Railsaw

"Railsea" is a super-fun China Mieville book. It stands on its own without tying into his other worlds, but will feel familiar to readers, as it similarly conjures an original, remarkable world. I find myself often thinking "How did he think of that?!" as his imagination barrels forward in ever more unexpected directions.

MINI SPOILERS

The central conceit of Railsea emerges relatively early on; unlike, say, The City & the City, where it can take quite a while to intuit exactly what's going on, Railsea has some helpful passages of exposition, carefully spaced throughout, in which the omniscient narrator speaks directly to you and lays things out. Between this and characters explaining things to one another through dialogue, the oddness is more clear. (I wouldn't say I necessarily prefer this approach, as I generally prefer spec fic that leaves it to the reader to suss things out, but it does make this a more approachable read without dumbing anything down.)

Anyways: To oversimplify a bit, the "railsea" of the title is, literally, a "sea" made out of endless railroad. There are tons and tons of tracks, branching off, switching, joining, occasionally changing gauge. The rails run over a very hazardous earth, and underneath the earth are a huge variety of monstrous predators, including enormous molerats, earwigs, earthworms, rabbits, owls and more. They will periodically "breach", emerging from the earth to feed and wreak havoc. Trains serve the role of ships, traveling along the rails, navigating through safer or more dangerous areas.

While the novel almost entirely unfolds on the railsea, we learn about the overall cosmology as well. "Islands" of land emerge from the railsea, on which live most of the people, forming cities and farming and such. Far up above the islands are multiple layers of heavily polluted sky, poisonous to anyone who enters; "divers" will occasionally suit up and ascend into the murky reaches above.

The book as a whole feels like an homage to, and partially a pastiche of, Moby-Dick. The protagonist Sham stands in for Ishmael, the mole-hunter Medes replaces the Pequod, Captain Naphi plays Captain Ahab, Mocker-Jack represents Moby Dick, Mbendo replaces Queequeg, and on and on. Naphi is obsessed with her Great Southern Mole-Rat and risks much in pursuit of her quarry. A fun aspect of this novel, though, is that this is not at all unusual in the railsea: we learn of dozens of captains who likewise have a single, larger-than-life quarry that they relentlessly pursue; not only that, but they have a term for them, "philosophy", and ascribe them deep symbolism and purpose: one captain's "philosophy" might represent loss, another's dangerous knowledge, another's mortality, another's community, another's the sublime, and so on. The whole thing ends up feeling like a really fun, winking commentary on English Literature classes.

The writing itself is really fun. After the first few chapters, the omniscient narrator (who seems to be someone from this alternate world and not Mieville himself) gets increasingly chatty, commenting on what is happening, how you might be feeling about it, and so on. One of my favorite parts is a chapter that digresses on the text's use of the "&" symbol. This is one of the more striking aspects of the novel; a typical sentence might read like:

A storm of faces hanging on him & listening as off in other bits of wherever they were Kiragabo & Vurinam were dancing together, & someone gave Shame another drink, & someone said "So what was is you found on the wreck?" & "Aaaaaah," he was saying, tip-tapped the side of his nose, never you mind, secrets, that was what.

As the narrator eventually explains, many centuries ago writers would have used the word "and" in these situations, but in the world of the railsea, where everything curves on itself and folds over and splits and combines, the "&" symbol is far more appropriate. Which I love! I also love the later sections where the narrator reluctantly stops writing about a particular storyline to focus on something happening elsewhere, then grows increasingly apologetic at how long it's taking to return to the cliffhanger we left on.

All of this writing is really fun and original. I do have to say (not at all as a slight on this book, just in praise of the original) that Moby-Dick itself is probably even more creative and original. I haven't read that book since college, and reading this sparked a lot of memories for me and makes me want to revisit it. I remember being amazed as the novel abruptly shifts into a Shakespearean play, or a Borges-style catalog, or a scientific treatise.

Near the end of the novel, the narrator wistfully recounts some of the other possible stories that could have been told instead of this one - the wild horses that gallop along the tracks, or the political intrigues of two evenly matched islands. This seems to be a very common thing in China's novels: he creates an amazing world that's wholly original and wholly compelling, which could serve as a fertile basis for a writer's entire career (in the style of Lovecraft or Howard or Tolkien); and yet, with the partial exception of the Bas-Lag books, he'll only write a single story set there and then move on. Which I guess does make me kind of think of Tolkien after all, as there's something especially compelling about encountering a single tale that seems to be floating in a sea of other tales, each untold but adding weight to the one we do read.

A final thought: I really liked Sham, and thought he's one of the best Mieville protagonists I've run encountered. He's not especially good at what he does, but has a good heart and good instincts. He doesn't always act on those instincts, but I can relate to his indecision.

Oh! Post-final thought: it's interesting that one author has written two entirely separate novels about fantastic trains, between this and Iron Council. They are kind of opposite conceits in some ways, as Railsea has a multiplicity of overabundant rail, while Iron Council has free-roaming track that moves along with the train. Both of them seem to arise out of a loose adaptation of a deep understanding of the historical development of the railroads, particularly the over-investment and over-development of rails and the self-inflicted wounds capitalism inflicted on itself in the mid-to-late 1800s. As a Brit, Mieville is probably drawing on his homeland's experiences, but they're basically identical to America's, just experienced a few decades earlier. Anyways, this ended up being yet another unexpected entry in my recent run of books about the follies of destructive competition in early railroad development.

END SPOILERS

I ended up enjoying Railsea more than I thought I would. It isn't often mentioned as a favorite book among Mieville fans. I wouldn't say that I like this more than, say, The City & the City or The Scar, but I'd put it on a similar tier with them. It's less macabre than the Bas-Lag books and a slightly quicker read while still feeling weighty and interesting.