History Literature / BasLagCycle

** The Garuda would also count to an extent. Their society values personal freedom and individuality above all else and has only one law: You must respect others' right to choose. Those who break this law are all guilty of choice-theft. While most human crime can be seen as theft of a choice (the choice of owning an item, the choice of continuing to live unharmed, etc), the converse does not hold, meaning that people who would be considered highly dangerous criminals in human society are be put on an equal footing with people who wouldn't be seen as criminals at all to humans. And some human crimes don't fit at all: to the Garuda, selling drugs would probably be legal and moral, while preventing the selling of drugs would be heinous.
*** More alien are the feelings of one Garuda as she talks about being raped... she seems to bear no more ill-will to the rapist, so long as his punishment continues, and becomes quite irritated when a human considers her a victim worthy of pity; she refuses to be anthropomorphised.
* BodyHorror: The Remade. A few examples:
** A woman (actually a teenager) who accidentally shook her baby to death had the baby's arms forceably grafted onto the sides of her face, so that she might never forget her crime.

* CrypticBackgroundReference: Taken to the level of an art form.

** The largest natural Torque-affected area is known as the Cacotopic Stain where getting eaten by giant caterpillar men is the least of your worries. Death itself probably isn't very high up on the list of bad things that can happen to you. Just to make this clear- a large number of people are collectively turned into a giant ''[[BodyHorror amoeba]]'', just by coming near to the Stain.
*** There is also a man-made Torqued area which was once the city of Suroch. During a war the city of New Crobuzon dropped a [[FantasticNuke Torque Bomb]] on it, and the result was so horrifying that they proceeded to drop even more of a different kind of FantasticNuke known as Colourbombs on the city... in order to ''cover up the damage''. There are things there described as "herds of what might have once been human", and mothers threaten to send unruly children to Suroch, "where the monsters are".
** The Cacotopic Stain, however, is not the worst place on Bas Lag. The worst place is the Fractured Lands, which has giant, nigh invincible, soul sucking moths halfway down the food chain. Flora and fauna there spent generations in the presence of a kind of probability magic, which caused them to evolve into highly bizarre, improbable and ''terrifying'' forms. Oh yeah, and there's a hole in the sea that monstrous beings from another universe came out of. On the up side, though, traveling through the Fractured Lands doesn't mutate you as horribly as Torque.

** And then there is the Torque, described by one character as a tumour that aborted itself from the womb that produced the forces of Birth and Death. Whilst not evil per-se, it is a natural force that is almost totally uncontrollable which warps and mutates matter and biology into horrifying things. Merely trying to research it can turn you yourself into an EldritchAbomination. It was once used as a weapon; the results of the Torque Bomb were so awful even after a generous application of {{Magitek}} versions of nuclear weapons there's a country-sized region of the world which isn't going to be inhabitable by anything but abominations ever again.
*** To elaborate on the 'horrendous mutations' part, at one point Isaac Dan Der Grimnebulin pulls out a book of photos taken at ground zero of the inhabitants (Though it may have been implied that there could be survivors) to show to a client.
-->'''Isaac''': "Turn the page, Yag. This next one, no one has the slightest idea of what it used to be. But I think those gears are descended from train engines. The... uh... ''best'' is yet to come. You haven't seen the cockroach-tree, or the herds of what [[WasOnceAMan once may have been human.]]
** Oh, and in the middle of a city there are The Ribs, the partially exposed skeleton of some enormous creature that has been dead for a very, very long time. Attempts to build over it resulted in seemingly structurally sound houses that just fell apart and tools that break long before they should, and attempts to excavate the whole skeleton tended to result in the workers suffering horrifying nightmares, or disappearing suspiciously. It was decided that whatever it is is best left buried and uninvestigated. Notable in that even the ''slake-moths'' felt that being around The Ribs was unsettling.

** The city-killer (aka Hecatomb) in Literature/IronCouncil is beyond even colourbombs for sheer alien annihilation. It ''erases cities''. And casts ripples of destruction ''backwards in time''.

** In New Crobuzon, the Remade are on the bottom rung on the social ladder - even lower than non-human xenians. Essentially criminals who've fallen foul of the city's notoriously vicious justice system, they have been magically mutilated by bio-thaumaturges either to embody their crime in some way or to fill some niche in vital industry. As if being hideously disfigured wasn't bad enough, the Remade are often restricted to work crews or ghettos, and those of them who don't have assigned jobs are forced to resort to crime or rely on charity in order to survive - no easy task, considering they're so widely hated; many citizens regard them as being justly punished, even though their punishments vastly outweigh their crimes, if they even committed any.

* FlyingSeafoodSpecial: Militia shock troops ride Men-of-War, enormous flying jellyfish.

* FrogMen: The Vodyanoi.

** The hotchi of Rudewood ride giant chickens that are also used in gladitorial cockfights.
* IconOfRebellion
** Jack Half-a-Prayer from ''Literature/PerdidoStreetStation''.
** The Perpetual Train in ''Literature/IronCouncil''.
*** Benjamin Flex from the same book.
*** Spiral Jacobs, the vagabond, roams around the city of [[WretchedHive New Crobuzon]] and spends his days vandalizing the city with drawings of spirals. This occurs during a time of political unrest, and the masses of New Crobuzon adopt it as a symbol of the rebellion, wearing it on their clothing and making the marks themselves. Subverted in that [[spoiler: Jacobs is actually the ambassador of an enemy city and the spirals are part of an extremely powerful and intricate magic that would completely destroy the New Crobuzon, sending ripples of destruction backwards through time.]]

* LaserGuidedKarma: Deconstructed - Remaking is ''supposed'' to be like this. Unfortunately, it usually just leads to (implied) {{Mad Artist}}s fucking around with the body and inflicting crippling BodyHorror for the fun of it. Case in point, there's examples of taxi Remade who are sometimes 'both cab and beast of burden'. A particularly cruel example would be a woman who smothers her baby has her baby's arms attached to her face so that she'll never forget what she did. [[spoiler: It leads her to become a terrorist and kill the mayor. Oops.]]
* MachineWorship: The Construct Council in China Mieville's ''Literature/PerdidoStreetStation''. A massive AI in a scrapyard with worshipers. However it still has to communicate through a dead body hooked up to it. [[spoiler: As they leave Isaac notes that for the spokesperson to work, they must have ''been alive'' when they were hooked up.]] Also in the gap between this and the sequels ''Literature/TheScar'' and ''Literature/IronCouncil'', there is a [[RobotWar purging of all constructs]] from the city for fear of what they could become.

* TheMagocracy: There are passing references to a nation called "The Witchocracy" in ''Literature/IronCouncil'', but it's not explored in great detail.

* TheNecrocracy: High Cromlech
** It is ruled by different castes of the dead, the highest being the thanati. They're described as liches with [[MouthStitchedShut their mouths sewn shut]].
** Because it is hard to produce coherent sounds with vocal cords and tracheas that are decayed or degraded, residents of High Cromlech speak a language known as Deadish or Quiesy. [[StarfishLanguage It is a series of timed coughs and grunts with silences meaning as much as the sounds]].

* OurVampiresAreDifferent: The ab-dead. And to a certain extend, the anophelii.
** The ab-dead are stronger and faster than the living. They have forked tongues and can move almost imperceptibly in shadow. They heal quickly and do not age. Sunlight does not kill them immediately, especially older and stronger vampirs, but it severely harms them and prolonged exposure ''will'' kill the ab-dead. Vampirism is caused by a virus in their saliva, and although infection is not guaranteed, repeated direct feedings can cause a human to become ab-dead.
** The ab-dead live in secrecy throughout Bas-Lag except in Armada and High Cromlech. In Armada, the Brucolac and a cadre of his closest allies are the resident ab-dead and run the Dry Falls riding. Dry Falls is an area and political standing within the governing structure of Armada; residents of Dry Falls enjoy more political weight, subsidized entertainment and lighter disciplinary actions than other ridings, but pay for this with the gore-tax, a routine collection of blood from Dry Falls residents. In High Cromlech, the city of the dead, the ab-dead live in the open, but make up the lowest class, even below that of the living. The dead of High Cromlech protect the living from the predations of the ab-dead, and therefore, ab-dead are reduced to begging for handouts from the living and are considered to be junkies.
*** Ab-dead is just the term for undead, in keeping with the frequent use of the prefix ab- instead of un- in the Bas-Lag books. Vampirs are just one form. As noted, in High Cromlech the ab-dead rule, but the vampirs, kind of considered not real ab-dead because of their parasitic nature, are on the lowest social rung.

* SecretPolice: The Militia of New Crobuzon.

* ZeppelinsFromAnotherWorld: Armada uses one as a lookout in ''The Scar,'' though its engine no longer functions.

* AuthorVocabularyCalendar: Given the author, if there aren't a dozen five-dollar words on the page -- you're probably looking at the title page.

* ZeppelinsFromAnotherWorld

* MagicalHomelessPerson: [[spoiler:Spiral Jacobs]] chooses to wander the streets of New Crobuzon as a vagabond despite being a powerful mage and ambassador from the rival city-state of Tesh. [[spoiler:His signature spiral graffiti are part of a years-long SummoningRitual to call down an EldritchAbomination and [[FantasticNuke annihilate the city]].]]

* MegaCity: New Crobuzon is enormous enough to be considered its own ''state'', and is even at war with another city in ''Iron Council''. [[labelnote: note]] Which is actually absolutely unremarkable, much more so with all the outlandishness of the setting, as there have been actual real-world city-states, doing all the things that full-fledged countries do, throughout human history, most of them (significantly) smaller than New Crobuzon. [[/labelnote]]

** Because it is hard to produce coherent sounds with vocal chords and tracheas that are decayed or degraded, residents of High Cromlech speak a language known as Deadish or Quiesy. [[StarfishLanguage It is a series of timed coughs and grunts with silences meaning as much as the sounds]].

* WildCard: The Weaver (and how.)

* WordSalad: The Weaver.

* SidenoteFullStory: It's full of these. Among a great many other things, the protagonist of ''Literature/TheScar'' is mentioned in one line of ''Literature/PerdidoStreetStation'' as being Isaac's last girlfriend.

* ''Literature/PerdidoStreetStation'': A scientist named Isaac Dan Der Grimnebulin is commissioned by the wingless [[BirdPeople garuda]], Yagharek, to find a way to enable him to fly again. In Isaac's search for an solution, he unwittingly releases a monster in the city of New Crobuzon.

** ''Literature/PerdidoStreetStation'' makes mention of Suroch, an area of the world that's been... ''twisted'' after New Crobuzon dropped a "torque-bomb" on it. Torque... twists things. That's what it means in physics, and that's definitely what one would call the results. [[GoryDiscretionShot The descriptions of Suroch try to avoid saying anything explicit]]. Apparently it was part nuke, part key to the gates of Hell.

* FaceFullOfAlienWingWong: How the khepri reproduce.

* BiTheWay: Judah from ''Literature/IronCouncil'' seems to prefer women but has no qualms with having sex with other men. At one point, he has weekly sex with other male railroad workers for a period of several months because the only women around are prostitutes and he doesn't see the difference between hetero and homo sex as being worth the price. This does cause a bit of a problem for [[spoiler: Cutter]] for whom their sex is drastically more meaningful than it is for Judah.

** A woman (actually a teenager) who accidentally shook her baby to death had the baby's arms forceably grafted onto the sides of her face, that she might never forget her crime.
** A woman's lower legs were replaced with coal-fired treads. Her knees are permanently locked together, and if she ever runs out of fuel will be unable to move.
** A man whose head was reversed so he could be made to handle extremely dangerous magical moths that must never be looked at directly.

* [[ChainsawGood Circular Saw Good]]: Secret police and Cacticae security in ''Literature/PerdidoStreetStation'' carry Rivebows, a large crossbow which shoots spinning chakris (basically circular saw blades). In universe, the main way to defeat Cacticae (humanoid cacti) is through severing limbs.
* ChekhovsGunman: One character is described in an anecdote in ''Literature/PerdidoStreetStation'', the very first book, before becoming a major player in [[Literature/IronCouncil the last book]].

* CityNoir: New Crobuzon.

** Then in ''Literature/TheScar'', the second book in the series, there's the [[GiantSwimmer avanc]], an entity from another universe big enough to tow the floating city, Armada[[note]]Armada is only a couple square miles on the surface, but has layers and layers of decks and bridges[[/note]]. A single vein is as large as a 20-foot ridge. Imagine how big that must be! Better yet, imagine just how big the stuff that preys on the avanc in its home dimension could be! All that anyone knows about the avanc is that it swims and has at least one thing that could be described as a limb. (Assuming the mind-bending hypothesis about how it's really some sort of microscopic plankton at home, and it becomes unimaginably huge due to transplanar warp when it enters Bas-Lag, is false.)

!!Novels in this series:
In chronological order:
* ''Literature/PerdidoStreetStation''
** A scientist named Isaac Dan Der Grimnebulin is commissioned by the wingless [[BirdPeople garuda]], Yagharek, to find a way to enable him to fly again. In Isaac's search for an solution, he unwittingly releases a monster in the city of New Crobuzon.
* ''Literature/TheScar''
** A former girlfriend of Isaac, Bellis Coldwine, flees Bas-Lag by ship shortly after the events of ''Perdido Street Station''. Not long after departure, Bellis' ship is captured by the forces of the pirate nation known as Armada. Most of the novel deals with events surrounding Armada's journey to an unstable and dangerous region of the seas known as "the Scar".
* ''Literature/IronCouncil''
** Twenty years after the events of ''Perdido Street Station'', renegade railway workers, collectively known as the Iron Council, threaten the iron-fisted government control over the city-state of New Crobuzon. New Crobuzon is currently in a state of war with the rival city, Tesh, and events in New Crobuzon suggest that a large-scale revolt is on the verge of breaking loose.

* {{Golem}}: Bas-Lag has a magical discipline called "golemcrafting", wherein magicians channel power into anything that isn't living. Most of the Golems created are fairly standard (blade, flesh, metal, clay, wood), However the main character of Iron Council creates increasingly more fantastic golems some of the more memorable ones being: poison, light, dark, and [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome TIME]].

* BodyHorror: The Remade. Oh God, the Remade...

** The golem fights in ''IronCouncil'' are an in-universe stand-in for blood sport, with many of the same trappings.

* BuryYourGays: Oddly averted. In books where being a named character and being sympathetic/a decent human being is usually a recipe for death, and the named-protagonist body count runs into the double digits,[[spoiler: Cutter]] of ''Iron Council'' and Derkhan of ''Perdido Street Station'' manages to make it out mostly in one piece. [[HeroicBSOD Key word here being mostly]].

* ''Literature/Literature/PerdidoStreetStation''

** And then there is the Torque, described by one character as a tumour that aborted itself from the womb that produced the forces of Birth and Death. Whilst not evil per-se, it is a natural force that is almost totally uncontrollable which warps and mutates matter and biology into horrifying things. Merely trying to research it can turn you into an Eldritch Abomination. It was once used as a weapon; the results of the Torque Bomb were so awful even after a generous application of {{Magitek}} versions of nuclear weapons there's a country-sized region of the world which isn't going to be inhabitable by anything but abominations ever again.

* ''Literature/PerdidoStreetStation''

** ''PerdidoStreetStation'' ends with [[spoiler:the trade union movement crushed, the city's largest subversive newspaper shut down, and the surviving protagonists miserable and fleeing for their lives from both the Orwellian government and a ruthless crime boss]].

** One of the protagonists in ''PerdidoStreetStation'' is a veteran of New Crobuzon's not-exactly-legal underground arena circuit.

* [[ChainsawGood Circular Saw Good]]: Secret police and Cacticae security in PerdidoStreetStation carry Rivebows, a large crossbow which shoots spinning chakris (basically circular saw blades). In universe, the main way to defeat Cacticae (humanoid cacti) is through severing limbs.
* ChekhovsGunman: One character is described in an anecdote in ''PerdidoStreetStation'', the very first book, before becoming a major player in [[Literature/IronCouncil the last book]].

** ''PerdidoStreetStation'' has the slake-moths -- monstrous, insectoid creatures that devour minds. Not literally, what the creatures feed on is the very sentience of their prey itself, leaving their victims utterly mindless shells. How terrible are these abominations? At one point, the government of New Crobuzon attempts to strike a deal with Hell to get them to intervene and stop the threat, and ''[[FoodChainOfEvil the demons are too frightened to get involved.]]''

** ''PerdidoStreetStation'' makes mention of Suroch, an area of the world that's been... ''twisted'' after New Crobuzon dropped a "torque-bomb" on it. Torque... twists things. That's what it means in physics, and that's definitely what one would call the results. [[GoryDiscretionShot The descriptions of Suroch try to avoid saying anything explicit]]. Apparently it was part nuke, part key to the gates of Hell.

* GiantSpider: The Weaver, which appears in both ''PerdidoStreetStation'' and ''Literature/IronCouncil''

** Jack Half-a-Prayer from ''PerdidoStreetStation''.

* LaResistance: There's one in every book, it seems. The Rungate Rampant in ''PerdidoStreetStation'', The Brucolac and his cadre in ''Literature/TheScar'', and although The Rungate Rampant still exists in ''Literature/IronCouncil'', the actual Iron Council fits the role better.

* MachineWorship: The Construct Council in China Mieville's ''PerdidoStreetStation''. A massive AI in a scrapyard with worshipers. However it still has to communicate through a dead body hooked up to it. [[spoiler: As they leave Isaac notes that for the spokesperson to work, they must have ''been alive'' when they were hooked up.]] Also in the gap between this and the sequels ''Literature/TheScar'' and ''Literature/IronCouncil'', there is a [[RobotWar purging of all constructs]] from the city for fear of what they could become.

* NonMammalMammaries: There are many different types of xenian characters, some of which fall under this trope. It's averted with the vodyanoi and garuda, which procreate like humans, but are flat-chested and not very sexually dimorphic by human standards. Cactacae females, on the other hand, lay eggs in the ground that the males fertilise (don't think about that too much) and suckle their young. The most bewildering by far are the Khepri species, introduced in the [[PerdidoStreetStation first book]]. The men are beetles--literal beetles. The women, on the other hand, are red-skinned human women with beetles for heads. As a result, khepri women have sex with humans, or even other female khepri when given the choice. Khepri reproduce by allowing the males to [[FaceFullOfAlienWingWong mate with their heads]].

* AIIsACrapshoot: Isaac had fears of this nature toward the Construct Council in ''Perdido Street Station.'' At some point in the time between then and ''Iron Council,'' the Militia discovered the Council and destroyed every construct in the city out just such a fear. They remain banned, with only a few popping up in truly desperate circumstances.

** "Colourbombs" in the same setting are implied to be less ''wrong'' but even more destructive; Mieville's influences being what they are, this latter might bear some relation to [[Creator/HPLovecraft "The Colour out of Space"]]. Colourbombs were used to cover up whatever the Torque did to Suroch. Basically, it was better to blanket nuke the area than try to explain the effects of torque to the populace of New Crobuzon.

* AlwaysChaoticEvil: Deconstructed with the FishPeople Grindylow. In ''The Scar'' they are initially depicted as this, but it turns out that despite their horrific behaviour they have entirely comprehensible and mildly sympathetic motivation. Then in ''Iron Council'' it is briefly mentioned that they are now allies of New Crobuzon in the war against Tesh.