Maxima Library

Embassytown: a city of contradictions on the outskirts of the universe. Avice is an immerser, a traveller on the immer, the sea of space and time below the everyday, now returned to her birth planet. Here on Arieka, humans are not the only intelligent life, and Avice has a rare bond with the natives, the enigmatic Hosts - who cannot lie. Only a tiny cadre of unique human Ambassadors can speak Language, and connect the two communities. But an unimaginable new arrival has come to Embassytown. And when this Ambassador speaks, everything changes. Catastrophe looms. Avice knows the only hope is for her to speak directly to the alien Hosts. And that is impossible.

Something is stirring in London’s dark, stamping out its territory in brickdust and blood. Something has murdered Saul Garamond’s father, and left Saul to pay for the crime.

But a shadow from the urban waste breaks into Saul’s prison cell and leads him to freedom. A shadow called King Rat, who reveals Saul’s royal heritage, a heritage that opens a new world to Saul, the world below London’s streets — a heritage that also drags Saul into King Rat’s plan for revenge against his ancient enemy. With drum ‘n’ bass pounding the backstreets, Saul must confront the forces that would use him, the forces that would destroy him, and the forces that shape his own bizarre identity.

The Natural History Museum's prize exhibit – a giant squid – suddenly disappears. This audacious theft leads Clem, the research scientist who has recently finished preserving the exhibit, into a dark urban underworld of warring cults and surreal magic. It seems that for some, the squid represents a god and should be worshiped as such. Clem gradually comes to realise that someone may be attempting to use the squid to trigger an apocalypse. And so it is now up to him and a renegade squid-worshiper named Dean to find a way of stopping the destruction of the world as they know it whilst themselves surviving the all out-gang warfare that they have unwittingly been drawn into…

Step into a London ravaged by unearthly creatures at once utterly alien and chillingly familiar. In China Miéville's award-winning novella 'The Tain', we learn the reason for the invaders' terrible revenge. One survivor must trek through the ruins of the city with a desperate plan to stand against their assault. In addition to 'The Tain', this superb collection contains thirteen short stories, of visionary cityscapes and urban paranoia, ghosts, monsters and impossible diseases. Several of the stories are published here for the first time: these include one set in New Crobuzon, the location of the award-winning series of novels that began with Perdido Street Station; and one in comic-strip form, illustrated by top graphic artist Liam Sharp. This collection displays the sheer imaginative scope of China Miéville's work.

China Miéville stworzył swą najdoskonalszą dotąd powieść — egzystencjalny thriller rozgrywający się w mieście najniezwyklejszym ze wszystkich, realnych czy wyimaginowanych…

Gdy w ponurym, chylącym się ku upadkowi mieście Besźel położonym gdzieś na skraju Europy znaleziono ciało zamordowanej kobiety, wydawało się, że inspektora Tyadora Borlú z Brygady Najpoważniejszych Zbrodni czeka kolejna rutynowa sprawa. W miarę postępów śledztwa Borlú odkrywa jednak dowody wskazujące na spiski znacznie dziwniejsze i groźniejsze niż wszystko, co mógłby sobie wyobrazić. Wkrótce inspektorowi i bliskim mu ludziom zaczyna grozić niebezpieczeostwo. Borlú musi przekroczyć granicę niepodobną do żadnej innej i wyruszyć do jedynego miasta na Ziemi, które jest równie dziwne jak to, w którym mieszka…

Powieść nagrodzona „Arthur C. Clarke Award 2010” oraz „Hugo Award 2010”.

Acclaimed fantasy author China Miéville plunges us into the year the world was turned upside down

The renowned fantasy and science fiction writer China Miéville has long been inspired by the ideals of the Russian Revolution and here, on the centenary of the revolution, he provides his own distinctive take on its history.

In February 1917, in the midst of bloody war, Russia was still an autocratic monarchy: nine months later, it became the first socialist state in world history. How did this unimaginable transformation take place? How was a ravaged and backward country, swept up in a desperately unpopular war, rocked by not one but two revolutions?

This is the story of the extraordinary months between those upheavals, in February and October, of the forces and individuals who made 1917 so epochal a year, of their intrigues, negotiations, conflicts and catastrophes. From familiar names like Lenin and Trotsky to their opponents Kornilov and Kerensky; from the byzantine squabbles of urban activists to the remotest villages of a sprawling empire; from the revolutionary railroad Sublime to the ciphers and static of coup by telegram; from grand sweep to forgotten detail.

Historians have debated the revolution for a hundred years, its portents and possibilities: the mass of literature can be daunting. But here is a book for those new to the events, told not only in their historical import but in all their passion and drama and strangeness. Because as well as a political event of profound and ongoing consequence, Miéville reveals the Russian Revolution as a breathtaking story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tvCfiLzee8

On board the moletrain

Medes

Moby-Dick

Science Fiction Chronicle

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An anthology of stories

The Devil is known by many names: Serpent, Tempter, Beast, Adversary, Wanderer, Dragon, Rebel. His traps and machinations are the stuff of legends. His faces are legion. No matter what face the devil wears, Sympathy for the Devil has them all. Edited by Tim Pratt, Sympathy for the Devil collects the best Satanic short stories by Neil Gaiman, Holly Black, Stephen King, Kage Baker, Charles Stross, Elizabeth Bear, Jay Lake, Kelly Link, China Mieville, Michael Chabon, and many others, revealing His Grand Infernal Majesty, in all his forms. Thirty-five stories, from classics to the cutting edge, exploring the many sides of Satan, Lucifer, the Lord of the Flies, the Father of Lies, the Prince of the Powers of the Air and Darkness, the First of the Fallen… and a Man of Wealth and Taste. Sit down and spend a little time with the Devil.

A thriller of war that never was—of survival in an impossible city—of surreal cataclysm. In The Last Days of New Paris, China Miéville entwines true historical events and people with his daring, uniquely imaginative brand of fiction, reconfiguring history and art into something new.

“Beauty will be convulsive…”

1941. In the chaos of wartime Marseilles, American engineer—and occult disciple—Jack Parsons stumbles onto a clandestine anti-Nazi group, including Surrealist theorist André Breton. In the strange games of the dissident diplomats, exiled revolutionaries, and avant-garde artists, Parsons finds and channels hope. But what he unwittingly unleashes is the power of dreams and nightmares, changing the war and the world forever.

1950. A lone surrealist fighter, Thibaut, walks a new, hallucinogenic Paris, where Nazis and the Resistance are trapped in unending conflict, and the streets are stalked by living images and texts—and by the forces of hell. To escape the city, he must join forces with Sam, an American photographer intent on recording the ruins, and make common cause with a powerful, enigmatic figure of chance and rebellion: the exquisite corpse.

But Sam is being hunted. And new secrets will emerge that will test all their loyalties—to each other, to Paris old and new, and to reality itself.

This is a novella set in a post-apocalyptic version of London where the fauna of mirrors have rebelled against their imprisonment. It was originally published in 2002 as a limited edition book by PS Publishing.

For readers of George Saunders, Kelly Link, and Karen Russell, This Census Taker is the poignant and uncanny new novella from award-winning and bestselling author China Miéville. After witnessing a profoundly traumatic event, a boy is left alone in a remote house on a hilltop with his increasingly deranged parent. When a stranger knocks on his door, the boy senses that his days of isolation are over — but by what authority does this man keep the meticulous records he carries? Is he the boy’s friend? His enemy? Or something altogether other?

Award-winning author China Miéville (King Rat; Perdido Street Station; The Scar; Iron Council) claims that he meant Un Lun Dun for younger readers, but, like the Harry Potterseries, the novel will appeal to a wide range of ages. While it includes the basics of the genre — magic, monsters, quests, heroes — it breaks the mold in many ways. An urban adventure with a strong environmental message, the novel harkens back to London's Great Smog of 1952, which bridges the real and the fantastical. Miéville's playful, clever language and plot, reminiscent of Lewis Carroll's, also impressed most critics, though a few thought them contrived and tedious. "Finding it as a grown-up may not be the optimum way to stumble into UnLondon," concludes Salon, "but it's pretty miraculous all the same."

*** Русского перевода пока нет... Мрачная подростковая фэнтези. Подрастающие девочки Занна и Дееба случайно попадают в необычный дивный странный город. В этом городe, например, можно встретить говорящие упаковки из-под молока, странных «почтипризраков», а также портного, у которого вместо головы — иголки и скрепки. И этот город терроризирует необычный монстр — невидимое чудовище. А одно древнее пророчество говорит — что именно Занна спасет город от страшного монстра. Но... Все пророчества обычно туманны и не ясны, и Занна чувствует — что-то здесь не так... © ceh Награды и премии: Locus Award, 2007 // Подростковый роман (Young adult Novel)