It looks like it'll be a good year for books. I say this because, amongst other reasons, there's a new novel from China Miéville on the horizon.
China Miéville - 'The City & The City'
Here's what Amazon.co.uk has to say:
When the body of a murdered woman is found in the extraordinary, decaying city of Bes el, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks like a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlu of the Extreme Crime Squad. But as he probes, the evidence begins to point to conspiracies far stranger, and more deadly, than anything he could have imagined. Soon his work puts him and those he cares for in danger. Borlu must travel to the only metropolis on Earth as strange as his own, across a border like no other. With shades of Kafka and Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler and 1984 , "The City & The City" is a murder mystery taken to dazzling metaphysical and artistic heights.
Intriguing. Although I must confess my slight disappointment that the signs point to it not being another Bas Lag novel, it's been almost four years since 'Iron Council' and while 'Un Lun Dun' was fun, I've been positively champing at the bit for whatever comes next.
Miéville's stories are largely the reason I made the transition from reader to writer. I read 'Perdido Street Station' and 'The Scar' toward the end of my teens and they changed forever the way I looked at Fantasy fiction. In New Crobuzon I saw a city quite unlike those that I had become bored with in other works, one that resonated with my city, not merely one of some bygone year but the London that I grew up in and in which I still live. "Finally", I thought, "something relevant". On almost every rereading of the three Bas Lag novels I find new echoes of a world not a thousand years or miles away from that right outside my front door, for instance in 'Iron Council' with the "fast spat performative slang of the Dog Fenn Dozens" that seems a wonderfully sly reference to Drum&Bass/Hiphop/Grime MCing. New Crobuzon, of all the places that never were, feels the most like home.
China Miéville does cities like nobody else, combining the strange and alien with the familiar and somehow universal. His metropolises are all and none at the same time. Perhaps 'The City & The City' will epitomise this. Expectations are absolutely gargantuan.
Next up is 'Finch', the third book in Jeff Vandermeer's Ambergris cycle.
Jeff Vandermeer - 'Finch'
Vandermeer's another writer who had quite an effect on me. The sprawling "patchwork-novel" 'City of Saints and Madmen' (another of those books that I think only the hardcover editions truly do justice) and its successor 'Shriek: An Afterword' showed me that Fantasy could be inventive in terms of form, that that kind of literary sophistication need not merely be the preserve of the stuffy so called 'higher echelons'. Like Miéville, you can't really compare Vandermeer's works to anything else out there. I think he writes from quite a different perspective and intention than most other authors working in these genres. He's the best at what he does, and nobody else does it like Jeff. Here's the blurb, taken from his excellent blog 'Ecstatic Days':
I applaud Vandermeer's decision to set this one far in advance of the previous. I don't think he's the sort of writer that would have a basic continuation from one novel to the next in any case, however there is a great sense of continuity in terms of the Big Picture. There has always seemed an air of latent prophecy, an expectation of terrible events to come hinted at and detailed subtly in other Ambergris fiction, and I feel as if we're about to see something come to fruition that we've known would happen since first opening 'City Of Saints'. We knew the greycaps would do it, and they did. Now what? I'm looking forward to finding out.
Finally we come to Ian McDonald's 'Cyberabad Days'.
Ian McDonald - 'Cyberabad Days'
Intriguing. Although I must confess my slight disappointment that the signs point to it not being another Bas Lag novel, it's been almost four years since 'Iron Council' and while 'Un Lun Dun' was fun, I've been positively champing at the bit for whatever comes next.
Miéville's stories are largely the reason I made the transition from reader to writer. I read 'Perdido Street Station' and 'The Scar' toward the end of my teens and they changed forever the way I looked at Fantasy fiction. In New Crobuzon I saw a city quite unlike those that I had become bored with in other works, one that resonated with my city, not merely one of some bygone year but the London that I grew up in and in which I still live. "Finally", I thought, "something relevant". On almost every rereading of the three Bas Lag novels I find new echoes of a world not a thousand years or miles away from that right outside my front door, for instance in 'Iron Council' with the "fast spat performative slang of the Dog Fenn Dozens" that seems a wonderfully sly reference to Drum&Bass/Hiphop/Grime MCing. New Crobuzon, of all the places that never were, feels the most like home.
China Miéville does cities like nobody else, combining the strange and alien with the familiar and somehow universal. His metropolises are all and none at the same time. Perhaps 'The City & The City' will epitomise this. Expectations are absolutely gargantuan.
Next up is 'Finch', the third book in Jeff Vandermeer's Ambergris cycle.
Jeff Vandermeer - 'Finch'
Vandermeer's another writer who had quite an effect on me. The sprawling "patchwork-novel" 'City of Saints and Madmen' (another of those books that I think only the hardcover editions truly do justice) and its successor 'Shriek: An Afterword' showed me that Fantasy could be inventive in terms of form, that that kind of literary sophistication need not merely be the preserve of the stuffy so called 'higher echelons'. Like Miéville, you can't really compare Vandermeer's works to anything else out there. I think he writes from quite a different perspective and intention than most other authors working in these genres. He's the best at what he does, and nobody else does it like Jeff. Here's the blurb, taken from his excellent blog 'Ecstatic Days':
A noir thriller/visionary fantasy set in the failed state of Ambergris, 100 years after Shriek: An Afterword. The gray caps, mysterious underground inhabitants, have re-conquered Ambergris and put the city under martial law, disbanding House Hoegbotton, and controlling the human inhabitants with strange addictive drugs, internment in camps, and random acts of terror. The rebel resistance is scattered, and the gray caps are using human labor to build two strange towers. Against this backdrop, John Finch, who lives alone with a cat and a lizard, must solve an impossible double murder for his gray cap masters while trying to make contact with the rebels.
Nothing is as it seems as Finch and his disintegrating partner Wyte negotiate their way through a landscape of spies, rebels, and deception. Trapped by his job and the city, Finch is about to come face to face with a series of mysteries that will change him and Ambergris forever.
The cat and the lizard watch intently. Something is about to happen. And they both want to know: who is Finch, really?
Who indeed? Although the previous two Ambergris books contained their fair share of darkness, this looks to be the grittiest, and Jeff has stated his pulp-noir intentions numerous times. It looks like 2008 may well be 'The Year of the Gumshoe'.I applaud Vandermeer's decision to set this one far in advance of the previous. I don't think he's the sort of writer that would have a basic continuation from one novel to the next in any case, however there is a great sense of continuity in terms of the Big Picture. There has always seemed an air of latent prophecy, an expectation of terrible events to come hinted at and detailed subtly in other Ambergris fiction, and I feel as if we're about to see something come to fruition that we've known would happen since first opening 'City Of Saints'. We knew the greycaps would do it, and they did. Now what? I'm looking forward to finding out.
Finally we come to Ian McDonald's 'Cyberabad Days'.
Ian McDonald - 'Cyberabad Days'
The world: 'Cyberabad' is the India of 2047, a new, muscular superpower of one and a half billion people in an age of artificial intelligences, climate-change induced drought, water-wars, strange new genders, genetically improved children that age at half the rate of baseline humanity and a population where males out-number females four to one. India herself has fractured into a dozen states from Kerala to the headwaters of the Ganges in the Himalayas. Cyberabad is a collection of 7 stories: The Little Goddess. Hugo nominee Best Novella 2006. In near future Nepal, a child-goddess discovers what lies on the other side of godhood. The Djinn's Wife. Hugo nominee and BSFA short fiction winner 2007 A minor Delhi celebrity falls in love with an artificial intelligence but is it a marriage of heaven and hell? The Dust Assassin. Feuding Rajasthan water-rajas find that revenge is a slow, subtle process. Jasbir and Sujay go Shaadi. Love and marriage should be plain-sailing when your matchmaker is a soap-star artificial intelligence Sanjeev and Robotwallah. What happens to the boy-soldier roboteers when the war of Separation is over? Kyle meets the River. A young American in Varanas learns the true meaning of 'nation building' in the early days of a new country. Vishnu at the Cat Circus. A genetically improved 'Brahmin' child finds himself left behind as he grows through the final generation of humanity.
'Cyberabad Days' is the new short-story collection by the writer of 'River Of Gods' and would seem to be set in the same universe as the novel, which I would describe as a Post-Colonial, Post-Cyberpunk gem. In it we see a future a little different from those shown by the likes of William Gibson and Neal Stephenson, an India in the age of dirty neon lights and crafty, self-serving artificial intelligences. In moving the focus toward developing nations McDonald does something that I think is crucial to the Speculative fiction of the 21st century - he breaks down the barriers of Euro-American-centricism and allows a fuller picture to emerge, one that takes a wealth of influences from that which has been hitherto neglected. It's a process that I think began with the first wave of Cyberpunk and continues to this day.
The last collection of short fiction I read by McDonald was 'Speaking In Tongues', noteable for a great story called 'Floating Dogs' (think 'The Animals of Farthing Wood' meets 'Terminator'). 'Cyberabad Days' should tide me over nicely until Ian McDonald graces us with his next novel-length work.
'Cyberabad Days' is the new short-story collection by the writer of 'River Of Gods' and would seem to be set in the same universe as the novel, which I would describe as a Post-Colonial, Post-Cyberpunk gem. In it we see a future a little different from those shown by the likes of William Gibson and Neal Stephenson, an India in the age of dirty neon lights and crafty, self-serving artificial intelligences. In moving the focus toward developing nations McDonald does something that I think is crucial to the Speculative fiction of the 21st century - he breaks down the barriers of Euro-American-centricism and allows a fuller picture to emerge, one that takes a wealth of influences from that which has been hitherto neglected. It's a process that I think began with the first wave of Cyberpunk and continues to this day.
The last collection of short fiction I read by McDonald was 'Speaking In Tongues', noteable for a great story called 'Floating Dogs' (think 'The Animals of Farthing Wood' meets 'Terminator'). 'Cyberabad Days' should tide me over nicely until Ian McDonald graces us with his next novel-length work.
I think my reasons for the transition from reader to writer re: Miéville are the same as yours, pretty much. And you're right: it was a fantasy city that seemed relevant. It makes appreciating other fantasy cities a tough job!
ReplyDeleteHi Mark, thanks for visiting!
ReplyDeleteI feel as though the bar's definately been raised, which is both exciting and daunting. I think the days of cheapo cookie-cutter Fantasy are definately numbered, if not over.
To me, the New Weird is almost a revolution rather than a movement: a complete overhaul of Fantasy that reconnects more firmly with the old Weird roots but also moves in a direction that's more relevant to the times we're living in now. Honestly, I think if I'd never read Miéville, I don't know if I'd still be reading Fantasy at all today.