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GreyjoyBastard posted:I don't want to say I like it more than the Bas-Lag books, but I think I probably do. It's his best novel by a considerable margin, imo.
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May 21, 2019 02:12
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andrew smash posted:It's his best novel by a considerable margin, imo. agreed
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May 21, 2019 02:23
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The Scar's plot sort of resembles a bar of soap in a bath. Sometimes it shoots dramatically about; most of the time it's lost in uncertainty; and the more you try to grasp some kind of finale, the worse things become.andrew smash posted:It's his best novel by a considerable margin, imo. Oh, agreed. It's also the only Mieville book I've lent out and not had returned. Dammit.
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May 21, 2019 06:50
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Eiba posted:I thought Iron Council's anti-climax was fantastic. It ended with the defeat of the revolution, but an vivid and visceral promise of a future revolution in the form of that incredible frozen train, motionlessly poised to hurtle once more towards the city. It might be because I really liked that image, but I was left really satisfied with Iron Council. I like the ending of Iron Council as well, but for different reasons. The revolution is defeated as so many times before, but there is a promise for a new revolution and surely this time it will be different (sarcasm). I don't know if it is intentional or not, but I like how he makes the idea of a future revolution after which everything will be sunny and green to be on the same level as Kingdom Come.
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May 21, 2019 07:08
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Cardiac posted:I like the ending of Iron Council as well, but for different reasons. Of course you do because this interpretation agrees with your biases which you go out of your way to mention at every opportunity
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May 21, 2019 13:06
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Does anyone else know of any other book where language is the main conceit of the book like Embassytown? I think the manipulation of the language and how it feels truly alien is one of my favourite things about the book so I'm really wondering if there is anything else like it out there. Talking about embassytown also reminds me of a review of the book on goodreads where someone went "I study linguistics and it's IMPOSSIBLE that a language does not allow you to lie and that's why the book is bad", and it was the most asinine review I've ever read.
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May 21, 2019 13:29
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Tekopo posted:Does anyone else know of any other book where language is the main conceit of the book like Embassytown? I think the manipulation of the language and how it feels truly alien is one of my favourite things about the book so I'm really wondering if there is anything else like it out there. You’ll want to read the short story “Story Of Your Life” by Ted Chiang right now - it was adapted into film by Denis Villeneuve as Arrival. It’s a great movie but read the short story too, it goes far more into the alien language itself. If you pick up the collection that has the story (called Stories of Your Life and Others) you get a collection of equally mindboggling stories, all with incredible central ideas.
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May 21, 2019 14:24
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Eiba posted:I thought Iron Council's anti-climax was fantastic. It ended with the defeat of the revolution, but an vivid and visceral promise of a future revolution in the form of that incredible frozen train, motionlessly poised to hurtle once more towards the city. It might be because I really liked that image, but I was left really satisfied with Iron Council. Yes! It really got to me when I read it - I should see how I feel a few years later, given how much more radicalised things have become.
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May 23, 2019 00:50
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OK starting to get sucked into PSS. Had a 4 hour flight and covered a fair bit of ground, also read a lot of the book. The caterpillar hatched and poo poo appears to have hit the fan. Very cool to see how Mieville is scaling up the story.
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May 23, 2019 04:41
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Bilirubin posted:Very cool to see how Mieville is scaling up the story. He’s more chitin-ing it up
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May 23, 2019 05:41
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If there's one thing that Mieville likes more than describing an integument, it's the word integument. (That and socialism?)
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May 23, 2019 06:52
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Tree Bucket posted:If there's one thing that Mieville likes more than describing an integument, it's the word integument. (That and socialism?) He is like legitimately a socialist.
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May 23, 2019 09:34
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pseudanonymous posted:Mieville has been cosseted in the most puissant of dialectical thaumaturgy
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May 23, 2019 09:36
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Mieville has been cosseted in the most puissant boscage of dialectical thaumaturgy
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May 23, 2019 10:48
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Eiba posted:I thought Iron Council's anti-climax was fantastic. It ended with the defeat of the revolution, but an vivid and visceral promise of a future revolution in the form of that incredible frozen train, motionlessly poised to hurtle once more towards the city. It might be because I really liked that image, but I was left really satisfied with Iron Council. yeah it's great
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May 23, 2019 12:26
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pseudanonymous posted:He is like legitimately a socialist. Oh I know, he's awesome. On that note, would it be possible to get hold of his PhD thesis...? YES
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May 23, 2019 12:28
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Tree Bucket posted:Oh I know, he's awesome. I mean I have it on my shelf so yeah. I forget how much it costs. But if you don’t care if it’s printed up all fancy, you could probably get it pretty cheap.
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May 23, 2019 14:44
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Xiahou Dun posted:I mean I have it on my shelf so yeah. I forget how much it costs. But if you don’t care if it’s printed up all fancy, you could probably get it pretty cheap. Where did he do his degree and what year? I can probably fetch a PDF
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May 23, 2019 14:56
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I checked and it's like 30$ new from Amazon.
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May 23, 2019 15:23
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Bilirubin posted:Where did he do his degree and what year? I can probably fetch a PDF LSE, although I don't know the year. So his academic pedigree is pretty solid.
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May 23, 2019 21:50
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poo poo is hitting the fan in PSS and I am really enjoying the ride. Its a very unique fantasy setting
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May 30, 2019 15:13
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Kinda bending my mind a bit that somebody would want to buy anyone's PhD Thesis unless it was retrospectively acknowledged as a seminal piece of a work in a field. But I guess he was already a published author as he was writing it, so maybe it's written with a bit more readability in mind. Curious as to the motivations behind buying it. Sheer curiosity? Wanting to own everything he's written in general? Bilirubin posted:poo poo is hitting the fan in PSS and I am really enjoying the ride. Its a very unique fantasy setting I think, for whatever anybody wants to say about his books in general, and I know some people deride them as pretty 'purple' or didactic or full of unlikeable characters and whatnot, I don't think anybody can deny that he really unleashes a crazy amount of imagination. Reading PSS for the first time was a bit of an eye-opening experience for me. Dude just went hog-wild and revels in it, and it just works. A single chapter in one of his books has more creative energy and ideas than most fantasy books in their totality.
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May 30, 2019 16:54
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Yeah people bitch about his language but it never bothered me personally, that part always just seemed like pastiche of overwrought Victorian era language anyway especially given that it's not nearly as bad in his non bas-lag books
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May 30, 2019 17:07
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Jeza posted:Kinda bending my mind a bit that somebody would want to buy anyone's PhD Thesis unless it was retrospectively acknowledged as a seminal piece of a work in a field. But I guess he was already a published author as he was writing it, so maybe it's written with a bit more readability in mind. You can get mine for free, well, one of the ones I didn’t throw away. Aren’t PhD thesis available in large university libraries? At least in Sweden you are obliged as a PhD to send your thesis to a set of university libraries (nowadays only as PDF) and are thus accessible to the public. I guess that is kinda a success for Mieville, someone actually wants to read his actual thesis after dissertation. ( I guess it is different for social sciences, but the science thesis I encounter usually consists of an introduction followed by a set of peer-reviewed articles and the latter which is the important part is easily accessible anyways).
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May 30, 2019 18:41
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OK. That was one of the most unique fantasy worlds I have encountered, if a tad too steampunk at times. A very engaging story too, once I got over some of the early literary quirks (like using the same less than common word over and over and over). It took a bit to give myself over to this story but once I did it worked out pretty well. I will definitely be reading the Scar at some point
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Jun 8, 2019 06:10
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Bilirubin posted:OK. That was one of the most unique fantasy worlds I have encountered, if a tad too steampunk at times. A very engaging story too, once I got over some of the early literary quirks (like using the same less than common word over and over and over). It took a bit to give myself over to this story but once I did it worked out pretty well. The Scar is the best of the three, imo. The short story is neat too. Though a bit predictable.
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Jun 8, 2019 07:33
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What did people think of Three Moments of an Explosion? I've read a number of the stories and it seems like most have a really fascinating premise, but kinda fizzle out without much closure or attempt at an ending. I guess that's by design?
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Jun 9, 2019 05:16
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Quandary posted:What did people think of Three Moments of an Explosion? I've read a number of the stories and it seems like most have a really fascinating premise, but kinda fizzle out without much closure or attempt at an ending. I guess that's by design? Nah, that’s Mieville. Strong on premise, weaker at execution. For some reasons his later stories seems to have issues with wrapping up the stories in a good way.
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Jun 9, 2019 06:16
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Quandary posted:What did people think of Three Moments of an Explosion? I've read a number of the stories and it seems like most have a really fascinating premise, but kinda fizzle out without much closure or attempt at an ending. I guess that's by design? Mieville builds some amazing worlds, but that also means that his books usually take a little long to get going. Short stories hit all of his weak points since there isn’t room to properly get into the world and he has a general problem with endings. I thought there were some really interesting ideas among the stories, but overall the book was a little disappointing
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Jun 9, 2019 09:57
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I found a lot of Three Moments to be impenetrable but the stories always left me feeling something, like the story about the window that shows onto a different world... you don't know what the gently caress you're looking at but it haunts you. I like that his endings aren't clear-cut, with the sort of ideas that he deals in any kind of forced narrative closure is going to feel like a let-down, like he'd be betraying his ultra-bizarre premises with the cheapness of tropes. That sort of style doesn't work for everyone though.
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Jun 9, 2019 14:37
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Quandary posted:What did people think of Three Moments of an Explosion? I've read a number of the stories and it seems like most have a really fascinating premise, but kinda fizzle out without much closure or attempt at an ending. I guess that's by design?
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Jun 9, 2019 14:54
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Quandary posted:What did people think of Three Moments of an Explosion? I've read a number of the stories and it seems like most have a really fascinating premise, but kinda fizzle out without much closure or attempt at an ending. I guess that's by design? I liked Three Moments and would recommend it to someone who is already a fan of Mieville. I basically agree with Saul Goode - there are a lot of creative and memorable ideas in it that don't always go anywhere. I think it's fine for a short story to fizzle plot-wise in a way that would be frustrating in a longer work, though. If I read 20 pages and there are a couple interesting images in there and maybe an "aha!" moment when I figure out what is actually going on, but not a lot else, I'm okay with that. Still, the best stores in the collection are the ones that actually have a bit of an arc, like the Dowager of Bees or Sacken. Bold Robot fucked around with this message at 15:39 on Jun 9, 2019 |
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Jun 9, 2019 15:37
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Tekopo posted:Does anyone else know of any other book where language is the main conceit of the book like Embassytown? I think the manipulation of the language and how it feels truly alien is one of my favourite things about the book so I'm really wondering if there is anything else like it out there. Babel-17 by Samuel Delany
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Jun 9, 2019 17:05
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When they start talking about Chaverim (hebrew) is from a long lost language in Iron Council is that meant to imply that New Crobuzon is on some distant Earth?
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Jun 12, 2019 22:38
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pseudanonymous posted:When they start talking about Chaverim (hebrew) is from a long lost language in Iron Council is that meant to imply that New Crobuzon is on some distant Earth? Interesting! Proooooobably not, I would think. The original golem story is about a man named Judah Lowe who builds a not-quite-living machine to protect a synagogue. So either the words "golem" "judah" and "chaverim" have survived from the old world, and absolutely nothing else has, OR Mieville is using that little scrap of etymology as another homage to the first golem story. Come to think of it, a story about golems is just about the most Mieville thing possible: golems are simultaneously a pulp nerd monster standby AND the creation of an oppressed minority dreaming of safety.
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Jun 13, 2019 07:41
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Tree Bucket posted:Interesting! Proooooobably not, I would think. The Chaverim is what the people in the caucus are calling each other, as opposed to comrade I suppose. I mean it could be a reference to the golem story but it's totally unrelated, its in the chapters with Ori. It just strikes me as quite odd to bring up word etymology because, ostensibly, if it's a different world than they wouldn't actually be speaking English at all.
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Jun 13, 2019 13:40
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Tree Bucket posted:Interesting! Proooooobably not, I would think. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Jun 13, 2019 |
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Jun 13, 2019 17:53
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I just picked up Perdido Street Station again. I just had no time a few years back, and now I've got a nice uninterrupted lunch hour to kick back and read every day so I've been getting through so many books I've always wanted to read which is awesome. I've been wanting to return to this so bad. One thing that I am finding is there is so much surreal weirdness going on in this world. Has anyone made any commercial artbooks or maybe even RPG source books? I feel like this world needs artists to capture it all!
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Sep 26, 2019 15:14
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Philthy posted:I just picked up Perdido Street Station again. I just had no time a few years back, and now I've got a nice uninterrupted lunch hour to kick back and read every day so I've been getting through so many books I've always wanted to read which is awesome. I've been wanting to return to this so bad. There was/ is an ongoing attempt to create a roleplaying game out of Bas-Lag, but I don't think anything ever really came of it. Mieville himself makes fun of roleplaying game players in that book in one section if you read carefully, though he's only really mocking a certain style of play. I'm sure if you look on deviant art and what not there's some art being done inspired by it, or has been in the past it's been so long since Bas-Lag came out.
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Sep 26, 2019 15:29
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Mieville isn’t doing anything new in Bas Lag, per se, he’s just brilliant at taking existing fantasy tropes, chopping them up, and quilting them all back together. You could take any high fantasy Tabletop RPG and plug Bas Lag/New Crubuzon into it without a lot of work.
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Sep 26, 2019 15:43
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