Perdido Street Station

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Perdido Street Station is a science fiction novel by the British author China Miéville . Perdido Street Station is the first of three stand-alone works set in the fictional world called Bas-Lag. In Bas-Lag, magic ( called thaumaturgy in the novel ) mixes with mostly Victorian technologies, as they are also often used in so-called steampunk . Perdido Street Station is set in New Crobuzon, the largest city-state in Bas-Lag. The title alludes to the city's central tram station.

In an interview, Miéville described the book as “basically a second world fantasy with Victorian-era technology. Whereby it is less a feudal society than an early capitalist one with an abundance of dirty police state ! "

The English original edition was published under the title Perdido Street Station , 2000 by Macmillan, London, and a complete German edition, 2014, by Heyne, in Munich. The text was translated by Eva Bauche-Eppers ; First published in German in 2002 by Bastei Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach, in a two-volume edition under the titles Die Falter and Der Weber .

Formal structure

The novel extends over 847 pages and is divided into 8 parts, which are titled as follows: 1. Commissions, 2. Physiognomies of flying, 3. Metamorphoses , 4. Pavor Nocturnus , 5. Consultations, 6. The glass house, 7th. Crisis, 8th court. Each new member is a italicized in I-form held monologue of wingless Garuda Yagharek initiated. Otherwise an authorial narrator dominates the novel.

In addition, the whole book is divided into 52 numbered chapters. There is no synopsis, but a map of New Crobuzon at the beginning of the novel.

action

The following important information is missing from this article or section:
everything between the liberation and death of the greed butterflies, Lin's abduction by multiformity, the storylines about the government and the wildfire, the end
Help Wikipedia by researching and pasting it .

Isaac Dan dar Grimnebulin lives as an eccentric scientist in the city-state of New Crobuzon. He has a complicated, interspecies relationship with Lin, a khepri artist. Both are confronted with different challenges almost at the same time.

Lin should create a sculpture of diversity, a well-known, unscrupulous gang boss. Issac faces the unique task of giving Yagharek, a Garuda (see: exotic species) deprived of its wings, the ability to fly. The sheer impossibility of this job, but also a bag bulging with gold nuggets that Yagharek leaves to him, motivates Issac and he begins to study the flight itself. He gathers a multitude of potentially airworthy creatures in his laboratory, including a dazzling, unidentified caterpillar .

It was only after Issac discovered that this caterpillar needed a hallucinogenic drug called Dreamshit to develop and fed it that it continued to develop. Unknowingly, Isaac promotes her metamorphosis into a gigantic, unimaginably dangerous moth, a so-called greed butterfly. These transdimensional beings feed on the dreams and unconscious of their victims, suck them up, and leave them as living, but catatonic , unconscious shells.

It turns out that Dreamshit is a secretion secreted by the butterflies. This drug is milked by a variety of four illegally acquired moths. The greedy butterfly raised by Isaac escapes his simple prison and then frees his four siblings from the hands of diversity. Together they terrorize New Crobuzon, which is helpless at their mercy.

Only through the collaboration of Isaac with other characters and the use of a newly discovered technology - the so-called crisis machine - is it possible to stop their goings-on.

species

  • Khepri , insectoid swarming people , communicate using pheromones and sign language, use their glands to create collective works of art from Khepri-Spei, live mainly in the Kinken district.
  • Garuda , winged hunters who live in the deserts of cymek, are very group-oriented, have no property, freedom is the highest good, restricting them is a serious crime.
  • Cactus people , vegetable, cactus-like bipeds, organized in tribes according to the cactus law, they live mainly in the so-called glass house - a gigantic glass dome in the Riverskin district or in the slums around it. They are mainly employed in heavy work or as soldiers.
  • Vodyanoi , aquatic, frog-like and human-like sea people, have a special water thaumaturgy to temporarily solidify and shape liquids, work mainly in the harbor and at the locks.
  • Wyrms , approx. 40 kilograms, human-like, barrel-shaped but airborne creatures. Their intelligence is somewhat above that of monkeys, which enables them to run small errands for a fee, feed mainly on the waste of city dwellers, live and die on the roofs of New Crobuzon.
  • Constructs , robots that can carry out simple work using punched tape programming, work in countless households and workshops in New Crobuzon, many of them have become intelligent, thinking machines through computer programs specifically distributed by the AI Konstrukt Council.
  • Handlingers , parasitic, tumor-like beings that are remotely the shape and size of a human hand. Via infection, they take over the mind and body of their respective hosts, continue to live their lives unrecognized and have uncanny powers. There are left-handed and right-handed creatures that develop two specializations - Sinistrale have special intellectual abilities, which makes them the aristocrats of this species, Dextrians form a soldier caste.

Action characters

  • Isaac Dan dar Grimnebulin , a human polymath obsessed with Unified Field Theory, which he seeks to prove through the practical application of so-called crisis energy, lover of Khepri artist Lin and good friend of journalist Derkhan Blueday.
  • Yagharek , an exiled Garuda, robbed of his wings for a crime, from the Cymek Desert, deep south of Bas-Lag. He wants Isaac to restore his ability to fly and is ready to accept any means and any price.
  • Lin , a Khepri artist and lover of Isaac dar Grimnebulin, is hired by gang boss Vielgestalt to create a sculpture of his actual multifaceted body.
  • Derkhan Blueday , a reputable journalist and art critic, but under the hand of the banned underground newspaper wildfire works.
  • Lemuel Girrvogel , Isaac's contact person on the New Crobuzon criminal underground.
  • Vielgestalt , the most feared gang boss of New Crobuzon, besides countless other criminal activities he runs a profitable dreamshit production with extremely dangerous greed butterflies. Vielgestalt transformed its shape into an amorphous potpourri of various body parts by means of multiple remaking operations.
  • Bentham Rudgutter , the corrupt mayor of New Crobuzon who has made common cause with both organized crime and the demons of the neighboring dimension - for his personal good and the detriment of the urban community.
  • MontJohn Rescue , a representative of the dreaded handlers (see: exotic species) who works for the mayor on the city council.
  • Lublamai Dadscatt , an independent scientist who shares laboratory facilities with Isaac Dan. He becomes the first victim of the fifth moth, which Isaac unwittingly raises.
  • David Serachin , another independent scientist who shares the laboratory with Isaac Dan. Works as an involuntary informer for the State Security of New Crobuzon.
  • Teafortwo , a not so simple-minded representative of the winged genus of wyrms, runs errands for Isaac's laboratory community.
  • Construct Council , a gigantic artificial intelligence that was spontaneously formed from the city's electrical junk, controls a large number of constructs
  • The weaver , a multidimensional being that appears in the form of a huge spider, weaves on the global energy network that spans all worlds and dimensions, has a bizarre idea of ​​harmony and aesthetics, speaks in an endless torrent of abstract poetry that is difficult to understand.

expenditure

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Richard Marshall: The Road to Perdido: An Interview with China Miéville . In: 3: AM Magazine , February 2003. Retrieved April 20, 2008. 

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