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We all unsee all the time. I'll politely step around a homeless person without explicitly recognizing them or breaking my stride while continuing a conversation. If they break that barrier and engage me its a clear violation of worlds.
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Apr 21, 2017 05:28
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To really do TC&TC on screen I'd expect all kinds of fun film/camera tricks to highlight the whole unseeing thing. Like really heavy out-of-focus, blur, even selective colouring. Regarding the Bas-Lag books I like enjoyment of Iron Council depends heavily on whether you think the long Amanuensis section is either cool or a big long slog (in an unfun way).
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Apr 26, 2017 01:15
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Apparently they've started filming TC&TC in Liverpool of all places. I might go down and see if I can catch some filming.
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Apr 26, 2017 17:45
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Interesting! I wonder how long it takes a production to go from filming to airing... Anyway, I just finished a re-read of Kraken, and I almost feel like it would work better as a series of little 5-minute tv episodes. (Or- heresy!- some kind of trading card game......) Tiny filmed stories about the magic ipod or the haunted teleporter or the embassy to the sea or whatever. There's so much fun stuff in Kraken- but even Mieville evetually runs out of ways to say "it feels like the end of the world is getting close and ppl feel bad."
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Apr 27, 2017 12:47
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Oh hello 98 new posts in the China Mieville thread...Tree Bucket posted:I cannot wait for this show. Now, a full movie of The Scar, that would be something special.... I can't even conceive of how a Bas-Lag adaptation could get made. Set aside the politics (which probably disqualify any studio from wanting to come near it anyway.) They're all long enough to fill a full season (or three) on a prestige drama network like Starz or HBO, which exacerbates my next point. You would need a budget on scale with James Cameron's Avatar to cover the amount of things you have to portray. Now, an indie-press comic adaptation would be something I'd buy every issue of.
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Apr 28, 2017 19:00
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Didn't some Chicago theatre do a TC&TC adaptation a while back? Really wish I'd gotten to see it. It was decent, but definitely a small theater production. They went real heavy on the exposition so it was totally unlike the novel where it takes you at least have the book to understand what's going on. I think only 2 of the 6 friends I went with had read it. Imagining ways a movie could do it, I'd love to see either a really good troop (lookingglass theater maybe?) or a cool movie director take a crack at it. You could definitely create cool scenes where some things are brought into and out of focus.
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May 1, 2017 22:03
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Daivid Morrisey as the lead in anything is excellent news, rather excited for this now. BBC are the kings of the mini series.
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May 3, 2017 14:58
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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/06/russian-revolution-matter-china-mieville
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May 7, 2017 00:22
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October is released in the States today. I hope he's touring for it, though I suspect he hates my city because he never ever comes here. 
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May 9, 2017 08:05
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Kraken sequel confirmed. https://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/05/14/watch-massive-mysterious-sea-creature-washes-ashore-in-indonesia/
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May 15, 2017 17:03
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Heads up, Verso has October on sale for $13 print + ebook or $5 ebook until the 28th of this month. I'm working through it right now, and I'm enjoying it so far. He makes the whole convoluted mess about as legible as it could be. They also have a bunch of other Russia related books on sale too: http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3116-the-russian-revolution-a-verso-reading-list?discount_code=RussianRevolution
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May 18, 2017 05:11
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here's an intersection of people I follow that I wasn't expecting. China on Chapo Trap House: https://soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/episode-110-the-rocktober-revolution-feat-china-mieville-52217
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May 22, 2017 05:27
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uber_stoat posted:here's an intersection of people I follow that I wasn't expecting. China on Chapo Trap House: and also entirely expectable tbh
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May 22, 2017 11:00
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Lunchmeat Larry posted:owns
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May 22, 2017 13:16
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Just finished Three Moments of an Explosion, and while I enjoyed the overall atmosphere of the stories, I was surprisingly frustrated at how incomplete many of the works felt. Could and would have read full versions of a fair few stories. So I whanna know where to go next? I loved the atmosphere and style of his writing, but I want something with more answers than Three Moments.
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Jul 20, 2017 22:50
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Sandwolf posted:Just finished Three Moments of an Explosion, and while I enjoyed the overall atmosphere of the stories, I was surprisingly frustrated at how incomplete many of the works felt. Could and would have read full versions of a fair few stories. He does have a bad habit of that. I always recommend Perdido Street Station, may as well start with his breakout book. Embassytown, The City & The City or Kraken if you don't want to jump into the Bas-Lag universe thing.
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Jul 20, 2017 23:33
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You should read The Scar, so many neatly resolved stories.
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Jul 21, 2017 02:39
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The Scar is still the best, and one of the most thrilling adventure books I've ever read -- and it's set in one of the scariest and most well realised fantasy settings.
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Jul 21, 2017 02:57
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The Scar has everything except a sequel.
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Jul 21, 2017 07:51
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The Scar or Embassytown are probably his two best books. The Scar has a pretty unsatisfying ending though - intentionally - so while I wouldn't let that put you off it might be worth reading a different book first. FWIW I agree with you about Three Moments.
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Jul 21, 2017 10:39
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Miéville has this thing about anticlimax. Maybe he's trying to subvert the expectations of a satisfying ending in the same way he dislikes happy endings, I don't know, but I think he really overblew it in most of Three Moments. Haven't read anything later of his yet so I'm still hoping it won't turn into (even more of) a trend.
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Jul 21, 2017 18:03
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anilEhilated posted:Miéville has this thing about anticlimax. Maybe he's trying to subvert the expectations of a satisfying ending in the same way he dislikes happy endings, I don't know, but I think he really overblew it in most of Three Moments. Haven't read anything later of his yet so I'm still hoping it won't turn into (even more of) a trend. October has one too :trotsky:
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Jul 21, 2017 18:56
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The Scar has a ton of good bits, but the main thread, where the guy has just plan everything and knows everything and wins, is just terrible.
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Jul 22, 2017 01:35
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Vastly unpopular here, but I don't massively rate The Scar, and its criminally poor ending is a big contributing factor.
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Jul 22, 2017 01:56
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For an alternate take, I loved weird anti-climax ending of The Scar, but it's still not my favorite Bas Lag book because of the generally meandering plot. Iron Council had the best ending though and is the best. 
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Jul 22, 2017 02:08
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All three Bas Lag books end with devastating anticlimaxes where China is like "gently caress you, I'm not going to end this like any fantasy book you've ever read" and it's great
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Jul 22, 2017 02:16
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Actually they're more like pseudoclimaxes because they are all endings of a kind, just not in the way that fiction conventions have trained us to desire
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Jul 22, 2017 02:18
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Iron Council is great. Uther kind of dragged the scar down for me. One minor thing i loved about the scar though is seeing at first that bellis is as frigid as Isaac described her in Perdido street station and then sort of figuring out why.
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Jul 22, 2017 07:57
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As far as I'm concerned, each Bas-Lag book was better than the last. Iron Council is my second-favourite Mieville novel and the ending loving floored me in a really good way. The Scar is good and I actually really like Bellis but the ending being dominated by deliberately less-interesting characters is a low blow. Like, I get that's the point, that Bellis and the other pov characters have stumbled across some epic fantasy in the making involving Doul, Brucolac and the Lovers and that the ending of that epic doesn't really even matter to the actual story of The Scar but having a cool idea doesn't really earn you any points if it's still dull. And PSS is fascinating but in a very sprawling and uncontrolled way that felt like Mieville just wanted to cram every loving thing in his setting into one book, story and characters be damned.
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Jul 22, 2017 15:47
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I think Embassytown is probably his best novel just as a novel, but Iron Council is my absolute favorite, especially because of that amazing, heartbreaking ending. Taking advantage of thread's revival to say that October is very good and I sure hope he writes more nonfiction someday. Guy's a good teacher.
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Jul 22, 2017 17:38
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Embassytown is a good book and probably has the most solidly conventional ending of his books.
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Jul 23, 2017 01:20
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Embassytown is objectively his best novel because it's half left hand of darkness homage and half extensive Marxist analysis of linguistics
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Jul 23, 2017 02:44
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Embassytown and The City and the City are his best books to me because he just takes the concept and goes really crazy with that specific idea. No distractions or anything, just pure whatever it's about. Contrast that with the everything-that-passes-into-his-head approach of his Bas Lag books, Kraken and Railsea, in which anything can happen, so there are dozens of lengthy digressions introducing new weird ideas over the course of the book. It can result in a crazy colorful grotesque world (and... Kraken), but I love his full novels with one focus best. Embassytown still has a lot of neat sci-fi concepts all over the place, I guess, but it's still way more focused and down to earth somehow than when he's writing fantasy and he's free to just do whatever the gently caress. Don't get me wrong, a book consisting of a dozen random ideas China Mievelle had is a fantastic book, but there's something satisfying about how tight Embassytown and The City and the City are.
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Jul 23, 2017 02:58
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I have made my peace with the fact that he may never write anything as fantastic as Embassytown ever again. As far as peaks go, it's a hard one to complain about.
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Jul 23, 2017 07:53
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Lunchmeat Larry posted:October has one too Too soon. I laughed
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Jul 28, 2017 07:17
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So I've started reading his books and decided to start with The City & The City followed by Embassytown. Having finished them both, I'm glad I wasn't overtly discouraged by TC&TC, since Embassytown was such a treat and one of the best and most inventive sci-fi books I've read in a long time. I liked the premise of TC&TC but in the end the story felt rather pedestrian for me: maybe it was because I was expecting a bit more sci-fi and less mystery thriller, so maybe the issue was with my expectations, but I think I was more interested in the background of the book itself rather than the actual storyline, and by the end I felt that the reveals weren't enough to make me invested in the outcome, or what exactly happened to the characters. Although the particulars would of course be different, I could have seen a similar storyline even in a book that doesn't use the interesting gimmick that TC&TC has. On the other hand, Embassytown, although relatively slow at first, builds up to a fever pitch by the end and really gripped me, and the end itself revealed so much more about the world and how the Hosts operated within them. It felt truly unique and I'm glad I had a chance to read it.
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Aug 12, 2017 23:50
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i'm about halfway through perdido street station and a moth just fluttered past me i'll never see moths the same way reading this book reminds me of playing planescape torment.
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Aug 25, 2017 22:04
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Yeah, I got that too. China has a love/hate thing with DnD. Most apparent in the Bas-Lag books, of course.
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Aug 26, 2017 18:52
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Oh Yag, old son... that was loving grim at the end, godsdamn, i mean i didn't necessarily expect a happy ending, but rudgutter and motley come out of it relatively unscathed (rudgutter even get to invoke martial law) and all of our protoganists got hosed hard. the only upsides are the death moths and vermishank dead. that's it edit3: forgot about the constructs not becoming all powerful yog's a loving featherless rapist, lin's mentally deficient, derkhan is probably traumatized for life and isaac is quite thoroughly broken by all the previous and more. oh and lemuel got tortured to death by angry cactus can't wait to start reading the scar edit: the dnd adventurers getting hosed up was quite funny though edit2: reading the first page cursorily, it seems like people prefer the scar to this one, can't wait! Kurtofan fucked around with this message at 16:12 on Aug 28, 2017 |
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Aug 28, 2017 16:07
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It's got much tighter plotting while keeping the amazingly hosed-up imagery Miéville built his reputation on. Probably the best Bas-Lag book, definitely my favorite of the three.
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Aug 28, 2017 18:35
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