China Miéville

China Tom Miéville (born September 6, 1972, Norwich) is a British writer of fantastic fiction. 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.

Miéville has cited Michael de Larrabeiti's Borrible Trilogy as one of his biggest influences. Miéville wrote an introduction for the 2002 reissue of the trilogy, which was eventually left out of the book; it remains unpublished.

Miéville has lived in London since early childhood. When he was eighteen, he taught English in and lived in Egypt, where he developed an interest in Arab culture and Middle Eastern politics. Miéville has a B.A. in social anthropology from Cambridge and a master's with distinction and PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics. 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 and inspired by the ideas of Evgeny Pashukanis, was published in the U.K. in 2005 by Brill Academic Publishers in their "Historical Materialism" series, and in the U.S. in 2006 by Haymarket Books.

He is a member of the British Socialist Workers Party, 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 a traditionally Labour constituency [http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/Ansible/a168.html. His left-wing politics are evident in his writing (particularly in Iron Council, his latest novel) as well as his theoretical ideas about literature (he criticised The Lord of the Rings as reactionary); several panel discussions at conventions about the relationship of politics and writing which set him against right-wingers ended up in heated arguments.

He is one of the Guests of Honour at Orbital 2008 the British National Science Fiction convention (Eastercon) in London in March 2008.

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 was nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy awards.
His third novel, The Scar, won the 2003 British Fantasy Award and was nominated for the Hugo, Arthur C. Clarke and World Fantasy awards.
His fourth novel, Iron Council, won the 2005 Arthur C. Clarke Award 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.

Bibliography

Novels

King Rat (1998)
Perdido Street Station (2000)
The Scar (2002)
The Tain (novella, 2002)
Iron Council (2004)
Un Lun Dun (February 2007)

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)

Collections

Looking for Jake (collection, 2005)

Nonfiction

Between Equal Rights: A Marxist Theory of International Law (nonfiction, 2005)

External links

Runagate Rampant, fan website--severely out of date
Pan Macmillan's China Miéville website --defunct
China Miéville pages at RealityEnds
"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.
Miéville is an infrequent blogger at Lenin's Tomb, where he signs his posts as China.
- 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 compiled by China Miéville at Fantastic Metropolis
"Debating Iron Council" at Crooked Timber
BAS-LAG, German fan website