A Conversation with China Miéville

Illustration by Liz Priddy, with photograph of China Miéville by Chris Close

Weird Fiction writer China Miéville defies easy categorization. A self-professed geek, he cites Dungeons and Dragons and comics as influences on his work. But Miéville has also studied social anthropology at Cambridge and received a PhD in international law from the London School of Economics; he was a Harvard fellow and even ran for the British House of Commons as the Socialist Alliance candidate. And while Miéville has won nearly every award in the science fiction and fantasy world, mainstream publications herald him for transcending the genre. But China Miéville doesn't want to transcend. He believes Weird Fiction holds distinct advantages over literary fiction. He prefers to see himself as a conduit to a world of writing that, in his mind, is best equipped to address the issues of the day.

If Miéville were to pick one of his books as an entry point for readers who typically avoid genre, he would choose The City & The City, for which he won one of his three Arthur C. Clarke Awards—along with the Hugo Award, the British Science Fiction Association Award, the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel and the World Fantasy Award. His other award-winning novels include Perdido Street Station, The Scar, Iron Council and Un Lun Dun. Miéville's latest book is Embassytown, a deeply fantastical and philosophical work that grapples with the nature of language and the power of stories, starring a species that literally becomes addicted to words.

Miéville lives and writes in London. This interview was conducted in May and August of 2011.

David Naimon:

Tell us about your beginning years, when you first started submitting pieces, and how that was for you.

China Miéville:

I always knew that I enjoyed writing, from when I was very young, five or six. The first time I thought about it as any kind of possible professional thing was probably when I was in my early teens. Though I didn't know what it meant, really, to write professionally.

Within SF and fantasy there is a fairly strong tradition of people working up careers by publishing a lot of short stories. People talk quite often, at least in Britain, about the state of the short story. A few years ago, everyone was very anxious about the short story. But for those of us who'd been working in the fantastic field, there was a wry sense of "Who is we?" Short stories were doing absolutely fine in our field. There were always outlets: magazines; and these days, of course, there are websites. I did not really do that, though. I did submit short stories a couple of times to the magazine Interzone, which has been the route to publication for a lot of British writers particularly. But they were quite rightly rejected. These were stories from my late teens. So basically I started working on a novel in my early twenties. But I was very shy of admitting that that was what I wanted to do. And I mean shy at admitting it to myself, to the universe. I was also pursuing being an academic. I enjoy research and academia. What happened, then, was that instead of going the short-story route, I was quietly writing this novel in the background. And when that was finished, I submitted it, and it got published. And it got me a book deal and someone interested in the second book, Perdido Street Station. I was halfway through my PhD, and that's when the publications really took off. There was a moment of wondering if I should throw it all in and just do the writing full time. But I really wanted to finish my researches, partly because I enjoy it and partly because you never know how long you will be able to write professionally, and it's good to have other possibilities. So for a few years I wrote fiction while also working on...