The Scar

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for the 1948 film, The Scar, see Hollow Triumph

See also The Scar (Fullmetal Alchemist episode)

The Scar is the third novel written by China Miéville, a self-described "weird fiction" writer from London, England. The Scar won the 2003 British Fantasy Award and was shortlisted for the 2003 Arthur C. Clarke Award. Miéville won both these awards in 2001 for his previous novel, Perdido Street Station, and won the Arthur C. Clarke Award again in 2005 for Iron Council.

Although set in the same universe as Perdido Street Station, The Scar is not a sequel to that novel, and the characters and settings are very different. If anything, the two books are complementary, and extend the borders of the stories beyond the page and into the reader's imagination.

[edit] Plot summary

The Scar opens with the introduction of Bellis Coldwine, a cold, reserved linguist from New Crobuzon, the setting of Perdido Street Station. Bellis is attempting to reach Nova Esperium safely before agents of New Crobuzon can find her. The only other passenger Bellis speaks at any length with is the bookish Johannes Tearfly, a scientist whose interests lie in megafauna and underwater sealife.

During this time aboard the ship, the reader is also introduced to another two important characters aboard the ship. Shekel, a cabin boy, befriends Tanner Sack, a Remade (an individual whose body was modified through science or magic, usually as punishment for a crime) who is to be sold into slavery once the ship reaches Nova Esperium.

Before that can happen, Bellis, Shekel, Tanner and the rest of the crew are captured by pirates. After killing the captain and first-mate, a mysterious figure in grey announces that the raiding party is from the floating city called Armada. None of the captives are faced with any choice; they must return with the pirates to Armada and become equal citizens of the city, or face imprisonment and 'reeducation', until they come to terms with they life in the city.

Bellis and Tanner each react to their new surroundings in very different ways. Bellis finds herself longing for New Crobuzon, though ironically she was fleeing it for her life. Tanner, on the other hand, takes to his new home like a Remade duck to water. Facing a life of slavery, prison or worse, Tanner realizes that Armada provides him a new chance at life. He collects his savings and undergoes further augmentation of his body, remaking himself into an amphibious sea-creature.

Many critics agree that Miéville's characters in The Scar mark the most significant improvement over his previous works, as they express and relate the more subtle characteristics of fear, boredom, companionship, betrayal and lust. Caught up in all its symbolism and entendre, a reader might forget that this novel is set in a fantastic universe.

A number of themes are interwoven throughout the novel. The most obvious is the imagery and meaning of the title, The Scar. In the story it is both a place and a destination, a wound and a healing, a mistake and a reminder.

The novel features Avanc, a gigantic aquatic beast, never actually described. It is summoned via a sink hole (sink holes here refer to pits in the bottom of the ocean so deep they cross dimensions and are therefore effectively bottomless) and used to drag the floating city of Armada to the Scar (a place where Torquic energy has rent apart space and time). The beast's name is possibly borrowed from Addanc/Afanc/Avanc, a lake monster from Welsh mythology

The Scar also features a vampire known as The Brucolac (The word Brucolac is probably a variation on vrykolakas, a Greek mythological character similar to Western vampires). The Brucolac is the political head of his own "riding", the Armada version of districts or parishes. Both he and the hero Uther Doul are from High Cromlech, a land ruled by the dead and referred to in passing in Miéville's other Bas-Lag novels. The Brucolac and Doul expand on the culture of the undead in Miéville's fiction (vampires were mentioned only briefly in Perdido Street Station), describing how High Cromlech society is structured around the ruling class of the Thanati or Truly Dead. Even the language of High Cromlech is composed of sounds that can be produced by beings whose vocal cords may have rotted or withered. The vignettes about High Cromlech society reflect Miéville's preoccupation with culture and structures of political power, and represent an anthropological imagining as much as a fantasy.

[edit] Related books

Below is a list of titles that influenced the writing of The Scar. Many are referenced in the book, the most obvious through the names of characters, ships and locations:

• The Blue World, by Jack Vance
• The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig', by William Hope Hodgson
• The Gormenghast novels, by Mervyn Peake
• The Hunting of the Snark, by Lewis Carroll
• Moby Dick, by Herman Melville
• Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson
• The Viriconium cycle, by M. John Harrison

[edit] External link

• The Scar publication history at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

Novels of China Miéville
King Rat (1998) | Perdido Street Station (2000) | The Scar (2002)
Iron Council (2004) | Un Lun Dun (2007)
Collections
Looking for Jake (2005)
Related articles
Bas-Lag | New Crobuzon | Races of Bas-Lag | Remade