Woo Hoo!
by Al
I almost forgot…I get to meet China Miéville tomorrow at work of all places. He’s the author of “Perdido Street Station,” “King Rat,” and, most recently, “The Scar.”
He kicks major ass even if he is a marxist bastard. (That’s a joke, folks.)
He’s doing a book signing at the University Bookstore in Seattle at 7:00 PM tomorrow and must know or be known to some people at Microsoft because he’s lecturing for an hour at 1:30 tomorrow at work.
Science Fiction and Fantasy: Against Myth (or ‘Stop The Tolkien Madness’)
Science Fiction and Fantasy are often associated with mythical thinking, good-v-evil struggles, and epic quests and narratives. I argue that such structures have become stultifying to creativity, and turn much genre fiction into a tired kind of mannerism. Tolkien’s grandchildren must be stopped.
China Mieville was born in 1972, and grew up in London, where he now lives. He has lived and worked in Egypt, Zimbabwe and Boston. He studied Social Anthropology at Cambridge, and has an MSc and PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics.
He has written several short stories and three novels, King Rat, Perdido Street Station (winner of the Arthur C Clarke and British Fantasy Awards, and currently shortlisted for a Hugo) and The Scar.
He is a political activist, having stood in the British general election.
His home page is at http://runagate-rampant.netfirms.com/