From Cacotopias to Railroads: Rebellion and the Shaping of the Normal in the Bas-Lag Universe (China Mieville Novels) (Report‪)‬

China Mieville's three Bas-Lag novels--Perdido Street Station (2000), The Scar (2002), and Iron Council (2004)--present an implacable, force-filled universe-to-go, with khepri and Remade to boot, and with all this multiplicity causing optimism rather than pessimism. Not only is Mieville a talented operator on the level of entertainment, but he has the ability to guide the reader through a labyrinth of political disillusionment and yet to hone rather than daunt their hope. Iron Council is the book that most plainly argues Mieville's political vision. It offers a rousing portrait of revolutionary action but also asks searching questions about the nature and even the very viability of such action, especially within the fantasy genre. It is a perennial question in the analysis of "mainstream' authors as to whether their nonfictional works should be used as a tool in the critical explication of their fiction. For many years, the shibboleth of the New Criticalera, Intentional Fallacy, inhibited linking writers to their works; at the same time, what is known about an author's beliefs can similarly limit analyses of their work, as when Wallace Stevens's poetry is read in conjunction with his aesthetic speculation. On the other hand, it surely helps to know that Gregory Benford is a theoretical physicist in attempting to understand his novels, just as Conrad's seafaring experience informs his use of maritime themes in his fiction. With a fantasy writer such as Mieville--even though from the beginning of his career the political and theoretical valence of his work has been widely recognized--there is also the issue that the fiction he writes is literally set in a different world than his nonfiction, so making links between them is not merely yoking art and biography, fiction and nonfiction, but in effect is a transverse portal between worlds.