I just finished reading
#Embassytown by #ChinaMiéville – and what an intellectually wild ride it was! When much of the #sciencefiction one sees nowadays has "aliens" that are just humans with pointy ears, it's refreshing to see someone's idea of a truly alien species, and the challenges of communicating with and understanding them. Here's a spot-on review of the book by none other than the late, great Ursula Le Guin
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/may/08/embassytown-china-mieville-review

Embassytown by China Miéville – the immer
“The fact is a lot of the bullshit we tell you about the immer is true. We’re still playing you, when we tell you: the story dramatises, even without lying.” 10/

#Embassytown #ChinaMiéville #books #immer #immersion

Embassytown by China Miéville – the immer
“Yes, we’re a crew working together like any crew, but more. The engines take us out of the sometimes, but it’s we who do the taking, too; it’s we who push the ship as well as it that pulls us. It’s us tacking and involuting through the ur-space, the shifts in it we call tides. Civilians, even those awake not puking or weeping, can’t do that.” 8/

#Embassytown #ChinaMiéville #books #immer #immersion

Embassytown by China Miéville – the immer
“Ships while still in the manchmal—Terre ones, I mean, I’ve never been on any exot vessels that abjure the immer and I know nothing about the ways they move—are heavy boxes full of people and stuff. Immerse, into the immer, where the translations of their ungainly lines have purpose, and they’re gestalts of which we’re part, each of us a function. ” 7/

#Embassytown #ChinaMiéville #books #immer #immersion

Embassytown by China Miéville – the immer
“It isn’t only that we have, some say (and some refute), a certain flatness of imagination that keeps the immer from basilisking us out of usefulness. We’ve learnt its caprices, to travel it, but knowledge can always be learnt.” 6/

#Embassytown #ChinaMiéville #books #immer #immersion

Embassytown by China Miéville – the immer
“What we do, what we can do—immersers—is not just keep ourselves stable, sentient and healthy in the immer, stay able to walk and think, eat, defecate, obey and give orders, make decisions, judge immerstuff, the paradata that approximate distances and conditions, without being crippled with always-sick. Though that’s not nothing…” 5/

#Embassytown #ChinaMiéville #books #immer #immersion

Embassytown by China Miéville – the immer
“SO THERE ARE lighthouses throughout the immer. Not every dangerous zone is marked by the beacons, but many are. They are, it seems, at least as old as this universe, which isn’t the first there’s been. The prayer so often muttered before immersion is one of thanks to those unknown who placed them. Gracious Pharotekton watch over us now." 4/

#Embassytown #ChinaMiéville #books #immer #immersion

Embassytown by China Miéville – the immer
“The immer’s reaches don’t correspond at all to the dimensions of the manchmal, this space where we live. The best we can do is say that the immer underlies or overlies, infuses, is a foundation, is langue of which our actuality is a parole, and so on." 3/

#Embassytown #ChinaMiéville #books #immer #immersion

Embassytown by China Miéville – the immer
“Those were among the techniques I now knew, along with the somatic control, the mantric thoughtfulness and instrumentalised matter-of-factness that made me an immerser, allowed immersers to stay conscious and intentional when we immersed." 2/

#Embassytown #ChinaMiéville #books #immer #immersion

Embassytown by China Miéville – the immer

“I’d studied the immer a long time, but my first moment of immersion had been as impossible to describe as I insisted… There are currents and storm fronts in the immer. There are in the immer stretches it takes tremendous skill and time to cross." 1/

#Embassytown #ChinaMiéville #books #immer #immersion

Embassytown by China Miéville – the immer
“Those were among the techniques I now knew, along with the somatic control, the mantric thoughtfulness and instrumentalised matter-of-factness that made me an immerser, allowed immersers to stay conscious and intentional when we immersed." 2/

#Embassytown #ChinaMiéville #books #immer #immersion

Embassytown by China Miéville – the immer

“I’d studied the immer a long time, but my first moment of immersion had been as impossible to describe as I insisted… There are currents and storm fronts in the immer. There are in the immer stretches it takes tremendous skill and time to cross." 1/
#Embassytown #ChinaMiéville #books #immer #immersion