China Mieville is not just a galaxy in the science fiction firmament, he is a whole universe!
Following THE CITY AND THE CITY'S gripping crime investigation in parallel cities that owed a lot to Escher and twisted the brain with relish and the extravagant London caper of KRAKEN where gods, monsters, demons and mummies joyfully ran havoc through the capital's streets, his breakthrough new novel EMBASSYTOWN moves much further afield and takes the reader to the deep reaches of space. But the visions he deploys are not like anything you've ever read before and convey both a sense of dread and what the nature of alienness might actually be. Space and time is an impenetrable sea through which only specially-trained and gifted navigators swim, survivors of ancient races overlook the chaos with both benevolence and quiet menace, and all familiarity with the world as we know it proves totally illusory. Once you wrap your mind through the imaginative and weird concepts Mieville juggles with bravura, you are transported into an invigorating if unsettling version of reality. Truly science fiction for the 22nd century. Fascinating stuff.
Ursula K Le Guin has written a wonderful review of Embassytown for the Guardian. Click here to view it.
Embassytown: a city of contradictions on the outskirts of the universe. Avice is an immerser, a traveller on the immer, the sea of space and time below the everyday, now returned to her birth planet. Here on Arieka, humans are not the only intelligent life, and Avice has a rare bond with the natives, the enigmatic Hosts - who cannot lie. Only a tiny cadre of unique human Ambassadors can speak Language, and connect the two communities. But an unimaginable new arrival has come to Embassytown. And when this Ambassador speaks, everything changes. Catastrophe looms. Avice knows the only hope is for her to speak directly to the alien Hosts. And that is impossible.
"It's a joy to find this young author coming into his own, and bringing the craft of science fiction out of the backwaters where it's been caught lately between the regressive drag of publishers marketing to a "safe" readership and the bewildering promises of change and growth offered by postmodernism in all its forms and formlessness. Embassytown is a fully achieved work of art." Ursula K Le Guin, Guardian
Author
About China Mieville
China Miéville lives and works in London. He is three-time winner of the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award (Perdido Street Station, Iron Counciland The City & The City) and has also won the British Fantasy Award twice (Perdido Street Station and The Scar). The City & The City, an existential thriller, was published in 2009 to dazzling critical acclaim and drew comparison with the works of Kafka and Orwell (The Times) and Philip K. Dick (Guardian). His most recent novel, Kraken, was published in 2010.
In 2010 China Miéville won the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award for his novel The City and the City, the first time in its history an author has won it three times.
Maxim Jakubowski's view on PERDIDO STREET STATION... British author Miéville is one of the most adept practitioners when it comes to creating imaginary worlds and cities which are both alien and recognisable as an extrapolation of the world we live in. The urban and gothic New Crobuzon is a harbour for humans, mutants, magicians and every mysterious species under the sun. Old-fashioned storytelling taken off the leash and exhaustively inventive.
