the problem with gaiman, mieville, and pullman

Nathan Spears · 29 Nov 2004, 13:11 · from 2004-November.txt.gz

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From: spearofsolomon at yahoo.com (Nathan Spears)
Date: Mon Nov 29 13:11:19 2004
Subject: (urth) the problem with gaiman, mieville, and pullman
In-Reply-To: <1f76173704112911553b53139c at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20041129211117.42986.qmail at web50303.mail.yahoo.com>

> > Allegory is a very nebulous concept, though, we can call Mieville work 
> > Marxist romanticism or captitalist dystopia if we want, 

> H'mm. Having just finished _The Scar_, I have to admit that I don't
> get much of that. I don't actually get much serious political content
> in his novels at all; mostly a sense of "Wow, look how grotesque this 
> is!" which was enough to carry _Perdido Street Station_ but not a
> second book, so that _The Scar_ stayed on my backburner until I
> was well over halfway through it.

I just wanted to interject a quick comment.  Having read several interviews with
Mieville, I think that he is very interested in how his worlds function, and
specifically, how the politics work.  Now, I might be getting myself in trouble,
because I can't remember how much intelligent discussion of M's work I've actually
read on this list, but here's what I remember:

He doesn't like the fantasy tradition of having an aristocratic society living on
air; for instance, in Tolkien, he would be wary of the inhabitants of Minas Tirath. 
What do they do?  How do they get food, support an economy, etc?  I think I remember
reading about how he laid out a whole economic and political (ecopolitical?)
foundation for his world before he started setting the story.  In fact, I read some
comments which made a pretty strong case for the idea that M's world, and the
creatures that inhabit it, are more interesting/important that the stories he tells
there.  I have a feeling someone said that on this list.

Personally, I didn't care much for Perdido, and I haven't made time for The Scar
yet.  I just wanted to get the idea out there that the person you were responding to
is (might be) pretty close to the mark with his summary of Mieville, especially from
Mieville's own viewpoint.

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