Perdido Street Station Review

Perdido Street Station is, at heart, a thriller and horror story. It is science fiction and urban fantasy in its world building--this is not a thriller that takes place in a conventional Earth setting. Instead, New Crobuzon is a large city on some other planet--nothing is mentioned about its relation to Earth at all, but references to other nearby regions lead to the conclusion that it does not take place on Earth. And there's no space travel of any kind, no notion of life anywhere on any other planet. New Crobuzon is populated with all sorts of intelligent species, some of which you might guess were manufactured somewhere, and others you specifically know are manufactured. Plus humans. You gotta have humans, if only as a reference race, something the reader can latch onto and say, "OK, I know who these are, and now I know how they relate to the other races." It's really hard to write a book about alien races without introducing humans as reference, as foil.

Most of the "technology" is really fantasy. Kinda steampunk, but much richer than that. This is mainly fantasy that *looks* like science fiction. No elves here, but there are khepri--humans with insect heads. Fantasy.

But as I said, it's a thriller and horror story. It starts out a little slow, as there is a lot of set-up required for this story in Act 1. Yes, it uses three-act structure. Boo! Hiss! And because of that, the first 211 pages (of the paperback) are slow and difficult to get through. Until then, there's no big action sequence. Is it worth the wait? I decided it was, but I really think it would have been better with some more explicit action. That's not to say some interesting things don't happen in those 211 pages. They do, and they're compelling, and I still recommend you get through it.

Act 2 (3-act structure, boo! hiss!) is a monster movie. We need to fight the big bad monsters that threaten the city. But they don't just threaten the way a few bad mobsters would. There are mobsters and all kinds of unsavory types in New Crobuzon, and while they're all destructive and make life dreadful, miserable, and dangerous, by and large, despite all the dysfunctionality and filth and morbidity, the city moves along, and you could even say thrives, in it's own way, the way mold thrives in the walls of a building. No, these monsters threaten the very existence of the city--not in a cartoonish, there's a matter/anti-matter explosion threatening the city sort of way--but in an insidious, permeating, draining sort of way (avoiding spoilers here), which is what makes it a horror story in addition to a thriller.

Perdido Street Station is dense. It can be hard to read at times, especially with an SAT vocabulary word appearing every 5 pages or so. Mr. Mieville seems to have forgotten to always use a less obscure word when it will convey the same meaning. Because you can only convey meaning if your reader understands what the heck you're saying. And to force the reader to look up a word every 5 pages severely breaks up the storytelling. Maybe if one out of every 30 pages. That would probably be fine. But, seriously, I started counting once I got to page 150 or so: 93. That's how bad it was.

So it's a thriller and horror story, with a science fiction and urban fantasy background. It's a dense read (I had to re-read some pages and sections), it has a lot of obscure vocabulary words, and it's long (probably about 200K words). This isn't a book you read in a weekend.

But man is it fun! As thrillers and horror, it's one of the best. As sci-fi and urban fantasy, it's a great setting. And it's a perfect blending of the four genres. I found it in the library in "Teen Fantasy." Well, you can put it in thriller, horror, sci-fi or urban fantasy, but it's not "Teen." I suppose someone thought all urban fantasy was "teen." But this is not.

I recommend this book. I give it five stars despite its obvious flaws, because, in execution, this book is really, really good.

2013 Storm Chase, day 2: Squall line inhibits any tornadoes.

On day 2 (5/21/13), we chased a squall line that produced no tornadoes. Essentially, a squall line is a line of storms that congeal together to make a rainy, windy mess that is not photogenic at all. So I have zero photos from that day. So we've had two chase days so far, but they were a bust. Not much else to say here.

2013 Storm Chase, Day 1: Heavy heart

On May 20, 2013, we chased south of Oklahoma City, and thus missed the carnage of the EF5 rated tornado that destroyed parts of Moore, OK. We won't chase in cities, and I'm glad we didn't. What we "saw" was one rain-wrapped tornado that was too difficult for me to make out, though others of our party saw it. We didn't know how bad the destruction in Moore was until we got back to our hotel. I was devastated. I don't know what else to say about it.

Rocky Storms

Yesterday, we chased a few storms in the Rocky Mountains. We almost saw a tornado drop, but the storm just couldn't do it. Soon after that, we ventured into an area with golf-ball sized hailstones covering the ground, all with snow-covered mountains within sight. Very beautiful.

The road networks were bad, so we couldn't chase the way we'd normally want to. In other words, we were handcuffed. We ended up punching a hail core to try to see a tornado, but we didn't see any. Ironically, we started the day at the Billings airport, from which we would have had a great view of a tornado.

But the money shot included here, of the hail on the ground with the snow-covered mountains in the background, was a great consolation prize.

Road Trip

I'm blogging my storm chase. Yesterday was a "travel day", and we drove from Denver to Montana. Our exact location is secret (oooooo!). There was a lot of beautiful scenery, and I'll include a photo when I update this blog later.

Late this afternoon and early evening, we expect to be chasing tornadic storms.

Why I Don't Chase On My Own...Yet

Roger Hill is a genius.

I could end this blog right there, but I'll give a brief example:

I'm currently with Silver Lining Tours, run by Roger Hill, for a week of storm chasing. We're starting today (Sunday 6/5/11) and will chase through Friday (6/10/11).

I have been looking at the weather models all week, up until 10:30PM MDT last night. At first they were telling me we'd start chasing in the NE/SD/IA/MN area. And then Roger said we'd be chasing in Montana. Montana??!! The models said there'd be NOTHING in Montana, at least as far as I could interpret them.

Later, the models started to say central South Dakota. The Storm Prediction Center continued to not be bullish on Montana either.

And then, right before going to sleep at midnight MDT (OK, 11:53 to be precise), SPC came out with a 15% risk (15% chance of a tornado within 25 miles of any point, or 2,000 square miles) in almost all of Montana and the western half of North Dakota. (Given how the region is drawn, it will include a healthy portion of Alberta and Saskatchewan as well).

You bet I'm going to find out what made him so bullish on Montana so early. I'll learn. Because until I do, there's no point in chasing out on my own.

Your First Storm Chase

So you’re eager to go on a storm chase. You know the joys of storm chasing, the hassles of storm chasing, and when and where to chase. You understand the dangers of storm chasing and how to avoid them. And now you’ve decided to chase. So you ask yourself, where do I begin?

You will NOT begin by going out chasing on your own. It would be like going out to the savannah and searching for lions, zebras and hyenas. You don’t know where to go looking for the storms, you don’t know how to tell if a particular storm is likely to produce a tornado, you don’t know the safe location from which to view a tornado, you don’t know how to avoid the hail core…

Start by going out with experienced chasers, people who have several years’ history of chasing storms. Make sure you’ve known them during that time period, or know of them through research on the web, to weed out the ones who make exaggerated claims. Storm chasing can get very macho and very competitive, so you can expect people to embellish their achievements.

By far your best chance of chasing with highly experienced storm chasers is through a tour company. That’s right, a tour company. People who don’t know about them tend to be surprised that there are actual tours for seeing severe storms. I highly recommend this way to start your storm chasing activities.

I have used Silver Lining Tours, co-owned by chaser Roger Hill. Since this post is targeted at my friends that want to know how best to get into storm chasing, I would be doing them a disservice to NOT mention my own experience with SLT. Quite simply, SLT is a tour company I can’t recommend enough. Roger Hill is the one of the best storm chasers that I know. The other co-owner of SLT is David Gold, who is an excellent long-range forecaster.

SLT has no idea I am making this post. I will receive no money or perk of any kind for this endorsement. They probably won’t even read this. I am simply recommending to my friends how best to chase storms.

There are other tour companies out there, of course. I have no experience with any other tour company, nor do I intend to use them. If you are considering a tour company different from SLT, I have heard from a chasing veteran that if you don’t go with SLT (for whatever reason), then Cloud Nine and Tempest are the ones to go with.

Tours go out on a fixed schedule, allowing you to plan your vacation in advance. There is usually a fixed cost for the tour, including hotel accommodations. SLT insists on a Comfort Inn level of accommodations (unless circumstances dictate otherwise, and they never have for me). Meals and transportation to and from the host city (the city where the tour begins and ends) are not included in the admission (though part of the admission is the transportation while on the tour). The cost for the tour is steep—usually $350 to $450 per day, which, again, includes hotels, for a minimum of 6 days.

SLT will say that the odds of seeing a tornado on fixed-date tours are 50%. Of course, SLT is doing some expectation setting here. I’m sure their success rate has been much higher than this, but the sample size is small, and every year is different. In 2010, every tour saw a tornado, but I think that was the only year that happened. It is rare, but some tours won’t even get to see a single severe storm, let alone a tornado. I think a tour in 2009 suffered from this, but I’m not completely sure. If SLT reads this, they can set me straight, about this or anything I say here, and I will change the info here.

If you’re interested in eventually chasing on your own (which includes doing your own weather forecasting, having a laptop in your vehicle running radar, gps, and satellite maps, installing special equipment including satellite receivers and weather radios, etc.), then plan to spend as much time with your tour guide as he/she will give you, asking questions about everything they are doing. Buy books on weather forecasting. My wife even bought a thermodynamics text.

I have been on three storm chases, and next week will be my fourth. Being honest with myself, I know I am not ready to chase on my own. Yet.

So that’s my advice on starting out storm chasing. Some people go once and get the bug out of their system. Some never lose the bug (like me). Either way, an initial storm chase can be the vacation of a lifetime.