Inside the Blogosphere: What SF/F Stories should become Lego Construction Sets?
Originally published at Grasping for the Wind. Please leave any comments there.
In this latest edition of Inside the Blogosphere, the irregular column in which I ask bloggers from across the internetz to respond to a personal question, my question comes out of my two loves (after my wife), books and Legos:
Lego has a history of turning popular stories like Indiana Jones, Harry Potter, and Star Wars, into Lego building sets. If one of your favorite books could become a Lego series, which would you choose and why?
Niall Alexander @ The Speculative Scotsman:
I’ll admit that I’m perhaps not so well-read as some of the other Inside the Blogosphere contributors - there are several, shall we say… classic-shaped voids in my conception of the landscape of speculative literature - but I don’t honestly doubt a Robin Hobb or a George R. R. Martin would change my mind as to which of the genre’s respective settings I’d most like to see re-imagined in Lego. Jeff VanderMeer’s Ambergris comes close, though given its abstract fungal motif I don’t believe it would lend itself particularly well to the necessarily angular forms one can achieve with (real or simulated) Lego blocks. Given that, I’d have to say China Mieville’s New Crubuzon - in any of the three books it’s starred in so far, but specifically Perdido Street Station.
The gloomy metropolis itself would be a remarkable thing to behold, rendered in Lego or chunky polygons or otherwise. At once smooth and sharp, punctuated by seedy streets and spectacular sights, the vast industrial sprawl of New Crubuzon is dominated by the great twisting spire of Perdido Street Station rising impossibly into the sky. Beneath its watchful eye: the markets and the Plaza of Statues, the Glasshouse, the University and the Parliament building, architectural wonders of sand and smoke and stone.
New Crubuzon would be an incredible place to slap a Lego guy in the midst of, no question, but what would really seal its deal as a prime candidate for reconstruction in colourful hunks of plastic are the horrifying feats of imagination that walk its streets. Giants cobbled together from scrap metal, the ghoulish biothaumaturgical horrors of ReMade men and women, the glinting carapace of a slake-moth pinioning in from the shadows. What better and more varied roster of bad guys could there be?
But what good is Lego anything without an uncountable number of things to collect? I’d go once more against the grain and suggest dreams. The sleeping sickness that ravages New Crobuzon in the slake-moth’s unthinkable wake has stolen the dreams of its people; they’d be add-ons to the construction set, individual builds drawn from the experiences of the myriad races that call New Crubuzon home. In Lego Perdido Street Station the video game, it’d be your job to recover each one and restore REM to the city’s sleepless denizens.
[Editor's Note: Like Steampunk and Lego? Check out the Lego Steampunk group on flickr.]
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