Embassytown

China Miéville’s Embassytown finally made it to the top of my reading list, after the recommendation on Terminally Incoherent. I have to agree with everything Luke says, it’s a pretty compelling sci-fi mixture. There’s a little fantastical technology but the story revolves around humans interacting with an alien society whose use of language is fundamentally different to our own.

I finished the book yesterday and by chance listened to an oddly relevant episode on the Grammar Girl podcast this morning. “Because as a Preposition” talks about a new use of the word “because”, for example “I didn’t do my homework because Skyrim”. To me, this sounds wrong. No, sounds is too weak – it feels wrong, jarring, like other kinds of grammatical error. If I read it at speed, I read “…because of Skyrim”. It was a grammatical error when I learned to speak, read and listen, back in the early eighties. Regarding constructions that were erroneous and became acceptable after I’d learnt seem to be quite deep inside me, more a sense like taste or smell with instinctive likes and dislikes than something I think about.

The podcast talks about how this use was happening in popular culture for those who learnt English after I did, so maybe to them it feels different, natural, when they use or observe it. You’ll see why it’s relevant when you read the book!

I found the story itself to be well crafted and I struggled to put it down. I’d certainly recommend it if you’re a fan of SF and the ideas of language and mind interest you.