Miévillians discussion
Perdido Str Station Discussion
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SECTION 16: Chapters 37- 39 (Nov 18)
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"I am the repository of construct history. I am the databank. I am the self-organised machine...I grow, I grow. My processing power fattens exponentially. I learn...Each day I read the books my congregation bring me, through my avatar's eyes. I assimimilate history and religion, thaumaturgy and science and philosophy within my databanks. Every piece of knowledge I gain enriches my calculations.""I continued to build me...The worshippers saw a construct mind that wound itself into existence from pure logic, a self-generated machine intellect. They saw a self-creating god. I became the object of their adoration...I produced generative programmes to tap the mutant motor-power of a viral affliction and push an analytical engine into sentience...Each construct that is brought into the fold of me becomes part of I"
Ian wrote: ""I am the repository of construct history. I am the databank. I am the self-organised machine...I grow, I grow. My processing power fattens exponentially. I learn...Each day I read the books my con..."Yes, nice description of the internet, eh? Though not quite 100%, but it's a bit like 'self-learning' chess games. Or, AI- Artificial intelligence, depending on which definition of it you're looking at. In any case, the passages around the 'council' and constructs are rich with cyberpunk lore.
I had originally intended to write something about the collectivist nature of the construct society. However, I decided not to when it appeared that CM had some reservations about some aspects of the collective:(view spoiler)
I was pleased to learn a little of Isaac and Lin's backstory; having it once it's all too late is all the more poignant. I confess I was a little bored with the handlingers and even the protracted battle scene.
The Construct Council was more fun. I thought more of supercomputers than the internet per se, perhaps because I already associated the Weaver with the worldnet/internet.
There seem to be ever more creatures with hive minds, or similar, as well as ever more esoteric forms of "food" (dreams, beauty, and now information).
Ma Francine has been found dead, shot in the night.
Along with some interesting comments that Mieville seems to be making about prostitution, we learn a bit more about Isaac's predilections and his past, and about his and Lin's relationship:
Before Lin, Isaac’s lover had been Bellis; human, like all his previous bedfellows.
Bellis was tall and pale. She painted her lips bruise-purple. She was a brilliant linguist, who had become bored with what she had called Isaac’s rumbustiousness,” and had broken his heart.
Between Bellis and Lin had been four years of whores and brief adventures. Isaac had curtailed all of that a year before meeting Lin. He had been at Mama Sudd’s one night, and had endured a shattering conversation with the young prostitute hired to service him. He had made a chance remark in praise of the amiable, matronly madame—who treated her girls well—and had been perturbed when his opinion had not been shared. Eventually the tired prostitute had snapped at him, forgetting herself, telling him what she really thought of the woman who hired out her orifices
and let her keep three stivers in every shekel she made.
Shocked and ashamed, Isaac had left without even removing his shoes. He had paid double.
After that he had been chaste for a long time, had immersed himself in work.
Eventually a friend had asked him to the opening show of a young khepri gland-artist.
In a small gallery, a cavernous room on the wrong side of Sobek Croix, overlooking the weather-beaten sculpted knolls and copses at the edge of the park, Isaac had met Lin.
He had found her sculpture captivating, and had sought her out to say so.
They had endured a slow, slow conversation—she scribbling her responses on the pad she always carried—but the frustrating pace did not undermine a sudden shared intimation of excitement. They drifted from the rest of the little party, examined each piece in turn, their twisted forms and tortured geometry.
After that they met often. Isaac surreptitiously learnt a little more signing between each time, so that their conversations progressed fractionally quicker every week.
In the middle of showing off, laboriously signing a dirty joke one night, Isaac, very drunk,
had clumsily pawed her, and they had pulled each other to bed.
The event had been clumsy and difficult. They could not kiss as a first step: Lin’s mouthparts would tear Isaac’s jaw from his face. For just a moment after coming, Isaac had been overcome with revulsion, and had almost vomited at the sight of those
bristling headlegs and waving antennae.
Lin had been nervous of his body, and had
stiffened suddenly and unpredictably. When he had woken he had felt fearful and horrified, but at the fact of having transgressed rather than at the transgression itself.
And over a shy breakfast, Isaac had realized that this was what he wanted.
Casual cross-sex was not uncommon, of course, but Isaac was not an inebriated young man frequenting a xenian brothel on a dare.
He was falling, he realized, in love.
And now after the guilt and the uncertainty had ebbed away, after the atavistic disgust and fear had gone, leaving only a nervous, very deep affection, his lover had been taken from him. And she would never return.
This is both the beauty and the tragedy of Perdido Steet Station: after the atavistic disgust and fear had gone, leaving only a nervous, very deep affection, his lover had been taken from him.
There is another tragedy in the novel, another person's story, in some ways just as powerful as the one of Lin and Isaac, which is revealed to us close to the end of the novel.
I hope to discuss these with you as we conclude the novel.
A bit further on, the militia do an exercise and we meet the handlingers. I'd very much like to hear some opinions of the handlingers-- to me they were almost an indulgence by Mievile-- yet again one of those aspects that i found hard to find any use for as far as plot necessity was concerned.
In chapters 38 & 39, our four friends visit the yard of the 'Construct Council' . I thought he was a hilarious skit on IT and the internet, and on cyberpunk stories especially the ones where some sentient or omniscient computer takes over the world and either attempts or succeeds on world domination.
Passages like this one was especially humorous:
Instantly the humans in the corner of the enclosed space fell to their knees, heedless of the sharp detritus around their feet. They gave obeisance, murmuring some complex chant in time, tracing some sacred hand movement like interlocking wheels.
Hahaha.
A bit further on the handlingers and The Weaver battle the Slake moths, and we discover how truly powerful the latter are.