Perdido Street Station

Format:

Book

Title:

Perdido Street Station

Author:

Miéville, China author

ISBN:

9780345443021

9781435295407

Edition:

First American edition.

Publication:

New York : Del Rey, 2001.

Physical Description:

710 pages : 1 map ; 24 cm

General Note:

Originally published: London : Macmillan, 2000.

Summary:

Yes, but what is Perdido Street Station about? To oversimplify: the eccentric scientist Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin is hired to restore the power of flight to a cruelly de-winged birdman. Isaac's secret lover is Lin, an artist of the khepri, a humano-insectoid race; theirs is a forbidden relationship. Lin is hired (rather against her will) by a mysterious crime boss to capture his horrifying likeness in the unique khepri art form. Isaac's quest for flying things to study leads to verification of his controversial unified theory of the strange sciences of his world. It also brings him an odd, unknown grub stolen from a secret government experiment so perilous it is sold to a ruthless drug lord--the same crime boss who hired Lin. The grub emerges from its cocoon, becomes an extraordinarily dangerous monster, and escapes Isaac's lab to ravage New Crobuzon, even as his discovery becomes known to a hidden, powerful, and sinister intelligence. Lin disappears and Isaac finds himself pursued by the monster, the drug lord, the government and armies of New Crobuzon, and other, more bizarre factions, not all confined to his world.

Subject(s):

Scientists -- Fiction.

Strangers -- Fiction.

Dissenters -- Fiction.

City and town life -- Fiction.

Alienation (Social psychology) -- Fiction.

Imaginary places -- Fiction.

Genre:

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... McMinnville Public Library	Mieville, C.	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Independence Public Library	SCIENCE FICTION - MIEVILLE	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Salem Main Library	FANTASY Mieville, C.	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

WINNER OF THE AUGUST DERLETH AND ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARDS * A masterpiece brimming with scientific splendor, magical intrigue, and fierce characters, from the author who "has reshaped modern fantasy" ( The Washington Post )

"[China Miéville's] fantasy novels, including a trilogy set in and around the magical city-state of New Crobuzon, have the refreshing effect of making Middle-earth seem plodding and flat."-- The New York Times

The metropolis of New Crobuzon sprawls at the center of the world. Humans and mutants and arcane races brood in the gloom beneath its chimneys, where the river is sluggish with unnatural effluent and foundries pound into the night. For a thousand years, the Parliament and its brutal militias have ruled over a vast economy of workers and artists, spies and soldiers, magicians, crooks, and junkies.

Now a stranger has arrived, with a pocketful of gold and an impossible demand. And something unthinkable is released.

The city is gripped by an alien terror. The fate of millions lies with a clutch of renegades. A reckoning is due at the city's heart, in the vast edifice of brick and wood and steel under the vaults of Perdido Street Station.

It is too late to escape.

Author Notes

China Miéville was born in Norwich, England on September 6, 1972. He received a B.A. in social anthropology from the University of Cambridge in 1994, and a Masters' degree with distinction and Ph.D in international relations from the London School of Economics, the latter in 2001. He has also held a Frank Knox fellowship at Harvard University.

His first novel, King Rat, was nominated for both an International Horror Guild and a Bram Stoker award. His other works include Perdido Street Station, The Scar, Iron Council, Un Lun Dun, The City and the City, Embassytown, and Three Moments of an Explosion: Stories. He has won numerous awards for his works including three Arthur C. Clarke Awards, two British Fantasy Awards, the British Science Fiction Award, and the 2008 Locus Award for Best Young Adult Book.

He also published a book on Marxism and international law called Between Equal Rights: A Marxist Theory of International Law. He teaches creative writing at Warwick University.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (4)

Publisher's Weekly Review

King Rat (1999), Miville's much-praised first novel of urban fantasy/horror, was just a palate-teaser for this appetizing, if extravagant, stew of genre themes. Its setting, New Crobuzon, is an audaciously imagined milieu: a city with the dimensions of a world, home to a polyglot civilization of wildly varied species and overlapping and interpenetrating cultures. Seeking to prove his unified energy theory as it relates to organic and mechanical forms, rogue scientist Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin tries to restore the power of flight to Yagharek, a member of the garuda race cruelly shorn of its wings. Isaac's lover, Lin, unconsciously mimics his scientific pursuits when she takes on the seemingly impossible commission of sculpting a patron whose body is a riot of grotesquely mutated and spliced appendages. Their social life is one huge, postgraduate bull session with friends and associatesÄuntil a nightmare-inducing grub escapes from Isaac's lab and transforms into a flying monster that imperils the city. This accident precipitates a political crisis, initiates an action-packed manhunt for Isaac and introduces hordes of vividly imagined beings who inhabit the twilight zone between science and sorcery. Miville's canvas is so breathtakingly broad that the details of individual subplots and characters sometime lose their definition. But it is also generous enough to accommodate large dollops of aesthetics, scientific discussion and quest fantasy in an impressive and ultimately pleasing epic. (Feb. 27) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Kirkus Review

Doorstopper steampunk fantasy from the author of King Rat (1999). In the stinking, teeming, rotting city of New Crobuzon, magic, science, and alchemy all work. Humans, aliens, sentient floor-mops, and other entities even more bizarre maintain an uneasy coexistence; criminals may be sentenced to have their heads grafted on to coal-burning machines. Overweight, talented but erratic scientist Isaachis girlfriend is a khepri, with the red-skinned body of human female and a head resembling a huge scarabaccepts the flying humanoid Yagharek as a client. Yagharek, having had his wings hacked from his body as punishment for a crime Isaac cannot comprehend, desperately yearns to fly again. Isaac considers the magical grafting of new wings, or mechanical devices to reproduce flight. To assist his research, he gathers samples of every imaginable creature capable of flightincluding a mysterious giant caterpillar that feeds only on dreamshit, a weird new drug thats ravaging the city. Finally, Isaac makes a scientific breakthrough in the field of crisis energy, but, meanwhile, the caterpillar matures and escapes. The creature, a slake-moth, frees others of its kind kept by the hideous gangster Motley as a source of the drug. The slake-moths are desperately hard to kill and, with their hypnotic powers, feed by consuming dreams, leaving their victims mindless drooling hulks. Soon the city quakes in terror. Somehow the slake-moths must be destroyedbut even the devil himself declines to assist. . . . Earthy, sometimes outright disgustingimagine finding your toilet blocked up by diamondsbut, amazingly in a book of this length, flawlessly plotted and relentlessly, stunningly inventive: a conceptual breakthrough of the highest order.

Booklist Review

As in Mervyn Peake's fantasy classic, the Gormenghast trilogy, the real protagonist of this gigantic book is a city, New Crobuzon, a steampunk version of Dickens' London that Mieville depicts in exhaustive detail. In the nooks and crannies of this colossal setting Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin labors to discover the secret of flight and restore it to his mutilated, nonhuman friend, Yagharek. To do this, he raises what turns out to be the larva of a deadly slake-moth. When it escapes and matures, Isaac is sucked into a frantic effort to track down and kill all the viciously telepathic slake-moths before the authorities catch up with him or them. Given its complicated setting, this chase rises above the level of a Godzilla movie, but critical readers may carp that much of the complication is just piled-on grunge and much of the characterization involves kinky sex and repetitious violence. More world building than storytelling, the yarn at least suggests that the author of King Rat (1999) is marching forward in his fantasy-writing career. --Roland Green

Library Journal Review

Scientist Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin and his lover, an insect-like creature named Lin, discover the risks of meddling in the affairs of mobsters, renegades, and revolutionaries when they fall afoul of the powers that rule the sprawling city of New Crobuzon. The author of King Rat delivers a powerful tale about the power of love and the will to survive in a dystopian universe that combines Victorian elements with a fantasy version of cyberpunk. Miville's visceral prose evokes an immediacy that commands attention and demands a wide readership. Highly recommended. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.