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tags:literature
Proposes that the central core of China Miéville’s| works: The place of the socially constructed individual within social collectives. How the fantastic can help us understand how that works in reality.
Bas Lag is intimately connected to London, as a world filled with various sentient people and variant cultures living in multicultural city states. New Crobuzon can be properly termed an alter-London.
Ludmead suggests Roman king Lud. Bone Town seems to echo Brixton. The inner map seems to be recognizable as a London analog.
One recent narrative from Three Moments of An Explosion (2015), which performs this in a particularly striking way, is ‘Polynia, where icebergs start to coalesce above London, becoming accepted as Mass 1, Mass 2 and Mass 3, and occasionally by colloquial names.’
- Alter-Londons refers to cities set in secondary world fictions that demonstrate characteristics identifiable with London, like New Crobuzon.
- Un-Londons refers to urban fantasy fictions which posit hidden places, under or unseen by the real London, such as King Rat. These are para-cities, in a sense both parallel and occasionally parasite.
- Ab-Londons describe an estranged London by means of something apocalyptic or transformative, and moving away from the familiar London.