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Fables of Need: this census-taker by China Miéville and The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati

By John Folk-Williams

This Census-Taker by China Mieville

I’m not sure what leads me to link these two books, as different and far apart in time as they are, but China Miéville’s this census-taker (2016)and Dino Buzzati’s The Tartar Steppe (1938) strike me as fables of human need. I’m not even sure what I mean by that, except that each book tells a […]

Filed Under: Fantasy Fiction, International Speculative Fiction, Reviews Tagged With: boyhood, China Miéville, Dino Buzzati, fable, glory, magic, military, mountains, The City & The City, trauma

The Art of Unseeing in China Mieville’s The City & The City

By John Folk-Williams

The City & the City by China Mieville The Art of Unseeing

The City & the City by China Miéville takes the form of a murder mystery amplified by Miéville’s unique ability to find richly suggestive fantasy metaphors about our world. This one is about the art of unseeing or seeing only what you are permitted to recognize in the midst of the doppelgänger cities of Besźel […]

Filed Under: Reviews, SciFi Mystery-Thriller Tagged With: China Miéville, city, invisibility, metaphor, mystery, seeing and unseeing, The City & The City

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Something is struggling to be born in this damaged and inspiring world, and I believe science fiction and its speculative cousins are helping us figure out what it is. It’s pushing the imaginations of fiction writers to bend and twist familiar forms to try to capture the forces that are hurling us into a barely conceivable future. This blog is my small way of exploring the half-perceived … Read More about About

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