Bas-Lag Trilogy - Perdido Street Station, The Scar and Iron Council

Perdido Street Station

Dust jacket and interior illustrations by Edward Miller

Welcome to New Crobuzon, the city at the center of China Mieville’s magisterial novel, Perdido Street Station. First published in 2000, Perdido was Mieville’s second novel (after King Rat) and the first to be set in the fictional universe of Bas-Lag. The book’s impact was powerful and immediate. It received, among other honors, the British Fantasy Society and Arthur C. Clarke awards for Best Novel, and announced the arrival of a major new voice in the literature of the fantastic.

The story begins when Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, a human scientist, and Lin, his alien lover, receive a visit from an exiled Garuda named Yagharek. Garuda are winged creatures for whom flight is as necessary as breathing. Yagharek, for reasons he cannot quite explain, has lost his wings, and commissions Isaac to restore them. In accepting this commission, Isaac sets in motion a complex plot encompassing a potent hallucinogen called “dreamshit,” a deadly, moth-like insect that feeds on dreams, and assorted denizens of the city’s colorful — and dangerous — underworld.

Dominating this vast canvas is New Crobuzon itself, a profusely detailed metropolis as authentic and convincing as any you will ever encounter. Like the city it so lovingly describes, Perdido Street Station offers delight and astonishment on virtually every page. The product of a powerful, wide-ranging imagination and a gritty, thoroughly urban sensibility, it remains one of the most significant fantasies of the modern era. You have never read anything like it. You probably never will.

The Subterranean Press edition of Perdido Street Station features a full color wraparound illustration for the dust jacket, a full color gatefold pull-out illustration, and the novel’s original dust jacket illustration as a frontispiece.

Limited: 350 signed numbered copies, bound in cloth, in dust jacket and sold out at the publisher

Lettered limited to 26 lettered and signed copies, deluxe bound, likely in leather and cloth, housed in a custom traycase and sold out at the publisher

The Scar

Dust jacket and full-color interior illustrations by Edward Miller.

First published in 2002, China Mieville’s The Scar was the second in an extraordinary sequence of novels set in the fictional universe of Bas-Lag. The first Bas-Lag novel, Perdido Street Station, is widely regarded as a classic of modern fantasy. The Scar is every bit its equal.

The Scar is a novel of the sea—of the people, ships and cities that live on the surface, and the astonishing creatures that live beneath. It tells the story of an ill-fated voyage from New Crobizon, the primary setting of Perdido Street Station, to the fledgling colony of Nova Esperium. That voyage will encompass piracy, floating cities, transformative magic, impossibly vast sea creatures, and the threat of impending war. It will lead, in the end, to a region known only as The Scar, where quotidian reality breaks down and new possibilities proliferate.

The Scar is a definitive example of The New Weird, an expansive, revolutionary offshoot of traditional fantasy. Written in muscular, often poetic language and informed throughout by the author’s intelligence and restless imagination, it remains a unique accomplishment, a book no one else could have written. For Mieville’s longtime fans, The Scar is a novel well worth rediscovering. For newcomers, it is an irresistible introduction to an extraordinary fictional world.

Limited: 500 signed numbered hardcover copies and sold out at the publisher

Lettered: 26 signed, specially bound copies, housed in a custom traycase

Iron Council

Dust jacket and full-color interior illustrations by Edward Miller.

About the Book:

First published in 2004, Iron Council was the third and final volume in China Mieville’s acclaimed Bas-Lag sequence, after Perdido Street Station and The Scar. Like its predecessors, it was published to immediate acclaim, and went on to win both the Arthur C. Clarke and Locus Awards for Best SF Novel of the Year. As with so much of Mieville’s work, it’s not hard to understand why.

Iron Council is a novel of war and revolution unlike any you have ever read. Set in and around the urban melting pot of New Crobuzon, it is a vividly imagined masterwork filled with action, ideas, and an extraordinary cast of characters, both human and other. As the novel begins, New Crobuzon is engaged in a long-running war with the rival city of Tesh. When the city’s leaders decide to build a railroad across the surrounding desert, an act designed as a tactic in that ongoing war, the narrative takes an unexpected turn. Revolutionary forces, faced with the endemic corruption of New Crobuzon’s Parliament, take over the railroad and hijack the train that will come to be known as Iron Council. That “perpetual train” will become the seat of a mobile revolution aimed at eliminating a power structure that has dominated new Crobuzon for much too long.

Exotic, compelling, and constantly surprising, Iron Council is an overtly political novel that offers powerful visions and unique perceptions on virtually every page. Without sacrificing any of the genre’s traditional pleasures, Mieville has created a hybrid of fantasy and revolutionary politics that is hard to set aside and difficult, perhaps impossible, to forget. 

Finally, as a bonus for Mieville’s many fans, this very special edition concludes with “Jack,” the only short story set in the Bas-Lag universe. The tale of a renegade “remade” who brings a measure of hope to the poorer denizens of New Crobuzon, “Jack” is Mieville at his incomparable best, and sheds essential new light on the nature of life in one of modern fantasy’s most memorable and imaginative locales.

Limited: 500 signed numbered hardcover copies

Lettered: 26 signed, specially bound copies, housed in a custom traycase

Consignment (Tim's Stuff) - Lettered Set (As New): 

This is a unique one of a kind set, it is not Lettered or marked PC, each book is bound as a lettered book and housed in a lettered  traycase BUT the limitation line is designated "Founder's Copy". No other sets were designated in this manner, this is your chance to own the rarest and most unique Lettered State of this set of books.