China Miéville

China Miéville
China Miéville
Born	6 September 1972 (1972-09-06) (age 39) Norwich, England, U.K.
Occupation	Novelist
Genres	steampunk, New Weird, weird fiction
Influences H. P. Lovecraft, Mervyn Peake, J. G. Ballard, Michael de Larrabeiti, Thomas Disch, Zane Grey, William Durbin, Michael Moorcock, John Ehle, Jane Gaskell, Tim Powers, M. John Harrison, T. F. Powys, Ousmane Sembène, Frank H. Spearman, Franz Kafka, Jonathan Swift, Gene Wolfe, Charles Dickens, William Hope Hodgson, Jack Vance, Bruno Schulz

China Tom Miéville ( /ˈtʃaɪnə miˈeɪvəl/; born 6 September 1972 in Norwich, England) is an award-winning English fantasy fiction writer. He is fond of describing his work as "weird fiction" (after early twentieth century pulp and horror writers such as H. P. Lovecraft), and belongs to a loose group of writers sometimes called New Weird. 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 his PhD thesis as 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, 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 attended Oakham School, for two years. 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 achieved a 'Bachelor of Arts' degree in social anthropology from the University of Cambridge in 1994, and a Masters' degree and PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics in 2001. Miéville has also held a Frank Knox fellowship at Harvard.^[1] 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.

Literary influences

Miéville has indicated that he plans to write a novel in every genre,^[2] and to this end has 'constructed an oeuvre' that is indebted to genre styles ranging from classic American Western (in Iron Council) to sea-quest (in The Scar) to detective noir (in The City & the City).^{[citation needed]} Yet Miéville's various works all describe worlds or scenarios that are fantastical or supernatural and thus his work is generally categorized as fantasy: Miéville has listed M. John Harrison, Michael de Larrabeiti, Michael Moorcock, Thomas Disch, Charles Williams, Tim Powers, and J.G. Ballard as literary "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.^{[citation needed]} In fact, in the February 2007 issue of Dragon Magazine, the world presented in his books was interpreted into Dungeons & Dragons rules. In 2010, Miéville made his first foray into writing for RPGs with a contribution to the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game supplement Guide to the River Kingdoms.^[3]

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"^[4]). 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.^[5] Miéville's position on the genre is also indebted to Moorcock, whose essay "Epic Pooh" Miéville has cited as the source upon 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?^[6]

Awards

Miéville just after winning the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2010

• 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^[7] and the 2001 British Fantasy Award,^[7] and was nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Locus and British Science Fiction awards.^[8]
• His third novel, The Scar, won the 2003 British Fantasy Award^[9] and the 2003 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel,^[9] was nominated for the Hugo, Arthur C. Clarke, World Fantasy, Locus, Philip K. Dick, and British Science Fiction awards,^[10] and received a Philip K. Dick Award special citation.
• His fourth novel, Iron Council, won the 2005 Arthur C. Clarke Award^[11] and the 2005 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel,^[11] and was nominated for the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.^[11]
• 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 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.
• The City & the City won the 2010 Arthur C. Clarke Award, 2010 Hugo Award, and 2010 World Fantasy Award, as well as being a Nebula Award nominee in the Best Novel category.^[12][13][14]

Politics

Miéville is a member of the Socialist Workers Party, and stood unsuccessfully for the House of Commons of the United Kingdom in the 2001 general election as a candidate for the Socialist Alliance, gaining 459 votes, i. e. 1.2%,^[15] in Regent's Park and Kensington North, a Labour constituency.^[16] 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. Therefore, he states: "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."^[17]

Bibliography

Novels and novellas

Bas-Lag series

• Perdido Street Station (2000)
• The Scar (2002)
• Iron Council (2004)

Standalone works

• King Rat (1998)
• The Tain (2002)
• Un Lun Dun (2007)
• The City & the City (2009)
• Kraken (2010)
• Embassytown (2011)
• Railsea (May 2012)^[18]

Collections

• Looking for Jake (collection, 2005)

Roleplaying games

• Pathfinder Chronicles: Guide to the River Kingdoms (co-authored with Elaine Cunningham, Chris Pramas, and Steve Kenson; Paizo Publishing, 2010)

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 (writer), 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
• "Jack" (in The New Weird, 2008)
• "The Rope is the World" (on iconeye.com, February 2010)
• "Covehithe" (on guardian.co.uk, 22 April 2011)

Nonfiction

Introductions to fiction by other authors

• The Borribles: An Introduction, 2001.^[19]
• Things That Never Happen: An Introduction, 2002.
• Wizardry and Wild: An Introduction, 2004.
• At the Mountains of Madness: An Introduction, 2005.
• First Men in the Moon: An Introduction, 2005.^[20]
• 'Dagger Key' and Other Stories: An Introduction, 2007.

Academic writing^[21]

• "The Conspiracy of Architecture: Notes on a Modern Anxiety", Historical Materialism, 2: 1–32, 1998.
• "Marxism and Fantasy: Editorial Introduction", Historical Materialism, 10 (4): 39–49, 2002.
• "The Commodity-Form Theory of International Law: An Introduction", Leiden Journal of International Law, 17 (2): 271–302, 2004.
• Between Equal Rights: A Marxist Theory of International Law, 2005, ISBN 1931859337.
• "Anxiety and the Sidekick State: British International Law after Iraq", Harvard International Law Journal, 46 (2): 441–458, 2005.
• "Floating Utopias", in Davis, Mike and Daniel Bertrand Monk (eds.), Evil Paradises: Dreamworld of Neoliberalism (New York: New Press), 2007.
• "M.R. James and the Quantum Vampire - Weird; Hauntological: Versus and/or and and/or or?", Collapse, IV: 85–108, 2008.
• "Weird Fiction", in Mark Bould and Sherryl Vint et al. (eds), The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction (London: Routledge), 2009.
• "Cognition as Ideology: A Dialectic of SF Theory", in Mark Bould and China Miéville (eds), Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction (London: Pluto Press), 2009.
• "Multilateralism as Terror: International Law, Haiti and Imperialism", Finnish Yearbook of International Law, 18, 2009.

As editor

• Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction (co-editor), 2009.

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.^[22] 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^[update] no further information has surfaced regarding the project.
• 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, the pirate city in Miéville's story.^{[citation needed]}

References

1. ^ Joan Gordon - Reveling in Genre: An Interview with China Miéville
2. ^ "A Truly Monstrous Thing to Do: Mieville Interview", 'Long-Sunday.net
3. ^ "Pathfinder Chronicles: Guide to the River Kingdoms (PFRPG) Print Edition" on Paizo Publishing Website.
4. ^ "Scar by China Mieville". panmacmillan.com. http://www.panmacmillan.com/displayPage.asp?PageID=3395. Retrieved 5 May 2011. 
5. ^ China Miéville, "'The Borribles'. An Introduction".
6. ^ The Believer - Interview with China Miéville
7. ^ ^{a b} "Science Fiction & Fantasy Books by Award: 2001 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. http://www.worldswithoutend.com/books_year_index.asp?year=2001. Retrieved 2009-03-28. 
8. ^ "Awards won by Perdido Street Station". Worlds Without End. http://www.worldswithoutend.com/novel.asp?ID=66. Retrieved 2009-03-28. 
9. ^ ^{a b} "Science Fiction & Fantasy Books by Award: 2001 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. http://www.worldswithoutend.com/books_year_index.asp?year=2003. Retrieved 2009-05-03. 
10. ^ "Awards won by Scar". Worlds Without End. http://www.worldswithoutend.com/novel.asp?ID=60. Retrieved 2009-05-03. 
11. ^ ^{a b c} "Science Fiction & Fantasy Books by Award: 2005 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. http://www.worldswithoutend.com/books_year_index.asp?year=2005. Retrieved 2009-03-28. 
12. ^ Flood, Alison (September 6, 2010). "China Miéville and Paolo Bacigalupi tie for Hugo award". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/sep/06/china-mieville-paolo-bacigalupi-hugo-award. Retrieved September 9, 2010. 
13. ^ http://www.locusmag.com/News/2010/09/2010-hugo-awards-winners/
14. ^ http://www.locusmag.com/News/2010/10/world-fantasy-awards-winners//
15. ^ "BBC NEWS – VOTE 2001 – RESULTS & CONSTITUENCIES – Regent's Park & Kensington North". BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/vote2001/results_constituencies/constituencies/474.stm. 
16. ^ Ansible 168, July 2001.
17. ^ Miéville, China (2006). Between Equal Rights. Haymarket Books. ISBN 1931859337.  Pg. 319.
18. ^ Amazon.com page for Railsea
19. ^ The Borribles: An Introduction
20. ^ Penguin Group
21. ^ [1]
22. ^ Paramount Vantage Gets "Details"

External links

• "rejectamentalist manifesto" Blog by China Miéville.
• 2011 Interview on io9's Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast
• A long 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

Persondata
Name	Miéville, China
Alternative names
Short description	English writer
Date of birth	6 September 1972
Place of birth	Norwich, England
Date of death
Place of death