Imaginary Cities

[flemmings]

Being half an hour early for my doctor's appt yesterday I went to the used bookstore across the street. They had a loonie bin out front-- in Canada that's 'any book for a dollar'-- and the books were all ancient and sometimes classic SF. Passed on Ethan of Athos and a couple of Moorcocks (all Moorcock is the same Moorcock, in essence) but gladly copped M. John Harrison's The Floating Gods (In Viriconium by any other name) which I was pretty sure I didn't have. Bopped back to my doctor's office to discover that I was not, in fact, fifteen minutes early, but forty-five minutes late. Must speak to her about this disturbing mental fuzz at next week's rebooked appointment.

Started the Harrison on the trip back and concluded that Viriconium is in fact magic realism. Call the city Buenos Aires and write it in Spanish and you couldn't tell it from Garcia Marquez. Then went to see which Viriconia I do have, and discovered a long-standing and hitherto unresolved mental confusion, in which I thought Harrison was Vance, Viriconium was the Dying Earth, and both were somehow related to John Brunner's Traveler in Black. Now I know they're not. Go me.

This is fine, because I'm finding Un Lun Dun heavy going. It would make a good Miyazaki film; it probably should *be* an anime film and not a book, because (for once, for me) there's just too many damn visuals floating over the city, and meanwhile I'm waiting for the story to start. Maybe should be reading The Borribles instead. Or the others in my stack of Horrible London books-- Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem, Jack Maggs, An Instance of the Fingerpost, Chatterton. Why is there so much Horrible London out there, and so little Amazing London like Aaronovitch's?

Comments

[summer-queen.livejournal.com]

I couldn't stand Un Lun Dun at all. A bit too ... it tried too hard to be clever, I think.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Mieville has that resonance with me anyway, and one expects cleverness in a certain kind of English kids-lit. But he said he was inspired by Gaiman's Neverwhere, and the other-London is a trope just begging to happen.

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

I have to write down all appts now. Suffer badly from CRS. It might not be just you ...

[yumiyoshi.livejournal.com]

Oh, too bad about Un Lun Dun - I wanted to read that but that doesn't sound so appealing.

I felt like Perdido was trying way too hard and it seemed like he'd found his footing by the time of City & City, though, so maybe it's just a stage-of-his-writing thing.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I have an appt calendar. Possibly I need a smart phone with a daytimer in it that I'd see frequently. But the card w. the appointment time was in my wallet next to the bank card. I suspect a certain inner cussedness that didn't want to see the doctor, because in fact I didn't.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I'm not very far into it. Maybe it's just a clunky passage. All I've read of his was early stuff- Looking for Jake and Perdido- and the latter kept me enthralled right to the end, when OMG was that the CLUNK heard round the world.

[yumiyoshi.livejournal.com]

OMG was that the CLUNK heard round the world.

^^^ fair point XD I was incredibly into the story until the climax/resolutions started flying and then, it was as you said. I almost forgot how great some of the earlier bits were. :/

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I like Sense of Place, and Mieville does that well, but he sucks at people. Or, I may hope, sucked.