====================================================================== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. ======================================================================
IT seems my last post on China Miéville (an old French Hugenot surname BTW) has not come thorugh to this lsit. Anyway I'm a big fan. What is also very intersting in Miéville's Science-Fiction stories, is the Marxist realism he posits, the fact that alien races can co-exist when they are being exploited, but that they have great difficulties in coordinating their response to exploitation. That when alien races really start building an Utopia, it is because they are at the periphery of the system (Iron Council), but that in the centre, in the world of New Crobuzon, identity takes over, and alien races "co-exist" (remarkable description of certain neighbourhoods being predomintently Kepri, or Human, or Voydanoi, etc...) without really acknowledging each other (except when there is an external war against a new alien race or when there is a strike). Miéville is the first Science-Fiction/Fantasy author to really describe an imaginary society on the basis of a Capitalist modes of production. Everything is a commodity and all the traditional elements of SF/Fantasy must fit into the Commodity production society. Which means that Magic (Thaumaturgy) is used to control the population, alien races are exploited and Monsters are used to justify repression. References are often made in many discussions to the relationship of "actually occuring" versus "possible outcomes" , a way of incorporating elements of Dialectical Materialism within descriptions of pure chaos. The concept of "Torque", the element that accounts for the discrepency between our world and that of Bas LAg give an intersting twist to the series. Miéville is truely a MArxist Science-Fiction authour, not just because he says so (or because of his political allegiances), but because his writings show a very deep familiarity with Marx. A familiarity that then informs the description of the imaginary world of Bas Lag and his telling preoccupation with the relations of production. Again, Miéville is a must read. Clever, fast-paced and yet meditative. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
