China Miéville

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China Miéville (2010)

China Tom Miéville (born September 6, 1972 in Norwich ) is an English fantasy writer , comic book writer and scientist. Characteristics of science fiction , horror literature and steampunk can also be found in his works . He himself describes his work as "Weird Fiction" (similar to some writers of the early twentieth century such as H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith , who wrote for the pulp magazine Weird Tales ). He belongs to a loose group of authors called the New Weird . They try to develop fantasy literature further and distance themselves from the more conservative content that, in their opinion, z. B. characterize the style-defining novels of Tolkien for the genre .

Miéville is on the left and is actively involved in politics. He is one of the editors of a Marxist magazine and the "revolutionary" culture magazine Salvage . The author has been honored with numerous awards.

childhood and education

China Tom Miéville was born in Norwich , east England, in 1972 and grew up in Willesden , a district in north-west London. There he lived with his single mother Claudia , a translator and teacher, and his younger sister. His parents, who - as Miéville said in an interview with Science Fiction Studies - saw each other as hippies , had separated shortly after his birth. His father, whom he had barely met, died when he was 19 years old.

In 1990, at the age of 18, Miéville went to Egypt for a year , where he worked as an English teacher. During this stay his interest in Arab culture and Middle East politics was aroused.

He attended the free school in Oakham , Rutland for two years . Until 1994 he studied at Clare College, Cambridge University and graduated with a bachelor's degree in social anthropology . In 2001 he also earned a Masters with honors and a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science with a dissertation A Historical Materialist Analysis of International Law and the Legal Form. He also studied for a year at Harvard University on a Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship .

Literary role models and role plays

Miéville names M. John Harrison , Michael de Larrabeiti , Michael Moorcock , Thomas M. Disch , Charles Williams , Tim Powers and JG Ballard as his literary heroes; besides he counted u. a. HP Lovecraft , Mervyn Peake , Ursula K. Le Guin and Gene Wolfe on his literary influences.

He blames dungeons & dragons and similar role-playing games (RPG), with which he was a lot in his youth, for his tendency to systematize magic and technology. Since 2010, with his contribution to the Guide to the River Kingdoms , Miéville has been an active role-play author himself.

The fantasy world of Bas-Lag

The three books Perdido Street Station , The Scar and Der Eiserne Rat (English: Iron Council ) are set in the fantasy world Bas-Lag, the most influential city of which is "New Crobuzon". Miéville populates this world with an abundance of (often intelligent) living beings such as B. cactus people, bird creatures from the desert with a nomadic culture, beings with female bodies and insect heads, but also "constructs" ( robots ) and genetically or surgically modified beings, the "remade". In this world magic is practiced as a kind of mystical science based on measurable and reproducible natural forces. Miéville avoids the terms “sorcery” and “magic” and prefers to speak of “ thaumaturgy ”.

As he describes in The Scar , the world of Bas-Lag suffered a cosmic accident when it collided with a different-dimensional celestial body. Its remnant is the “scar”, a “massive wound in the world”, in whose sphere of influence the otherwise usual laws of nature do not apply and strange, often malicious beings arise.

The city of New Crobuzon is ruled by a parliament and thus on the surface has a democratic constitution, but there is also a militia that bloodily suppresses workers' uprisings. Miéville describes the government and mayor as corrupt, greedy for power and money, although he pays little attention to this point. His attention is more on the different subcultures and resistance groups and their interactions as well as the conflicts of his main characters between personal, group, national or racial interests. No matter whether men, women or other beings, the love relationships of his protagonists often go beyond the heterosexual norms, be it in the form of homosexual or cross-species partnerships.

Perdido Street Station is close to the horror genre, it is about the exploitation of hypnotically gifted beings, so-called greed butterflies, by different factions of the inhabitants of New Crobuzon. Eventually, the creatures oscillating between mythical beings and predators who drink the New Crobuzonians' dreams for food get out of control and threaten the very existence of the entire city. In The Scar , a floating city fights piracy against the overwhelming power of New Crobuzon. However, some influential characters play their very own game and conjure up a fabulous monster to use the floating city for their interests. In Iron Council is about the construction of a transcontinental railroad: a group of trade unionists, anarchists , freed slaves and prostitutes hijacked a train and breaks with him in the wilderness - in areas beyond the control of New Crobuzon - and becomes the legendary model for all opponents of the regime in the city.

Political perspective and fantasy

Miéville defined his relationship as a left-wing politician to writing and literature as follows:

“I'm not a leftist who tries to convey his bad message with the help of despised fantastic novels. I'm a fantasy and science fiction freak. I love this stuff, and when I write my novels, I don't write them with the intention of getting political points. I write it because I am passionate about monsters, as well as bizarre and horrific stories and dangerous situations and surrealism, and what I want with it is to communicate just that. But because I look at all of this from a political perspective, the worlds I create are always embedded in the fears I harbor. ... What I'm trying to say - I made up this really cool world and I have really big stories to tell in it and one of the ways to make it more interesting is to think about it politically. If that's what they want, that's fantastic, if not; - isn't that a cool monster? "

Political commitment

Miéville is a member of the International Socialist Alliance (US). In 2001, as a direct candidate in a London constituency for the left-wing electoral alliance Socialist Alliance, he received 1.2 percent of the vote in the election for the English House of Commons . Until March 2013 he was a member of the British Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party . After arguments with the party leadership over their handling of a rape allegation, he drafted a resignation declaration with others in March 2013 and left the SWP. In the same year he signed the founding appeal of the Left Unity , another small left party that has set itself the goal of overcoming the “neoliberalism” of the Labor Party . It sees itself as socialist, ecological as well as feminist and opposes any kind of discrimination.

He is an editor of the journal Historical Materialism - Research in Critical Marxist Theory . In 2015 he and other leftists founded the “revolutionary” quarterly magazine Salvage , in which essays, art and poetry are published. According to his statement, a new, free, controversial culture of discussion and representation needs to be developed beyond narrow-mindedness, stuck norms and moralism. In depicting struggle and oppression, he rejects the almost kitschy imitation of the Bolshevik propaganda of 1917 and rejects an optimistic view of the world.

In his most recent book October: The Story of the Russian Revolution, published in English in 2017 , he tells the story of the Russian October Revolution . He gives information about this in an interview. He did not want to write for specialists, but also to tell the story of the revolution as a story of people and make the goals of the revolutionaries understandable, without having in common with communist dogma. It is a narrative introduction.

Awards

Miéville's first novel, King Rat , was nominated for the International Horror Guild Prize and the Bram Stoker Award . Perdido Street Station won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2001 and the British Fantasy Award in addition, he was nominated for the Hugo , the Nebula Award and the World Fantasy Award . In Germany, Perdido appeared in two parts as Die Falter and Der Weber ; the books received the 2003 Kurd-Laßwitz Prize in the “Best Foreign Novel” category, and the translator Eva Bauche-Eppers also received the Kurd-Laßwitz Prize for the best translation. His third book, The Scar , also won the Arthur C. Clarke Prize, the Locus Award , the British Fantasy Award and was nominated for the World Fantasy Award. In 2005, Miéville again received the Kurd-Laßwitz Prize in Germany for The Scar as the best foreign novel. In 2005 he again won the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel with Iron Council , and in 2010 his The City & the City won again the Locus and Arthur C. Clarke Awards and the World Fantasy Award. In 2009, the Japanese translation of Perdido Street Station won the Sense of Gender Award . In 2011 Miéville won the Locus Award for best fantasy novel with Kraken again. The SF novel Embassytown was also on the ACCP shortlist in 2012. In 2015 he was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature .

Works

Bas-lag

  • Volume 1: Die Falter , Bastei Lübbe , Bergisch Gladbach, 2002, ISBN 3-404-23245-3 , Perdido Street Station , 2000 (English)
  • Volume 2: Der Weber , Bastei Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach, 2002, ISBN 3-404-24320-X , Perdido Street Station , 2000 (English)
  • The Iron Council , 2005, ISBN 3-404-24344-7 , Iron Council , 2004
  • Short story: Jack , original contribution to the short story collection Other Heavens ( Looking for Jake ).

Single novels

Short stories

  • Spiegel , 2004, ISBN 978-3-924959-71-5 , The Tain in a translation by Joachim Körber, illustrated by Reinhard Kleist.
  • Collection: Other Heavens , 2007, ISBN 3-404-24361-7 , Looking for Jake , 2005. Contains u. a. Novella The Tain in the translation by Eva Bauche-Eppers.

Youth books

As an author and illustrator

comics

  • On the Way to the Front (drawings by Liam Sharp), original contribution to Looking For Jake , 2005 ( Other Heavens ).
  • Snow Had Fallen (drawings by Giuseppe Camuncoli, Stefano Landini) in Hellblazer No. 250 (DC Vertigo 2008); also included in the anthology Scab (2010).
  • Dial H for Hero , ongoing monthly series for DC Comics (2012–2013).

Non-fiction and historical novels

  • Between Equal Rights: A Marxist Theory of International Law , 2006
  • Co-editor with Mark Bould: Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction , 2009.
  • October: The Story of the Russian Revolution . Verso, 2017

Forewords and Afterwords

  • On Michael de Larrabeiti The Borribles , in Pandora No. 02, 2007 (English 2001).
  • In English afterwords to works by M. John Harrison ( Things That Never Happen , 2002), Michael Moorcock ( Wizardry and Wild Romance: A Study of Epic Fantasy , 2004), HP Lovecraft ( At the Mountains of Madness , 2005), HG Wells ( First Men in the Moon , 2005), Lucius Shepard ( “Dagger Key” and Other Stories , 2007).
  • Afterweird: The Efficacy of a Worm-Eaten Dictionary , afterword to the anthology The Weird (Eds. Ann Vandermeer and Jeff Vandermeer , 2012).

Interviews (selection)

literature

Web links

Commons : China Miéville  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Salvage | Bleak is the new red. Retrieved January 12, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Joan Gordon: Reveling in Genre: An Interview with China Miéville . Science Fiction Studies . Homepage , November 2003
  3. ^ Justine Jordan: A life in writing. China Miéville , The Guardian , May 14, 2011
  4. Jump up ↑ Pathfinder Roleplaying Game supplement Guide to the River Kingdoms , February 2010
  5. ↑ USA: The Believer - Interview with China Miéville . Believermag.com. Retrieved June 28, 2012.
  6. ^ Election 2001. Results in the constituencies . Here: 2001 election results for the London constituency Regent's Park & ​​Kensington North . BBC News ; (English). Retrieved November 9, 2017
  7. ^ Jerome Tayler: Ranks of the Socialist Workers Party are split over handling of rape allegation . Independent . January 11, 2013, (English). Retrieved November 8, 2017
  8. ↑ internationalsocialismuk.blogspot.co.uk exit declaration . March 2003
  9. ^ Paul Kellogg: Britain. Reflections on the crisis in the Socialist Workers Party. Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal. 2013 (English). Retrieved November 7, 2017
  10. ^ Labor. Left Unity ready to offer an alternative . The Guardian online, August 12, 2013. Retrieved November 11, 2017
  11. ^ Homepage historical materialism , (English). Retrieved November 7, 2017
  12. ↑ Salvage website , (English). Retrieved November 9, 2017
  13. ↑ Daniel Schulz in conversation with China Miéville: "There is nothing more decadent than optimism" . Taz online and print, 4./5. November 2017, p. 27
  14. ↑ Daniel Schulz in conversation with China Miéville: "There is nothing more decadent than optimism" . Taz online and print, 4./5. November 2017, p. 26
  15. ↑ China Miéville heads Arthur C Clarke award shortlist - again . The Guardian , March 26, 2012, (English). Retrieved November 12, 2017
  16. ^ Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature . Retrieved November 12, 2017
  17. ↑ Harald Keller: Review note on Perlentaucher
  18. ↑ Harald Keller: Review note on Perlentaucher ,
  19. ↑ China Miéville "King Rat" , Piper Fantasy-Lexikon online, January 13, 2010. Retrieved November 12, 2017
  20. ^ Thomas Ballhausen: Review. The octopus. China Miéville , Falter .at, 31/2012. Retrieved November 12, 2017
  21. ↑ Marcus Hammerschmitt : You live in houses that are host animals. "Embassytown" by the master of the fantastic, China Miéville . Telepolis , January 14, 2012
  22. ↑ Review note on Pearl Divers ,
  23. ↑ Anja Kümmel: Review. China Miéville. The census taker. Novel. The suction on the edges of nothing . Die Zeit online, July 29, 2017 and in print. Retrieved November 12, 2017
personal data
SURNAME Miéville, China
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Miéville, China Tom (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English fantasy writer
DATE OF BIRTH September 6, 1972
PLACE OF BIRTH Norwich