Notes on 'Perdido Street Station' (2000) by China Mieville (b. 1972)
Perdido Street Station is a genre-defying masterpiece of New Weird fiction that helped reinvigorate the steampunk tradition. Set in the hallucinatory city of New Crobuzon, on a world that may or may not be Earth, it is the opening novel in China Miéville’s Bas-Lag series (2000–2004). Blending science fiction, fantasy and horror, the novel offers a multilayered meditation on hybridity and fluidity, challenging conventional boundaries between genres, identities and forms of existence. Perdido Street Station won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction Novel and the British Fantasy Award in 2001.