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The Tain
a novella by China Miéville
Published in: December 2002
ISBN: 1902880641 / 1902880633
SOLD OUT in Jacketed Hardcover / Paperback
Edition: 300 / 500
Introduction: M. John Harrison
Cover Art: Edward Miller
Synopsis / Contents:
The river was clogged with wrecks. Besides the mouldering barges that had always been there jutted the bows of police boats, and the decks and barrels of sunken gunships. Inverted tugs like rusting islands. The Thames flowed slowly around these impediments.
Once, in a city seemingly deserted, Sholl would have explored, in fear and loneliness. But he had grown disgusted with those feelings, and with the prurience that quickly mediated them. He walked north, along the top of the train. He would follow the tracks down past the walls of London, into Victoria station.
From some miles off, from the direction of South Kensington, came a high mewing sound. Sholl gripped the shotgun. A multitude lifted from the distant streets, many thousands of indistinct bodies. They were not birds. The flock did not move in avian curves, but with spastic jerks, changing speed and direction with a suddenness birds could never manage. The things trilled and chattered, moving erratically south.
"[China] has the art of estrangement increasingly wired. The Tain is deeply uncanny." M. John Harrison, from his Introduction.
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