The Character of the City: Review of China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station

Science fiction and fantasy are tricky genres, simply because there is such a wide disparity between the quality of the science fiction and fantasy stories that are told.  In addressing his writing being slotted as science fiction, noted the bad reputation that science fiction writers receive from critics: “I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled 'science fiction' ever since, and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.”
As Vonnegut suggests, perhaps science fiction, and by association, fantasy can be quality writing.  No one would dispute the strength of story of the Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings.  I personally am aware of the former being used as “literature” in a middle school reading class.  I also recall a number of Ray Bradbury works being used as well.  I personally taught a class in which Dandelion Wine was used, and not by my choosing.
But at the same time, anyone who goes to a Barnes and Noble and peruses there science fiction and fantasy shelves will find cover after cover of similar covers, elfin creatures in blouses brandishing blades staring out over a cliff into alien environment or a human male wearing a futuristic suit in a spaceport, peering around a corner at a spaceship, grasping a space pistol, and holding back an alien but strangely strangely sensual female.  Science fiction and fantasy novels feel a void for the reading audience that romance novels fill for the female audience, and their fans read these novels as they would pop vitamins in the morning. 
I like science fiction and to a lesser extent fantasy.  I remember as a kid having a love of the Robotech television series, and, while in middle school and high school, regularly read the novelizations.  I also had a love of the Hitchhiker’s Guide series and Xanth novels.  Later on in my life, Star Wars novels played a role in my life when I would often consume a whole book in one weekend.  But sitting here now, I don’t know that I could tell you the specific title of those books or even a detailed plot of those books.  I recognized them for what they were, junk food to be consumed and forgotten.
The quality disparity in science fiction and fantasy points out a real problem for the genre, and, more particularly, their audiences.  A reader should be prepared for a book.  A reader should know how a book should be read in order to utilize the book’s intended purpose.  For example, no one reading Go, dog! Go! would ever confuse it for what it is meant to be, a elementary book through which developing readers began learning the fundamentals of reading and story.  The story is very shallow by necessity.  No one would (or should) confuse it for one of the world’s great works on par with Dostoyevsky or Dickens.  But the discernment process in determining the intended purpose easy to detect by looking at the cover or even the genre.
But, with science fiction and fantasy, such discernment is difficult, if not impossible.  My case in point is Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. 
I first came by this book when I bought a electronic version of it on my Nook.  I remember buying the book based on price but also based on reviews which compared it to Dickens, Lewis Carroll, and Blade Runner.  See Barnes and Nobles description here.  
I am a fan of Alice and Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.  I like Dickens though I would not necessarily call myself a fanatic.  I’ve seen the film Blade Runner and recognized the skill it took in drafting the story.  The description used by Barnes and Noble suggest a level of quality writing higher than most science fiction novels.
I had begun the book with this expectation.
I stopped reading the book only a hundred pages, lost in a mire of confusion and disappointment.  I moved on to other books, and, even, at one point, archived the book, removing it from my nook entirely.
Recently, I revisited the book, curious about why I was so disenchanted by the book first time around.  I’ve gotten about another hundred pages in with a better appreciation of what Mieville intent for Perdido Street Station was.
A lot of science fiction and fantasy is about world building.  Every science fiction and fantasy writer fancies themselves another Lucas or Tolkien, creating magical worlds, strange and unique, different from ours, a place we can visit and walk around in.  And I love each of these worlds and thought and planning that went in to creating them.  But at the same time, neither Lucas and Tolkien world built in the stories they told.  This happened outside of the story.
Mieville, too, has done extensive world building.  But unlike Lucas and Tolkien, it feels that much of the world building occurs inside the novel.  Specifically, Mieville spends a large part of the initial part of his novel describing the world that the characters are in.  There are large sections of the book detailing the aspects of New Crobuzon and its inhabitants to a fault.  He utilizes passages in which characters travel to one part of the city to another to describe the city and its inhabitants when he could lose large swaths of this description and achieve the same result.
It feels almost as if Mieville wants the city itself to serve as a character itself.  The problem is, however, characters require depth and growth.  Characters are faced with actualized conflicts and act and react to those conflicts.  New Crobuzon in the initial pages of the book fails in this regard.  It does not show depth.  Each of its sections feel similar, a dung heap, dangerous.  Nor is it really clear what conflicts that the city is facing.
Further, it feels as if, in creating his world, Mieville relies on old, tired tropes.  The scene of the carnival and freak show is a prime example.  Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, a scientist who is trying to figure out how to give a bird-like creature his wings, goes to the carnival in the hopes in running into one of the bird-like creature’s brethren.  It is the same carnival/freak show we have seen before, one built upon falsehoods and deception, one that the protagonist Isaac, sees through and threatens to reveal but ultimately does not as a result of a pleading underling afraid of the wrath of the carnival/freak show boss.
There is the underground movement fighting against injustice in the form of a newspaper describing the corruption of the government and its various parties.  It operates in hidden rooms and relies on its reporters to peddle its issues. 
There is the crime boss, a Mr. Motley, who is both sophisticated and cruelly vicious, always initially kind to the protagonist, in this case, an artist named Lin, but always acting in ways to suggest that it would not be a good idea to cross him.  It is another variation of the Bond villain, secretive and mad.
Disappointingly, Mieville does not really effectively use these tropes in his new setting effectively, such that it feels like he does not bring anything new to the table.
The other notably fault I have with the novel is that it heavy-handedly plies tired conflicts.  There is the never-touching contrast between science in the form of Isaac and art in the form of Lin, which do not ever meet.  Yet, we are constantly reminded of these two occupations and the struggles suffered in them. 
There is the love between Isaac, a human, and, Lin, a Khepri, a creature with a head of a beetle body and the body of a human.  There is the ever present conflict of forbidden love between the two.  And yet, Mieville fails to develop the basis for that love.  Mieville makes the assumption that we will accept the relationship.
These are the weaknesses that prevent this book from being the Dickensian masterpiece suggested. 
However, despite its weaknesses, there are some bright spots to this novel.  This becomes apparent when the reader discovers how this novel ought to be read.
The length of this book suggest that it is not one to be read in one sitting.  The number of characters, the switching between characters and plots, the lengthy descriptions suggest that it should be read in clumps, like little episodes, to be returned to.  This is the type of novel which would not make a good movie, but, rather, a good television series.
Read this way, the reader begins to appreciate the construction of the story.  The story is plotted well.  Each scene is a point along the way to the next point.  Each scene becomes an image for you to observe and explore much like you might wander through a museum. 
Further, Mieville does not like the genre guide his story.  Rather, the genre presents interesting twists on the story, and, as a result, the story becomes accessible even in the background of the strange characters and milieu of New Crozubon.
I’m not sure if I will make it through the book this time around.  I know that I will feel comfortable going back to it now, not scared to miss something in it. 

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