China MieVille's 'Perdido Street Station'

Something Wicked This Way ComesIn the last ten years there has been a conscious effort by some writers of Fantasy fiction, particularly in Britain, to move away from the over-familiar and increasingly worn clichés of epic Fantasy created by genre greats like the British writer J.R.R. Tolkien ('The Lord of the Rings') or the Irish writer C.S. Lewis (the 'Narnia' series), and to venture into new forms of the field more suited to modern reality, with a contemporary urban feel to the most supernatural or imaginative of settings.Nicknamed by some as the 'New Weird' wave, a small generation of authors have emerged who have deliberately subverted the accepted conventions of Fantasy literature that some, particularly in the United States, still pursue. One of the leading examples of this new movement is British writer China Miéville, who has brought a darker, edgier, punk feel to his writing informed by his left-wing politics and socialist beliefs. His most successful, and influent
ial work so far, is 'Perdido Street Station', published to critical acclaim in 2000.Set in an initially typical Fantasy setting, the far away and mysterious world of Bas-Lag, its urban background, in the dank and sultry city of New Crobuzon, gives it the evocative feel of the 'Steampunk' genre that has informed so much the 'New Weird' movement. The city itself is a much a character as those who inhabit it, no mere backdrop, but a sprawling, ancient metropolis, a city-state undergoing the early stages of a semi-magical industrial revolution, inhabited by all sorts of strange races and minorities, creatures and automata, with a nominally democratic but actually tyrannical and harsh government whose laws are as cruel as some of those who break them. Throughout its rambling suburbs and decaying ghettos gangs and factions compete for power and influence, while around them all sorts of fantastic technologies, sorceries and politics interact and play, holding the whole rotting edif
ice together.The plot is complex and multilayered, with a mysterious creature terrorizing New Crobuzon from the skies and rooftops above, sparking events that eventually lead to turmoil and violence in the streets below. But this is as much a tale of individuals and individual lives and emotions, the small and petty as well as of the great and grand, as it is of high and important events. Even the most alien of characters, and there are many, are given a real sense of identity with human emotions and motives that elicit genuine sympathy from the reader.The writing is voluptuous and verbose, as Miéville takes his time to pay tribute to the city of his imagination that he has created in all its intricate and believable detail. We are a long way from Minas Tirith or Cair Paravel here. Everything is described with intimate familiarity: we can feel the muggy oppressive heat of the city, the intertwined smells and aromas of its many quarters, the competing aggressive loudne
ss of the many languages and voices on its streets, and the feeling of eyes watching at all times for offense or transgression, while in the corners hidden things lurk or go about their own affairs.New Crobuzon is one the great creations of literature, not just of Fantasy literature, and it is no surprise that China Miéville has returned to it several times since, albeit with mixed results. He remains a writer of incredible imagination and inventiveness, someone who thinks outside the genre boxes others so readily confine themselves too, and even when he does take up the old cliché's of the field it is with a new and imaginative hand.

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