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Oasx posted:As much as I love Bas-Lag and want more of it, I just want him to do more longer fiction. His short stories and novellas have been mediocre to decent. I dunno I really liked Looking for Jake, Reports of Certain Events in London is one of my all-time favorite short stories.
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Mar 3, 2019 22:28
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Bilirubin posted:Lol It seems like he picks some word and overuses it in each book of the Bas-Lag trilogy. I can't remember what they are anymore but I remember thinking at the time, like okay this is the word for this book then.
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May 10, 2019 09:26
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mitochondritom posted:Yes, I thought laciviously. I didn't notice it in Kraken, but I really liked that book, to me it seems like the best of the "magic is real you just don't know about it" sub-genre.
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May 12, 2019 00:19
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Hedrigall posted:He only ever uses it to describe the grindylow magic I kind of hate that I know this, but I'm pretty sure he uses it in Perdido Street Station in reference to a musket.
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May 13, 2019 08:31
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scary ghost dog posted:just finished a reread of The Scar and while i said earlier that PSS was eminently unfilmable, i think The Scar might actually be perfectly suitable for adaptation I think it'd be really hard to capture the wtf moment at the end when Bellis realizes that Uther either manipulated her or else is just a terrifying improviser. It's a very The Usual Suspects kind of revelation.
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May 17, 2019 04:57
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Oasx posted:You might as well change the ending if you are going to adapt it, it is absolutely the worst part of the book. Can you elaborate as to why you don't like it?
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May 17, 2019 12:10
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Oasx posted:I hate it when at the end of a book/movie/tv show the author suddenly turns around and tells me that everything he got me to care about was false. Pretty much the entire plot of the book is about people tricking Bellis, and thereby the reader into thinking something is happening, and it turns out to be a ruse. It in many ways makes the entire book feel like a practical joke, and for everything you read to be pointless. that's interesting, I think it's the best/strongest of the three personally. scary ghost dog posted:its very anticlimactic.....the titular scar is only seen in a might-have-been. in reality armada turns around right before reaching it, after spending the whole book seeking it......however, the attempted mutiny right before is very thrilling I'd pose this question to both of you, I guess, did you like The Usual Suspects or was that a frustrating shaggydog story for you as well?
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May 17, 2019 14:04
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Tree Bucket posted:Embassytown is my absolute favourite. Possibly because I am a delicate flower and really don't deal well with the ending of PSS. I think my favorite Kraken: An Anatomy Tree Bucket posted:This post drools clots of accreted brute pugnacity. Nuh uh
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Apr 1, 2021 01:18
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Sandwolf posted:I just finished TC&TC earlier today, I loved it. China does a unique creative setting like no one else. Looking for Jake is great, Report of Certain Events in London is an amazing short, Jake has a bas-lag story in it. I also adore Kraken: an anatomy.
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Jun 26, 2022 23:55
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Alhazred posted:It also shows how evil and brutal the city government is. They have relations with Hell and no one there thinks that's kinda weird. Honestly, it felt a little too on the nose for me.
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Jun 27, 2022 21:05
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exmarx posted:yeah same. iron council is the best of the three. Totally this, the same, except the exact opposite.
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Jul 2, 2022 14:53
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Tosk posted:I found myself wondering what had happened to China Mieville not long ago, and found a rather unpleasant answer: scroll down to Sablefool's comment that begins with 'Whilst we do not live in...' This has come up before in the thread. The thing is, assuming it's the same person at least, what she appears to accuse China Mieville of is, being an rear end in a top hat. Her whole article is a lot of words about manipulation and gas-lighting and stuff, but I remember reading and not actually understanding what she was accusing him of, more or less cheating on her and lying about it, which is lovely but like... The article referenced in that Reddit is the one I read a year or more ago, from 2012. So, I don't know what to believe. Often in cases like this, there is more than one accuser, and there's a pattern of behavior. The complainer alludes to many other cases and says he's doing it to other women and then says he's using legal threats or whatever to keep them from talking about it. It's certainly plausible. I think it's also plausible this was an ugly relationship that ended badly. I'm not saying I hope another accuser comes forward, but Also, it seems like he's mostly just writing non-fiction right now. Er I don't want to seem like I'm white-knighting the guy, I'm not saying do or don't believe her or him, just it's hard for me to want to memory hole someone over some fairly vague allegations that appear to be unsubstantiated and unique - it's entirely possible he's a serial abuser and so proficient at it that he's keeping people from reporting or talking about it. I know the UK has very different laws about libel and such.
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Sep 7, 2022 20:57
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General Battuta posted:Written entirely in fraction words this time Maybe he apostrophe ll spell out all punctuation this time period
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May 31, 2023 01:04
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