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Three Moments of an Explosion: Stories Hardcover – August 4, 2015

by China Miéville (Author)
4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 492 ratings
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NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • NPR • The Guardian • Kirkus Reviews • The fiction of multiple award–winning author China Miéville is powered by intelligence and imagination. Like George Saunders, Karen Russell, and David Mitchell, he pulls from a variety of genres with equal facility, employing the fantastic not to escape from reality but instead to interrogate it in provocative, unexpected ways.
 
London awakes one morning to find itself besieged by a sky full of floating icebergs. Destroyed oil rigs, mysteriously reborn, clamber from the sea and onto the land, driven by an obscure purpose. An anatomy student cuts open a cadaver to discover impossibly intricate designs carved into a corpse’s bones—designs clearly present from birth, bearing mute testimony to . . . what?
 
Of such concepts and unforgettable images are made the twenty-eight stories in this collection—many published here for the first time. By turns speculative, satirical, and heart-wrenching, fresh in form and language, and featuring a cast of damaged yet hopeful seekers who come face-to-face with the deep weirdness of the world—and at times the deeper weirdness of themselves—Three Moments of an Explosion is a fitting showcase for one of literature’s most original voices.

Praise for Three Moments of an Explosion
 
“China Miéville is dazzling. His latest collection of short stories, Three Moments of an Explosion, crowds virtuosity into every sentence.”—The New York Times
 
“You can’t talk about [China] Miéville without using the word ‘brilliant.’ . . . His wit dazzles, his humour is lively, and the pure vitality of his imagination is astonishing.”—Ursula K. Le Guin, The Guardian
 
“[A] gripping collection . . . Miéville expertly mixes science fiction, fantasy and surrealism. . . . Amid the longer stories are more cerebral, poetic flash pieces that will haunt the reader beyond the pages of this exceptional book.”—The Washington Post
 
“The stories shine . . . with a winking brilliance.”—The Seattle Times
 
“Mind-bending excursions into the fantastic.”—NPR
 
“Bradbury meets Borges, with Lovecraft gibbering tumultuously just out of hearing.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
 
“Three Moments of an Explosion is a book filled with fabulous oddities.”—Entertainment Weekly
 
“Miéville moves effortlessly among realism, fantasy, and surrealism. . . . His characters, whether ordinary witnesses to extraordinary events or lunatics operating out of inexplicable compulsions, are invariably well drawn and compelling.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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  1. Print length
    400 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Del Rey
  4. Publication date
    August 4, 2015
  5. Dimensions
    6.75 x 1.25 x 10 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    110188472X
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1101884720
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Even when he is orbiting somewhere in a galaxy too far away for normal human comprehension, the genre-subverting English novelist China Miéville is dazzling. His latest collection of short stories, Three Moments of an Explosion, crowds virtuosity into every sentence. . . . There are things to admire in every story, even the ones you can’t quite grasp. The book left me feeling unsettled, uneasy, nervous, and I think that is Mr. Miéville’s point. He wants to draw attention to the scratching under the floorboards, the panic in our heads, the rebellion of nature and inanimate objects. As he says, ‘These days there are so many odd and troubling noises in the city.’”—Sarah Lyall, The New York Times
 
“You can’t talk about Miéville without using the word ‘brilliant.’ . . . His wit dazzles, his humour is lively, and the pure vitality of his imagination is astonishing. . . . My favourite of all these tales is ‘The Rules,’ two and a half pages long. Read it. You won’t regret it, or forget it.”—Ursula K. Le Guin, The Guardian
 
“[A] gripping collection . . . Miéville expertly mixes science fiction, fantasy and surrealism. . . . Amid the longer stories are more cerebral, poetic flash pieces that will haunt the reader beyond the pages of this exceptional book.”—The Washington Post
 
“The stories shine . . . with a winking brilliance.”—The Seattle Times

“Horror, noir, fantasy, politics, and poetry swirl into combinations as satisfying intellectually as they are emotionally. . . . Bradbury meets Borges, with Lovecraft gibbering tumultuously just out of hearing.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Three Moments of an Explosion is a book filled with fabulous oddities.”—Entertainment Weekly
 
“Miéville moves effortlessly among realism, fantasy, and surrealism in this dark, sometimes horrific short story collection. . . . His characters, whether ordinary witnesses to extraordinary events or lunatics operating out of inexplicable compulsions, are invariably well drawn and compelling. Above all, what the stories have in common is a sense that the world is not just strange, but stranger than we can ever really comprehend.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

About the Author

China Miéville is the author of numerous books, including The City & The City, Embassytown, Railsea, and Perdido Street Station. His works have won the World Fantasy Award, the Hugo Award, and the Arthur C. Clarke Award (three times). He lives and works in London.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Del Rey; First Edition (August 4, 2015)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 110188472X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1101884720
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.4 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.75 x 1.25 x 10 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 492 ratings

About the author

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China Miéville

China Miéville

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China Miéville lives and works in London. He is three-time winner of the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award (Perdido Street Station, Iron Council and The City & The City) and has also won the British Fantasy Award twice (Perdido Street Station and The Scar). The City & The City, an existential thriller, was published in 2009 to dazzling critical acclaim and drew comparison with the works of Kafka and Orwell (The Times) and Philip K. Dick (Guardian).

Customer reviews

4 out of 5 stars
4 out of 5
492 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Florian Schneider
5.0 out of 5 stars Bonkers!
Reviewed in the United States on December 23, 2021
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This is an amazing collection of weird fiction. I generally love Mieville's prose and inventiveness, and the short stories in this collection showcase his immense creativeness. This is a firework of evokative ideas. Derelict oil rigs emerging from the sea to mate on the shores of England? Psychologists removing the source of their patients' anxieties through carefully planned assassinations? Viruses jumping the "species" barrier between humans and... buildings?? Creatures that live within paintings and are only revealed by novel avant-garde art techniques??? It's bananas, all of it. I suspect this won't be for everyone: the stories are often decidedly post-modern, stubbornly refusing to yield up a sense of closure. Often, they only paint a picture, then leave it at that. If that is not your thing, best turn to other fiction. But for anyone willing to take a crazy ride through Mieville's worlds, this is a must read.
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John M. Ford
4.0 out of 5 stars Sticking Together
Reviewed in the United States on June 27, 2016
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I have gotten used to making the novel-length commitment necessary to appreciating China Miéville’s oddly-textured style. This collection of twenty-eight short stories supplies the same experience in smaller doses. The author’s omission of an introduction is an appropriate choice; the stories are better experienced without framing or buffering.

My six favorites:

“Three Moments of an Explosion” somewhat arbitrarily divides the last act of a condemned building’s existence into three overlapping scenes.

“The Dowager of Bees” is about a card game that is so complex that players must be very careful about the rules. It’s my favorite story in the collection.

“Säcken” explores the uncomfortable meme of something unwanted dropped into a weighted burlap sack and thrown in the lake. It becomes more familiar.

“Keep” plays out in the middle of an epidemic, with the characters variously concerned about infection, quarantine, and side effects. It seems almost normal for a small trench to start forming around any infected person who stays in the same place too long.

“A Second Slice Manifesto” introduces a new approach to painting and describes several representative works created in this style. This art can only be appreciated from a very specific perspective.

“Four Final Orpheuses” lists four different versions of what Orpheus might have been thinking as he stepped into the light. Some are darker than others.

The stories were as enjoyably weird as I expected. I did notice patterns in the author’s topic choices that weren’t apparent in his longer works. There were maybe one too many stories in script form, for example. After the second one it stopped seeming clever. The patterns reminded me of the second time I saw Robin Williams on late-night TV. Suddenly he didn’t seem quite so original as he was clearly drawing repeatedly from the same set of ideas. Still very good, but not quite as good when you can see the brush strokes.

That said, still a very good collection. Worth reading, worth keeping to reread.
12 people found this helpful
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Bradley Trevor Greive
3.0 out of 5 stars Diamonds and gravel. Mostly gravel.
Reviewed in the United States on October 29, 2016
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An inconsistent anthology of shorter works that will appeal to devoted fans only. Like Jospeh Conrad's "Notes on Life and Letters", this uneven collection of bold and half-baked concepts never measures up to the formidable talent of the writer. That said, some stories are truly outstanding and even in those where the core idea unravels quickly and awkwardly it is still very rewarding to catch a glimpse of Miéville's extraordinary mind at work and play. If you are considering your first foray into Miéville's deliciously strange world do not start here. Kraken is an ideal primer, and Embassytown a masterpiece. Likewise The Bas Lag series is excellent fare for sci-fi/fantasy readers who like the clever, weird and wonderful dialed up to eleven.
11 people found this helpful
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J. Mathews
5.0 out of 5 stars Score More for Mieville
Reviewed in the United States on January 19, 2017
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Mieville lets himself loose with these short stories. That's saying a lot, considering that his imagination normally goes places we mortals can't even contemplate until he reveals them to us. The short story form seems to allow the author to experiment, if incompletely, in directions he may have decided not to commit an entire novel to--in Mieville's hands, that means even more freedom, and more enjoyment for his readers. I read the library copy and then purchased this copy for my son. He's a social worker and a sci-fi/fantasy reader; there's a bonkers story in this collection about social workers that I know will poke his twist-loving mind.
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S. Howes
4.0 out of 5 stars A mixture of treasures and ideas
Reviewed in the United States on February 16, 2022
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A very mixed collection with some true gems. Most notably:

- Polynia
- The Dowager of Bees
- Säcken
- Dreaded Outcome

Overall, though, it feels a bit like a scrapbook of sketches and completed works.
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Mathew
5.0 out of 5 stars 'A burst of light...'
Reviewed in the United States on August 10, 2015
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This collection is worth the price for 'The Buzzard's Egg' alone. Those unfamiliar with Mieville's work might be overwhelmed with the variety presented here, but it shouldn't be a surprise for anyone who's read his fiction before. Each story feels like a leap off a different cliff, not just in genre but style and pace, ranging from the wholly experimental to the unexpectedly straight. It's almost infuriating how fluid his prose can be. But as noted above, there are a handful of stories that I'd consider worthy of the cost on their own. The other twenty-seven are a bonus.
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Kindle Customer
3.0 out of 5 stars Decent
Reviewed in the United States on September 18, 2017
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I am on mobile so I refuse to do individual story reviews for the collection.
I liked quite a number of these although sometimes an ending, or lack of, would leave me hanging but overall I didn't mind terribly. Sometimes, certain stories I feel, if they had been fleshed out and longer, would have made decent novellas. I do quite enjoy this authors work and will still continue making my way through all his works.
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Phipedro
4.0 out of 5 stars A mix of stories
Reviewed in the United States on November 5, 2015
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All what you would call fantastic in various ways - some SF, some ghost stories (a particularly good updating of an M R James classic). One attempt at a politically-coloured fantasy falls rather flat, and elsewhere the language gets a bit too ornate for its own good, but this is as wide a range of innovative storytelling as you could hope to find.
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AvidJosh
5.0 out of 5 stars Avid reader
Reviewed in Canada on October 31, 2018
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Love this author.
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carlo arrighi
1.0 out of 5 stars Sualla via del fantasy urbano
Reviewed in Italy on September 17, 2015
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L'antologia di Mieville segna il suo definitivo distacco dai temi e dai campi che mi interessano: il New Weird non mi ha mai convinto, che si tratti di VanderMeer, Abercrombie o Gaiman. In questi racconti, cinque dei quali – forse i migliori – avevo già letto, Mieville si conforma alla stessa maniera di scrivere, con risultati che personalmente trovo noiosissimi e ripetitivi: niente che Leiber e Ballard non abbiamo fatto prima e meglio. L'unico racconto nuovo che mi è veramente piaciuto è Rules, di tre pagine, e ho trovato interessanti ma non risolti The Buzzard's Egg e The Dowager of Bees: davvero un po' poco.
I titoli in prossima uscita di Mieville non promettono nulla. Li acquisterò per dovere e poi vedremo, ma ho delle sensazioni negative.
3 people found this helpful
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P. J. Dunn
5.0 out of 5 stars Enough novel weirdness to refuel the "New Weird" for another deacde
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 9, 2015
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China Miéville is often described as part of the New Weird literary movement and this short story collection confirms his position the high wordsmith of weirdness.

After 20 plus years you might think the New Weird would be beginning to lose the right to use the word “new” but if that description relies in any part on its authors being able to find new forms of weirdness to entrance us, then this collection alone should sustain its right to that word for another decade at least.

As you read you just know that while these stories might have endings, those endings often will not be accompanied by resolutions. However you also know that the weirdness in itself and the reactions of the protagonists to that weirdness is more than enough to entertain you now and even haunt you afterwards.

If I had the very slightest of criticisms I would turn to the small subset of stories arranged as screenplays or descriptions of trailers for movies or TV shows. I would have to say that most of these did not really do it for me - but my mind is now too wrapped up in a vision of me sitting within my personal moat watching a burning stag run past a sentient oil rig to worry too much about that.
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Richard Bagshaw
4.0 out of 5 stars Virtuoso, Uneven Magic Realism
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 23, 2015
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China Mieville is a writer of such ferocious intelligence and boundless creativity that he can be his own worst enemy. Mieville does not confine himself to one setting - or even genre - but instead appears to approach each new work as a fresh experiment. Sometimes this produces something wonderful, as with 'The City and the City' and 'The Scar,' and sometimes results in disaster ('Kraken'). Although Mieville first made a name for himself with the steampunk Bas-Lag Trilogy; he has gone on to become a leading light of the 'New Weird' school of magic realism, as well as dabbling in sci-fi.

Three Moments of an Explosion is Mieville's literary career to date; writ small. Written with elegance, flair and above all a vivid imagination; I found this nevertheless an uneven collection.

Featuring just over thirty short stories in four hundred pages; Three Moments tends towards the shorter end of the medium. This belies a fairly even split, however between short stories of a more conventional length (between twenty and forty pages) and two-to-three page vignettes. I found these latter unrewarding, especially the several 'trailers,' written in the style of screenplays. The exception was 'Four Final Orpheuses,' a smart post-modern muddying of the waters of the ancient Greek myth.

Three Moments' fifteen or so conventional short stories are a mixed bag. All are centred around a fantastical conceit; whether a space elevator, icebergs floating above the skies of London, or a malign spirit haunting a German lake. A personal favourite was 'The Dowager of Bees,' in which a card shark begins to encounter such impossible suits as the Five of Chains; each with attendant rules resembling a grim, adult take on a game of truth or dare. The Dowager of Bees is a masterclass in how to introduce a low fantasy trope, hint at internal consistency without explaining away its mystique, and then play with the concepts introduced by having credible characters test the limits of the stated rules. Likewise 'The Design,' in which a medical student discovers the bones of the cadaver he's dissecting to be elaborately carved. Not only charming historical fiction anchored by well-sketched characters and a vivid sense of place; the central conceit is used as a springboard for some weighty philosophical speculations.

Unfortunately, not all of the stories herein are as successful. 'The Rabbet' is a tiresome hipster slasher centred around a malevolent picture frame; sitting uneasily alongside some reflections on the artistic process. Mieville's evocative prose cannot elevate the concept above one of Stephen King's forgotten fever dreams (and without that author's gift for a compelling yarn). 'Keep' is an overlong apocalypse-by-numbers in which a scientist tries - and fails - to stop a plague which causes it sufferers to create around themselves a 'moat' of disappearing matter. The allegorical significance of this is hinted at the tale's conclusion, but the characters are so flat, and the concept so bizarre and ill-explained, that one finishes unsatisfied.

This is, then, an eclectic mix in terms of both content and quality. What unites this collection is a certain melancholia, and a Lovecraftian tendency to have frail humans brush against powers beyond their comprehension or control. Mieville contrasts his wilder ideas with humdrum reality nicely; tincturing the familiar with the bizarre to good effect. Yet our protagonists - if they survive - rarely make it through their travails wiser than they began them. One is left with the impression that it is up to the reader to make sense of Mieville's fantasties. Yet for all the brilliance of some of these tales, sense - and satisfaction - eluded me in those from the more left-of-field.
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Richard Easton
3.0 out of 5 stars Where's the story?
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 10, 2016
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There are some great ideas here but I do wish that the author would write more stories with plots!
Half of them seem to be magic realist; almost stream of consciousness 'creative' writing reminiscent of J G Ballard's lesser works.
Very few actually have any sort of traditional structure.

Better than: Kraken
Worse than: Perdido Street Station (but then, that's excellent).
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