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English writer, critic, and activist From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
China Tom Miéville FRSL (/miˈeɪvəl/ mee-AY-vəl, born 6 September 1972[1][2][3]) is a British speculative fiction writer and literary critic. He often describes his work as "weird fiction", and is allied to the loosely associated movement of writers called New Weird.
China Miéville | |
|---|---|
Miéville at Utopiales (2010) | |
| Born | China Tom Miéville 6 September 1972 Norwich, Norfolk, England |
| Occupation | Short-story writer, novelist, essayist and comic book author |
| Education | Clare College, Cambridge (BA) London School of Economics (PhD) |
| Period | 1998–present |
| Genre | Urban fantasy Weird fiction Steampunk |
| Literary movement | New Weird |
| Notable works | Perdido Street Station (2000) The City & the City (2009) October: The Story of the Russian Revolution (2017) |
| Website | |
| chinamieville | |
Miéville has won multiple awards for his fiction, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award, British Fantasy Award, BSFA Award, Hugo Award, Locus Award, and World Fantasy Awards. He holds the record for the most Arthur C. Clarke Award wins (three). His novel Perdido Street Station was ranked by Locus as the 6th best fantasy novel published in the 20th century.[4] During 2012–13, he was writer-in-residence at Roosevelt University in Chicago. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2015.[5]
Miéville is active in left politics in the UK and has previously been a member of the International Socialist Organization (US) and the short-lived International Socialist Network (UK). He was formerly a member of the Socialist Workers Party, and in 2013 became a founding member of Left Unity.[6] He stood for Regent's Park and Kensington North for the Socialist Alliance in the 2001 United Kingdom general election, gaining 1.2% of votes cast.
Miéville was born in Norwich and brought up in Willesden, and has lived in London since early childhood. Miéville's parents separated soon after his birth, and he has said that he "never really knew" his father.[7] He grew up with his sister Jemima and mother Claudia. His mother was a translator, writer and teacher, and the daughter of Leo Claude Vaux Miéville, whose wife Youla (née Harrison) was granddaughter of Edward Littleton, 4th Baron Hatherton.[8][9] His parents chose his first name, China, from a dictionary, looking for a beautiful name.[7] By virtue of his mother's nationality, Miéville holds US citizenship in addition to British citizenship. In 1982 his mother married Paul Lightfoot, a maternal descendant of George Charles Mostyn, 6th Baron Vaux of Harrowden; they divorced in 1992.[8][10][11]
Miéville boarded at Oakham School, a co-educational independent school in Oakham, Rutland, for two years. He subsequently attended University College School. At the age of eighteen, in 1990, he taught English for a year in Egypt, where he developed an interest in Arab culture and in Middle Eastern politics. Miéville studied for a BA degree in social anthropology at Clare College, Cambridge, graduating in 1994, and gained both a master's degree and PhD in international law from the London School of Economics in 2001. Miéville has also held a Frank Knox fellowship at Harvard University.[7] After becoming dissatisfied with the ability of post-modern theories to explain history and political events, he became a Marxist at university.[7] A book version of his PhD thesis, entitled Between Equal Rights: A Marxist Theory of International Law, was published in the UK in 2005 by Brill in their "Historical Materialism" series, and in the United States in 2006 by Haymarket Books.
Miéville's works all describe fantastical or supernatural worlds or scenarios.[12][13] Miéville has said he plans to write a novel in every genre.[14] To this end, he has "constructed an oeuvre" that ranges from classic American Western (in Iron Council) to sea-quest (in The Scar and Railsea) to detective noir (in The City & the City).[15] His work has been described as new weird fiction.[16]
Miéville has listed M. John Harrison, Michael de Larrabeiti, Michael Moorcock, Thomas M. Disch, Charles Williams, Tim Powers, and J. G. Ballard as literary "heroes"; he has also frequently discussed as influences H. P. Lovecraft, Mervyn Peake, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Gene Wolfe. He has said that he would like his novels "to be read for [his imagined city] New Crobuzon as Iain Sinclair does for London". Miéville has admitted that his books contain some allusions to Russian writers, including Andrei Platonov, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Evgeny Voiskunsky [ru] and Isai Lukodyanov [ru].[17]
Miéville played a great deal of Dungeons & Dragons and similar roleplaying games (RPGs) in his youth. He has attributed his tendency to systematisation of magic and theology to this influence.[7] In his novel Perdido Street Station, he refers to characters interested "only in gold and experience". The February 2007 issue of Dragon magazine interpreted the world presented in his books according to Dungeons & Dragons rules. The Player's Handbook for the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons cited his novel Perdido Street Station as a source of inspiration for the game's designers.[18]
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.[19]
Miéville once described Tolkien as "the wen on the arse of fantasy literature".[20] Miéville is also indebted to Moorcock, having cited his essay "Epic Pooh" as the source upon which he is "riffing" or even simply "cheerleading" in his critique of Tolkien-imitative fantasy.[citation needed] Despite his criticisms, Miéville has praised Tolkien for his contributions to fantasy, especially in a 2009 blog post where he gave five reasons why Tolkien was praiseworthy.[21]
He has cited Michael de Larrabeiti's Borrible Trilogy as one of his biggest influences, and he wrote an introduction for the trilogy's 2002 reissue (the introduction was eventually left out of the book, but appears on de Larrabeiti's website).[22]
Miéville has previously been a member of the International Socialist Organization (US) and, until 13 March 2013, was also a member of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP, UK).[23] He 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, equivalent to 1.2%,[24] in Regent's Park and Kensington North, a Labour constituency.[25]
In January 2013, he emerged as a critic of the SWP's leadership and in March resigned[23] over the leadership's handling of rape allegations against a leading SWP member.[26][27]
In August 2013, Miéville was one of nine signatories (along with veteran film-maker and socialist Ken Loach, academic Gilbert Achcar, General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Kate Hudson, fellow novelist Michael Rosen, and actor Roger Lloyd Pack) of an open letter to The Guardian announcing the foundation of a "new party of the left", to be called Left Unity. The letter, which claimed that Labour policies on austerity and the breaking of ties with trades unions amounted to a "final betrayal of the working-class people it was founded to represent", stated that Left Unity would be launched at a "founding conference" in London on 30 November 2013 and would provide, as an "alternative" to Labour, "a party that is socialist, environmentalist, feminist and opposed to all forms of discrimination".[6]
In 2014, together with Richard Seymour and others, Miéville quit the International Socialist Network, a Left Unity faction, over a dispute concerning the acceptability of sexual "race play"[28][29] that was prompted by discussion of a controversial art piece owned by Dasha Zhukova.[30]
In 2015, he was announced as one of the founding editors of a "bi-annual journal of revolutionary arts and letters", Salvage.[31] He has been the director of Salvage Publications since 2014.[32]
October, published in 2017, documents the dramatic events of the Russian revolution. Jonathan Steele reviewed it for The Guardian. Steele considers it an ideological though nuanced retelling: "Known as a left-wing activist, [...] Miéville writes with the brio and excitement of an enthusiast who would have wanted the revolution to succeed. But he is primarily interested in the dramatic narrative – the weird facts – of the most turbulent year in Russia's history".[33]
In a letter to Joybrato Mukherjee on 22 April 2024, Miéville rejected his nomination for a DAAD fellowship, citing Mukherjee's role in the cancelling of Jewish-American political theorist Nancy Fraser's Albertus Magnus Professorship at the University of Cologne because Fraser signed a pro-Palestine letter during the Hamas-Israel war, and his lack of "faith that the institution will stand against such a shameful program of repression and anti-Palestinian racism."[34]
In the early 2000s, Miéville lived in London with his partner Emma Bircham.[35] They were both cast as extras in the 1999 film Notting Hill,[36] which he jokingly described as a dystopian alternate history of an ethnically cleansed city.[37]
In 2013, Miéville denied allegations of emotional abuse made by an ex-girlfriend. He acknowledged having had a brief affair with the woman, but stated that her account of it was untrue. According to Miéville, he was in a non-monogamous relationship at the time, about which she was aware.[38]
Since 2018, he has taken steps to defend his privacy, following what he described as a campaign of harassment and online defamation.[39]
Miéville is married to artist Season Butler.[40]
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A comprehensive list of Miéville's work is available at the ISFDB.
Miéville has won numerous accolades in speculative fiction; he holds the record for the most Arthur C Clarke Award wins (three).[50] Perdido Street Station was featured in Locus's poll of all-time best 20th century fantasy novels, where it ranked 6th place.[51]
| Book / Award | Arthur C Clarke |
British Fantasy |
British SF |
Hugo | Locus | Nebula | World Fantasy |
Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Perdido Street Station | Won | Won | Nom | Nom | Nom | Nom | Nom | [52][53] |
| The Scar | Nom | Won | Nom | Nom | Won | – | Nom | [54][55] |
| Iron Council | Won | – | – | Nom | Won | – | Nom | [56][57] |
| Un Lun Dun | – | – | – | – | Won | – | – | [56] |
| The City & the City | Won | – | Won | Won | Won | Nom | Won | [58][59][60] |
| Kraken | – | – | – | – | Won | – | – | [56] |
| Embassytown | Nom | – | Nom | Nom | Won | Nom | – | [56][61] |
| Railsea | – | Nom | – | – | Won | – | – | [56] |
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