Plot
Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin is an eccentric scientist living in the city of New Crobuzon with girlfriend Lin. While Lin, an artist, is commissioned to create a sculpture of mob boss Mr. Motley, Isaac is offered a unique challenge. Yagharek is a member of a flying species, whose wings have been cut off, and who asks Isaac to restore them. Isaac is sparked by the seemingly impossible nature of the task, and gathers various flying animals to study in his lab - including a multicolored, unidentifiable caterpillar. Once Isaac learns that the caterpillar only eats a hallucinogenic drug called "dreamshit", he begins to feed it, unwittingly stimulating its metamorphosis into a giant and incredibly dangerous butterfly-like creature which feeds off the dreams of sentient beings, leaving them as catatonic vegetables. It is revealed that dreamshit is in fact secreted by such creatures, of which four have been sold to Mr. Motley, and "milked" to produce the drug. When these other larvae transform and escape they plague the citizens of New Crobuzon until Isaac can find a way to stop them.
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“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Trade and the streets ensnare us,
Our bodies are weak and worn;
We plot and corrupt each other,
And we despoil the unborn.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)