I don’t quite recall who recommended China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station and The Scar (though I suspect the answer is lost in the mists of time). I can’t thank that person enough.

Where my other favorite authors of speculative fiction — unoriginally Bradbury, Clarke, and Asimov — may have One Big Idea that drives the plot of any one novel, Mieville’s writing overflows with such originality that a Big Idea on the scale of those that drive the work of the Grand Masters of Science Fiction might just be a background detail for this up-and-coming master of the “New Weird.”

Wait, wrong blog! Here’s a lovely steampunk gentleman by Pascal reminiscent of the Remade in Perdido Street Station. Awesome!