Post by account_disabled on Jan 1, 2024 5:43:36 GMT
I recently read Embassytown , a science fiction novel by China Miéville, an author I met with Perdido Street Station and The Town and the City . In those novels you immediately made me understand your genius and also the innovation that you brought to fantasy. And with Embassytown , even if I liked it less than the others, he proved that he is a writer to follow and take as an example. I preferred the other two novels because of the type of narration, which here is in the first person and very reflective, a story full of reasoning, suppositions, which in the end slowed down my reading and also made me partially lose my sense of interest in the events. But Embassytown is a good novel to analyze to understand how the setting of a story should be constructed, even if I didn't find detailed descriptions of that future world.
Miéville here lets us know his world in small doses, entrusting its description to many other elements, first of all words . Language as a fundamental part of the setting To write a science fiction novel it is important to study the language. Your own and also foreign languages. And those deaths. I'm not saying we should become linguists, but we certainly need to appreciate languages and their diversity. As well as knowing etymology, a discipline that has always fascinated me. In science fiction it is common to find new words. I would be surprised Special Data otherwise. However, even in other literary genres, words and language have great relevance, as they determine the setting . Many years ago in Rome you could buy a bag of fusarium . Once I ordered one at a pub in the province of Latina and the waiter asked me to repeat it. He hadn't heard that word in years. Maybe they've never even heard of it in northern Italy. If I write a story set in Rome in years past and use that word, I've created part of the setting. It is certainly not enough, but it helps to create images and sensations in the reader's mind.
Miéville did this with , but also with his other novels. In The City and the City he used the verb “disvedere”, rare, which means to ignore. But “unseeing” was much more than simply ignoring. Remember that synonyms do not exist. Unseeing is the main action of the story, the one that makes it possible to survive in the city. Or in the cities. In borrowed words from other languages, such as German. The current currency is the eumarch , but in they use the ersatz , a German word meaning “replacement”. A currency that replaces the current one. From German he also took the terms Immer (always), space, and Manchmal (sometimes), reality. The language spoken by the characters is Anglo-ubiq : an (Anglo) English that is spoken everywhere ( ubique in Latin means everywhere). Other terms are disarmingly simple, but how many people really think about them? Miabs are spaceships that deliver cargo and mail . Miab: message in a bottle .
Miéville here lets us know his world in small doses, entrusting its description to many other elements, first of all words . Language as a fundamental part of the setting To write a science fiction novel it is important to study the language. Your own and also foreign languages. And those deaths. I'm not saying we should become linguists, but we certainly need to appreciate languages and their diversity. As well as knowing etymology, a discipline that has always fascinated me. In science fiction it is common to find new words. I would be surprised Special Data otherwise. However, even in other literary genres, words and language have great relevance, as they determine the setting . Many years ago in Rome you could buy a bag of fusarium . Once I ordered one at a pub in the province of Latina and the waiter asked me to repeat it. He hadn't heard that word in years. Maybe they've never even heard of it in northern Italy. If I write a story set in Rome in years past and use that word, I've created part of the setting. It is certainly not enough, but it helps to create images and sensations in the reader's mind.
Miéville did this with , but also with his other novels. In The City and the City he used the verb “disvedere”, rare, which means to ignore. But “unseeing” was much more than simply ignoring. Remember that synonyms do not exist. Unseeing is the main action of the story, the one that makes it possible to survive in the city. Or in the cities. In borrowed words from other languages, such as German. The current currency is the eumarch , but in they use the ersatz , a German word meaning “replacement”. A currency that replaces the current one. From German he also took the terms Immer (always), space, and Manchmal (sometimes), reality. The language spoken by the characters is Anglo-ubiq : an (Anglo) English that is spoken everywhere ( ubique in Latin means everywhere). Other terms are disarmingly simple, but how many people really think about them? Miabs are spaceships that deliver cargo and mail . Miab: message in a bottle .