From the Publisher
A mythmaker of the highest order, China Miéville has emblazoned the
fantasy novel with fresh language, startling images, and stunning
originality. Set in the same sprawling world of Miéville's Arthur
C. Clarke Award-winning novel, Perdido Street Station,
this latest epic introduces a whole new cast of intriguing
characters and dazzling creations.
Aboard a vast seafaring vessel, a band of prisoners and slaves,
their bodies remade into grotesque biological oddities, is being
transported to the fledgling colony of New Crobuzon. But the
journey is not theirs alone. They are joined by a handful of
travelers, each with a reason for fleeing the city. Among them is
Bellis Coldwine, a renowned linguist whose services as an
interpreter grant her passage-and escape from horrific punishment.
For she is linked to Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, the brilliant
renegade scientist who has unwittingly unleashed a nightmare upon
New Crobuzon.
For Bellis, the plan is clear: live among the new frontiersmen of
the colony until it is safe to return home. But when the ship is
besieged by pirates on the Swollen Ocean, the senior officers are
summarily executed. The surviving passengers are brought to Armada,
a city constructed from the hulls of pirated ships, a floating,
landless mass ruled by the bizarre duality called the Lovers. On
Armada, everyone is given work, and even Remades live as equals to
humans, Cactae, and Cray. Yet no one may ever leave.
Lonely and embittered in her captivity, Bellis knows that to show
dissent is a death sentence. Instead, she must furtively seek
information about Armada's agenda. The answer lies in the dark,
amorphous shapes that float undetected miles below the
waters-terrifying entities with a singular, chilling mission. . .
.
China Miéville is a writer for a new era-and The Scar is a
luminous, brilliantly imagined novel that is nothing short of
spectacular.
From the Jacket
A mythmaker of the highest order, China Mieville has emblazoned the
fantasy novel with fresh language, startling images, and stunning
originality. Set in the same sprawling world of Mieville''s Arthur
C. Clarke Award-winning novel, "Perdido Street Station, this latest
epic introduces a whole new cast of intriguing characters and
dazzling creations.
Aboard a vast seafaring vessel, a band of prisoners and slaves,
their bodies remade into grotesque biological oddities, is being
transported to the fledgling colony of New Crobuzon. But the
journey is not theirs alone. They are joined by a handful of
travelers, each with a reason for fleeing the city. Among them is
Bellis Coldwine, a renowned linguist whose services as an
interpreter grant her passage--and escape from horrific punishment.
For she is linked to Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, the brilliant
renegade scientist who has unwittingly unleashed a nightmare upon
New Crobuzon.
For Bellis, the plan is clear: live among the new frontiersmen of
the colony until it is safe to return home. But when the ship is
besieged by pirates on the Swollen Ocean, the senior officers are
summarily executed. The surviving passengers are brought to Armada,
a city constructed from the hulls of pirated ships, a floating,
landless mass ruled by the bizarre duality called the Lovers. On
Armada, everyone is given work, and even Remades live as equals to
humans, Cactae, and Cray. Yet no one may ever leave.
Lonely and embittered in her captivity, Bellis knows that to show
dissent is a death sentence. Instead, she must furtively seek
information about Armada''s agenda. The answer lies in the dark,
amorphous shapes that float undetected miles below
thewaters--terrifying entities with a singular, chilling mission. .
. .
China Mieville is a writer for a new era--and "The Scar is a
luminous, brilliantly imagined novel that is nothing short of
spectacular.
Bookclub Guide
A Conversation with China Miéville
Award-winning author China Miéville's third novel, THE
SCAR, is a dark, rich tapestry of adventure and politics set on an
incredible floating pirate city. In a recent interview, Miéville
spoke with us about his inspirations and ideas for THE SCAR.
Q: THE SCAR and your last novel, PERDIDO STREET
STATION, are set in the same world, but this time you take us
much farther a field in the world of Bas Lag. How do you see the
two stories as similar, and how different?
A: Most obviously, the stories are similar in that
they are both very much urban, though the cities - Armada and New
Crobuzon - are different in important ways. I've also carried on
doing stuff I love, like inventing monsters, of which there are
loads in THE SCAR. Setting the books in the same world gave me the
chance to expand the world I've been creating. But there are some
very important differences. The aesthetic, and the feeling of the
two books are very different. Perdido Street Station was a
book with a bleak story but a fairly traditional narrative
structure. THE SCAR is a book that has a much more experimental -
and bleaker - narrative structure. It's also a book that's
structured more around the internal, emotional life of its
characters. It's more melancholic.
Q: THE SCAR further illuminates the political
complexities of the world you've created. Did you set out to write
an overtly political novel, or did your own real life experience
with governments seep in?
A: It's difficult to make that distinction. I don't
really set out to write political fiction as an end in itself - if
I want to make political points, I write political articles - but
to write fiction that would keep me interested. But the thing is
that what keeps me interested, among other things, is politics, so
I tend to put a lot of that stuff in the books. Also because it
gives the world an awful lot more texture, and more realism, to
make the political stuff in it as systematic and coherent as
possible. My "real life experience" as a candidate for Parliament
wasn't so much an inspiration as my day-to-day experience as a
political activist.
All fiction is political in some sense or other - but I'm
interested in critical fiction (which doesn't necessarily mean
left-wing, of course) which is conscious of its own political
engagement with the real world.
Q: Much of THE SCAR's action takes place in Armada, a
floating pirate city. Where did the idea for this story come
from?
Most fundamentally, I've always loved underwater
things - deepsea fish, diving, etc - and I had always wanted to
write something that was set on, in and under the sea.
THE SCAR was conceived as a kind of response to the first book -
Perdido Street Station - which was set in the same world.
It isn't really a sequel. Each book is a standalone, and it's very
important to me that they can be read in any order, or
individually. But it is a response insofar as the tone and
atmosphere are deliberately very different than that of Perdido
Street Station. The response to that first book was so
wonderful, that I was concerned that any follow-up would be a
disappointment. So in a spirit of not-quite-contrariness but rather
risk, I formulated THE SCAR to be the antithesis of the
earlier book, yet still have an integrity and a sense of its own
completeness. I was interested in taking those elements of the
first book that had garnered the greatest response - the city, the
sense of oppressive pell-mell rushing - and deliberately withhold
them, or view them as if through gauze.
I am very much in love with the world I created in the first book,
and I wanted to take the opportunity to visit some other parts of
that world. So I focused on a maritime novel as the perfect
opportunity to roam around the world, and to see fleeting glimpses
of various other places, as well as to have a very different sense
of scale than Perdido Street Station.
Q: Would you live in Armada if you could?
A: Yeah! Not because it would be nice - I think it
would be a fairly awful place to live, much of the time - but
because who could possibly turn down the opportunity to live in
their own invented world? I'd go live in New Crobuzon too. I'd be
shit-scared, though.
Q: Tell us a bit about the reading, research, or
thinking you did to come up with Armada and its unique
neighborhoods.
A: Most of the research I did was on the stuff about
ship design. I spent loads of time looking up schematics of ships
from all over the time and place. I read lots of children's
reference books when I'm researching - they tend to have enough
detail to make things convincing, but not more than I need. And
they have good pictures. I found loads of cool stuff online -
downloaded a bunch of blueprints for oil rigs. Found loads of old
names for different types of vessels. I read a lot of maritime
fiction, of which an awful lot is riffed on in the book. You can
find 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, Boats of the Glen Carrig,
Rites of Passage, "The Hunting of the Snark," and lots else.
The thing is that there is so much fiction set at sea and on ships
that there are hugely strong clichés, so I needed to get to grips
with all that stuff so that I didn't unwittingly repeat them. To
that extent I wanted to write an "anti-maritime" book.
I even forced myself to watch Waterworld for research
purposes, so no one can say I haven't suffered for my art.
Q: Do you think of either of the book's two troubled
protagonists - the linguist, Bellis Coldwine, and the freed
prisoner, Tanner Sack - as heroic or as villainous?
A: Certainly not villainous at all. Heroic? Well,
yes, but not in the traditional sense. They're both very, very
flawed, and more to the point, they're both - particularly Bellis -
very damaged. I know that being damaged doesn't preclude being
heroic. Tanner especially really wants good things for people.
Bellis is more just trying to survive. In the genre/epic fantasy
tradition, heroism seems defined by characters' abilities to stamp
their wills on history. None of my characters can do that. What
they can do is change themselves and their surroundings, though
history always constrains them. They both try to do the right
thing, particularly Tanner, and they're both different people at
the end of the book. Heroic? I'm not sure.
Q: Uther Doul, Armada's formidable defender, carries a
very special blade which slices through possibility itself to
brutal effect. The city of Armada goes on a treacherous voyage in
search of the power to manipulate reality. Have you been reading up
on quantum theory?
A: Only in the most crass and makeshift sense. I'd be
deeply embarrassed to talk to a proper scientist as if I knew jack
shit about quantum stuff. What's important to me isn't necessarily
to be scientifically rigorous, but to be plausible. I pilfered just
enough quantum stuff to make sense within the constraints of the
world I created. More expertise than that I couldn't possibly
claim.
Q: So if THE SCAR were made into a big-screen Hollywood
feature, what would be your ideal cast?
I love questions like this! Okay, Bellis Coldwine
would be Carrie-Anne Moss. She's a bit young, but with make-up…?
Tanner Sack would be Sean Bean. For Uther Doul, I'd have Russell
Crowe bulk up a bit. Sleazy Silas Fennec? Ralph Fiennes would be
perfect. The Lovers? Anjelica Huston and Timothy Dalton
Q: Ah, Timothy Dalton?
A. It's my movie - hush up! Brucolac would be
Laurence Fishburne (whose wardrobe I would love to raid, by the
way). Johannes Tearfly would be Malcolm McDowell because he excels
at playing that type of pseudo-sympathetic megalomaniac. I'd also
want it to feature Fairuza Balk, Don Cheadle and Demitri
Goritsas.
Q: Okay, back to the real world now…Admirers of your
books sometimes call them "steampunk," finding both "science
fiction" and "fantasy" inadequate, given popular conceptions of
those genres. Does that label suit you? What do you call your
work?
A: Sure. I'll take whatever labels people want to
hand out. To be honest, I find the whole debate about "is it
science fiction, is it fantasy (or is it even horror?)" kind of
academic. I've had "steampunk," I've had "grunge fantasy" - none of
them bother me. I have always been openly critical of the
post-Tolkien genre of epic or quest fantasy.
People associate fantasy with elves, dwarfs and wizards. My books
have none of that - THE SCAR is full of ironclad battleships,
dirigibles, swearing, sex and violence.
I think it is worth pointing out that this book and my last book
blur the boundaries between SF and fantasy. Perdido Street
Station won both a fantasy prize and a science
fiction prize. I consider myself to be writing in an older
tradition than Tolkien's notion of fantasy. If I'm talking to
somebody who knows a little bit about the field of SF, etc., then I
describe what I write as Weird Fiction - because the writers in the
Weird Tales tradition did a very good job of blurring the
boundaries between the various realms of the fantastic.
To the mainstream, it could be pointed out that I am unapologetic
about genre, but try to write with a more 'literary' sensibility.
It's been said several times that this is the kind of fantasy that
people who don't think they like fantastic literature might enjoy.
I am quite argumentative in my attacks on mainstream critics for
being short-sighted about genre, and enjoy pointing out to them
that plenty of 'their' classics are in fact 'ours' (The Master
and Margerita, Metamorphosis, Toni Morrison's
Beloved, any Isabel Allende novel). I would love to get
the chance to get into mainstream books publications and make the
case for fantastic literature.
Q: In the past, you've cited Mervyn Peake and M. John
Harrison, among others, as special influences, but your style is
evolving with each novel. Was there anything - music, images, books
- that was especially inspiring while you worked on THE SCAR?
A: The single strongest influence on me for this book
were the writings of the Zimbabwean author Dambudzo Marechera. He
is an astounding figure, a self-taught writer who wrestles with the
English language, reinvigorating it. He's a modernist, unlike so
many African writers who are part of a social realist or a
folklorist tradition. The epigram from his book Black Sunlight
informs the whole book - he has a wonderfully empathetic and moving
sense of humans as the sum of all their damage, but no less
important for that.
Other stuff: music - particularly Benjamin Britten's chamber music
and solo cello suites. Images: stuff from Moby Dick, and basically
every single underwater monster from films, comics, and all the
other cultural bumph I could sift through. It's not really
inspiration, but there is a massive riff on 'The Hunting of the
Snark' in there. As well as one of the Narnia books - which I
dislike a lot and have wreaked revenge on.
Q: Will we see more novels set in the world of Bas
Lag?
A: The next book, the one I'm writing now, is set in
the same world. After that, I'm not committed, and I might change
settings for a while. I would be extremely surprised, though, if I
never go back there. There are too many other places to go in this
world. I'm enjoying it too much not to go back.