NEWS | Chine Miéville Finally Coming to Comics

Only a couple years ago China  Miéville was slated to do a run on Swamp Thing, but with DC's Vertigo imprint folding many of the older characters back into the DC Universe for the New 52 launch including Swamp Thing stopped those plans. I also heard rumors of him doing a Scrap Iron Man story, but nothing ever came of it although China recently released a bit of info on this aborted project. So  Miéville getting a shot at a long-run in comics has been long in coming.  DC finally announced an official series with him called Dial H based off the the old Dial H for Hero comic series from the 60s.

Miéville has been a fan of Dial H for Hero since he was little and without tattoos. He'll work with artist Brian Bolland on the series cover who has worked previously on Judge Dredd, Batman, Doom Patrol, and a whole bunch of other series with Mateus Santoluoco doing the interiors. Santolucco is new to me, but just looking at his portfolio gives you a feel for what is to come. From China's interview with USA Today:

"I cannot believe that I get to just make up superheroes. It's what you did as a kid," Miéville says. "The whole point of Dial is that the roster of capes is changing every single month, often two or three times." He also promises a darker series with horror, sci-fi and lots of psychological ramifications for its dialing protagonist. "In the original run, he's turning into a giant spring coil to foil bank robbers, and I'm like, OK, what if you are a 25-year-old guy and you turn into a superpowered spring coil? That's going to mess with your head."

I certainly think Miéville can pull off an adult version of Ben 10. It will definitely be interesting to see him work in another medium. Miéville's first issue of Dial H should be out in May. So between that and his steampunk Moby Dick YA novel Railsea coming out this year we'll have plenty of Miéville to go around.

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Cover Unveil for Railsea by China Mieville

I'm a bit late in getting this up, but hey, I'm on Thanksgiving break.

China Mieville's next release is Railsea, for which very little is known, but much is inferred. Most say it is his next YA release, which feels right given the price and cover. It definitely seems to be in the vein of Paolo Bacigalupi's work, which would be fine by me. What is know is that Railsea will be out in May, which shows again Mieville is keeping up the year a book schedule. Even though I thought Mieville's last release Embassytown showed brilliance I still felt it lacked something, but even his most disappointing work kept me with him until the end and his first YA novel Un Lun Dun, while not as deep as his other works hit the mark with me.

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ART | China Mieville's Embassytown reveal and more

Tor UK planned a big launch for China Mieville's latest novel Embassytown in addition to repackaging his complete backlist with a uniform look.  Tor tried to capture China's theme of blurring worlds and did a rather decent job.  Perdido Street Station and Kraken especially caught by eye although Un Lun Dun doesn't feel right especially since it is a Young Adult novel. Embassytown itself leaves me a bit confused at the moment, but hopefully it will make more sense once I've read it.  Which catches your fancy? 

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NEWS | Hugo Winners Announced (Big Tie for Novel!)

The Hugo Awards have been announced and a bit of surprise has happened in the novel category. I didn't relish the voters this year with such a great selection of novels to choose from. I myself read 4 out of the 6 and found each to have its own merits for inclusion and possibly winning.  I certainly don't disagree with the end result. The Windup Girl and The City & The City have tied for Best Novel. There have been two ties previous for Best Novel. In 1966 for Dune by Frank Herbert and Roger Zelazny's And Call Me Conrad and in 1993 for Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep and Connie Willis' The Doomsday Book. Without further adieu here are all the results.

Best Novel

• The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade) (tie winner)
• The City & The City, China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan UK) (tie winner)
• Boneshaker, Cherie Priest (Tor)
• Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America, Robert Charles Wilson (Tor)
• Palimpsest, Catherynne M. Valente (Bantam Spectra)
• Wake, Robert J. Sawyer (Ace; Penguin; Gollancz; Analog)

Best Novella

• “Palimpsest,” Charles Stross (Wireless; Ace, Orbit) (winner)
• “Act One,” Nancy Kress (Asimov’s 3/09)
• The God Engines, John Scalzi (Subterranean)
• Shambling Towards Hiroshima, James Morrow (Tachyon)
• “Vishnu at the Cat Circus,” Ian McDonald (Cyberabad Days; Pyr, Gollancz)
• The Women of Nell Gwynne’s, Kage Baker (Subterranean)

Best Novelette

• “The Island,” Peter Watts (The New Space Opera 2; Eos) (winner)
• “Eros, Philia, Agape,” Rachel Swirsky (Tor.com 3/09)
• “It Takes Two,” Nicola Griffith (Eclipse Three; Night Shade Books)
• “One of Our Bastards is Missing,” Paul Cornell (The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction: Volume Three; Solaris)
• “Overtime,” Charles Stross (Tor.com 12/09)
• “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast,” Eugie Foster (Interzone 2/09)

Best Short Story

• “Bridesicle,” Will McIntosh (Asimov’s 1/09) (winner)
• “The Bride of Frankenstein,” Mike Resnick (Asimov’s 12/09)
• “The Moment,” Lawrence M. Schoen (Footprints; Hadley Rille Books)
• “Non-Zero Probabilities,” N.K. Jemisin (Clarkesworld 9/09)
• “Spar,” Kij Johnson (Clarkesworld 10/09)

Winners of the other categories.

Best Related Book: This is Me, Jack Vance! (Or, More Properly, This is “I”), Jack Vance (Subterranean)

Best Graphic Story: Girl Genius, Volume 9: Agatha Heterodyne and the Heirs of the Storm Written by Kaja and Phil Foglio; Art by Phil Foglio; Colours by Cheyenne Wright (Airship Entertainment)

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: Moon Screenplay by Nathan Parker; Story by Duncan Jones; Directed by Duncan Jones (Liberty Films)

Best Editor Short Form: Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Best Editor Long Form: Ellen Datlow

Best Professional Artist: Shaun Tan

Best Semiprozine: Clarkesworld edited by Neil Clarke, Sean Wallace, & Cheryl Morgan

And the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (presented by Dell Magazines): Seanan McGuire


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REVIEW | Kraken by China Mieville (Del Rey)

A pickled and jarred giant squid has been stolen from the Natural History Museum of London and so begins the wild, tangent-ridden, and utterly delectable Kraken. Seers of London are predicting a fiery end of the world and to avert this the squid must be rescued. Gods of all stripes make appearances while the local police just muck everything up.

Kraken is quite a divergence from Mieville's last effort The City & The City, which was more of a somber and masterfully plotted police procedural. Word on the street is Mieville wrote both at the same time, which boggles the mind a little given how each feel like they weren't written on the same world let alone the same Universe. Kraken is a mad mix of China Mieville at his most weird with a pinch of Alan Moore on his a normal daily dose of acid with a healthy influence of Lovecraft to boot.

Kraken evokes the feel of a caper as the main characters are eluding many while in search of the missing squid and people responsibility for its disappearance. Given what I expect from Mieville nowadays I was actually quite bored for the first 70 pages and then all of a sudden Mieville brings the Weird in force and never lets up from there on introducing grotesqueries, out-there gods, wild concepts, and an inordinate amount of religious fanatics to the fray. Oh, and there are phasers! Can't forget the phasers. And yes they make sense as much as anything does in this story.

In Kraken nothing is true and everything is pure fact. Don't ponder that thought too much or you'll get lost in it. Mieville wants to create a sense of discomfort and surrealism from his readers, but with a bite of humor and satire about religion, Sci-Fi, and Fantasy in general. He also does cooler things with origami than even the best master out there. Kraken often reads as Mieville's bedside dream diary with constant apocalypses and flights of fancy taking off to dark, weird corners to bring his vision of London to light.

Everything boils to a fever pitch that doesn't disappoint, but will still leave you scratching your head weeks later wondering how the hell did Mieville pull that off? Kraken is Mieville's most accessible and fun adult work to-date even if it is a mess, but what a beautiful mess it is to behold.   He wants us to wonder: Where the heck is this going? Then he'll change his mind and bring us along for the ride. The get is that he more than succeeds on that front. I give Kraken 8.5 out of 10 hats. Mieville is still a master of his craft, he just melts that craft to fit whatever fiendish mold his mind comes up with. Man, now I feel like some calamari.

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NEWS | China Miéville has released the Kraken so what's next?

With China Miéville's Kraken just being released in the UK, Pan Macmillan has announced a little about his next new novel. This just in from the Pan Macmillan newsletter:

We’ve also just done a new deal for the next book from China Miéville. His latest novel Kraken (out now) is a fantastic romp through a London that only China could create. The new book Embassytown which we will publish in May next year is a brilliant science-fiction novel.

This should mean Embassytown will be release around the same time in the states as Del Rey, Miéville's US publisher generally tries to match them within a month of each other.  What little I've heard about this new book is that it will be more Sci-Fi than any of his other previous novels.  Here is a tidbit from an interview he recently did:

However he revealed his next book is already with his editor – ’science fiction, aliens and spaceships, but I don’t want to give too much away’ – and should be out next year, while adding he has a bunch of books in mind that he wants to write in the future.

Kraken will be released later next month stateside, which is still too far away for me.

UPDATE: Here is the blurb for Embassytown:

"Embassytown: a city of contradictions on the outskirts of the universe.

Avice is an immerser, a traveller on the immer, the sea of space and time below the everyday, now returned to her birth planet. Here on Arieka, humans are not the only intelligent life, and Avice has a rare bond with the natives, the enigmatic Hosts - who cannot lie.

Only a tiny cadre of unique human Ambassadors can speak Language, and connect the two communities. But an unimaginable new arrival has come to Embassytown. And when this Ambassador speaks, everything changes.

Catastrophe looms. Avice knows the only hope is for her to speak directly to the alien Hosts.

And that is impossible."

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Covers Unveiled for Kraken by China Mieville and Nights of Villjamur by Mark Charan Newton

Kraken by China Mieville is looking very good.  The cover is so simple yet evocative.  Kraken is a standalone with a very Lovecraftian twist.  Really can't wait for this one to come out next June. 

 Deep in the research wing of the Natural History Museum is a prize specimen, something that comes along much less often than once in a lifetime: a perfect, and perfectly preserved, giant squid. But what does it mean when the creature suddenly and impossibly disappears?

For curator Billy Harrow it's the start of a headlong pitch into a London of warring cults, surreal magic, apostates and assassins. It might just be that the creature he's been preserving is more than a biological rarity: there are those who are sure it's a god.

A god that someone is hoping will end the world.

UPDATE: James over at Speculative Horizons tipped me off to the UK cover for Kraken, which is very cool as well.

Newton's Nights of Villjamur has been gaining strong accolades in the UK.  We finally get a crack at it in June stateside.  The cover when compared to the UK is a bit ho-hum and nowhere near as interesting as what Tor UK did.  The art is also a bit bright for what is supposedly a very dark read.  I'm still eagerly awaiting its release and follow-up City of Ruin though.

Political intrigue and dark violence converge in a superb new action series of enthralling fantasy. An ice age strikes a chain of islands, and thousands come to seek sanctuary at the gates of Villjamur: a city of ancient spires and bridges, a place where banshees wail the deceased, cultists use forgotten technology for their own gain and where, further out, the dead have been seen walking across the tundra.  When the Emperor commits suicide, his elder daughter, Rika, is brought home to lead the Jamur Empire, but the sinister Chancellor plans to get rid of her and claim the throne for himself. Meanwhile a senior investigator in the city inquisition must solve the high-profile and savage murder of a city politician, whilst battling evils within his own life, and a handsome and serial womanizer manipulates his way into the imperial residence with a hidden agenda. When reports are received that tens of thousands of citizens are dying in a bizarre genocide on the northern islands of the Empire, members of the elite Night Guard are sent to investigate. It seems that, in this land under a red sun, the long winter is bringing more than just snow.

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VIDEO | Mieville, Ringo, and Link Sci-Fi Discussion from Book Expo 2009 and

Book Expo has now posted a whole bunch of the discussions taped at the show here.  During my trip to BEA I really wanted to go to the Sci-fi discussion with John Ringo, China Mieville, and Kelly Link but I only managed to catch the last 15 minutes or so.  Now we can see the whole discussion moderated by Del Rey editor Chris Schluep in which China Mieville sounds smart and John Ringo makes good points while wearing a Utilikilt:



Here is the Scott Westerfield, Holly Black, and Cassie Clare discussion about Alternative History:



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MINI-REVIEW | Un Lun Dun by China Miéville (Del Rey)

China Miéville is fast becoming one of my favorite authors as The City & The City made my top reads this year so far and Un Lun Dun is now up there as well. I still need to dive deeper into his work to be sure as I've heard the majority of his other books are much darker, but his imagination, prose, and pacing are impeccable. Un Lun Dun is Miéville's try at subverting Young Adult Fantasy, which turns out to be one of the best attempts in recent years. Un Lun Dun is also adorned by a couple dozen drawings by Miéville, which work beautifully but I do wish there were more. Un Lun Dun starts with unusual things happening to teenaged Zanna in her hometown of London. It seems as if Zanna is destined for greatness however much she doesn't understand or believe it. She and her best friend Deeba stumble into Unlondon, which is where all things that are forgotten end up and whole subcultures have developed. Binjas, a talking book, words made manifest, Window Spiders, a needy milk carton, an umbrella wielding adventurer all make this one exciting and nutty read. Zanna's enemy is an evil sentient cloud of Smog along with his smoglodites, which works surprisingly well. Miéville quickly turns the idea the destined one on its head and pushes it to all thing Un.

If you are worried that this is similar to Gaiman's Neverwhere have no fear. Little ground, if any, is retread yet Miéville does include Gaiman in the acknowledgements as a source of inspiration. Lose yourself in in the strangely wonderful Un Lun Dun. You won't be disappointed. This is a book I wish I had read in my formative years as it sets your imagination on fire. I give Un Lun Dun 9 out of 10 Hats. China left the door open for more visit to Unlondon and if he delves into Young Adult Fantasy I'll definitely be there for it. I'd love to see a Sub Press version of Un Lun Dun with more art and maybe China's sketch book as an extra appendix. Book link: US Europe Canada

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REVIEW | The City & The City by China Miéville (Del Rey)

The City & The City was one of those books that everyone has been hotly awaiting since announced. I must admit I fell into the trap as well with the entire mystique surround its release. Even to the point where the author asked reviewers to be very vague about some of the details. After reading I can certainly see why China and his publisher wanted to keep things quite. A loose word here or there could ruin the entire experience, which is why I'll keep this brief.

The City & The City is a detective murder mystery a la Raymond Chandler with a little fantasy mixed in narrated by Inspector Tyador Borlu of Beszel Extreme Crime Squad. The setting is quite strange in that it is a divided city. Think East/West Berlin only with the streets split in half with one side of the populace on each side and neither being able to acknowledge or see the other. Borlu lives in Beszel and the other half of the city is called Ul Qoma.

The style of writing is almost as if it were written in another language and than translated into English, but it works beautifully. Some may consider this work too high brow, but I think it can be enjoyed by anyone willing to put in the effort. It will certainly make you think. I found myself putting the book down a few times between chapters just to ponder what it would be like to live or visit a city such as this. A few brief chapters have Borlu accompanying visitors around the Bezel, which gives you a bit more insight into the alienness of it all. Borlu's investigation takes him to the other side of the city so you do get a complete view of each.

The City & The City twists and turns into something I was never expecting, but is all the more satisfying for doing so. I give The City & The City 9.5 out 10 Hats. I would have given it 10, but I do have to leave room for improvement. I'm even contemplating getting the Subterranean edition, but I haven't decide if it will live up to repeated readings. I'll definitely be checking out China's Un Lun Dun and maybe some other works by him in the next couple of months.

Book link: US UK Canada Subterranean