Miévillians discussion

Chapter 29: Heavens, I love these Wyrmen names: Arfamo and Sideways; Minty; and most frighteningly, Buggerme, the boss-boy of the eastern city

David visits an old clandestine haunt of his, a place that makes him feel shamed. Remade kinky erotica, nightmare flavor. He commits a horrid treachery there..

Chapter 30: Horror abounds. Nightmares are encroaching, the creatures hunt the skies and the city.

Nice prose:
" camouflaged by the chiaroscuro of full moon through the clouds and the shadows of the trees in Billy Green, were only Isaac, Derkhan and Lemuel.

Isaac's group finds Dr Barbile, and learns from her that the government had sold some of the Slake-moths to 'a criminal' (who we can deduce must be a certain somebody we know who deals in drugs) for the purpose of Dreamshit manufacture.

Chapter 29 is important to my reading of the novel as a whole, because when David sees a Remade prostitute, "his eyes lingered on her in hypnotic, prurient horror".

This is in stark contrast with how Isaac looks at Lin, which I think is founded in love and lust for the person (not the fetishist perception of the person).

The word "prurient" has always featured in the legal discussion of obscenity, indecency and pornography.

For me, there is an implication that it is an internal reaction stimulated by something external and sexual (but not always) in nature.

It is a "perverted" response to the sexual.

In contrast, love and lust are healthy responses, especially when they are in a two-way relationship.

It's this two-way aspect that makes the erotic content of PSS so convincing and appealing to me personally.

Traveller wrote (comment 1): "Nice prose:..."

Indeed. One passage that caught my attention was about the plague of nightmares:
"Dreams were become a pestilence... They even inveigled their way into the minds of the waking... All over the city the night was fissured by cries of nocturnal misery."

Ian wrote (comment 2): "...David sees a Remade prostitute, "his eyes lingered on her in hypnotic, prurient horror".
This is in stark contrast with how Isaac looks at Lin, which I think is founded in love and lust for the person (not the fetishist perception of the person)..."

I'm not sure it's so clearcut: in the very first chapter, Isaac says, with a degree of relish, ‘I am a pervert... and so is she’ (it's when he's contemplating the way she eats and also describes her as "my monster"). There's certainly lust, but I'm less sure of love thus far. In this chapter, Lin signs a letter "with love", but I think that's the only mention of love I've noticed, and earlier (chapter 23), it merely talked of their "deep affection".