Science Fiction

13617 readers

4 users here now

Welcome to /c/ScienceFiction

December book club canceled. Short stories instead!

We are a community for discussing all things Science Fiction. We want this to be a place for members to discuss and share everything they love about Science Fiction, whether that be books, movies, TV shows and more. Please feel free to take part and help our community grow.

Be civil: disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally insult others.
Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, ableist, or advocating violence will be removed.
Spam, self promotion, trolling, and bots are not allowed
Put (Spoilers) in the title of your post if you anticipate spoilers.
Please use spoiler tags whenever commenting a spoiler in a non-spoiler thread.

Lemmy World Rules

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Question about Perdido Street Station (minor spoiler) (lemmy.world)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

19 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I recently finished Perdido Street Station, and one minor thing that bothered me is how many of the other races were either a humanoid version of earth life (cactus person, bird person) or a literal combination of a human and something (head of a bug, body of a person). That just seems so fantastically unlikely that I wonder if any of the other books in that setting explain it. Like, is it a future earth and the races are results of generic modification in some prior era?

I liked the book pretty well, through it's not exactly uplifting. Thought provoking though.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (11 children)

That just seems so fantastically unlikely that I wonder if any of the other books in that setting explain it.

Not in any depth/at all and it is the fantastically unlikely nature of it that is one of the attractions of the series. As the setting is possibly an infinite plane, one of many, it helps get you straight into the idea that this is a strange and almost dream-like place. After all it has to be pretty odd to spawn it's only literary genre, even if very little has been able to achieve similar heights of weirdness.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (10 children)

I'm a fan of weird, but I'll be honest that it bugged me. On the other hand, I sat down with it knowing very little about it, but thinking it was SF. Though it has SF elements, it also has magic, so more of a fantasy novel and, for some reason, that makes the thing about the races easier to swallow. There doesn't have to be a valid explanation for fantasy, it just has to be internally consistent.

Okay, thanks for the response.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

If you want to read something slightly closer to “normal” SF by him, The Embassy is good. Although my absolute favorite is still The City and The City, which is all about social mores and to a degree, castes.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I read a lot, and it got expensive, so now I use a library app connected to three library cards I'm entitled to. I have The City and The City on hold, but it's apparently pretty popular because the app is estimating seven weeks until it's available. But I'll read it when it comes up.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Hahaha, yeah I only buy books that I know I will be rereading down the line, because otherwise the foundations of my house would crumble under the weight.

My library allows requesting new books 3 months before they come out, so I usually try and be the guy requesting it and getting the first hold on it that way…

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Amusingly, it popped up yesterday as available on one of the smaller libraries, so I've started reading it. Interesting.

load more comments (8 replies)