Perdido Street Station By China Meiville

 Perdido Street Station

By China Meiville

  Dr. Mieville was born in Norwich on September 6th, 1972 but his parents separated fairly soon after he was born and he was moved to the city that clearly maintains an iron hold on his heart and subconscious, London. He grew up with his sister Jemima and his mother Claudia Mieville who was a translator, writer, and teacher. She was born in New York City and because of that Dr. Meiville holds dual citizenship in the US and the UK. For much of his life, his father was absent, they only met a handful of times and his father passed away when Dr. Mieville was 19. When his mother moved out of London in his late teens, Dr. Mieville went on a scholarship to a boarding school, Oakham, a private school (although the English call their private schools, public schools, thus maintaining the separation by common language across the ocean). After spending two fairly unhappy years (Because British boarding schools are often hellpits.) there, he took a gap year in Egypt and Zimbabwe, in Egypt he taught English and developed an interest in Arab culture and Middle Eastern politics before it was cool. After that, he headed off to Cambridge to read English (Basically majoring in English) but feeling constrained by it switched to a much more interesting study of anthropology (I bet that makes you feel validated!). Now before this, he had been involved in the CND and anti-apartheid campaigns but it was at Cambridge that he started a turn towards Marxism (Yaaas!  For reference, Dr. Meiville is a Trotskyite.  I am not going to hold that against him in the name of left-unity.  Trotsky was a pretty cool dude for a human icepick stand.).  He graduated in 1994 and gained a master's degree and Ph.D. in international relations from the London School of Economics in 2001. He also ended up holding a Frank Knox Fellowship at Harvard University for a year. His understandable dissatisfaction with postmodernism to explain historical or political events led him to fully embrace Marxism at that time. 

It was during all of this that he published his first book, King Rat, in 1998, set in a fictionalized version of London's club scene, where a young man deals with the fact that he is half rat and being framed for his father's murder (I mean… dealing with the fact?   That seems like the kind of thing you come to terms with in your teens.{well he finds all of this out after coming home to his father’s dead body and being arrested for the murder} Oh.  That’ll do it.). It was very well received getting nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for first novel and the International Horror Guild Award for first novel. He followed that up with the first book set in his alternate universe of Bas-lag and the City of New Crobuzou, the subject of this week's review. Since then he has won the Arthur C Clarke Award 3 times, the British Fantasy Award twice, Locus Awards, a Hugo award, Nebulas, and more. Additionally, he stood for election in the 2001 general election as a candidate for the Socialist Alliance and was a member of the Socialist Workers Party (My kinda guy.). His works have been for the most part widely considered great examples of the New Weird style of fiction. Which has a lot of conflicting definitions but is mainly interested in mixing things up, merging street culture with ancient mythology, subverting genre expectations, and trying for new mixes of science fiction, fantasy, and often urban writing. I have my own opinions on it but I'll hold on to them for now. For reasons I haven't been able to find he has been a victim of online stalking and harassment as well as outright defamation mostly since 2017. Because of this, I have been very careful to try and use only confirmable information in this work and try my best to avoid spreading anything I wasn't sure of. I do want to take a moment to decry this behavior, just because someone writes something you don't care for is not a reason to harass or stalk them. Dr. Meiville may have personal politics that some dislike (Certainly not your editor.) but he doesn't call for anyone to be harmed or subjected to state violence. There are certainly limits to tolerance, we should never tolerate people who call for the death or brutalization of people for circumstances of their birth for example. Those kinds of beliefs and people have no place here and should be ejected, my advice is don't game with them, don't review them, don't read them. However, someone who wants to advocate for peaceful changes in our political and economic systems (that don't involve going after ethnic groups or marginalized peoples) should be able to do so without being subjected to a campaign of aggression or attack. It is frankly shameful that he has been subjected to such and I'm going to say this, stop stalking, harassing, or otherwise persecuting people whose only issue is that they have beliefs you don't like (Unless of course, such people are calling for your own death or the deaths of others. {At that point it’s self-defense to get rid of them post haste} I have no problem punching Nazis in the face. I just want to make it perfectly clear that Your Reviewer is not endorsing a fascist-tolerant position.  I don’t want him misconstrued.). You're not a hero for doing so, you are in fact one of the bad guys and that's all I have to say about that. Let's instead finally turn to Perdido Street Station shall we? 

Our novel takes place in the city of New Crobuzon built beneath the titanic ribs of some ancient beast, the city serves as a setting and a character within the story. It is a wealthy, powerful city whose influence stretches across the world buoyed by dark magics and darker sciences. Where even the powers of Hell maintain an embassy for the Lord Mayor to maintain relations and avoid certain misunderstandings. It is a savage city where the majority of its citizens groan under gilded age levels of exploitation and oppression, where political parties fight over dividing the people along species lines or uniting across those lines to fight against upper-class interests (Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains!). A repressed city where most of its citizens are denied the vote, except for the wealthy and powerful, and those lucky enough to win the suffrage lottery. Where underground unions foment illegal strikes to demand 8 hour working days and minimum wages, where printing the idea maybe the City Militia instead of operating masked or in plain clothes should operate openly and that citizens should have rights beyond what they can buy gets your paper labeled a criminal publication (So basically Czarist Russia and the German Empire, with an Ambassador from Perdition.{With a heavy English flavor, they call their government Parliament after all}). It goes hard for those who make an enemy of the City Militia who lurks in overhead airships and has filled the teeming streets with informers and secret agents. A city where being convicted of the wrong crime can get you not only enslaved but remade. Remaking is something I would label a dark science, where people are reshaped often against their will, in state-owned factories with combinations of biological grafts or cybernetic implants. Often turning men and women into nothing more than intelligent industrial tools for the use of the powerful. I honestly find the technology level truly interesting here because they have airships and something even worse than a nuclear bomb but at the same time, flintlock pistols are the height of personal weaponry. Unless you get convicted of a crime and turned into a living flamethrower or something. New Crobuzon is a city at war with itself, more concerned with keeping its underclass down than fighting organized crime because quite frankly there are times where it's hard to tell organized crime apart from the government (They are one in the same, in such systems.). Despite all of this New Crobuzon is an economic and cultural powerhouse that can reach across the world despite being a single city-state. The artists of the city constantly push boundaries, while the magic users and scientists dig deeper into the mysteries of the universe. As long as they can find people willing to pay for the knowledge anyway. 

Issac Grimnebulin is one of those scientists, even if he's at the barely respectful fringe of scientific society. He lives outside the constraints of academia mainly because he realized that not only was he a terrible teacher and that he hated teaching (I can relate.  I am good at it, I just hate grading.{Every teacher I’ve ever known hates grading}), he hated the fact that he was wrecking his students even more. So he bailed from the university to set up his own lab in a warehouse and using contacts and project work bought and/or looted his own lab equipment and set about doing science for hire to fund his own research. I have to admit I have quite a bit of respect for Issac, as my own time in university was full of professors who didn't give a good damn if they were decent teachers or not. Hell, I had professors who were outright proud of doing a crap job of being teachers, or at least I have no other way of processing a person who walks into a 202 class and brags about a 30 percent failure rate (I had one who was a really good teacher who did that.  But it was because if you can’t understand genetics or won’t do the work, you have no business going into medicine and thus genetics was a weeder course for the Pre-Meds. He didn’t boost that failure rate either.  He gave us all of his old tests. {Sure but there’s a difference between having a subject so complex that a number of students just aren’t gonna get it and bragging about how you like to wash people out of a class that is covering material of moderate difficulty at best} Yes.). Look I get that student apathy and laziness account for a lot but frankly bragging about how you try to boost the failure rate of your class suggests that not only are you a lousy teacher but you're on a sadistic power trip and shouldn't be in the classroom. So full respect to Isaac for refusing to punish bright eager young folks for his disinterest or inability to transmit understanding and instead chose a harder path (And in this capitalist hellscape, it definitely is a hard one.). He's not the only one because there are several Rogue Scientists who are working on disapproved but not disproven theories. Issac also maintains a bit of a roguish lifestyle, this is clearly seen in his relationship with Lin. Lin is an artist which already makes them a strange pair but on top of that Lin is a Khepri, a non-human who very closely resembles a human female body with a large scarab beetle for a head. I don't mean a beetle's head but the whole beetle with wings and legs fused onto a humanoid body. Now all humanoid Khepri are female, the males are lobster sized beetles that are non-sapient. Lin practices a traditional Khepri art using an organic paste that she chews and then extrudes from an orifice in the rear of her head as a fast-drying spit that becomes fairly strong and durable. The Khepri use this to make sculptures via group work but Lin defies that tradition by working alone and focusing on subjects and styles that the Khepri find nontraditional. For example, using tools to enhance the details of her work. She and Issac are lovers in a relationship that is something of an open secret because society demands they at least put some effort into covering it up. Cross relationships or cross-sex as people in this setting call it isn't uncommon and is fine as long as it's causal. It's even considered normal if you just pay for it. Having a loving adult relationship with someone of a different species that involves sex that you both enjoy? That's terrible (Oh the scandal!  I can never judge anyone for this.  If Garrus were real…). On top of that Issac revels in using what some of us call his anarchist and criminals options to gather lab materials and subjects even when it would be less trouble to do it legally (I swear, I only ever use those options when it’s harder to get them legally.). Despite that, or maybe because of it, Issac can publish his work and enjoys a rather high reputation for his work to the point that someone is willing to cross seas, deserts, and all manner of wilderness to hire him to do the impossible, and Issac just can't say no. 

That someone is Yagharek, a garuda from the far off Cymek Desert. The garuda are a race of humanoid bird folk who can fly most likely due to magic since their wings are attached to their shoulders from the back. The same shoulders that their human-like arms are attached to (Yeah, it’s magical. The biomechanics of that just wouldn’t work.). Yagharek has trekked to New Crobuzon on foot because he can't fly anymore. He can't fly anymore because his own people tore his wings off! This was done to him due to a horrible crime he committed against another garuda, which they refer to as choice theft in the second degree with utter disrespect. While the facts of garuda society and beliefs are shared out sparing, spooled out at various points in the narrative. What we learn is that they are a fiercely communal people with a high level of individuality, they believe that an individual can only be fully realized and free within a community. They also believe that stealing a choice from another is the only crime there is. To the garuda, someone who steals your car is committing a crime, but not because they took your property but because they robbed you of the choice to drive your car, to sell it or give it away, or to not use your car at all (Honestly, I kinda like this conception.). All these things are valid choices that have been taken from you by a thief, who has also disrespected you personally by treating you as a resource to exploit rather than a concrete and real person whose choices matter. It's an incredibly interesting world view with some profound implications that we sadly don't really get to dig into. Because while Yagharek's desire to fly again is our inciting incident, it's not the crisis point of the book. Yagharek's obsession with reachiving flight becomes Issac's obsession when Yagharek offers him a bag of pure gold nuggets to get it done and Issac is prepared to do anything he can to make it happen. Unfortunately, an inability to teach isn't Issac's only character flaw, there's also a huge streak of impulsiveness and a tendency to not really think through the implications of his actions. This leaves me wondering how he has avoided burning down his own lab at this point and becoming a cautionary tale to students to think their experiments through lest you burn to death like poor old Issac the rogue scientist (My guess is that the impulsivity only applies operationally, not tactically, so to speak? {Hard to say, he’s one of the guys who does things according to the method but depends more on inspirational jumps then grinding out data from small steps}). Then again Issac does metaphorically end up burning down his lab here, the problem is he might end up taking the city with it! Because of that love of using his criminal and anarchist options? That ends up going poorly when he gets something delivered to him that he really shouldn't have gotten when he asked for examples of all types of flying creatures or creatures that go from a nonflying to flying status. Like, say caterpillars, that are somehow connected to the hot new drug of dreamshit that is taking the city underbelly by storm. Just one pellet will let you experience dozens of other people's dreams, thoughts, and nightmares. No one knows where dreamshit comes from, how it's made, or what it really does to its users but that's not stopping people from jumping on it. So what is this caterpillars' connection? What has Yagharek and Issac stumbled onto and how many people are going to end up paying the cost for it. 

Meanwhile, Lin has managed to get into a tricky entanglement of her own when she is somewhat forcibly hired by the mob boss Mr. Motley. Mr. Motley is clearly insane, having remade his own body so many times that it's actually an amorphous collection of body parts from animals and other races hammered together in a chaotic mockery of a humanoid form (No kink-shaming, but body modification can go too far, kids.). So of course he wants someone to sculpt him so he can enjoy the work of insane art that is his body. Lin is stuck trying to navigate a situation where she keeps enough favor from a man who is clearly unstable that he doesn't beat her to death but doesn't get pulled too deeply into his business that she can never leave. It doesn't help that she does this without telling Issac anything thinking to herself that ignorance is what will keep him safe (Word to the wise, kids.  It is never a good idea to think that not informing someone you love of something like that will keep them safe.). I'm just gonna say this folks, that never works. As Lin and Issac strive to keep their entanglements in the shadowy world of crime a secret from one another, events catch up to them and they find themselves dragged into a dark world of secrets, plots, and deeds fouler than any gutter sleeping homeless man could even dream about because they're the kind of vile sins you can only really do if you have money and minions (The rich really are capable of whole new levels of villainy.{resources and power bring greater opportunity and choice is all} Also I kinda figure it’s like drugs.  The little acts of assholery just don’t cut it after a while, and suddenly you find yourself on Epstein's Island.{I don’t know, seems like there’s plenty of rich dudes who don’t turn into screaming manics}). 

Because the secret behind that caterpillar and the dreamshit drug is the kind of secret that would be ruinous to the government if exposed and worse could lead to the deaths of a lot of people. Because if things do get out of control? An invasive predatory species that is so scary that even demons won't screw around with it could end up getting unleashed on the city. A city that for all its skill in dark magic and dark science has no idea how to combat a threat like this and whose government has of course taken every step necessary to ensure that they will be exposed to this threat if even a low-level clerk makes the wrong move (Which they always do, eventually.). This is on top of the unrest and simmering discontent of a population being ground under in the worse of Gilded age excess and aggressive upper-class heel grinding (Eat the Rich {Please note this review does not condone eating people}). Because adding to the tension is the fact that the unions are stirring and people like Derkhan Blueday, art critic by day, socialist muckraker by night are frantically working to expose as much government corruption and double-dealing as they can (My spirit animal.). Derkhan is also, unfortunately for her, a friend of Issac and Lin's so when the tide of events threatens to pull them under, she's going right along with them. Meanwhile, a remade who has slipped his leash named Jack Half A Prayer is outright fomenting armed revolution by murdering Militia members and informants whenever he can find them (Good {considering they torture and kill without trail, I’m feeling at very worse this is a gander and goose situation, at best, justified resistance} At that point it’s like giving Nazis a drumhead-trial in the woods.  Nothing of value is lost.). Most of this is happening in the background but bubbles over into the main story with Jack functioning as more of a Chekov's Gun than an actual character. There's in fact a number of these in the story that help the setting feel very real, like a trio of adventurers that get hired to help out Issac, much to his disgust, that plainly signal that Dr. Mieville has not only played a good amount of D&D but was often a character of less than sterling motives. Which makes him a member of a long and proud tradition if we're going, to be honest. 

Perdido Street Station is a sordid and epic tale featuring flawed but mostly decent protagonists whose own mistakes and talents have placed them in a horrible and deadly situation. Issac, Derkhan, and the others aren't hardened adventurers or professionals in violence but people from the fringes of respectable society who lose their grip on that fringe and find themselves in the dark underbelly with little in the way of recourse or hope of rescue beyond what they can provide for themselves. As such they are up against vastly more powerful and dangerous opponents and enemies but they're not without advantages. Issac's talents manage to win him allies in strange places and Derkhan's journalistic skills lend themselves well to disguise and stealth. Of course in a world where reporting the truth is a crime, journalists have to adopt more criminal methods than ones we would be used to. The setting presented is fantastic in the extreme but feels very real, as Dr. Mieville presents a place with wonders and terrors, with people trying to do good, despite all manner of degradation and degeneracy going on. The book itself has a bit of a slow start but once the main threat shows up speeds rapidly with the pace getting a bit odd at the end. The ending itself however is full of consequences and is rather hard-hitting. I do think some elements could have used some work, for example maybe Jack could have been a character instead of a plot device, given the role he plays in the end. The plot itself is well done but some parts feel over-padded like Issac's first attempts at figuring out flight and some parts could be cut out completely like his trip to the squatter's town outside of New Crobuzon that ended up having no impact on the story or the plot at all. That said, I would never have believed that this was Dr. Mievilles second novel, it reads like a veteran work and I can see how it earned the reputation it has as a stand out example of new weird fiction. For myself, I'm giving Perdido Street Station by China Mieville an A-. It's not without its flaws but in my opinion, managed to rise above them to deliver a hell of a read. 

    So the end of this year is thankfully soon upon us.  With the last book of the year having been chosen by our ever-wise Patrons God's Demon by Wayne Barlowe.  After that, the review series will return on the 22nd of January.  If you like a vote on what review we greet 2021 with, consider joining us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads where a vote is as little as a dollar a month.  We will see you next week and until then, stay safe and Keep Reading. 

Red Text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen
Black Text is your reviewer Garvin Anders