Strange Horizons, Oct ’01
Strange Horizons, Inc.
CONTENTS:
Article: Interview: China Miéville, by Cheryl Morgan
Article: Steganography: How to Send a Secret Message, by Bryan Clair
Article: Divining Neil Gaiman: An Exegesis of American Gods, by Bryan A. Hollerbach
Article: The Meanings of Medieval Clothes, by Rachel Hartman
Article: Interview: Joan Aiken, by Gavin J. Grant
Fiction: Ovigonopods of Love, by Joe Murphy
Fiction: Water, Green River, Daybreak, by Sarah Prineas
Fiction: Alien Animal Encounters, by John Scalzi
Fiction: Other Cities #2 of 12: Ponge, by Benjamin Rosenbaum
The Cruel Brother
The Rented Swan
The National Space Society CD
Poetry: The Golem, by Denise Dumars
Poetry: Gothic Romance, by Dave Whippman
Poetry: Orpheus Among the Cabbages, by Tim Pratt
Poetry: The Fright Before Christmas, by S. K. S. Perry
Poetry: Pi in the Sky, by Joan Aiken
Poetry: Down Below, by Joan Aiken
Review: C. J. Merle’s Of Duty and Death, reviewed by Christopher Cobb
Review: Steven Brust’s Issola, reviewed by Fred Bush
Review: Big Finish’s Doctor Who: The Fearmonger, reviewed by D. K. Latta
Review: Joan Aiken’s Wolves Sequence, reviewed by Beth Kelleher
Review: Joan Aiken’s Short Fiction, reviewed by Jed Hartman
Editorial: Choice and Consequences, by Chip Sudderth
Interview: China Miéville
By Cheryl Morgan
10/1/01
China Miéville electrified the British SF scene in 2000. His first novel, King Rat, was nominated for both the Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild awards. His second, Perdido Street Station, a dark fantasy with SF undertones, did even better; it was nominated for both the British Science Fiction Association Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and won the Clarke. Had the book been available in the U.S. in its first year of publication it might also have made the Nebula and Hugo ballots. It is that good. Del Rey released Perdido in March 2001, and consequently American readers are now asking, “Who is China Miéville?” Strange Horizons has been to Britain to find out.
The first thing to note is that China is most definitely a “he.” The name, he says, is a result of having hippie parents. He had childhood friends with names such as Cascade and India. By now, he’s used to people mistaking his gender. Despite the earrings, they won’t make that mistake once they’ve met him. With the unusual name go some unusual interests: China is currently studying for a doctorate at the London School of Economics. His chosen subject is the philosophy of international law. Like fellow British author Ken MacLeod, China has a passion for far-left politics. Unlike Ken, he is prepared to put his convictions on the line. He stood as a candidate for the Socialist Alliance (a grouping of far-left and Trotskyist organisations) in this year’s British general election. One London newspaper dubbed him “the sexiest man in politics.” He is not your typical fantasy writer.
This interview took place at the 2001 British National Science Fiction Convention. After the interview we spent about an hour discussing our common fascination with role-playing games, but that’s another story.
Cheryl Morgan: So, the obvious first question is, how did you get into writing?
China Miéville: I always read. I wasn’t a fan as such, I didn’t know about conventions. But I always read magazines like Interzone, and SF columns in White Dwarf, and so on. And I used to write, short stories and whatever, all of which got rejected from Interzone, quite rightly. When I went to university I began to get more serious about things, and because my time was fairly flexible I was able to work on a novel. I don’t know how people write books and hold down a 9 to 5 job. In writing a novel I learned a lot and there was a qualitative change in my writing, so I got an agent and it all went from there.
Cheryl: You mentioned White Dwarf (Games Workshop’s house magazine). That indicates a background in role-playing. Has that been an inspiration to you in your writing?
China: It has. I used to play a lot of games, between the ages of about 10 and 13. I haven’t played them for about 12 to 13 years and I have no interest in playing them again, but I have a great interest in them as a cultural phenomenon. I quite often buy and read game manuals because I am interested in the way that people design their worlds, and how they decide to delineate them.
Cheryl: That doesn’t come over in your writing. There is no way anyone would read Perdido and think, “this is a D&D adventure write-up.”
China: I think the sort of stuff I write is a sort of hybrid between Mike Harrison and role-playing. Harrison’s work is definitionally fluid, you can’t really grasp the worlds he creates, but I’m doing a sort of Mike Harrison role-playing game. I have tried to write like Harrison, but at the same time I have rigidly defined the secondary world. You could give most of the characters in my world stats.
Cheryl: Have you done a Tolkien on us? Can we expect a series of books detailing the background to the Perdido Street Station world?
China: I would love to do that kind of thing. I’ve got voluminous notes that go way, way beyond the scope of the book. I know all the history and all the races and all the geography and stuff. If someone were interested in it I would love to see it published.
Cheryl: The look of your books, they way that they are packaged, suggests that they are horror novels. The settings for both King Rat and Perdido Street Station are very much fantasy-oriented. And yet Perdido is also a science fiction book in many ways. Its hero, Isaac, is a scientist and, despite the 19th century feel of the setting, there are cyborgs and an artificial intelligence. Did you deliberately set out to create a new genre?
China: I didn’t set out to do anything particularly new, but it is true that I am conscious of writing in a tradition that blurs the boundaries between three fantastic genres: supernatural horror, fantasy, and science fiction. I have always been of the opinion that you can’t make firm distinctions between those three.
The writing that I really like is what has been called “weird fiction.” If people ask me what I write, that is the label I give them. The weird fiction axis of people like Lovecraft, Lindsay, Clarke Ashton Smith, and William Hope Hodgson exists at the intersection and you really can’t say that it is horror not fantasy, or fantasy not science fiction, or whatever. It is about an aesthetic of the fantastic; you alienate and shock the reader. That’s what I really like.
Cheryl: Is there anything else in the science fantasy field that has inspired you? Moorcock, for example. And I was reminded particularly of two of Mary Gentle’s books, Rats and Gargoyles and The Architecture of Desire, both of which have a similar feel to Perdido.
China: The science fantasy which looms largest in my head consciously—which I think is an important distinction because a lot of this stuff is lurking around subconsciously—is Gene Wolfe. Rats and Gargoyles I enjoyed very much. I liked the setting and the fact that it didn’t whitewash urban life. It has strikes and civil conflict and stuff. Moorcock? I think we are all post-Moorcock. So in a way, yes, but it is so deep and penetrating that I’m not at all conscious of it.
Cheryl: In my humble opinion you can’t pick better inspiration than Wolfe.
China: Well yes, he’s a god. It is to the mainstream’s eternal shame that they haven’t recognised him. He is one of the great living authors.
Cheryl: Michael Swanwick said recently that Wolfe is the greatest living writer in the English language.
China: For me it’s a toss-up between him and Harrison. Wolfe has an authority and scope that is more sweeping, but Harrison has this wonderful way in which he intersects emotion, loneliness, and language. I wouldn’t want to choose between the two.
Cheryl: One of the things I love about Wolfe is the way that he lays little clues. He’ll mention something in passing but you won’t see the full import of it until several chapters, or maybe even a book or two later. Are you doing that sort of thing with your writing? Will later novels expand on a theme you introduced as a passing idea in Perdido?
China: There is certainly stuff that will be picked up. The scale of Wolfe’s operation is enormous and can be quite daunting. There’s this puzzle element to it. I don’t have the mind to do that. But I am trying to give the impression of a much wider scope that is outside the boundaries of the book. If you don’t notice it then it doesn’t matter, but if you do it gives this impression of back text which is something that Harrison does very well in his Viriconium books and I think is very powerful. Of course it is also important that the books all stand alone as well.