Things I Wish I Had Thought Of: Part Infinity Plus One: Khepri

"Perdido Street Station" by China Miéville was a wake up call to me in the works of fantasy. It is to me the equivalent of what the first cyber punk novels were to science fiction. A fun, fast shake up of the genre. One part London, one part Tolkein, one part Lovecraft, and all to pardon my french kick ass. If you haven't read it yet, do so.

I'm torn as to whether it should be a movie or not. Movies wreck things of such wonder with the ease of a whale going through plankton. Yet, I'd go for it in a second for a view of the Khepri on the screen. What a wonderful creation! Dang the author, I wish i had thought them first.

Oh, the Khepri look like just another fantasy race of amazons, that is until the fan boy looks up. The Khepri are females with the heads of beetles. And i don't mean just cute little feelers. Imagine a women of a reddish hue and then put a lobster sized beetle where the head should be. Yes, it is once beautiful and nightmarish to the normal person, and that is why I love them so.

But China does so much more than the obvious weirdness of the mating of bug and woman, he has truly created an interesting culture and history. The Khepri are first off mute. They communicate with each other via chemicals and movements of their head legs. This creates an interesting feel in the midst of a Khepri community. Where a human might smell something a little off, a little bitter; to the Khepri it is the echoes of past conversations. Think of that, all the talk still drifting around creating sort of a cloud of zeitgeistian community.

The smell of a Khepri community though is not the first thing a human notices. Khepri produce a wonderful secretion, know derisively as Khepri spit, that hardens into pearly creations. Even if they take over a part of a human city their neighborhood soon becomes awash in their creation binding the buidings together into dare I say a hive like construction?

Also, as one digs deeper one learns a lot more about these interesting creatures. For one thing they aren't all female. There are male Khepri, who are just lobster sized beetles sans any human body or appreciable intelligence. They are considered by most Khrepri as neccessary vermin, and the resulting "head sex" (don't think about it) a social duty. Of course not all believe this way (A great touch by the author, in fantasy novels there is often no disagreements in a fantasy race over such things making them boring ultimately), some Khepri worship their insect half and exalt the males as divine avatars. They are a minority and considered rather distastefully by their sisters.

The Khepri in the novel are survivors, they have fled their lands from across the sea for reasons they will not say. In their vast brood ships only a few survived the trip and the humans were not very open at first. If anything saved the Khepri it is their art. The same spit they use to bind their towns they use to make wonderful sculptures. To the khepri art is a rather intimate, biological process. They eat colourberries to stain their creation, and as they create their spit they use their head legs to shape it. The wonderful artistic irony is all this is done from behind, so they work their art blindly.

I haven't even touched on Lin, the main Khepri character in "Perdido Street Station," but I've said enough. I would dearly love a Perdido movie but I'm not holding my breath.