THE DEEP ONES: "Familiar" by China Mieville
SnakThe Weird Tradition
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1semdetenebre
"Familiar" by China Mieville
Discussion begins March 22, 2023.
First published in The New Wave Fabulists (2002).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?102126
SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS
Looking for Jake and Other Stories
Creatures: Thirty Years of Monsters
Year's Best Fantasy 3
ONLINE VERSIONS
No authorized online versions found to date.
ONLINE AUDIO VERSIONS
No authorized online audio versions found to date.
MISCELLANY
https://www.chinamieville.net/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Mi%C3%A9ville
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/may/14/china-mieville-life-writing-genre
https://tinyurl.com/5n88en2c
Discussion begins March 22, 2023.
First published in The New Wave Fabulists (2002).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?102126
SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS
Looking for Jake and Other Stories
Creatures: Thirty Years of Monsters
Year's Best Fantasy 3
ONLINE VERSIONS
No authorized online versions found to date.
ONLINE AUDIO VERSIONS
No authorized online audio versions found to date.
MISCELLANY
https://www.chinamieville.net/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Mi%C3%A9ville
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/may/14/china-mieville-life-writing-genre
https://tinyurl.com/5n88en2c
2housefulofpaper
Looking for Jake and other stories has gone out of print. I have got hold of a used copy and read "Familiar" today.
I haven't read a great deal of China Mieville's work, but I have read his novel Kraken. That's a London-set urban fantasy where magic works to rules as rigid as science (I know that's not an original idea, it goes back at least as far as John W. Campbell's editorship of Unknown magazine in the '40s).
This is also set in modern London, and the familiar's exploration of this landscape, and the depiction of its mental and physical development in the main middle part of the story, felt more in tune with the classic science fiction I've read than it did with Weird fiction, or horror, or fantasy genres.
It also riffs on Frankenstein, I think, which has been called (by Brian Aldiss, for one) the first science fiction story.
There's a lot left unexplained about the witch and his customer, unless there are clues in the narrative that I missed it on this first reading. But it feels right that they are supporting characters because the familiar is clearly the protagonist of the story.
I haven't read a great deal of China Mieville's work, but I have read his novel Kraken. That's a London-set urban fantasy where magic works to rules as rigid as science (I know that's not an original idea, it goes back at least as far as John W. Campbell's editorship of Unknown magazine in the '40s).
This is also set in modern London, and the familiar's exploration of this landscape, and the depiction of its mental and physical development in the main middle part of the story, felt more in tune with the classic science fiction I've read than it did with Weird fiction, or horror, or fantasy genres.
It also riffs on Frankenstein, I think, which has been called (by Brian Aldiss, for one) the first science fiction story.
There's a lot left unexplained about the witch and his customer, unless there are clues in the narrative that I missed it on this first reading. But it feels right that they are supporting characters because the familiar is clearly the protagonist of the story.
