Olive
Explorer
Joshua Dyal said:He does seem to occasionally wander off in weirdness that serves no purpose whatsoever. The entire handlinger sequence in Perdido Street was just to show off "hey, look, here's a really weird, grotesque element of my aw3some 53tting, d00ds" kinda moment. It didn't further the storytelling at all; in fact, it interrupted the momentum of the story for no apparent reason. Which was unfortunate, as it took at least 200 pages to build up any momentum to begin with.
While I disagree about the first 200 pages, I do agree about the handlingers. But the scar had less of that in there, so I suspect as his writing matures the needless wierdness will get less and less.
On the politics thing, basically he's a very political person. I'd imagine that he would be unable to write these books without his politics.
Though to be honest, as a very political person with views not dissimilar to Meiville's, I don't find that he IS that political. But I guess that's just me. Ken MacLeod is a much more political writer, where as Iain M Banks, who is a very political person, is very rarely described as a political writer of fiction. But I have no doubt what Bank's politics are upon reading his work. Meiville's books remind me of Banks's in terms of their political-ness. Smilarly with Ursela LeGuin, with the notable exception of two books and a short story, she doesn't have much overt politics in her writing. But she is also a very political person whose politics informs her work. Moorcock as well.
This is probably a dangerous line of discussion tho. I'm pretty sure I'm sailing as close to the wind as I can without being specific and breaking the rules.
