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Question about Perdido Street Station (minor spoiler) (self.sciencefiction)

submitted 3 months ago by AFKBRBChocolate to c/sciencefiction

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I recently finished Perdido Street Station, and one minor thing that bothered me is how many of the other races were either a humanoid version of earth life (cactus person, bird person) or a literal combination of a human and something (head of a bug, body of a person). That just seems so fantastically unlikely that I wonder if any of the other books in that setting explain it. Like, is it a future earth and the races are results of generic modification in some prior era?

I liked the book pretty well, through it's not exactly uplifting. Thought provoking though.

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[–] AFKBRBChocolate 2 points 3 months ago (10 children)

I'm a fan of weird, but I'll be honest that it bugged me. On the other hand, I sat down with it knowing very little about it, but thinking it was SF. Though it has SF elements, it also has magic, so more of a fantasy novel and, for some reason, that makes the thing about the races easier to swallow. There doesn't have to be a valid explanation for fantasy, it just has to be internally consistent.

Okay, thanks for the response.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (5 children)

If you read The Scar it goes into how strange the setting is and how broken reality is in places. Some of the things in there may or may not explain some of the races, lime the cactus people. However, it is all kept very vague.

You should probably take it as a reaction against Tolkeinesque fantasy that draws on northern European myths. There's a wide range of influences as well as Mieville just making up oddities just for the sake of it. So, for example, Kephri is an Egyptian scarab-headed god and then everything is built around that. It doesn't have to be plausible it just has to contribute to the strangeness.

[–] AFKBRBChocolate 3 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Okay, thanks.

Do you recommend The Scar?

Meiville wrote The City and The City, right? I think that's the only other one currently on my reading list.

[–] statler_waldorf 2 points 3 months ago

I bounced off Perdido twice, then tore through The Scar then went on to read his whole back catalog. It's my favorite of the Bas Lag "trilogy".

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