I have torn the misleading quills from my skin and made it smooth, and below that avian affectation, I am the same as my citizen fellows. I can live foresquare in one world.

I indicate him thanks and farewell and turn away, stepping off into the dim lamplight to the east, towards the university campus and Ludmead Station, through my world of bricks and mortar and tar, bazaars and markets, sulphur-lit streets. It is night and I must hurry to my bed, to find my bed, to find a bed in this my city where I can live my foresquare life.

I turn away from him and step into the vastness of New Crobuzon, this towering edifice of architecture and history, this complexitude of money and slum, this profane steam-powered god. I turn and walk into the city my home, not bird or garuda, not miserable crossbreed.

I turn and walk into my home, the city, a man.

Other Books by China Miéville

Also by China Miéville

KING RAT

THE SCAR

Praise for Perdido Street Station

“AMBITIOUS, BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN,
ENORMOUSLY IMAGINATIVE, ENGROSSING . . .

A complex fable that blends several genres—fantasy, horror, gothic, science fiction, and social protest with believable, interesting, and utterly weird, fantastic creature-characters . . . I could feel my imagination stretched and tweaked by the haunting narrative—redolent of dreams, nightmares, intuitive whisperings, visions, and tastes of the unconscious. . . . With its inventive plot, fascinating characters, evocative language, and underlying themes of coexistence among very different beings, economics and politics, crime and punishment, computer consciousness, science and art, Perdido Street Station is in the end both complex and satisfying. And China Miéville is an author to read both for fun and for quite serious amusement.”

—The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Revolutionary in the sheer bravura range of its invention . . . This is the point in the review where prefabricated accolades like ‘this novel heralds a promising new voice on the fantasy horizon’ are usually offered up. To hell with that. Miéville isn’t on the horizon, he’s roared to the center of the map, kicked ass, taken names, and jumped straight to the top of the heap.”

—The New York Review of Science Fiction

“With his new novel, the gargantuan, intricate, and thoroughly grounded Perdido Street Station, China Miéville moves effortlessly into the first division of those who use the tools and weapons of the fantastic to define and create the fiction of the coming century.”

—NEIL GAIMAN

“BRILLIANTLY ORIGINAL . . .