Embassytown (2011) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit

Write a ridiculously simplified synopsis.

Characters/People edit see section history

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• Avice Benner Cho: Protagonist; Immerser who is "floaking" in Embassytown at the beginning of the novel; simile for "the girl who was hurt in darkness and made to eat what was given her."
• Bren: Cleaved ambassador
• Scile: Avice's husband
• MagDa: Ambassador
• Ariekei: Not a character; the sentient beings who populated Arieka before humans ("Terre") arrived. Referred to by the humans as "Hosts"
• Shur'asi: Not a character; another race of sentient beings that moved to Embassytown after the humans arrived
• CalVin: Ambassador, lovers of Avile
• Valdik: A human used as a simile by the Hosts/Ariekei -- "he who swims every week with the fishes"
• Yohn: Childhood friend of Avice
• Ehrsul: A free automa; friend of Avice
• Joel Rukowsi: an empath
• Simmon: Security guard and personal friend of Avice.
• Wyatt: A diplomat from Bremen, mistrusted by the ambassadors.
• Darius: Add a description of this character.
• DalTon: Former ambassador, now missing
• Gar
• Shonas
• Hasser: A simile who thinks the Hosts should not be able to lie.

Quotes edit see section history

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• “We tell the truth best by becoming lies.”

  Avice - p. 296

• “Tactile languages, bioluminescent words, all varieties of sounds that organisms can make. Dialects comprehensible only as palimpsests of references to everything already said, or in which adjectives are rude and verbs unholy.”

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• Being a child is like nothing. It’s only being. Later, when we think about it, we make it into youth.

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• A scholar can never let mere wrongness get in the way of the theory.”

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• “I don’t want to be a simile anymore,” I said. “I want to be a metaphor.”

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• “Language is the continuation of coercion by other means.”

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• This is what I excelled at: the life-technique of aggregated skill, luck, laziness and chutzpah that we call floaking.

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• Their language is organised noise, like all of ours are, but for them each word is a funnel. Where to us each word means something, to the Hosts, each is an opening. A door, through which the thought of that referent, the thought itself that reached for that word, can be seen.

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• Whenever any society dies there must be heroes whose fightback is to not change.

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• I admit defeat. I’ve been trying to present these events with a structure. I simply don’t know how everything happened. Perhaps because I didn’t pay proper attention, perhaps because it wasn’t a narrative, but for whatever reasons, it doesn’t want to be what I want to make it.

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• A classic unspoken agreement among escapees from a small town: don’t look back, don’t be each other’s anchors, no nostalgia.

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• If language, thought and word were separated, as they just had been, there was no succulence, no titillating impossible. No mystery. Where Language had been there was only language: signifying sound, to do things with and to.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Bremen
• Embassytown
• Arieka
• Pear Tree
• Charo City
• Language
• Staff
• Dagostin
• Shanita

First Sentence edit see section history

Glossary edit see section history

• Miab: Drone ship. "message in a bottle"
• floaking: "the life-technique of aggregated skill, luck, laziness and chutzpah" -- apparently what immersers do between contracts
• exoterre: "exot" for short -- non-human sentient being. (Preferable to "alien" because humans/Terre are the aliens on most planets.)
• Terre: human; tracing its origin to Earth
• terretech: human (by implication, non-biorigged) technology
• immer: A plane of existence outside of space/time, cartography, and Euclidean measurement. Immer is eternal, unlike the universe.
• pharos: A beacon in the immer, from the Greek word for lighthouse. Their existence is seen by some as evidence for the existence of a God.
• Pharotekton: "pharos-maker" -- used as an adjective for the religious figure "Christos Pharotekton"

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. China Miéville (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• The Kitschies (Finalist, 2011: The Red Tentacle for Best Novel, Finalist)
• Nebula (Finalist, 2011: Best Novel)
• Locus Award (2012: Science Fiction Novel)
• Hugo Award (Finalist, 2012)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 813

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Science Fiction & Fantasy › Science Fiction › Adventure
• Books › Literature & Fiction

More Books Like This edit see section history