I recently finished Perdido Street Station, and one minor thing that bothered me is how many of the other races were either a humanoid version of earth life (cactus person, bird person) or a literal combination of a human and something (head of a bug, body of a person). That just seems so fantastically unlikely that I wonder if any of the other books in that setting explain it. Like, is it a future earth and the races are results of generic modification in some prior era?
I liked the book pretty well, through it’s not exactly uplifting. Thought provoking though.
I’m charmed to see Perdido Street Station come up! I was talking to my wife about this very book earlier this evening.
It’s so good! One of my favourites!
Yep, it had lots of cool ideas. I’m glad to have read it.
I take it you enjoyed it then?
Definitely! It was an excellent read. I do think you hit the nail on the head with
it’s not exactly uplifting. Thought provoking though.
I’ve never read anything quite like it. I picked it up in a second hand store for a couple of bucks while travelling, read it the first time and was completely confused, thn re read it a second and third time.
My takeaway is that it’s an exercise in suspension of disbelief. The third time through I’d accepted that it was just…weird…and it became a grimy unsettling story about complex people with complex motivations.
Oooooooh, I have one:
It’s like a 5 page spread for the whole spiel but this is the most relevant page.
The one thing i will add it that the eye thing primarily is super true and backed up by science as 20% of our brain is dedicated to visual functions and adding a third would make our heads very very hard to handle for almost 0 benefits.
