From Cacotopias to Railroads: Rebellion and the Shaping of the Normal in the Bas-Lag Universe

China Mieville's Iron Council is the most overtly political of the three Bas-Lag but it reveals political circumstances latent throughout the entire series. Mieville upends two givens of the traditional sf/fantasy universe. He sees the existing oppressive order as too entrenched for an immediate, cathartic overthrow, while not relinquishing a hope that this overthrow will someday come. Also, he does not hypothesize a benevolent historical agency operating behind the scenes, as has been a customary trope in sf/fantasy that takes on political dimensions. Mieville champions a patchwork, hybridized, but highly material mode of resistance to constituted authority. The emblem of this resistance is the Time Golem manufactured by Judah Low, which bursts the order of time so that resistance can thrive outside the contours of a deterministic, fixed political universe.