Love in the Time of the Malarial Queendom

China Mieville is part of the so called "New Weird" movement of writing and the logo is well applied. Perhaps his most famous novels take place in the world of Bas-Lag. Though a fantasy trilogy, Mieville defies the staples of the genre, and tends to draw influence from horror and science fiction instead. For one, Bas-Lag itself is a setting you're more likely to find in your fevered dreams and nightmares than anywhere else. Instead of taking place in the times of armoured knights and stupid pants, the world is an industrialized, adaptive place, but straining at the seams and peopled by a myriad of bizarre, inhuman races and twisted cultures and its heroes are scientists and unionist, in fact a group of "adventurers" hired in the first book are shown as sociopaths and killers. Though the setting is wildly inventive, the author doesn't go for the traditional approach to world building, instead scattering details of far off locations, such as the nation of High Cromlech and its zombie factories or the long dead and transdimensional Ghosthead Empire, who mined and monetized probability.

As a writer, one of the most intriguing things to me is the way China Mieville manages to insert his own world views without it getting in the way of a good tale. First is his obvious love of the English language. The vocabulary used throughout would make a linguaphile quiver in ecstasy. Second is Mieville's outspoken Marxism: he also writes academically and unsuccessfully stood in the British House of Commons for the Socialist Alliance in 2001. Rather than preach his beliefs, they come across in the actual setting and the stories told. The first and third books, Perdido Street Station and Iron Council (which I haven’t read yet) take place in the Victorian styled city of New Crobuzon. A police state in all but name, electoral representation is based on a lottery, non-humans form an underclass and the hooded militia can detain and torture suspected dissidents at will. The Scar the middle novel is set on the floating pirate city of Armada and while the reign is less tyrannical, the oligarchs in charge still decide everything that happens in the city. A minor incident in the first book concerns a dockyard strike that is brutally shut down after a government-planted worker turns the peaceful demonstrations violent and serves as a perfect summation of Mieville's views on state power.

The concept of justice also turns up throughout, unsurprising as Mieville’s only published academic book concerns international law. New Crobuzon punishes almost every criminal with a Remaking, thaumaturgically altering their bodies either mechanically or organically and forcing them to work in indentured service. These modifications are tailored to cause even more shame, taking on ironic forms; for example a man who refused to talk to the authorities about his coconspirators had his mouth surgically erased. This is contrasted with the laws of the Garuda, a nomadic, communist and tribal culture of bird-hominids who eschew property ownership in favour of complete individualism. They name their crimes “choice-theft”, the stealing of self-determination, with the first degree being murder and the second being rape. The punished individual is their wings cut off, almost a death sentence for the hunter race.

The books overflow of other, more intimate themes. One is sexual taboo; New Crobuzon is full of prostitutes who cater to the xenian inclined and the Perdido’s protagonist’s artist lover happens to be a Khepri (think a woman whose head is a scarab), a fact he hides from all but his closest, bohemian friends. The second novel simply concerns the nature of home and the things people will go through to return to it. The “hero” and linguist, Bellis Coldwine is driven by the will to go back to New Crobuzon and must confront vampiric pirates, bloodsucking mosquito-people and a gargantuan underwater deity, just to taste that smog filled air once more. All in all, there’s something for everyone her, and you’re likely to enjoy the books even if you disagree with Mieville’s labour theory. Unlike most the other works I’ve talked about, the books are fairly short, the writing’s punchy (if baroque) and there are only three of them (and they’re all largely unconnected.)  So I invite you to get lost in the world of one of the weirdest, most wonderful imaginations out there.

Also he looks like he will break you.