Being a classic of the genre and being alive and kicking is quite a milestone. This is what happens with China Mieville and the science fiction more disruptive and advanced. In other words, in addition to being classic, China Mieville always bets on the avant-garde, paradoxes of the creative gift. And I say science fiction because the determination of fantastic falls short to delimit China Mieville's bibliography.
The most sophisticated dream of the electric sheep of Phillip K Dick it falls short in front of the pastures where Mieville's creatures feed, as human at times as inaccessible beings at others, moved by inconceivable longings.
Since his Bas-Lag saga, with which almost all his new readers approach his work, we are getting to know new proposals that could result from a cocktail between Mad Max and Blade Runner. China enjoys allegorical, hyperbolic spaces, as if projected from our world in whimsical parallel paths. Perhaps there could be some tangential encounter with our planet... everything will depend in any case on the reader's ability to catch the trail of the new worlds made in Mieville.
China Mieville's Top 3 Recommended Novels
The city and the city
Dickens He spoke to us about his two cities looking for juicy analogies, impossible symmetries from the historical circumstances. China Mieville prepares us to discover two places connected by a kind of fourth dimension. A kind of God or Devil game to enjoy with your favorite chess game about fate, free will and the butterfly effect. Two cities displayed as if in a prism effect, disparate developments for those who are located within the city and the city…
Originally published in 2009, The City and the City is the masterpiece that has turned China Miéville into one of the greatest voices of current Anglo-Saxon letters in any genre, admired by writers such as Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Neil Gaiman and Ursula. K.LeGuin.
Welcome to the story of two twin cities, invisible to each other, whose destinies are intertwined by the murder of young Mahalia Geary, found dead and her face disfigured in the city of Beszel.
During the investigation of the crime, Inspector Borlú will follow the pyres from Beszel to the identical neighboring city, UI Qoma. There he will discover the young woman's participation in a political conspiracy and will find himself surrounded by nationalists, who try to destroy the twin city, and unificationists, who dream of turning the two cities into one. The truths that the detective will discover about the separation of both cities could cost him his life. China Miéville mixes the best of science fiction, thriller and police drama in a work that breaks the seams of three genres to become an absolutely unforgettable reading work.
Perdido Street Station
Creating a new world as in the case of New Crobuzon has to be very complex. Building a plot always has its one. Waking up a new world is something else… China Mieville got down to it with the meticulousness of a goldsmith. The result is an ultimately magical place not so far away in underlying statements as our world. In the exuberant metaphor resides that wisdom of the uchronic and the dystopian. To perhaps learn and draw conclusions not as far away as New Crobuzon itself.
The metropolis of New Crobuzon lies at the center of his bewildering world. Humans, mutants, and arcane races huddle in the gloom, under their chimneys; the rivers flow, viscous, and the factories and foundries hammer the night. For over a thousand years, Parliament and its brutal militia have ruled a wide range of workers, artists, spies, magicians, addicts, and prostitutes.
Now, as a stranger arrives with deep pockets and an unattainable demand, something unthinkable is released. Suddenly, the city is gripped by terror, and the fate of millions of people depends on a group of outcasts on the run from lawmakers and criminals. The urban landscape becomes a hunting ground, battles are fought in the shadows of strange buildings... and it's too late to escape.
Awarded the Arthur C. Clarke Prize in 2001 and the Ignotus in 2002. With this trilogy, Miéville began to fascinate writers, media, and readers of all genres. Today he is considered one of the greatest names in Anglo-Saxon letters of the XNUMXst century.
the iron council
The novel that closes an impressive trilogy that undoubtedly breaks stereotypes of the fantastic that is most attached to budgets in form and substance. Fantasy must always reinvent itself. And Mieville set about it to get us all back to imagining new worlds, not territories always attached to already existing regions, no matter how far away they may be…
These are times of riots and revolutions, conflict and intrigue. New Crobuzon is being torn apart from within and without. War with the sinister city-state of Tesh and riots in the streets are bringing the metropolis to a close.
Amidst this chaos, a mysterious masked figure stirs up a rebellion, while treachery and violence simmer in unexpected places. In desperation, a small band of renegades escape the city and cross strange and alien continents in search of a lost hope, an enduring legend... It's the time of the Iron Council.
