China Miéville has lived all his life in London. His first novel, King Rat, received superb reviews and was nominated for fantasy awards, and his second, Perdido Street Station, astonished the literary world with its imaginative power and sheer inventiveness.
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China Miéville recommends
The Planetbreaker's Son (2021) (Outspoken Authors, book 26) Nick Mamatas "The sharpest, funniest, most insightful and political purveyor of post-pulp pleasures going."
Cygnet (2019) Season Butler "Terribly moving. A clear-sighted, poignant rumination on loneliness, love, the melancholy of age and of youth."
Confessions of the Fox (2018) Jordy Rosenberg "Extraordinary and brilliant . . . At once a queer love story, radical counterhistory, and a thrilling page-turner, Confessions of the Fox is a vitally important work of our time."
You Should Come With Me Now (2017) M John Harrison "With an austere and deeply moving humanism, M. John Harrison proves what only those crippled by respectability still doubt – that science fiction can be literature, of the very greatest kind."
Deadstock (2007) (Punktown, book 2) Jeffrey Thomas "Jeffrey Thomas has done something wonderful."
Shriek (2006) (Ambergris, book 2) Jeff VanderMeer "Unsettling, erudite, dark, shot through with unexpected humour. Ambergris is one of my favourite haunts in fiction."
The Year of Our War (2004) (Castle, book 1) Steph Swainston "Exuberant, incredibly inventive, a blistering debut, and honest-to-god unputdownable."
Wanderers and Islanders (2002) (Legend of the Land, book 1) Steve Cockayne "Steve Cockayne has created something fascinating and strange. It resonates like a sudden memory - one that is intricate, important and moving."
Stranger Things Happen (2001) Kelly Link "This small-press short-story collection by a young American writer is a joy - a very tired word, and not one I use lightly. I've not been so moved and affected - and dammit, yes, inspired - by a book for a long time."
The Dark Domain (1992) Stefan Grabinski "Early in the last century, this shockingly underrated Polish writer saw the horror that haunted modernity. His ghosts and demons don't inhabit graveyard or ruins, but steam trains, electricity cables, and the rapidly growing cities. The antithesis of nostalgic fantasy."
The Gormenghast Trilogy (1967) (Gormenghast) Mervyn Peake "Somehow this manages to be both rich and austere at the same time - the sense is of vastness, but of unbearable claustrophobia, too. The egregious BBC adaptation turned it into an Augustan costume romp and stripped out all the shadows and all the dust. Philistines."
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1964) Philip K Dick "It's infuriating to have to choose just one of Dick's works - he is the outstanding figure in SF. In the end I went for Stigmata because I remember how I felt when I put it down. Hollow and beaten. I kept thinking: 'That's it. It's finished. Literature has been finished.'"
Strange Evil (1957) Jane Gaskell "The book was written when Gaskell was 14, and though it suffers from all the flaws her youth would lead you to expect, it is a staggering achievement. A fraught fairyland full of sexuality, and containing the most extraordinary baddy in fiction."
The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) H G Wells "Short, cold, economic and totally unrelenting. An utterly terrifying book, Wells's outstanding achievement by far."
Jane Eyre (1847) Charlotte Brontë "The greatest work of horror ever. OK, technically there are no monsters or aliens or what-have-you, but there's no way this isn't horror. A book about madness, loneliness, manipulation, class and sex that's more frightening than any tentacled thing Lovecraft could come up with."
(b.1972)
