The Art of Ruthless Revision

China Mieville, author of the Hugo Award winning novel, “The City and the City,” and the classic “Perdido Street Station,” in conversation with Richard Wolinsky in this archive interview recorded September 1, 2002.

China Mieville is a British author of weird fantasy and science fiction, and a leftist political activist in Britain. Born in 1972, he began his literary career with an urban fantasy novel, King Rat, and followed it up with a novel considered now one of best fantasy works of the 20th Century, Perdido Street Station in 2000. This interview with China Mieville at the 60th World Science Fiction Convention in San Jose on September 1, 2002, shortly after the publication of his follow-up to Perdido Street Station, The Scar.

Since then, China Mieville wrote a third novel set in that same Bas Lag universe as Perdido Street Station, Iron Council, published in 2004, and then moved on to other worlds with six stand alone novels, the most recent being a collaboration with Keanu Reaves titled The Book of Elsewhere, set in the BRZRKR comic book universe, published in 2024. A new novel is expected some time in 2025. his novel, The City and the City, which tied for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2010, was adapted for television by the BBC in 2018 and is now available streaming on Amazon Prime.

This interview has previously never been heard in its entirety. Remastered and edited in January 2025 by Richard Wolinsky.

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