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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. he wrote a really weird resurrection of the comic Dial H For Hero
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Sep 26, 2019 16:15
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There was a copy of Dragon magazine where they covered Bas Lag and did some of the races and monsters within the D20 rules. There also also some artwork done which you can see here: https://www.deviantart.com/njoo/art/World-of-China-Mieville-48266205
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Sep 26, 2019 17:10
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I've just ordered Perdido Street Station, and the Area X stuff by VanderMeer, because I've been putting off reading both for far too long. I'm well hype for getting into it but now I'm seeing that SA likes it and wondering if I've made a huge mistake. Bad digs aside I'm really looking forward to it. China Mieville seems like such a rad dude and I've loved his short stories/politics.
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Sep 30, 2019 00:40
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Mieville hasn't published anything new in a while. Do we know if he's stopped writing entirely? (Maybe he's spent the lockdown working on the fabled fourth Bas-Lag book!?!) And, given the current state of things, does the thread have any recommendations for Mievillian authors?
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Mar 29, 2021 06:14
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He seems to have only done non-fiction these last few years. Given that he could be making bucket loads of money just by pumping out Bas-Lag books, I figure he just writes what he finds interesting, and fiction hasn't been that recently. I don't know any other authors that scratch that Mieville itch, the closest in tone and subject is probably Jeff VanderMeer, but I often find his work frustrating to read. His writing has a sort of dreaming/muddy style that often makes it unclear what is actually happening. Oasx fucked around with this message at 07:10 on Mar 29, 2021 |
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Mar 29, 2021 06:54
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Tree Bucket posted:And, given the current state of things, does the thread have any recommendations for Mievillian authors? The Anubis Gates. Horrabin would fit right into Bas-Lag.
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Mar 29, 2021 16:13
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Tree Bucket posted:Mieville hasn't published anything new in a while. Do we know if he's stopped writing entirely? (Maybe he's spent the lockdown working on the fabled fourth Bas-Lag book!?!) It probably depends on what you like about Mieville. I don't think there's anybody that blends social commentary/big ideas with the new weird/cosmic horror in quite the same way that he does, but Hannu Rajaniemi is pretty good on the big ideas and kind of trippy writing, and Tamsyn Muir is good at the cosmic horror and weird settings interacting with well-developed characters.
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Mar 29, 2021 17:23
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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. I hope you like the word puissance!
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Mar 29, 2021 18:24
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Ccs posted:I hope you like the word puissance! Yknow I once did a word search in an ebook of the scar and the word puissance/puissant appears like a dozen times tops over 700 pages and always in context of talking about the grindylow’s magic, dude picked a word he liked for their magic, get over it
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Mar 29, 2021 21:10
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It's a pretty good word IMO.
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Mar 29, 2021 21:55
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Hedrigall posted:Yknow I once did a word search in an ebook of the scar and the word puissance/puissant appears like a dozen times tops over 700 pages and always in context of talking about the grindylow’s magic, dude picked a word he liked for their magic, get over it Could've sworn it was more, also in the context of that sword dude, but I haven't checked. I do remember noticing the word choice when reading the book. It's a pretty good word, all the fights move very smoothly, so it's not like it's weighing the prose down, but it does stick out haha.
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Mar 29, 2021 22:05
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Hedrigall posted:Yknow I once did a word search in an ebook of the scar and the word puissance/puissant appears like a dozen times tops over 700 pages and always in context of talking about the grindylow’s magic, dude picked a word he liked for their magic, get over it Somebody's salty today!
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Mar 29, 2021 22:06
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I wish I had gotten a kindle earlier, all my Mieville books were physical copies and are in another country so I can't reread them. Would like to revisit The Scar again.
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Mar 29, 2021 22:10
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andrew smash posted:Somebody's salty today! Sorry if I seem a little puissed off
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Mar 29, 2021 22:37
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Hedrigall posted:Yknow I once did a word search in an ebook of the scar and the word puissance/puissant appears like a dozen times tops over 700 pages and always in context of talking about the grindylow’s magic, dude picked a word he liked for their magic, get over it He basically uses it instead of the term power when talking about magic. They start talking about the might blade and I'm pretty sure he uses it in Perdido Street Station also when talking about the gun the adventurer loses fighting the slake moths. "It was a puissant weapon" or some such. To be honest it's getting thrown around like eldritch or arcane, which actually don't really make sense as words in a fantasy setting because their very definition is "strange energies" or "unusual" but if magic is everywhere they wouldn't be strange.... Anyway. I can't remember what the word he picks to go crazy with in Iron Council, bit it almost seems deliberate by then. This is a reflection on the subject on Goodreads that is kind of neat: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1487608-glossary-of-unusual-words-to-be-found-in-cm-s-writings
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Mar 29, 2021 23:14
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He definitely uses it in PSS to describe the gun. I don't mind it either I think it's a decent word to use to avoid just calling everything magic.
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Mar 29, 2021 23:18
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I wonder if Mieville likes "puissant" because it means strange & powerful and sounds a little bit like "pus"? Also, the best line about the grindylow has to be "their science ain't ours." It needs to be the opening line of a trailer for a hypothetical Bas Lag movie, ideally said over a black screen with weird faint noises in the background. Notahippie posted:It probably depends on what you like about Mieville. I don't think there's anybody that blends social commentary/big ideas with the new weird/cosmic horror in quite the same way that he does... That's the problem, isn't it! I used to read a lot of scifi, but Mieville kind of ruined most of it for me. I need my scifi to include cool monsters, angry politics and weird experimental literary nonsense now. Thanks all for the recommendations, though.
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Mar 30, 2021 03:05
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Tree Bucket posted:I wonder if Mieville likes "puissant" because it means strange & powerful and sounds a little bit like "pus"? Well, there is Lovecraft: cool monsters.. check angry politics... well check but sort of wrong weird experimental literary nonsense... well kind of. Some of it is just bad.
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Mar 30, 2021 04:08
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What annoys me about the complaints about puissance/puissant isn't that it ignores that the word is used in a Book of the New Sun way as a term that is implied to have a concrete, technical meaning to the characters in the universe that the reader doesn't have the context to completely understand, it's that it ignores that lasciviously is right there. It's a word you're supposed to use 0-1 times in a book and he uses it 10 times in PSS alone (for comparison, puissance/puissant gets used 3 times total)
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Mar 30, 2021 04:52
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pseudanonymous posted:Well, there is Lovecraft: Come to think of it, the ending of The Scar left me with exactly the same feelings as Lovecraft's thing of "what I saw there, I cannot tell you, lest you go mad! Oh No! It is coming through the window! I dare not describe it!"
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Mar 30, 2021 05:07
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Tree Bucket posted:Come to think of it, the ending of The Scar left me with exactly the same feelings as Lovecraft's thing of "what I saw there, I cannot tell you, lest you go mad! Oh No! It is coming through the window! I dare not describe it!" Oh, I actually really like the end of The Scar.
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Mar 30, 2021 05:20
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pseudanonymous posted:Oh, I actually really like the end of The Scar. Yeah, I first read it when I was about 17, and was not a fan o that ending. With the intervening... aagh, two decades... it's begun to make a lot more sense.
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Mar 30, 2021 06:37
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I've come to appreciate The Scar more, but the ending is still one of the reasons why it's the Bas-Lag book I like the least.
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Mar 30, 2021 07:00
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Whatever happened to that history of the Communist Manifesto? Very weird to me that it seemed to be on track for publication then vanished into nothingness.
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Mar 30, 2021 10:02
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FPyat posted:Whatever happened to that history of the Communist Manifesto? Very weird to me that it seemed to be on track for publication then vanished into nothingness. Is this an elaborate Iron Council joke?
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Mar 30, 2021 10:03
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Tree Bucket posted:Is this an elaborate Iron Council joke? No, though it would be very apropos. I checked the Amazon page and it says it'll be published November 4, 2021.
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Mar 30, 2021 10:10
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All this talk of Lasciviousness and Puissance and yet no-one has mentioned "clot". I don't mind the China Mieville overuse of weirdly horrible words at all. I find it quite charming in a way. Any UK goons here who watch University Challenge? China Mieville was an answer to a question last week and I laughed at Paxman pronouncing his name "Mee-ay-ville", which I take it is correct, but had never heard it spoken out loud before.
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Mar 30, 2021 11:11
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People always talk about the puissance but never the pugnacity. It's a shame imo
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Mar 30, 2021 12:31
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I always think of 'bituminous'. I have a friend who commented about 'russet' as well.
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Mar 30, 2021 12:45
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Oasx posted:I've come to appreciate The Scar more, but the ending is still one of the reasons why it's the Bas-Lag book I like the least. I think it’s about how people are always going to choose the certainty of everyday life over the possibility of revolution and how that bums China out.
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Mar 30, 2021 14:47
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I saw all these new posts, thought he must've published something new, then I click on the thread and it's just you fuckers posting 'puissance' over and over again.
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Mar 30, 2021 20:21
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Pistol_Pete posted:I saw all these new posts, thought he must've published something new, then I click on the thread and it's just you fuckers posting 'puissance' over and over again. A puissant post that might cause a ruction with ersatz outrage violating the lassitudinous bathos the palimpsestic thread usually exhibits, it rather chivvies the bonce in it's lack of elasticity in accepting the alterity of posting about Mieville's sesquipedalian tendencies.
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Mar 30, 2021 21:54
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A guy I know thought Iron Council was Trotskyist propaganda. I guess I can see it as a literalized Permanent Revolution.
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Mar 31, 2021 14:02
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FPyat posted:A guy I know thought Iron Council was Trotskyist propaganda. I guess I can see it as a literalized Permanent Revolution.
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Mar 31, 2021 15:48
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FPyat posted:A guy I know thought Iron Council was Trotskyist propaganda. I guess I can see it as a literalized Permanent Revolution. Mieville has a PhD in economics with a Marxist focus, so it's hard to imagine that's an accidental parallel.
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Mar 31, 2021 15:51
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FPyat posted:A guy I know thought Iron Council was Trotskyist propaganda. I guess I can see it as a literalized Permanent Revolution. That trotsky is still a thing 90 years after he had a date with an ice pick says more about your guy. My general feeling with regards to Mieville is that he reached the amount of success necessary to start believing the hype around himself. Embassytown is 10 years ago and what he produced since then is far from his best work. I would say he has passed his creative peak. We will know that for certain when he starts churning out Bas-lag novels in order to pay the rent.
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Mar 31, 2021 17:30
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Cardiac posted:That trotsky is still a thing 90 years after he had a date with an ice pick says more about your guy. I think it's more like now he has enough dollars that he can afford to work on only stuff he finds really interesting.
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Mar 31, 2021 20:38
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I think it's absolutely a positive that he is writing the stuff he wants, and not just pumping out yearly Bas-lag books for the paycheck
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Mar 31, 2021 20:42
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a foolish pianist posted:I think it's more like now he has enough dollars that he can afford to work on only stuff he finds really interesting. October was good but it was hardly a deep analysis that will stay with us for the ages so I'm wondering where he's going with his upcoming stuff, we'll see I guess
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Mar 31, 2021 21:16
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Oasx posted:I think it's absolutely a positive that he is writing the stuff he wants, and not just pumping out yearly Bas-lag books for the paycheck Wrong
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Mar 31, 2021 21:20
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