“Part of the appeal of the fantastic is taking ridiculous ideas very seriously and pretending they’re not absurd.”

—China Miéville

Those who have been following both my writing and this blog know that alongside writers like Neil Gaiman, Mark Twain, and Ursula K. LeGuin, the English novelist China Miéville is one of my biggest influences.

Recently, I just finished his latest book, This Census Taker (and it was wonderful.) The fanboy in me wanted more so I shuffled some books around in my to-read stack so while on my way to Lilac City Comicon I was able to listen to the first half of the Iron Council (which I am also loving and regrettably have never read.) So, Miéville work and his process have been on my mind.

If you want more Miéville beyond his novels, make sure to check out his dissertation at the University of Kansas: Cognition as Ideology: A Dialectic of SF Theory. I’ve featured it in past Friday Link Packs, but you can watch the full lecture on YouTube. It’s great and worth watching.