his debut collection from the celebrated British author of such works as Perdido Street Station (2000) and The Iron Council (2004) finds Miéville moving beyond his fabled land of New Crobuzon—save for one occasion—and into several other strange new venues, many of them with a contemporary twist.
The title story finds the nameless first-person narrator wandering the streets of a London that has suffered through an "inexact apocalypse." He's looking for his best friend, the only man who might be able to unriddle the catastrophe. "Foundation" deals with a man known as the "house-whisperer." Brief acquaintance with your domicile allows him to identify all its structural flaws. But his talent has been purchased at a nightmarish price, and the bill comes due. What could be more innocent than a nursery-style playground in a big furniture store? Nothing, you say? But what if "The Ball Room" is haunted ... ?
The narrator of "Reports of Certain Events in London" is called China Miéville. But if he's identical with our author, then you must pity him. For he accidentally becomes privy to dangerous knowledge about the secret cartography of the world's cities, and seems doomed. In "Familiar," a male witch crafts a most unusual apprentice, which turns the tables on its master. "Entry Taken From a Medical Encyclopedia" chronicles the origin and effects of an odd disease. A young boy must serve as intermediary between his mother and a local madwoman in "Details." But the woman's madness is really insight into the nature of the universe.
"Go Between" follows the fate of an ordinary fellow who happens to become enlisted in a bizarre information-delivery system. An elderly man desirous of just a little variety and excitement in his life finds more than he bargained for when a strange window gives him a view of "Different Skies." Don't mess with charities is the moral of "An End to Hunger," while "'Tis the Season" reveals the true meaning of Christmas™. We revisit New Crobuzon in "Jack," the story of a Robin Hood-type figure. Drawn by Liam Sharp, the 11-page strip "On the Way to the Front" is a story of a civilian's brush with war. Finally, "The Tain" mirrors the book's opening apocalypse with the presentation of an Earth invaded by creatures from within our own mirrors.
Postmodern yet traditional
China Miéville's recent championing of a kind of writing dubbed "New Weird"—in association with co-conspirator M. John Harrison, whose own fiction seems an inspirational close cousin to that of the younger writer—has been presented as a revolutionary act. But the stories in this volume will prove to any objective reader that the New Weird was always about extending old modes, not replacing them with something totally unprecedented. It's plain that Miéville loves a host of iconic classic genre writers and has learned much from them, transmuting their visions and tropes and styles into something uniquely his own.
With its loving fascination with apocalypse, the title story owes much to the early disaster novels of Ballard. "Foundation" seems to me very much in the mode of Robert Aickman, something of a neglected master these days, and just the kind of author the New Weird would champion. "The Ball Room" has echoes of M.R. James. With its black humor and fabulism, "Reports ..." could claim either Brian Aldiss or Ian Watson as grandfather. "Familiar" rings changes on Sturgeon's famous "It." The main conceit of "Details" reminds me of Avram Davidson's The Boss in the Wall (1998), while Miéville's homage to Lovecraft is undeniable in "Different Skies." Galaxy-era satirists like Robert Sheckley hover over "'Tis the Season." Finally, in "The Tain," the alien viewpoint of creatures sharing our world unbeknownst for millennia correspond to those in more than one Gene Wolfe opus.
In short, like all of us, Miéville did not sprout full-blown from the head of Zeus, nor is he arguing for casting out the best of the past. Rather, he has honorably and lovingly assimilated the work of many great writers and transmogrified it into his own special vision. This book finds his precise prose operating at a comparatively stripped-down level next to the novels, but always still resplendent with emotions and cinematic images. For instance, the progress of the witch's familiar as it teaches itself about the world is both vividly odd and touching.
And that in the end is what Miéville is after, whatever tools he might use. Honest emotional impact conveyed through brilliantly outre characters and events, in peculiar settings that force us to shed the scales from our inner and outer eyes. And here he achieves his goals without fail.
