Having only recently finished China Miéville's—in my humble opinion—brilliant novel Kraken, I have just now begun reading Perdido Street Station. I cannot account for the whole book, of course, but I have already come across enough useful imagery to justify my pick. Considering that novel is set in a steampunk city-state (and China being a known connoisseur of the English language), drawing the connection to Victorian London is not far fetched.In fact, Miéville describes his world as follows:
Written by Christopher O'Sullivan
"It's basically a secondary world fantasy with Victorian era technology. So rather than being a feudal world, it's an early industrial capitalist world of a fairly grubby, police statey kind!"Victorian era and industrial capitalist world can, by all means, only mean one thing: pollution. And there is lots and lots of it. The novel starts of by following the thoughts of a character who arrives in the city on one of the two main rivers (“Tar” and “Canker”) by barge. Through his or her implied eyes we see chimneys “retch dirt into the sky”, how the water “reflects the stars through a stinking rainbow of impurities”, cranes and cogs, machines leaking oil and sludge, and dead fish and frogs swimming in the poisonous water. This could easily be seen as a slightly hyperbolic reference to the 19th century Thames, which was, at that time, not the healthiest river to fall into (*ahem*). The reader does also come across places such as “Smog Bend”, “Gross Coil” or “Rust Bridge”, which all add to image of a polluted, industrial town.
Written by Christopher O'Sullivan
Great start, Christopher. The next move would be to specify one element of that toxic discourse and analyze it. As you say, the pollution is ubiquitous, so what particular nuance would you look at? For one, the names of the natural landscape are interesting. Pollution, in other words, has assumed a "naturalized" position and has woven itself into the fabric not only of the land but of the language used to describe it.
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