Embassytown

Last updated

Embassytown
Mieville Embassytown 2011 UK.jpg
UK first edition cover
Author China Miéville
LanguageEnglish
GenreScience fiction
Publisher Pan Macmillan
Publication date
28 April 2011
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
Media typePrint (hardcover)
Pages404
Awards Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (2012)
ISBN 978-0-2307-5076-0
OCLC 769982453
China Miéville on Bookbits radio talks about Embassytown.

Embassytown is a science fiction novel by British author China Miéville. It was published in the UK by Pan Macmillan on 6 May 2011, and in the US by Del Rey Books on 17 May 2011. A limited edition was released by Subterranean Press. The novel's plot involves the town of Embassytown, the native alien residents known as Ariekei, their Language, and humans' interaction with them. The novel was well reviewed and won the 2012 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.

Contents

Plot

Embassytown takes place mostly in the city of the title, on the planet Arieka. Embassytown is a colony of a state called Bremen; and its trade goods (precious metal and alien-influenced biotech), along with Embassytown's unique position at the edge of the known universe, make it a particularly important colony.

Avice Benner Cho, an "Immerser" (a traveller on the Immer, see § Style below for the meaning of Miéville's neologisms), has returned to her childhood home from her adventures in the "Out". On the planet of Arieka humans and other "exots" co-exist with the indigenous, enigmatic Ariekei—otherwise known as the Hosts. Few people can speak the language of the Ariekei (referred to only as "Language"), as it requires the orator to speak two words at once with one mind; those humans who can are genetically engineered twins known as Ambassadors, bred solely for this purpose. The Ambassadors can be understood by the Ariekei (who do not recognise any other form of communication) allowing for trade in their valuable biotechnology. Language does not allow for lying or even speculation, Language reflects both their state of mind and reality as the Ariekei perceive it; they create literal similes by recruiting individuals to perform activities that can then become allusions in Language. Avice herself became a simile when younger, "the girl who was hurt in the dark and ate what was given to her". Ariekei compete at Festivals of Lies to see who can most closely approximate speaking an untruth, an act both thrilling and highly taboo.

The relationship between humans and Ariekei has proceeded in relative tranquillity for many years. However a new Ambassador arrives, named ⁠Ez/Ra⁠, who despite not being twins, is able to speak Language. The speech of the new Bremen-engineered Ambassador, regardless of words spoken, intoxicates any Ariekei exposed to it, and they become addicted to the extent that they cannot live without it.

A faction of the Ariekei deafen themselves to break their addiction and begin to violently convert others, developing increasingly sophisticated gesture-based communication. Avice is drawn into a search for a solution, having a special relationship with the Ariekei as a human simile. With assistance from sympathetic Ambassadors, she trains a small group of Hosts to be able to use metaphors and eventually utter lies. Due to the interconnectedness of thought and Language, this has the effect of altering their minds and now the words of ⁠Ez/Ra⁠ lose their addictive properties. The two Ariekei factions reconcile; freed from the literal nature of Language, they are able to learn new forms of communication, which also allows them to speak to non-Ambassador humans.

Style

Often described as a book about language, Embassytown also employs fictional language, or neologisms, as a means of building its world. [1] [2] The author Ursula K. Le Guin describes this as follows: "When everything in a story is imaginary and much is unfamiliar, there's far too much to explain and describe, so one of the virtuosities of SF is the invention of box-words that the reader must open to discover a trove of meaning and implication". [3] Their effect on the reader has been described as disorienting, with The Guardian 's James Purdon remarking on "a slow accretion of detail and implication until a universe coheres". [4]

Anglo-Ubiq
"Ubiquitous" English; the most widely spoken language on the planet, and a far-future descendant of Terre English. [5] The scholar of English Carl Freedman views this also as a reference to Philip K. Dick's Ubik , which the novel alludes to in other parts of its worldbuilding. [5]
biorigging
Living houses, furniture and organic weapons; a technology proprietary to the Ariekei, and central to their commerce with Bremen. Reminiscent of the setting of Ubik, with Freedman noting that Miéville once wrote a critical essay about Ubik on this theme. [6]
exot or exoterre
Alien, or from outside Terre, [7] the long-lost, mythical home planet of humans. [2] Freedman views the remote, forgotten Earth and uncommonness of space travel as sharing an affinity with Samuel R. Delany's linguistic SF, Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand . [8]
immer and manchmal
Borrowed from German, meaning "always" and "sometimes". The immer is hyperspace (also called warpspace [2] or subspace [7] ), while manchmal refers to normal spacetime. [9] The book describes the current manchmal as the "third universe", born after the heat-death of the previous two (each with different laws of physics); the immer, in contrast, is never-changing. [10] Le Guin calls the relationship between the manchmal and immer as akin to the land and the sea, so that "to travel through space is to immerse". [3] Joseph Weakland notes that the immer is associated with nautical language, such as tides, currents and shipwrecks; he describes it as reflecting the "sublime unpredictability and hostility of the sea". It even contains sea monsters that arrive in a "miab". [9] The scholar and critic Gary K. Wolfe compares them to the subspace predators of Cordwainer Smith's The Game of Rat and Dragon . He also highlights Avice's description of the immer: "langue of which our actuality is a parole" [French: language of which our actuality is a word], and interprets the universe as being "a kind of deep-structured grammar", a foreshadowing of the novel’s themes. [7]
miab
Acronym for "message in a bottle". [11] The world of Embassytown does not have faster-than-light communication, but it does have FTL travel, resulting in "miabs" sent through the immer as the means of communication. The presence of sea monsters ("stichlings") makes their reliability a concern; this matches the book's central theme, that of a crisis in communication. [9]
pharos
Greek for "lighthouse". Refers to beacons placed in the immer by an unknown alien entity, to warn immersers against hyperspace hazards. The lighthouse maker is referred to as the "Pharotekton" and worshipped by humans as a deity, as part of the "Church of Christ Uploaded", [12] a form of space-adapted monotheism. [2]
shiftparents
Refers to a family structure with cooperative/group parenting of children. [13]

Another stylistic quirk employed by Miéville is the use of fractions such as ⁠Cal/Vin⁠ to display alien language, which takes the form of two words spoken simultaneously (by two alien mouths). [1]

Characters

The names in Embassytown which are presented in fractional notation are supposed to be spoken simultaneously, by two mouths. [14]

Development

The Ariekei have two speaking orifices and utter their language through both simultaneously; for them, language, thought and reality are inseparable, hence they cannot understand the speech of individual humans, tell lies or speculate.

Kirkus Reviews [14]

Miéville originally had the idea for the Ariekei at age 11, in "an early draft of what became Embassytown", written while he was in school. [15] [16] They next featured in a short story he wrote eight years later, which Miéville intended to get published in Interzone magazine. [16] In attempting to portray an authentically "alien" alien race, Miéville commented that he finds it almost impossible, stating "if you are a writer who happens to be a human, I think it's definitionally beyond your ken to describe something truly inhuman, psychologically, something alien." [17]

Publication history

Reception

Ursula K. Le Guin, reviewing the book for The Guardian , wrote "Embassytown is a fully achieved work of art...works on every level, providing compulsive narrative, splendid intellectual rigour and risk, moral sophistication, fine verbal fireworks and sideshows, and even the old-fashioned satisfaction of watching a protagonist become more of a person than she gave promise of being". [3] Publishers Weekly said "Miéville's brilliant storytelling shines most when Avice works through problems and solutions that develop from the Hosts' unique and convoluted linguistic evolution, and many of the most intriguing characters are the Hosts themselves. The result is a world masterfully wrecked and rebuilt." [19] The Scotsman stated that "Embassytown features aliens that are genuinely and thrillingly alien" and suggested "a book fundamentally concerned with the role of language as an imaginative liberation. Miéville has taken the theoretical and philosophical insights of thinkers such as Jacques Derrida and Paul Ricoeur and turned them into story. It is not, however, a tract. There is a genuine emotional transaction at the novel's climax." [20]

Awards

YearAwardResultRef.
2012 Arthur C. Clarke Award Nominated [21]
BSFA Award Nominated [22]
Hugo Award Nominated [23]
John W. Campbell Memorial Award Nominated [22]
The Kitschies (Red Tentacle) Nominated [24]
Locus Award Won [25]
Nebula Award Nominated [26]
2014 Premio Ignotus Won [22]
Seiun Award Nominated [22]

Related Research Articles

<i>The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch</i> 1964 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch is a 1964 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1965. Like many of Dick's novels, it utilizes an array of science fiction concepts and explores the ambiguous slippage between reality and unreality. It is one of Dick's first works to explore religious themes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tim Powers</span> American science fiction and fantasy author (born 1952)

Timothy Thomas Powers is an American science fiction and fantasy author. His first major novel was The Drawing of the Dark (1979), but the novel that earned him wide praise was The Anubis Gates (1983), which won the Philip K. Dick Award, and has since been published in many other languages. His other written work include Dinner at Deviant's Palace (1985), Last Call (1992), Expiration Date (1996), Earthquake Weather (1997), Declare (2000), and Three Days to Never (2006). Powers has won the World Fantasy Award twice for his critically acclaimed novels Last Call and Declare. His 1987 novel On Stranger Tides served as inspiration for the Monkey Island franchise of video games and was partly adapted into the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film.

The Heechee Saga, also known as the Gateway series, is a series of science fiction novels and short stories by Frederik Pohl. The Heechee are an advanced alien race that visited the Solar System hundreds of millennia ago and then mysteriously disappeared. They left behind bases containing artifacts, including working starships, which are discovered and exploited by humanity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">China Miéville</span> English writer, critic, and activist

China Tom Miéville is a British speculative fiction writer and literary critic. He often describes his work as "weird fiction", and is allied to the loosely associated movement of writers called New Weird.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arthur C. Clarke Award</span> Award for best science fiction novel published in the UK in the previous year

The Arthur C. Clarke Award is a British award given for the best science fiction novel first published in the United Kingdom during the previous year. It is named after British author Arthur C. Clarke, who gave a grant to establish the award in 1987. The book is chosen by a panel of judges from the British Science Fiction Association, the Science Fiction Foundation, and a third organisation, which as of 2019 is the Sci-Fi-London film festival. The award has been described as "the UK's most prestigious science fiction prize".

<i>Iron Council</i> 2004 novel by China Miéville

Iron Council (2004) is a weird fantasy novel by the British writer China Miéville, his third set in the Bas-Lag universe, following Perdido Street Station (2000) and The Scar (2002). In addition to the steampunk influences shared by its predecessors, Iron Council draws several elements from the Western genre.

<i>Perdido Street Station</i> 2000 novel by China Miéville

Perdido Street Station is a novel by British writer China Miéville, published in 2000 by Macmillan. Often described as weird fiction, it is set in a world where both magic and steampunk technology exist. It won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and was ranked by Locus as the 6th all-time best fantasy novel published in the 20th century.

<i>Looking for Jake</i> 2005 collection of stories by China Miéville

Looking for Jake and Other Stories is a collection of science fiction, horror and fantasy stories by British author China Miéville. It was first published by Del Rey Books and Macmillan in 2005.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Story of Your Life</span> 1998 science fiction novella by Ted Chiang

"Story of Your Life" is a science fiction novella by American writer Ted Chiang, first published in Starlight 2 in 1998, and later in 2002 in Chiang's collection of short stories, Stories of Your Life and Others. Its major themes are language and determinism.

<i>Heechee Rendezvous</i> 1984 science fiction novel by Frederik Pohl

Heechee Rendezvous is a science fiction novel by the American writer Frederik Pohl, published in 1984 by the Del Rey imprint of Ballantine Books. It is a sequel to Gateway (1977) and Beyond the Blue Event Horizon (1981) and is set about three decades after Gateway. It has been cataloged as the third book in a six-book series called Heechee or The Heechee Saga but Kirkus reviewed it as completing a trilogy and a German-language edition of the three books was published as the Gateway trilogy after all six were out.

<i>Hunter of Worlds</i> 1977 novel by C. J. Cherryh

Hunter of Worlds is a 1977 science fiction novel by American writer C. J. Cherryh. It was published by DAW Books, first as a Science Fiction Book Club selection through Nelson Doubleday in March 1977 and then in a DAW paperback edition in August of that year. The work is set in Cherryh's Alliance-Union universe and occurs in the far future during the period of the Hanan Revolution, although the events portrayed in the novel take place in another sector of the galaxy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paolo Bacigalupi</span> American science fiction and fantasy writer (born 1972)

Paolo Tadini Bacigalupi is an American science fiction and fantasy writer. He has won the Hugo, Nebula, John W. Campbell Memorial, Compton Crook, Theodore Sturgeon, and Michael L. Printz awards, and has been nominated for the National Book Award. His fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov's Science Fiction, and the environmental journal High Country News. Nonfiction essays of his have appeared in Salon.com and High Country News, and have been syndicated in newspapers, including the Idaho Statesman, the Albuquerque Journal, and The Salt Lake Tribune.

<i>The City & the City</i> 2009 science fiction novel by China Miéville

The City & the City is a novel by British author China Miéville that follows a wide-reaching murder investigation in two cities that exist side by side, each of whose citizens are forbidden to go into or acknowledge the other city, combining weird fiction with the police procedural. It was written as a gift for Miéville's terminally ill mother, who was a fan of the latter genre. The novel was published by Macmillan on 15 May 2009.

<i>Kraken</i> (novel) Novel by China Miéville

Kraken is a 2010 fantasy novel by British author China Miéville. It is published in the UK by Macmillan, and in the US by Del Rey Books. Handed in at the same time as The City & the City, it was chosen to be published at a later date to give the former breathing room. The book bears the subtitle An Anatomy on the title page. It was the winner for the 2011 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel.

The anthropologist Leon E. Stover says of science fiction's relationship to anthropology: "Anthropological science fiction enjoys the philosophical luxury of providing answers to the question "What is man?" while anthropology the science is still learning how to frame it". The editors of a collection of anthropological SF stories observed:

Anthropology is the science of man. It tells the story from ape-man to spaceman, attempting to describe in detail all the epochs of this continuing history. Writers of fiction, and in particular science fiction, peer over the anthropologists' shoulders as the discoveries are made, then utilize the material in fictional works. Where the scientist must speculate reservedly from known fact and make a small leap into the unknown, the writer is free to soar high on the wings of fancy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carolyn Ives Gilman</span> American novelist

Carolyn Ives Gilman is an American historian and author of science fiction and fantasy. She has been nominated for the Nebula Award three times, and the Hugo Award twice. Her short fiction has been published in a number of magazines and publications, including Fantasy and Science Fiction, Interzone, Realms of Fantasy and Full Spectrum, along with a number of "year's best" anthologies. She is also the author of science fiction novels such as Halfway Human (1998), which is noted for its "groundbreaking" exploration of gender.

<i>This Census-Taker</i> 2016 novella by China Miéville

This Census-Taker is a 2016 novella by British author China Miéville. It tells the story of a boy who witnesses a violent event, which he recalls initially as his mother killing his father, but later as his father killing his mother. Centred on the mysterious events surrounding the alleged murder, it is told alternately in the first and third-person by an unreliable narrator. The writing style is sparse, Kafkaesque and a departure from the detailed world-building of Miéville's prior work.

<i>The Devourers</i> 2015 novel by Indra Das

The Devourers is a 2015 debut novel by Indian writer, artist, and editor Indra Das. It takes place in Kolkata, India, where Das grew up, and is considered South Asian speculative fiction and dark fantasy, incorporating aspects of historical fiction, fantasy, and horror. It was originally published by Penguin India in 2015, followed by release in North America by Ballantine Del Rey of Penguin Random House in July 2016.

A formal description of an alien language in science fiction may have been pioneered by Percy Greg's Martian language in his 1880 novel Across the Zodiac, although already the 17th century book The Man in the Moone describes the language of the Lunars, consisting "not so much of words and letters as tunes and strange sounds", which is in turn predated by other invented languages in fictional societies, e.g., in Thomas More's Utopia.

Carl Howard Freedman is an American writer, literary theorist and professor of English literature at Louisiana State University. He is best known for the non-fiction book Critical Theory and Science Fiction, and his scholarly work on the writer Philip K. Dick. Freedman's other works include a series of books on Isaac Asimov, Ursula K. Le Guin and Samuel R. Delany, and several essays and a book on China Miéville. In 2018, he won the Pilgrim Award for lifetime contribution to science fiction and fantasy scholarship.

References

  1. 1 2 Easterbrook, Neil (26 August 2011). "Language and Monsters". Los Angeles Review of Books .
  2. 1 2 3 4 Thompson, Sam (16 June 2011). "Monsters You Pay to See". London Review of Books .
  3. 1 2 3 Le Guin (2016), pp. 254–256.
  4. ↑ Purdon, James (20 May 2011). "Embassytown by China Miéville – review". The Guardian.
  5. 1 2 Freedman (2015), p. 116.
  6. ↑ Freedman (2015), p. 115.
  7. 1 2 3 Wolfe, Gary K. (18 May 2011). "Gary K. Wolfe reviews China Miéville". Locus Magazine .
  8. ↑ Freedman (2015), p. 114.
  9. 1 2 3 Weakland (2015), p. 82.
  10. ↑ Miéville (2011), chpt. 0.3.
  11. ↑ Miéville (2011), chpt. 0.2: "'Miab, miab, message in a bottle!' Mum Berwick would sing as she gathered our letters up."
  12. ↑ Weakland (2015), p. 83.
  13. ↑ Weakland (2015), p. 88.
  14. 1 2 Bledsoe, Alex. "EMBASSYTOWN by China Miéville | Kirkus Book Reviews". Kirkusreviews.com. Retrieved 26 June 2012.
  15. ↑ Jordan, Justine (14 May 2011). "A life in writing: China Miéville | Books". The Guardian. Retrieved 28 June 2012.
  16. 1 2 "Take Five with China Mieville, Author, Embassytown « Del Rey and Spectra". Suvudu. 24 May 2011. Retrieved 28 June 2012.
  17. ↑ "A Brief Interview with China Mieville, Author, Embassytown « Del Rey and Spectra". Suvudu. 25 May 2011. Retrieved 28 June 2012.
  18. ↑ Embassytown Archived 21 February 2011 at the Wayback Machine at Subterranean Press
  19. ↑ "Fiction review". Publishers Weekly . 21 March 2011. Retrieved 27 June 2012.
  20. ↑ Kelly, Stuart (26 April 2011). "Embassytown by China Miéville – review". The Scotsman .
  21. ↑ Lea, Richard (26 March 2012). "China Miéville heads Arthur C Clarke award shortlist – again". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 March 2012.
  22. 1 2 3 4 "China Miéville Awards". Science Fiction Awards Database . Locus Science Fiction Foundation. Retrieved 21 September 2021.
  23. ↑ "2012 Hugo Awards". The Hugo Awards. 7 April 2012. Archived from the original on 9 April 2012. Retrieved 9 April 2012.
  24. ↑ "The Kitschies: 2011 Finalists". Pornokitsch . 13 January 2012. Retrieved 13 January 2012.
  25. ↑ "Locus Online News » 2012 Locus Awards Winners". Locus . 16 June 2012. Archived from the original on 22 June 2012. Retrieved 1 July 2012.
  26. ↑ "2011 Nebula Awards Nominees Announced". Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. 20 February 2012. Retrieved 30 March 2012.

Sources

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.