Three Moments of an Explosion by China Miéville

1. I certainly wanted more variety of structure. Short stories are where authors can try more with less risk of wasting a year on a crap novel: they can attempt new schemes and test sentence structures and throw it all away if it doesn't work, only having wasted a few hours of time rather than weeks or months. And Miéville does that here, somewhat. But at times he sticks rigidly to his familiar themes and styles: the unknown, barely glimpsed or heard horror understood by one character as necessitating flight, and by another as the other's irrational flight; the mid-story reveal of a deeper mystery that, though it's not what the story is about, subtly or wholly changes the setting or stakes; a discussion of how humans exist in a world where one significant thing is quite different and, to us, illogically so. These are good tactics and he writes them well. But this is a collection of 28 short stories mostly using these three tactics. I wanted more variety here, and didn't get it. For instance, the three italicized stories are transcriptions of video, and instead of trying this structure then moving on to trying other interesting new things, two more stories come along written as a video transcription. I wanted more variety, but the stores are mostly good: well-written and engaging, communicative of his subtext, and interesting.

2. What I like the most is that they remain focused on humanity. Mostly he examines the various ways we deal with the unknown and unknowable: our reactions, our reactions to our own reactions, others' reactions to our reactions, and how we react to their reaction to our reaction. This is what makes Miéville great: he goes that one layer deeper into what makes us who we are and how who we are reacts. With the fantastical, often unknowable setting or actions, this honesty about humanity grounds the stories and keeps them legible and applicable to human readers. No matter how weird, farfetched, or illogical it all gets, there are still humans and recognizable reactions. The themes here circle humans and the unknown, reaction chains and how we interface with the unknown and stay human with it. Like the three figured cast of "In the Slopes," which is probably a wonderful metaphor for the theme of the stories, the unknown comes and in their final act they pointlessly attempt protection, succeeding instead at love, trust, fear, panic, and acceptance of the fateful inevitability. The speculative aspects almost always affect the characters in interesting, recognizable ways. Miéville uses them as more than decoration throughout. But they are not the focus. Rather, they are a pivot point, or a metaphor, or a way to look at something in a new light initially undimmed by preconceptions. This is strong science fiction.

3. The other thing Miéville does well is allow readers to care before the plot really gets moving. We already care about Nick before we learn his condition. This effectively gives his illness import. This is rare: in The Caves of Steel, the initial murder is not inherently interesting or important or contextualized to the reader at all. So many speculative novels start with a murder that it's no longer gripping but cliché—like a D&D campaign beginning in an inn, or a film's external scene setting shot not informing the following scene at all. Miéville avoids this by beginning his stories before an important action, far enough back that the reader is able to guess at the importance when the action occurs, actually giving the action some import. This is both engaging and refreshing.

4. The writing is economical and unusual, prone to wonderfully surprising one-liners and immense pace changes. There are some strange sentences while Miéville pushes and stretches language, trimming and pruning—such as, "I said, he said, we must go"—but he's still usually making sense. There is beauty here:

"Couldn't arrange the sun," Anna called. The cloud cover was flat and unvarying gray. The yard was too enclosed to feel the wind.

But mostly, his wonderful wording leads to surprising one-liners:

I poured myself a glass of water. I didn't like how it looked at me.

They started to shed shadows.

God is a scrimshander.

There are many other examples. He uses words rather than being constrained by the ways they've been used in the past. He attaches new connotations, stretching their traditional meanings a bit. A typical author would have written, "They started to shadow whole swaths of London." He says, "shed shadows." It works. At least more often than it doesn't.

5. Miéville mostly shows. He does this well, using sentence structures and word choices to modify pace and show fractures in human logic and understanding and changing minds. But he also tells well:

I looked straight at Ian and willed myself not to show guilt.

I loved the London bergs.

I'm not thrilled by the prospect.

He does both well and uses both to influence the pace of the narrative, to breed mystery. For instance, why is he not thrilled to go back? Too much here would've piqued my interest less. But when an important crux is reached in "The Dusty Hat," the character's emotions are shown through the episode with the water glass looking at him funny, and his other actions, which slows down the narrative through needing more words to show emotion by action rather than telling, which allows the story to dwell for a space, which billboards the importance of that part of the story. Miéville shows and tells well, but also uses both to influence the story brilliantly.

6. I think at two or three points Miéville is a bit too preachy in the stories and it comes off egotistical.

7. "In the Slopes" is one of my favorite short stories. It uses one of his typical structures—surprise the reader 1/3 into the story—but Miéville writes this tactic so well that it's a delight to read. It's a 33 page story about "The Other Pompeii". It begins with 14 pages about two dig sites—one traditional, the other new and mysterious—and their two dig-crews—one traditional, the other experimenting with new techniques. Their professional rivalry plays out like a soap opera for the island's permanent inhabitants. This rivalry is the focus of the first 14 pages. Then Miéville nonchalantly drops a massive revelation about the artifacts themselves that completely changes the setting, recasting all the mundanity of island life and the professional rivalry in a strange new view that uses the mundane-fantastical contrast to show the human truth that time will make any atypical typical. He reveals this in a way wholly appropriate to the characters and the setting: this is a revelation to the reader, but it's obviously mundane to the islanders. Rather than blasting off with this new revelation in a new direction, like a pulp author would, he continues the human story from the first 14 pages within this newly shifted frame: the story's still about the professional rivalry and the digs. Miéville often uses this sort of bait-and-switch tactic, like a sonnet's volta, to recast a partially built world with a nonchalant detail drop that shifts the whole thing. These fantastic elements are part of the whole story and integral to the story, but they're never the point: something to do with humanity is always the point. It's a tactic he uses often—both in this collection and in his other works—but perhaps nowhere better than "In the Slopes". Although, The City and The City quite skillfully does this as well.

8. "Polynia" engages a different structure. Here, London is invaded by relics of the past. Illicit explorers of these relics send messages back to London while government expeditions livestream their explorations. But the whole is told by an adult looking back on his childhood obsession with these artifacts. The structure leaves the why until the end—examining the parts and plot before reflecting on why the adult is bringing these situations back up. Again, it's a mundane, human, coming-of-age story in a fantastical setting. Miéville uses the set pieces to ally the largely unlikable main character with the reader: I am as interested in the objects of his obsession as he is. And without these speculative artifacts, well, I would have been hard pressed to feel with this kid about Pokémon or Minecraft. But the strange, illogical artifacts, about which I have no preconceived notions, allow me to empathize with a character who is otherwise unlikable.

9. In "The Design", Miéville experiments with an interesting structure: the story ping-pongs back and forth in time, allowing the future narrator to reflect on the past and foreshadow the more future past. The mystery of the narrator's origin and interest in William ties it all together. He's not just a close school chum, that's apparent, but the specifics of what he is are hinted at throughout, not explicitly given. This effectively drives the story forward while the situation of the design itself is more the excuse for the subtextual story—the hook to draw the reader in while the relationship between William and the narrator takes its time building up enough detail to gain interest and import.

10. "Säcken" shows the physical monster, describes it, which is typically a no-no. I've been heard to say, "never show the monster," and I detest writing rules. But it works here, because the real monster is the humanity that created this, not the strange physical result. In this way, it's indebted to Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau and Shelly's Frankenstein, both of which fully show the physical monster because the humanity is the real monster. But of course, it's Miéville, so he has his own point and take on this plot element.

11. I did not like a few stories, or maybe I just didn't get them. "The Condition of New Death" lost sight of humanity in the window dressing. "The Crawl" failed to deal with the genre in an interesting way. "Rules" had a great premise and opening, but petered out in a lackluster mess. "The Rope is the World" is a fascinating idea that nothing is done with: this should probably be a novel to really get enough out of this rich concept.

12. In many ways, most of the stories are worthy of study by a writer: even the failures are still interesting enough to make engaging with them worthwhile and enjoyable. The stories are dense with techniques, confident wordplay, and appreciable pacing, world-building, and character creation. Maybe I read them too quickly—one and a half weeks—but I grew fatigued by the similarities of structures, themes, and the long story to short story to long story arrangement of the book. I think spacing the stories out in my own reading would have been a better method here: one that would have allowed more time to reflect on every story and draw conclusions from each.

13. I most liked "In the Slopes," "The Design," "Polynia," "Dreaded Outcome," "Watching God," "The Dowager of Bees," "Keep," "Covehithe," "A Second Slice Manifesto," and "Three Moments of an Explosion." However, "In the Slopes" and "The Design" seem to just blow everything else out of the water.