido Street Station and I'l like to read or listen to another one of his books. Any advice on which direction to go? Should I just do the Iron Council or move onto something more recent and not Bas-Lag?

I'm so loving great and posted:

Where should I start reading?

You can really start anywhere, although personally I would recommend not reading Iron Council until after you've read Perdido Street Station. Also, King Rat and Un Lun Dun are decent, but not amazing. I'd recommend trying something else first.

Ask any Miéville fan and they're sure to say The Scar is his best novel. It's a standalone story requiring no prior knowledge of Bas-Lag, and it won't spoil anything in Perdido Street Station — the connections are minor. It's where I started with Miéville, and I'm glad I did to this day.

China himself recommends starting with either The Scar (for genre fans) or The City & the City (for non-genre fans).

Without further adieu, here are all of Miéville's books to date:

~THE BAS-LAG BOOKS~

The Bas-Lag books are a series of three fantasy novels, each standalone, but all set within the world of Bas-Lag (and centering around the city-state New Crobuzon).

Bas-Lag is not an Earth-substitute. It's a planet (or something else entirely? The Scar may have clues) with some weird (and often nightmarish) physics, and bursting with wildly different forms of magic and technology. It's not a steampunk world, so if anyone tells you it is, punch them in the face.

Bas-Lag is populated by many sentient races including humans, Khepri (scarab-headed people), Garuda (bird people), Cactacae (physically imposing plant-people), Vodyanoi (bloated frog shamans), Hotchi (adorable hedgehog people), Grindylow (underwater nightmare fuckers), Llorgis (???), and many more. Humans may also come in Remade configurations, where machinery or non-human biology is grafted to them as a permanent punishment for a crime.

There are three books so far in the Bas-Lag series:

PERDIDO STREET STATION
WHAT IT'S ABOUT - Isaac is a layabout scientist who lives with his Khepri girlfriend in New Crobuzon, a vast and ugly city populated by humans and many other species. He meets a Garuda from a far-off desert tribe whose wings have been cut off for a vaguely described crime, who commissions him to restore his flight by any means. In his research, Isaac accidentally unleashes an alien terror on the city and has to ally himself with dangerous forces to save the city.
WHAT YOU'LL FIND INSIDE - psychic vampire moths, bug-headed women, birdmen, walking cacti, seditionist scientists and artists, mobsters who are more mosaic than man, hell's ambassadors, hive-mind machine intelligences, multidimensional spider gods, xenian sex, grime and filth
READ THIS IF - you want to get in on the ground floor with Bas-Lag; you want the weirdest urban fantasy you've ever seen; you're sick of "it's medieval Europe!" fantasy worlds

THE SCAR
WHAT IT'S ABOUT - Bellis is a linguist who has fled the city New Crobuzon by ship, after the events of Perdido Street Station. Her ship is captured by scouts for the pirate nation Armada, a gigantic floating city made up of hundreds of ships of all kinds. Bellis is pressganged into citizenry of Armada, and soon finds herself on the periphery of a plan by the city's rulers to raise something ancient and unfathomable from the depths of the ocean. But that's only the beginning of a much more dangerous plan...
WHAT YOU'LL FIND INSIDE - a city of stolen ships, pirates in pantaloons, libraries, an island of ravenous mosquito women, terrifying sea monsters, a voluntary Remaking, blood taxes, civil uprising, naval battles, parallel dimensions of possibility, a jackass of a dolphin, the word "puissance" a lot, pus
READ THIS IF - you want to read the best of the best in fantasy; you love monsters; the ocean scares you; you thought Pirates of the Caribbean wasn't weird enough

IRON COUNCIL
WHAT IT'S ABOUT - Decades after Perdido Street Station and The Scar, New Crobuzon is at war with the witch-city Tesh. At the same time, civil unrest is brewing inside the city. Various factions make plans: one group plots to kill the corrupt mayor; another party journeys into the continent's uncharted heart to find the Iron Council — a renegade train, once owned by New Crobuzon but stolen by its workers, that lays its own rails and represents the last hope for the oppressed masses... that is, if it can make it home through the wilderness.
WHAT YOU'LL FIND INSIDE - trains, golems, elementals, monsters galore, hedgehog men riding giant roosters, whores and railway workers starting revolutions, mysterious graffiti spirals, puppetry, a journey through a horrifying wasteland which is like a tumour on reality, telewitchcraft, assassination plots, war, gay sex
READ THIS IF - you've already read Perdido Street Station; you wonder what a Cormac McCarthy fantasy novel would be like; you want Miéville at his most baroque and dense

~STAND-ALONE NOVELS~

KING RAT
WHAT IT'S ABOUT - The animals of London have their own rulers which can take human form; and Saul has just found out he's the heir to the Rat throne. Unfortunately for everyone involved, the legendary Pied Piper of Hamelin is back to wipe out all rat-kind... and he's bent on incorporating new musical genres in his work.
WHAT YOU'LL FIND INSIDE - drum & bass, animal lore, garbage-eating, dance-fighting, spider and bird kings, socialism, rats
READ THIS IF - you've already read everything else by Miéville

UN LUN DUN
WHAT IT'S ABOUT - Zanna is the chosen hero, prophecized to save UnLondon (an abcity, kind of a funhouse-mirror reflection of London) from evil. So it's a huge surprise when she's taken out of the picture before she can do anything heroic. It's left to her friend Deeba, who isn't even named in the prophecies, to take up the slack and go about completing all the heroic tasks that weren't expected of her. She has to traverse the weird landscape of the abcity and face off against its many dangerous inhabitants in order to stop a sentient pollution cloud from destroying both our worlds.
WHAT YOU'LL FIND INSIDE - whimsy, silliness, puns galore, talking books, carnivorous giraffes, evil smog, umbrellas, indoor forests, arachnid windows, a chav heroine, a gun that can be loaded with any ammunition INCLUDING abstract concepts, illustrations!
READ THIS IF - you're a fan of Neil Gaiman; Bas-Lag is too scary for you

THE CITY & THE CITY
WHAT IT'S ABOUT - Beszel, a crumbling city-state in Eastern Europe, has a rather unique relationship with its neighbour Ul Qoma (a bright, economic boomtown). The nature of that relationship becomes clear throughout the novel, but suffice to say it's more complicated than borders and politics. Remember, Miéville is a SF/F writer, after all. When a visiting archaeology student is murdered in one city but her body dumped in the other, the crime becomes much more than just another routine murder case. Inspector Borlú of Beszel has to deal with the shady forces that concern themselves with the relationship between the two cities.
WHAT YOU'LL FIND INSIDE - murder, mystery, mindboggling geography, conspiracy theories, secret organisations, psychological SF, two well-crafted fictional European nations, characters with hard-to-pronounce names, Schroedinger's pedestrian
READ THIS IF - you want to see what happens when you mash crime, sci-fi and literature together; most fantasy fiction isn't cerebral enough for you; you like to tax your brain with a good puzzle

KRAKEN
WHAT IT'S ABOUT - At the British Museum of Natural History, London, a 40-foot giant squid specimen has literally just vanished. This is only the start of a series of bizarre incidences which pull museum employee Billy into London's strange underworld of cults, magic, and other supernatural weirdness. And it may also be the start of the end of the world.
WHAT YOU'LL FIND INSIDE - squids, tentacles, museums, bottles, cults, magic, witches obsessed with Star Trek, unionized familiars, ghost cops, human origami, indoor oceans, evil ink, cockney horrors, competing apocalypses
READ THIS IF - you like Neil Gaiman; you want to try one of Miéville's darkest and funniest works; you want to know what the hell human origami is

EMBASSYTOWN
WHAT YOU'LL FIND INSIDE - aliens, spaceships, clones, floaking, biological architecture, androids, sex, musings on the nature of language and thought, personified similes, festivals of lies, the terror of traversing outer space, typography that looks like fractions, decimal time (keep a calculator handy!), George Romero references
READ THIS IF - you like aliens; you want to read an intelligent thought experiment about contact with another, completely unhuman species

RAILSEA
WHAT YOU'LL FIND INSIDE - giant moles, harpoons, hunting-trains, rails, rail-pirates, Lovecraftian monsters in the sky, a sea with no water, islands not surrounded by water, creepy crawlies, drunkenness, adventure, ampersands
READ THIS IF - you want an adventure story as good as The Scar; the idea of Moby Dick on rails is funny to you; you can't stand all the misery and gruesomeness in Miéville's other books and you just want a joyful romp

~COLLECTIONS~

LOOKING FOR JAKE
WHAT IT'S ABOUT - 14 short stories from the first five or so years of Miéville's career; more horror-oriented than his novels, although there are a few stories that are humourous. Features the novella The Tain as well as the short story Jack, which is set in Bas-Lag.
WHAT YOU'LL FIND INSIDE - (in order) supernatural reality-fuckery, building contractors haunted by nightmarish visions, a haunted Ikea store, a secret society obsessed with vanishing streets, gross body horror, word-borne diseases, Lovecraftian things in the cracks on the walls, a man hounded by mysterious and compelling notes, windows onto unnatural streets, obnoxious hackers, Christmas in a corporatized dystopia, more Bas-Lag, a comic about ghost soldiers, post-apocalyptic London after pissed off mirror creatures break into our world

Hedrigall posted:

Honestly, don't even bother with King Rat.

Benson Cunningham posted:

I tried to read King Rat like 4 times now. I just can't do it.

Ravenfood posted:

Its really short and moderately okay. Its not his greatest work, but you can do a lot worse too.