Perdido Street Station is a novel by British writer China Miéville, published in 2000 by Macmillan. It is the first in a series set in the fictional world of Bas-Lag, and is followed by the independent works The Scar and Iron Council. It is home to various intelligent races, a form of magic called "thaumaturgy," and a technological and scientific development consistent with the early capitalism of the Industrial Revolution. The novel is set in the city-state of New Crobuzon, a dystopian industrial metropolis characterized by social stratification, economic exploitation, and partial segregation. Xenophobia is rampant, and cruel corporal punishment magically transforms convicts into "remade," a despised class. The dictatorial government is in cahoots with big business and organized crime. The plot centers on the heroes' struggle against colossal winged monsters that threaten the existence of a densely populated city. The protagonist, dissident scientist Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, seeks a way to destroy the monsters and save his lover, the artist Lin, a member of the beetle-headed khepri race, from a crime boss.
The novel received positive reviews from critics, won several awards including the Arthur C. Clarke award, and attracted the attention of academic researchers. Critics praised the characterization of New Crobuzon, the novel's scale, the detailed and convincing world-building, the author's inventiveness, and the engaging storytelling. Genre-wise, the book combines elements of fantasy, science fiction, horror, and steampunk. The novel has been seen as a left-wing critique of postmodern capitalism (post-Fordism or neoliberalism), as a reflection on cultural diversity, as an exploration of the space of the modern city (including a revision of the classic totalitarian dystopias of Orwell and Zamyatin in the direction of an “urban dystopia”), as a discussion of the problems of racism and racialization, as well as issues affecting group solidarity, utopian alternatives and ethical choice.
World Bas Lag Perdido Street Station is primarily set in the city-state of New Crobuzon, the most powerful political and economic entity, in the world known as Bas-Lag. The city's development roughly corresponds to early capitalism during the Industrial Revolution. New Crobuzon uses the steam engine, gas lamps, airships, railways, including aerial ones, as well as heliotypes—analogs of photographs—and steam-powered computer technology in the form of "constructs," small machines, or robots. Steam power as a means of production is supplemented by magic, "thaumaturgy," and other energy sources, primarily magical, are sought. Practical magic is closer to engineering than to magic. New Crobuzon is an ancient city, "built amid the bones of a gigantic ancient animal", with a history spanning nearly two thousand years, but in decline. Fragmentary information suggests that science and technology were once more advanced, leaving some elements of it intact. For example, a "cloud tower" that controlled the weather towered over the city; this technology has been lost, and the tower's "aeromorphic" motor cannot be restored to working order. Vast and densely populated, New Crobuzon is prone to decay and pollution, and is plagued by crime and disease. The author describes the metropolis as "a gigantic breeding ground for infection, a plague pit," teeming with "parasites, infection and rumour".
The city-state of New Crobuzon New Crobuzon is a multicultural city with many immigrants, consisting of "a series of districts with strange architecture", each a miniature city, a collection of disparate elements. Districts are governed by their own rules and may or may not be isolated. New Crobuzon and Bas-Lag are inhabited by humans, the most common species, and non-human intelligent races, collectively called xenii. Each species has its own history, culture, and language. Khepri have the head of a beetle and the body of a woman; their males are mindless insects. The Vodyanoi are amphibious aquatic creatures that resemble frogs and can manipulate water. The cactacae are tall, cactus-like beings distinguished by their size, strength, and endurance, and are therefore valued as workers and soldiers. Individualist garuda have human bodies but bird-like features; they are covered in feathers and capable of flight using large wings. All races are roughly equal in intelligence and other qualities, possessing the capacity for friendship and love, political and economic activity and individual characters. There are few profound differences between them, as indicated, for example, by the joint strike of human and water dockers. Strange creatures called hand lingers are disembodied parasites, "hands" that control the minds of their hosts. According to one version, these are the spirits of evil and vile dead people. Thanks to their psychic abilities, handlingers occupy high positions in the city, collaborating with the government. For example, Montjon Rescue, the mayor's assistant is a handlinger.
New Crobuzon, nominally a parliamentary city-state, is ruled by an imperialist oligarchy—a dictatorial government led by Mayor Bentham Rudgutter and his authoritarian Fat Sun Party. The government, in collusion with big business and organized crime, relies on a secret paramilitary force—the militia. The militia "dislikes operating in the open," using a "vast network of informants", and maintaining a constant, "pervasive" fear in the city. There is no freedom of speech in New Crobuzon, and elections are held through a corrupt Electoral Lottery that maintains the status quo. Political parties sometimes resemble shadowy cults. The city is highly socially stratified, with its space divided both horizontally and vertically into different levels of social and economic privilege, although the boundaries between them are fluid and unstable; cities within cities are constantly disintegrating, with privileged areas losing their status. The authorities exploit poverty and the appearance of difference for state oppression, creating informal structures of segregation, and exploiting marginalized populations, seeing them as both a resource and a threat. For example, the Cactacae and Khepri live in ghettos; the latter once lost their homeland to a “heavenly apocalypse” they called the Devastation – a terrible tornado killed most of the Khepri, leaving only a handful of fugitives. The Garuda, the outsiders of outsiders, occupy formerly abandoned high-rise buildings in the ghetto of Raspelovy, the poorest district on the outskirts of the city. The wealthiest cactacae live in a heavily guarded and almost completely isolated structure, the Glasshouse, a colossal flattened dome of metal and glass, which maintains the natural dry climate. New Crobuzon is characterized by xenophobia between races, particularly towards other races, as humans are the most powerful species, dominating business and science. These unequal relationships include cruel and unfair prejudices and stereotypes. Xenia have only recently gained basic rights (for example, university degrees have only become available to them in the last 20 years). Sex between humans and xenia occurs, but is usually commercial. The authorities use xenophobia to maintain power and to divide the working class.
In New Crobuzon, alteration is common—various types of bodily deformations that are accomplished through both science (surgery) and magic ("biothaumaturgy"). During alteration at the penal factories, organic or mechanical parts, such as pipes, shovels, tentacles, claws, are amputated or added. Those altered become, accordingly, either hybrids or cyborgs. Alteration is most often performed on humans, but sometimes on members of other species. Alteration is often a criminal punishment in the New Crobuzon "justice" system, but can also be voluntary. The Remade are used for slave labour (they maintain urban infrastructure and provide supplies), for commercial purposes: gladiatorial combat or prostitution. The symbolism and vileness of corporal punishment is meant to reflect the crime committed or to serve a specific purpose required by the state. This may include sewing the mouth shut for the accused's refusal to "speak," attaching the hands of a child killed by its mother to her face, or crudely sticking feathers into her skin. The remade are ostracized out of disgust at their unnaturalness, rather than because of slavery or crimes; they are perceived almost as a separate race. The lower classes of the remade begin to acquire class consciousness and resist oppression, forming a group; they are popularly regarded as outcasts and terrorists, sometimes as heroes. In the city, a secret organization of the Remade is led by the legendary Jack-Half-Prayer, the local Robin Hood, an escaped anarchist from prison and a symbol of revolutionary hopes.
Perdido street station Perdido Street Station, which gives the work its title, is the city's largest architectural structure and its main transportation hub, the terminus of both the railways and the overhead rails. The colossal building, in the spirit of Antoni Gaudí, was designed by an architect who later went mad. It is an "industrial castle, bristling with disjointed parapet projections," its "five enormous, gaping brick mouths" swallowing the railway lines, whose rails, like "giant tongues," spread "along the vaulted spans." The womb of the station is filled with "shops, torture chambers, workshops, offices...". In the underground tunnels beneath the train station dwells the mighty Weaver, a massive, black, arachnid creature with a teardrop-shaped body, eight pointed legs, and a pair of childlike arms. The enigmatic Weaver possesses superhuman strength and primarily inhabits other dimensions. It weaves an endless "world web"—the fabric of the universe. Hell also exists in another dimension, and the city's corrupt authorities regularly contract with the Devil.
The city's constructs have evolved into an artificial intelligence, the Council of Constructs, which accidentally spawned itself (in the spirit of Prigogine's "order from chaos") from a pile of scrap metal and became a single entity. It is a composite of countless discarded parts. Its power and ambition grows as the number of components increases, becoming more complex, spreading like a virus and threatening to engulf the entire city.
Plot Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin is a scientist living in the city of New Crobuzon. He is approached by Yagharek, a member of a birdlike species known as garuda, who has had his wings removed as a punishment for an undisclosed crime in his native land. He asks Isaac to help him to fly again. Isaac agrees and starts collecting flying creatures for research purposes with the aid of Lemuel Pigeon, a fence with links to the criminal underworld. One creature is a large and unusual caterpillar, stolen from a government research lab. The caterpillar sickens until Isaac accidentally discovers it feeds on a popular hallucinogenic drug. It grows and starts to pupate. After reaching maturity, it emerges as a monstrous flying beast known as a slakemoth, able to paralyse its victims using hypnotic patterns on its wings. It escapes after eating the mind of one of Isaac's colleagues, leaving him catatonic. Isaac, Yagharek and Lemuel resolve to re-capture or destroy it.
Isaac's girlfriend Lin is a khepri, an insect-like humanoid and an artist. She is commissioned by Mr Motley, a mob boss, to make a sculpture of him. Mr. Motley has four more of the slakemoths in captivity and harvests their milk to sell as drugs. After Isaac's slakemoth frees its siblings, Mr Motley discovers Isaac's connection to the slakemoths. Assuming Isaac to be a potential rival in the drug trade, he imprisons Lin, demanding that Isaac return his creatures. The slakemoths start to terrorise New Crobuzon, feeding on its inhabitants.