China Miéville

China Miéville
China Miéville at Piccadilly Waterstones, 26 April 2006
Occupation	Novelist
Genre	weird fiction, New Weird, steampunk

China Tom Miéville (/ˈtʃɑinɑ ˈmieɪˌvɪl/) (born 6 September 1972 in Norwich) is an award-winning English fantastic fiction writer. He is fond of describing his work as "weird fiction" (after early 20th century pulp and horror writers such as H. P. Lovecraft), and belongs to a loose group of writers sometimes called New Weird who consciously attempt to move fantasy away from commercial, genre clichés of Tolkien epigons. He is also active in left-wing politics as a member of the Socialist Workers Party. He has stood for the House of Commons for the Socialist Alliance, and published a book on Marxism and international law. He teaches creative writing at Warwick University.

Early life and education

Miéville was born in Norwich and brought up in Willesden, a neighbourhood in northwest London, and has lived in the city since early childhood. He grew up with his sister and his mother, a teacher; his parents separated soon after his birth, and he has said that he "never really knew" his father. He is an alumnus of the public school Oakham School. When he was eighteen, in 1990, he lived in Egypt teaching English for a year, where he developed an interest in Arab culture and Middle Eastern politics. Miéville acquired a B.A. in social anthropology from Cambridge in 1994, and a Master's with distinction and PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics, the latter in 2001. Miéville has also held a Frank Knox fellowship at Harvard. A book version of his PhD thesis, titled Between Equal Rights: A Marxist Theory of International Law, was published in the United Kingdom in 2005 by Brill in their "Historical Materialism" series, and in the United States in 2006 by Haymarket Books.

Politics

Miéville is a member of the British Socialist Workers Party, a Trotskyist organization, and stood unsuccessfully for the British House of Commons in the 2001 General Election as a candidate for the Socialist Alliance, gaining 459 votes, i. e. 1.2%, in Regent's Park and Kensington North, a Labour constituency. He became a Marxist at university, after becoming unsatisfied with the ability of postmodern and feminist theories to explain history and political events.

In Between Equal Rights, his only major political writing, Miéville advocates a revised version of the legal theory of the Russian Marxist Evgeny Pashukanis, as applied to international law and synthesized with ideas drawn from the Critical Legal Studies movement, particularly Martti Koskenniemi, as well as U.S. international legal theorist Myres McDougal. Miéville argues that the form taken by the law, a process of deciding disputes between abstract, formally equal subjects, can only be explained as essentially related to capitalism's system of generalized commodity exchange, which requires participants with equal rights to property. However, he argues, just as the symmetry of commodity exchange conceals class division and exploitation, the symmetry of law conceals violent power relations. Law is structurally indeterminate as applied to particular cases, and so the interpretation which becomes official is always a matter of force; the stronger of the contesting parties in each legal dispute will ultimately obtain the sanction of law. International law, therefore, is not only genuine law despite the lack of an overarching sovereign, but is a more basic type than domestic law, with states taking the role of individuals, with "property rights" in their territory. This analysis leads Miéville to be skeptical that international law can ever live up to its promises; rather, he concludes, "The attempt to replace war and inequality with law is not merely utopian but is precisely self-defeating. A world structured around international law cannot but be one of imperialist violence. The chaotic and bloody world around us is the rule of law."

Literary influences

Miéville's style is influenced by pulp science fiction, ranging from early 20th century serials to modern television shows and movies, as well as by a number of writers of fantasy and horror. He has listed M. John Harrison, Michael de Larrabeiti, Michael Moorcock, Thomas Disch, Charles Williams, Tim Powers, and J.G. Ballard as "heroes"; he has also frequently discussed as influences H. P. Lovecraft, Mervyn Peake, and Gene Wolfe. He has said that he would like his novels "to read for [his imagined city] New Crobuzon as Iain Sinclair does for London." Miéville played a great deal of Dungeons & Dragons and similar roleplaying games in his youth, and includes a specific nod to characters interested "only in gold and experience" in Perdido Street Station as well as a general tendency to systematization of magic and technology which he traces to this influence. In fact, in the February 2007 issue of Dragon Magazine, the world presented in his books was interpreted into Dungeons & Dragons rules and on February 19, 2008 it was announced that Adamant Entertainment will be developing an RPG based on the Bas-Lag universe

Miéville has explicitly attempted to move fantasy away from J.R.R. Tolkien's influence, which he has criticized as stultifying and reactionary (he once described Tolkien as "the wen on the arse of fantasy literature"). This project is perhaps indebted to Michael de Larrabeiti's Borrible Trilogy, which Miéville has cited as one of his biggest influences and for which Miéville wrote an introduction for the trilogy's 2002 reissue. The introduction was eventually left out of the book, but is now available on de Larrabeiti's website. Miéville's position on the genre is also indebted to Moorcock, whose essay "Epic Pooh" Miéville has cited as the source off of which he is "riffing" or even simply "cheerleading" in his critique of Tolkien-imitative fantasy.

Miéville's left-wing politics are evident in his writing (particularly in Iron Council, his third Bas-Lag novel) as well as his theoretical ideas about literature; several panel discussions at conventions about the relationship of politics and writing which set him against right-wingers ended up in heated arguments. He has, however, stated that:

"I’m not a leftist trying to smuggle in my evil message by the nefarious means of fantasy novels. I’m a science fiction and fantasy geek. I love this stuff. And when I write my novels, I’m not writing them to make political points. I’m writing them because I passionately love monsters and the weird and horror stories and strange situations and surrealism, and what I want to do is communicate that. But, because I come at this with a political perspective, the world that I’m creating is embedded with many of the concerns that I have... I’m trying to say I’ve invented this world that I think is really cool and I have these really big stories to tell in it and one of the ways that I find to make that interesting is to think about it politically. If you want to do that too, that’s fantastic. But if not, isn’t this a cool monster?"

Awards

• His first novel, King Rat, was nominated for both an International Horror Guild and a Bram Stoker award.
• His second novel, Perdido Street Station, won the 2001 Arthur C. Clarke Award and the 2001 British Fantasy Award, and was nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy awards.
• His third novel, The Scar, won the 2003 British Fantasy Award and the 2003 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel, was nominated for the Hugo, Arthur C. Clarke and World Fantasy awards, and received a Philip K. Dick Award special citation.
• His fourth novel, Iron Council, won the 2005 Arthur C. Clarke Award and the 2005 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel, and was nominated for the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.
• His short story "Reports of Certain Events in London" (featured in the anthology McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories) was nominated for a 2005 World Fantasy Award and tied for the 2005 Locus Award for Best Novelette.
• His fifth novel, Un Lun Dun, won the 2008 Locus Award for Best Young Adult Book.
• He will be or has been a Guest of Honour at multiple science fiction conventions, including Orbital 2008 the British National Science Fiction convention (Eastercon) in London in March 2008 and Readercon 2006.

Bibliography

Novels and novellas

• King Rat (1998)
• Perdido Street Station (2000)†
• The Scar (2002)†
• The Tain (2002)
• Iron Council (2004)†
• Un Lun Dun (2007)
• The City & the City (15 May 2009)

† denotes novels set in the Bas-Lag universe.

Short fiction

• "Highway Sixty One Revisited" (in Young Words, 1986)
• "Looking for Jake" (in Neonlit Vol. 1, edited by Nicholas Royle, 1999)
• "Different Skies" (in Brit-pulp!, edited by Tony White, 1999)
• "An End to Hunger" (in Book of Internet Stories, edited by Maxim Jakubowski, 2000)
• "Details" (in The Children of Cthulhu, edited by John Pelan and Benjamin Adams, 2002)
• "Familiar" (in Conjunctions: 39, The New Wave Fabulists, edited by Peter Straub, 2002)
• "Buscard's Murrain" (in The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases, edited by Jeff VanderMeer and Mark Roberts, 2003)
• "Reports of Certain Events in London" (in McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories, edited by Michael Chabon, 2004)
• "A Room of One's Own" (in Mike Mignola's Hellboy: Oddest Jobs, edited by Christopher Golden, 2008)
• Hellblazer #250, DC Vertigo 2008

Collections

• Looking for Jake (collection, 2005)

Nonfiction

• "M.R. James and the Quantum Vampire: Weird; Hauntological: Versus and/or and and/or or?", Collapse, 2008
• Between Equal Rights: A Marxist Theory of International Law, 2005
• "At the Mountains of Madness: An Introduction", 2005
• "The Borribles: An Introduction", 2001
• "First Men in the Moon: An Introduction", 2005

Adaptations

• In 2006 it was announced that Miéville's short story Details (collected in Looking for Jake) was turned into a script by Dan Kay, and subsequently picked up by studio Paramount Vantage. The script was said to expand upon the original story's exploration of pareidolia and rework the plot to feature a father and daughter. As of September 2008 no further information has surfaced regarding the project.

• Miéville's world of Bas-Lag, and the city of New Crobuzon, will be the focus of Adamant Entertainment's upcoming RPG, Tales of New Crobuzon. It is scheduled for release in fall 2009.

• Miéville's novel The Scar is the inspiration for the Armada-Breakaway floating sim in the virtual world of Second Life. The region is described as having evolved after a storm causes it to breakaway from Armada (Bas-Lag), the pirate city in Miéville's story.

External links

• BAS-LAG German Website about China Miéville
• A long and literate China Miéville Interview.
• 3:AM interview
• Part 1 of video interview with China Miéville
• Part 2 of video interview with China Miéville
• China Miéville at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• "Fantasy Remade" a Review of China Mieville’s New Crobuzon novels in n+1 magazine, (March 2006).
• Author page at Random House--also out of date.
• Author page at Macmillan - his UK publisher
• Lenin's Tomb, where Mieville is an infrequent contributor.
  • As an example of Miéville's postings there: politics of Weather part I, part II and part III.
• "Fifty Fantasy & Science Fiction Works That Socialists Should Read", an annotated book list originally compiled by China Miéville for Fantastic Metropolis
• "Debating Iron Council" at Crooked Timber
• RevolutionSF Interview
• Audio Interview with Rick Kleffel on The Agony Column Podcast