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Bas-lag 3: Iron Council
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IC spoiler thread 7 Chapter 23 to end of Chapter 30:The Stain and The Remarking
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Traveller
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Sep 27, 2013 05:41AM
This thread is for discussion of Iron Council from the start of Chapter 23 to end of Chapter 29; The Stain and The Remarking.
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I would be a pot-stirrer, Traveler, except I am more of a responder than an instigator. I have been hovering over these last chapter links hoping someone would say something as I finished the book last week.I know, shame on me...
Ugh, I feel so bad, but I just don't have the time this week to read fiction...Where's J and Derek, I wonder?
Je suis présent!I found those parts to be a lot of in-between, events necessary for the plot, but not especially interesting to read about---or not really thought-provoking, anyway.
I should have made notes as I read, but I'll try and say more later.
My excuse is that there was a hold on the library copy I had and there seems to be only one copy in circulation.I am not sure,without Trav's succinct synopsis,if I can zero in on those chapters.
Ido remember starting to warm up to the book near the end. I really 'got it'as to the revolutionary potential of IC
The whole Jesus in the wilderness analogy got turned on it's head a bit, and I liked that.
Ok give me two more days and I'll put up a synopsis. :)
Traveller wrote: "Ugh, I feel so bad, but I just don't have the time this week to read fiction...Where's J and Derek, I wonder?"
Too busy being rightfully indignated. Sorry for the effect it's having on discussion.
Hey, wait a minute! I'm not the one who should be sorry, here.
In The Stain, the Iron Council moves through the Cacotopic Stain, the Mieville bizarro equivalent, I have always thought, (but you may differ) of a post-nuclear disaster area. When Mièville introduced us to the idea of torque in PSS, I already thought it seemed to be a Mievillian version of nuclear fission. Certain of the events that happen when the IC moves through the Stain seems to bear this out, especially the car that becomes a giant cancer, though of course in Bas-lag things are never quite as they are on earth, so the correlations to our version of nuclear fallout are not exact.In The Remaking, we see large parts of New Crobuzon being destroyed by civil war - the militia against the Collective. Ori seems to be immobilized by what appears to be a mixture of post-traumatic stress syndrome and depression--his world has fallen apart because everything he had believed in, his ideological efforts as invested in Toro's gang, has been blown wide open by the knowledge that not only Toro had deceived and used them for her own personal aims, but it appears Spiral Jacobs as well.
We learn from Qurabin that Spiral Jacobs might be far more dangerous than we might have thought, and indeed any attempts by Ori to kill or even touch the old tramp seem in vain-certainly a disconcerting situation.
Cutter, Judah and some others from the Collective join Ori in hunting the old man down, and in a nod to the first novel in the series, we see, as in PSS some climactic action taking place on the roof of Perdido Street Station : the threat of the killerspirit sent by Tesh to annihilate NC, is finally being averted when Spiral Jacobs tries to summon it prematurely and is defeated by Qurabin - a battle that also caused some of Collective's death - Elsie and Ori don't make it out alive.
Well, quite a lot happening here.
Some questions: what did you guys the of The Stain? I felt it was a bit rushed through and CM, as usual crammed in too much to make any particular thing memorable and stand out, except perhaps the attacks of the inchmen and the cancerous train car.
Regarding Spiral Jacobs and the Haints and the killerspirit thing, well, I'm still trying to figure out exactly how these mechanisms work. They bleed the color out of their surroundings? Hmm, what would that be a metaphor of?
As I mentioned above, I found The Stain to be a pro forma section. Iron Council had to get moving, so we see just that. We learned a bit about Council society, but as you say, Traveller, things move a bit too quickly for the reader to put down roots in the Council community. We don't really get to know any Councillors we didn't already know any better, either. The looming threat of the militia wasn't particularly effective, and I didn't even find the inchmen memorable. The speed with which Torque could cause entirely unpredictable and barely comprehensible effects did stick with me, though. Back when reading Perdido Street Station I immediately associated Torque with Chernobyl, but I actually found this to be too simple a comparison as I read Iron Council. The Stain is not merely an area of weird mutations, but a completely breakdown in reality; it's like another universe has encroached on their own. I was reminded a bit of the Tiberium infestation of Earth in the later Command & Conquer series of strategy games: it remakes (ha) the landscape, and will corrupt any life it comes into contact with. It's curious, too, that the Stain is apparently contained. Will it expand, I wonder?
The next section was much better, I thought. I felt Ori's depression as my own, the Collectivists' desperation as my own. This is one of the few sections where I found the pacing suitable given to speed with which events progressed. It probably still could have been twice as long to fill everything in. Too bad there isn't more, byt that's okay.
Thanks for your insights, J.Regarding the Stain/Torque: yes, I agree with you in that it is much more than just nuclear fission as we find it in our world.
As you say, in a typically Mieville-like subversion of things from our known universe, the torque indeed appears to represent a total distortion of reality, but similar to nuclear fallout, the results of the fallout from Torque seems to be pretty much unpredictable.
..but tell me, has nobody had any ideas about the Haints? I'm not sure I quite follow in which way these things were killing people. Or what they are, what they consist of, and where they come from.
I get that Spiral Jacobs is somehow summoning them with his spirals, in some kind of 'magical' ritual, but what is it that the haints do to people? "Sucking the color out" seems such an abstract idea to me. Is this an instance of Mieville just throwing a vague idea out there, or am I just missing something?
Since there is such a lot to say in the final thread, I'm going to use this thread to quote some of CM himself on Iron Council.Regarding the fact that he writes about monsters and monstrous fights so much, China writes:
"The bottom line of course is that I write the books I want to read. The cavalry rode to the rescue partly for the wink-factor, but partly because I like watching them do so. I like hallucinatory prose, avant-garde stylings, nonlinearity and existential angst, and I like monsters and gunfights and robust pulp.
... My problem (?) is I like battle scenes, and I like writing them (even though they might perhaps be as much a fetter as a pleasure).
...It seems to me at least plausible that these different kinds of values do ‘erode’ each other . These values are several – the avant-garde sensibility, of depicting realistic social structures, of the ripping yarn – and it’s unclear the extent to which each can fruitfully coexist with others in a single text.
...I simply don’t know whether I can have this cake and eat it too: critically depict political economy, while having shots ring out and people swinging off cliffs to magical battles.
The best I can do is offer a thought. Even if it’s true that the different values fundamentally work against each other, the attempt to marry them may never succeed, but it might approach success asymptotically. Try again, fail again, fail better.
That tension, that process of failing better and better – the very failure, if it’s the best kind of failure – might generate interesting effects that a more ‘successful’ – ie aesthetically integrated – work cannot do. "
I've given a bit of a recap of the ending too, if anybody is interested in posting their their thoughts regarding the ending and the book as a whole: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
I'm not too sure what to make of the haints, either. They do seem to be related to the colourbombs which Tesh were reputed to be using. I don't think there's any understanding them, ultimately. We simply don't have enough data. :(
J. wrote: "I'm not too sure what to make of the haints, either. They do seem to be related to the colourbombs which Tesh were reputed to be using. I don't think there's any understanding them, ultimately. W..."See, this is one of the downsides of CM for me. He is so bursting with ideas that he seems to have a bit of 'Idea-ADHD' . All these way-out ideas that he doesn't end up following through completely with all of them.
But it might also just be that I'm too unimaginative to figure out why removing the color from something would kill it. Is CM using color in a metaphorical sense here though? Is color a metaphor for life?
J. wrote: "I'm not too sure what to make of the haints, either. They do seem to be related to the colourbombs which Tesh were reputed to be using. I don't think there's any understanding them, ultimately. W..."To understand colourbombs, and the Cacotopic Stain, you need to be familiar with Perdido Street Station, but even then you won't get a full explanation. Yes, the Stain is a result of colourbombs, and so presumably the leeching of colour by the haints from Tesh is related, but I don't think Miéville can be faulted for not making it more clear (though perhaps he might have recapped some of what was said in PSS—after all it wasn't much).
Colourbombs/Torque magic are "lost" (and happily so for most people) technology in New Crobuzon, so nobody there can possibly explain it. I wonder if Tesh regained the knowledge through priests like Qurabin?
I'm pretty sure the Stain is not "constrained"—I think it's like the Great Red Spot on Jupiter: over the long term pretty static, but in the short term it may grow or shrink.
And yes, I'm sure "it's like another universe has encroached on their own." Exactly like the whirlpool in The Scar, and the gate in the deep through which the Godwhale (avaunc?) entered Bas Lag.
Thanks for that, Derek. But what I'm still trying to figure out, is how leeching the colour from you will kill you. After all, won't you just be a less colorful version of yourself? Or am I missing some essential aspect of physics to do with colour here? After all, chameleon change their colour all the time... I wonder what would happen if you put a chameleon in the path of a haint. :P Would it confuse the haints? :D
For colourbombs, see http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php...Follow the references to Fantastic Nukes. I must say I'm disappointed that Miéville can be so easily analyzed!
I think for the actual sucking of color out of people you're just being way too literal. I just think of it as a measure of vitality, though I'm sure you could retcon a physics reason if you really tried. After all, pretty much any nuclear reaction is going to result in the release of photons.
Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "I think for the actual sucking of color out of people you're just being way too literal. I just think of it as a measure of vitality, "Point well taken. Like I said earlier, I was wondering if I shouldn't just be taking it metaphorically, so I'll lay it to rest at that! :)
Wikipedia reminded me that I've misremembered torque bombs and colourbombs. New Crobuzon used torque bombs first, and the results were so catastrophic that they tried to cover it with colourbombs, so presumably they have some sort of opposite effect. Which makes some kind of sense in the context of Iron Council.The Stain is torque run wild. Torque, like Judah's golemancy, can even animate the inanimate. The Tesh haints are at least in some sense in opposition to that.
It could perhaps be something like atom bombs vs hydrogen bombs. Although of course, CM's bombs are their own thing, unique to Bas-lag.Yes, I remember that Isaac discussed the effects of torque with Yagharek (and/or with one of those roommates of his) in PSS.
Yes, it was with Yagharek.
Just in case anybody missed my reference above, the last thread of the discussion is here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
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Perdido Street Station (other topics)The Scar (other topics)
