City of Saints and Madmen was published by Cosmos Books in 2001 (expanded edition by Bantam in 2004), and it established Ambergris — VanderMeer’s fictional city, built over the ruins of an ancient civilization of subterranean creatures called “gray caps” — as one of the most compelling imaginary environments in contemporary fiction. The collection combines novellas, short stories, appendices, fake bibliographies, and mock-scholarly apparatus into a portrait of a city that is simultaneously beautiful, dangerous, and profoundly strange.
The stories approach Ambergris from multiple angles: “Dradin, in Love” follows a missionary driven mad by desire; “The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of Ambergris” presents itself as a tourist guide to the city’s bloody past; “The Transformation of Martin Lake” traces an artist’s descent into the city’s underworld; and the appendices include a fake pamphlet, a scholarly monograph, and other documents that blur the line between fiction and pseudo-fact.
VanderMeer’s Ambergris owes debts to Borges (the scholarly apparatus), Peake (the atmospheric grotesquerie), and Miéville (the secondary-world urbanism), but it is entirely its own creation. The fungus — which grows everywhere, which the gray caps cultivate for purposes humans cannot fathom — gives the city a biological horror that distinguishes it from purely architectural imaginary cities. Ambergris is alive in ways its inhabitants cannot fully comprehend, and the stories circle this incomprehension without ever resolving it.
Collecting City of Saints and Madmen
First edition (Cosmos Books, Hyattsville, MD, 2001): Trade paperback, small press.
Market values:
- First Cosmos edition: $40–$100
- First Bantam expanded edition (2004): $10–$25
- Signed copies: $50–$150