...not that I have many readers, still....it can be motivating.
I am currently reading Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. I had recently learned about the "new" subgenre of sci-fi/fantasy (which I've decided I am going to call "speculative" fic from now on, as the two genres often merge together, and also because they are primarily fascinating, IMO (oooh! internet lingo! what if our language completely degenerated into acronyms and cyber-isms? I'm not rueing such a possibility -- just finding it entertaining. All languages evolve, anyway.), for their speculations about our own society) called "the New Weird." (I also just totally did a parenthetic statement within another parenthetic statement. Oops.) A few links about this subgenre, which developed only recently, at the end of the 1990s:
- Wikipedia
- this Guardian article, while very brief, acknowledges the above novel as "seminal" in the movement and mentions that : "For serious writers of speculative fiction the prize has always been the belief that the unrealities of science fiction, fantasy and horror provide unique tools with which to dissect the realities of our world."
- Michael Cisco at The Modern Word, a favorite literary website, states two vital things: "Poetry restores language by breaking it, and I think that much contemporary writing restores fantasy, as a genre of writing in contrast to a genre of commodity or section in a bookstore, by breaking it." AND "Fantasy writing is no more inherently inessential than any other variety, and no more inherently escapist, either. What makes writing escapist is not a matter of whether or not it involves magic but whether or not it involves something meaningful. Fantasy writing is if anything increasingly relevant because it involves building and representing the whole world, fantasy worlds, sci-fi worlds, hidden gnostic horror worlds."
Now that's that done, Perdido Street Station itself: EXCELLENT. I'm only a third through, so I can't quite give my ultimate decision, but I am well pleased already. The society of New Corbuzon is that fascinating mix of advanced science and regressed society. They have fascinating technological, scientific, medicinal skills, but yet the city is a mess of misery where murder, poverty, abuse of power, etc., occurs everywhere and is easily ignored. In addition, the city is a home to numerous races. I'm not talking race as we know it: ppl distinguished from each other by skin color, language, facial features, culture, etc. I'm talking race as in some of the inhabitants aren't human. Of course, this is a metaphor for the racial issues that continue to trouble our society, and Mieville addresses the topic quite accurately, I think: ghettos and closed-off communities, forbidden interracial sexual relationships, prejudice of the humans toward the non-humans, prejudice of a race toward those individuals who have chosen to identify themselves on their own terms, rather than defined racial terms. There are, of course, those who recognize the social problems (and yet, some of them continue to exacerbate the situations. Problem: the difference between recognition and action.), and there's even a fabulous liberal activist whom I love to associate with all the memories of my liberal activist friends.
Interesting/horrific side-detail: those who are deemed guilty are punished by being "Remade": their bodies are altered with mechanical or "natural" appendages. Ex: a woman who suffocated her baby because it wouldn't stop crying was Remade so that the baby's arms were stitched to the sides of her head so that it would always be with her. Like I said: they have the technology but are only using it for abuse.
