Books by China Miéville
“He created this world called Bas Lag, within which exists a massive city called New Crobuzon, which is like a mad fantastical London. It’s an enormous amalgamation of different races of people. He’s got such a fecund imagination, it’s almost like he’s got about a hundred books’ worth of ideas crammed into these novels.” Read more...
“Embassytown is centred around the idea of alien languages. It’s another example of the more incomprehensible alien species—it’s set on a planet where the native aliens speak two words at the same time. This is somewhat fantastical, and it gets tied up with the limits of this alien language. They can’t say anything untrue, for example, because their language is not a symbol. It adds all these layers of meaning that are hard for me, as a human, to wrap my head around. A lot of the plot of the book hinges on the way that the aliens experience language, and experience the world as a result.” Read more...
The Best Science Fiction Books About Aliens
Jaime Green, Science Writer
“There’s a murder investigation and there are two cities that exist side by side, overlapping each other. Their relationship is unclear right at the beginning: they occupy the same geographical space, theoretically in Eastern Europe, but they are two different cities by custom and law. If something comes from one city into the other, it’s called breaching. And breaching is considered a crime worse than murder. It’s one of those books where you just don’t even know what genre it is. This book messed with my brain so much.” Read more...
Mary Robinette Kowal, Novelist
Interviews where books by China Miéville were recommended
The Best Sci-Fi Mysteries, recommended by Mary Robinette Kowal
When the rules for technology, geography and even personal identity can be changed, murder mysteries get complicated – and fascinating. Mary Robinette Kowal, award-winning novelist and author of the Hugo-nominated mystery The Spare Man, talks to us about her top five sci-fi mystery books – and takes us on a tour of the whodunnits, howdunnits, and whydunnits available to us in science fictional worlds.
The best books on Surrealism and the Brain, recommended by Bradley Voytek
Neurological disorders lead to far more surreal stories than those we find in science fiction, argues University of California neuroscientist Bradley Voytek.
The Best Science Fiction Books About Aliens, recommended by Jaime Green
Science fiction helps us work through not only the possibilities of the cosmos but also the nature of humanity itself, argues Jaime Green—science writer and author of a new book on the search for alien biology, The Possibility of Life. Here she highlights five classic works of sci-fi that explore ideas of consciousness and communication in the setting of outer space.
The best books on Linguistics, recommended by David Adger
Which linguistics books give a good sense of what the field is about? David Adger, Professor of Linguistics at Queen Mary University of London and the current president of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain, recommends some of his own favourite books on the science of language, including a sci-fi novel.
The Best High Fantasy Novels, recommended by Richard Swan
High fantasy, also known as epic fantasy, has been on a long journey since J.R.R. Tolkien published The Lord of the Rings. Richard Swan introduces us to the breadth of the genre – and how it embraces social commentary, political realism, and deeply personal stories.
