China Mieville Quotes

The problem with most genre fantasy is that it's not nearly fantastic enough. It's escapist, but it can't escape.

Sometimes translation stops you understanding.

The Weaver is a really godlike power. It's not even a blind idiot god, a sort of Lovecraft thing, it's just a purely capricious god. It's an intelligence you can't understand, so you can't trust it." -Amazon.com interview

A classic unspoken agreement among escapees from a small town: don't look back, don't be each other's anchors, no nostalgia.

His fidelity to the cliche transcended the necessity to communicate.

Palgolak was a god of knowledge. ... He was an amiable, pleasant deity, a sage whose existence was entirely devoted to the collection, categorization, and dissemination of information. ... Palgolak's library ... did not lend books, but it did allow readers in at any time of the day or night, and there were very, very few books it did not allow access to. The Palgolaki were proselytizers, holding that everything known by a worshipper was immediately known by Palgolak, which was why they were religiously charged to read voraciously. But their mission was only secondarily for the glory of Palgolak, and primarily for the glory of knowledge, which was why they were sworn to admit all who wished to enter into their library.

In the streets of Un Lun Dun: a group of a girl, a half ghost, a talking book, a piece of rubbish, and two living words was unusual but not very.

It is becoming exquisite corpse. It is remade. It is without artist. And in its wake, as its wan precision is replaced by that stochastic rigor, that self-dreamed dream, the buildings that it saw into twee perfection are less perfect again. They quiver. Their colors bleed. They are too saturated, their lines are wrong again. They remember their cracks. And then with breaths of stone-dust they are back to ruination, or are not there, or are battered by age, scarred with the stuff of history, again. Paris is Paris

You'd love a bit of pomp: that way in later years you might invoke end-of-empire ghosts.

Behind her, for a moment, the sky was very full: an aerostat droned in the distance; tiny specks lurched erratically around it, winged figures playing in its wake like dolphins round a whale; and in front of them all another train, heading into the city this time, heading for the centre of New Crobuzon, the knot of architectural tissue where the fibres of the city congealed, where the skyrails of the militia radiated out from the Spike like a web and the five great trainlines of the city met, converging on the great variegated fortress of dark brick and scrubbed concrete and wood and steel and stone, the edifice that yawned hugely at the city's vulgar heart, Perdido Street Station.

Beyond those somewhat anchored fantasy settings are the wild-eyed and the wahoo worlds. This is by no means pejorative, as these include some of my personal favorites, but it is meant to show that there are high-concept, love-’em-or-hate-’em sorts of settings. Call them worlds of pure chaos, places where anything goes and where the usual rules do not apply. They are not meant to be realistic, and indeed that is their appeal. They are settings unmoored from reality and operating by rules of your design—but these settings do have rules. To provide some examples, think of places like China Mieville’s Bas Lag, Pratchett’s Disc World, Frank Baum’s Oz, David “Zeb” Cook’s Dark Sun and Planescape, Keith Baker’s Eberron, Jim Ward’s Gamma World, NCSoft’s Guild Wars, Andrew Leker’s Jorune, Michael Moorcock’s Melnibone, Jeff Grubb’s Spelljammer, and Blizzard’s World of Warcraft. These are places where truly Weird Shit happens, with different rules of physics, alien landscapes, magical wastelands, alien gods, mutants, and cosmologies. It’s fun to go out on the edge, and fantasy is always exploring strange places like this. These are the high-wire acts of worldbuilding. They take creative risks, not always successfully, and they endure a higher degree of mockery than the real fantasies or anchored fantasies do because of those creative risks. They also attract a loyal following who love that particular flavor of weird. Just ask any Planescape fan.

What can we get on with while our consciousness rests? A researcher into the mind, a psychonomer , a thought-mapper , might claim this a meaningless question: that we are nothing without our consciousness.When it rests so do we" -Railsea by China Mieville

The professor can be a touch off-putting, I know,” Baron said. He took one of Collingswood’s cigarettes. “The way he was talking,” Billy said. “About the squid people. It was like he was one of them.” “You’ve put your finger on it,” Baron said. “It is just like he’s one of them. He has a little revelation.” “Takes one to know one,” said Collingswood. “Oh yeah.” “What?” said Billy. “He was one of…?” “Man of faith,” Baron said. “Grew up one of your ultra-born-agains. Creationist, literalist. His dad was an elder. He was in it for years. Lost his faith but not his interest, lucky for us, and not his nous, neither. Every group we look at, he gets it like a convert”-Baron thumped his chest-“because for a moment or two he is.” “It’s more than that,” Collingswood said. “He don’t just get it,” she said. She grinned smoke at Billy. She put her hand to her lips, as if she were whispering, though she was not. “He misses it. He’s miserable. He didn’t used to have to put up with none of this random reality cack. He’s pissed off with the world for being all godless and pointless, get me? He’d go back to his old faith tomorrow if he could. But he’s too smart now.” “That’s his cross to bear,” said Baron. “Boom-boom! I thank you.” “He knows religion is bollocks,” Collingswood said. “He just wishes he didn’t. That’s why he understands the nutters. That’s why he hunts them. He misses pure faith. He’s jealous.

What was that squirrel?” Billy said. “Freelancer,” Dane said. “What? Freelance what?” “Familiar.” Familiar. “Don’t look like that. Familiar. Don’t act like you’ve never heard of one.” Billy thought of black cats. “Where is it now?” “I don’t know, I don’t want to know. It did what I paid it for.” Dane did not look at him. “Job done. So it’s gone.” “What did you pay it?” “I paid it nuts, Billy. What would you think I’d pay a squirrel?