Mieville Thread!

[LD]

I hope Mieville's next book after this one will be a Bas-Lag one. I predict it will deal with airships. It is the logical progression. He has already done land (trains) and the sea (ships).

Just imagine the wonders of the sky (already partially introduced in the earlier books, but not yet indepth)

The only other environment that is left may be mines and underground. The earlier books covered a lot of ground...

[Steerpike]

I'm hoping for more on Troglodopolis or Maru'ahm, in terms of the underground/airship thing.  I wonder if he might suprise us with something completely different, though.  A novel set in Bered Kai Nev?!

Whatever the case, I'm very stoked for The City & The City.

[Superfluous Crow]

Has anyone read "The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases"? Mieville apparently wrote a chapter (or disease i guess) for it. Would like to know what he came up with. ^^

Also, his book will probably be about something he has barely ever hinted at before. i think he enjoys to surprise his readers with something completely new. Or maybe he'll just write another chapter in the history of New Crobuzon, but i doubt it.  

[Matt Larkin (author)]

Added this as the official discussion thread for the wiki. Sounds like an author I need to get around to reading.

[Steerpike]

I've read Mieville's disease (Buscard's Murrain) but nothing else, sadly.  I'd like to though, it has amazing contributors, Alan Moore and Jeff Vandermeer and I think maybe Neil Gaiman (!).

With regards to the two manuscripts/The City & The City thing, apparently the publisher didn't know he was writing C & C, and he handed it in the day after handing in another manuscript, which isn't described; it might not necessarily be a novel (I somehow doubt it, though we can hope).

Also, apparently The City & The City is "monster-free," which coming from Mieville is a bit alarming.

[Superfluous Crow]

It really is somewhat alarming. He always claims he's only in it for the monsters. but then again, it was written for his mother or so i heard. She might have different tastes.
And yes, Neil Gaiman and VanderMeer contribute.
What is China's fictional disease about?

[Llum]

I would go so far as to say that there are no "physical" monsters, ala slakemoths and junk. Doesn't mean there isn't anything monstrous at all, it just happens to be prettier ~~

[Steerpike]

China's is a strange disease that causes uncontrollable glossolalia; it's triggered when someone says the word "wormwood," with a certain inflection, which supposedly reconfigures the speaker's brain, prompting them to seek out large crowds and repeat the word over and over again.  There are hints that an "antidote" word also exists, but it's unknown.

It doesn't sound very credible when I just describe it like that, but Mieville does a good job of making the description look like an Entry Taken from a Medical Encyclopedia (the title), and afterwards you don't really feel like saying the word wormwood, just in case...

[Steerpike]

China speaks about The City & The City, talking about the peculiar, dream-like logic of police procedurals.

[Superfluous Crow]

Can anyone remember where the in-depth explanation of crisis  science is? Or just explain it? :P
Can only find the part where he blows up the cheese.

[Steerpike]

Chapter Fourteen and Chapter Twenty of PSS have a pretty good explanation of crisis energy.  Basically the idea is that crisis energy is kind of like potential energy, and is omnipresent all about us, since "crisis is a part of being."  Vodyanoi tap criss energy to create watercraeft, but most of it goes to waste.  Crisis comes out of contradictions (like in the endgame atop the station).  I think crisis is partly meant to reflect the idea of The Dialectic.

[Superfluous Crow]

Just finished Iron Council! I had heard it was worse than the others, so chose to skip it after i had read the two others. But i was actually positively surprised. It's a really cool book if you ask me. And for once the ending didn't disappoint as much as it surprised. Very clever of him. Also, golems are pretty awesome.

[Superfluous Crow]

And now i have finished The City & The City. Very different from his other books, but i'm actually pleasantly surprised at how well he writes non-fantasy like this. And the story is pretty nice as well, it actually made me guess at the wrong villain :)
But of course, the best point about it is:
[spoiler]The idea of the two cities. They co-exist in the same space, and while some areas belong entirely to one or the other, some of them are shared. Because each inhabitant is only ever in one city (unless they cross the centrally located border) they are bound to ignore and evade everything that is in the other city (unseeing it). This is such a great idea, and brilliantly carried out and evoked by Miéville.[/spoiler]

[Steerpike]

A Mieville interview; the interviewer is Jeff Vandermeer.  I'm really fascinated by the bit at the beginning about the sublime as an aesthetic category, which I've written a couple of papers on.

[LD]

Thank you.
Hm. Mieville provides another name to keep a lookout for:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hope_Hodgson

The guy sounds like quite an intriguing character.