It\u2019s been 25 years since China Mi\u00e9ville stepped into the literary spotlight with his novel \u201cPerdido Street Station.\u201d<\/p>\n
Combining elements of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, the novel introduced readers to the fantastically complex city of New Crobuzon, filled with insect-headed khepri, cactus-shaped cactacae, and terrifying slake moths that feed on their victims\u2019 dreams. It also sparked broader interest in what became known as the \u201cnew weird.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n After \u201cPerdido\u201d\u2019s success (commemorated this year with a quickly-sold-out collector\u2019s edition<\/a> from The Folio Society), Mi\u00e9ville continued to meld genres in novels like \u201cThe City and the City\u201d and \u201cEmbassytown.\u201d But for nearly a decade, he stopped publishing fiction, only to reemerge last year with The New York Times bestseller \u201cThe Book of Elsewhere,\u201d co-written with Keanu Reeves<\/a>. (Yes, that<\/em> Keanu Reeves.)<\/p>\n Over the past two-plus decades, Mi\u00e9ville has also been a compelling observer and critic \u2014 of politics, of cities<\/a>, of science fiction and fantasy. So while we started our conversation by discussing his breakthrough book, I also took the opportunity to ask about the relationship between science fiction and the real world, particularly what seems to be a growing tendency among tech billionaires to treat the science fiction they grew up reading as a blueprint for their future plans<\/a>.<\/p>\n To Mi\u00e9ville, it\u2019s a mistake to read science fiction as if it\u2019s really about the future: \u201cIt\u2019s always about now<\/em>. It\u2019s always a reflection. It\u2019s a kind of fever dream, and it\u2019s always about its own sociological context.\u201d<\/p>\n He added that there\u2019s a \u201csocietal and personal derangement\u201d at work when the rich and powerful \u201care more interested in settling Mars than sorting out the world\u201d \u2014 but ultimately, it\u2019s not science fiction that\u2019s responsible.<\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s not blame science fiction for this,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not science fiction that\u2019s causing this kind of sociopathy.\u201d<\/p>\n This interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n First of all, congratulations on 25 years of \u201cPerdido Street Station.\u201d I was in high school when it first came out, and I have this very vivid memory of ditching school so I could finish the book, and then being very upset with how it ended.<\/strong><\/p>\n Thank you for telling me \u2014 both that I upset you and that you read it.<\/p>\n It\u2019s very strange. Like everyone who\u2019s my age, all I can really think is, \u201cI don\u2019t understand how I\u2019m this age.\u201d So the idea that I\u2019ve done anything that could be 25 years old, let alone this book, is giddying to me.<\/p>\n In the afterword [to the new collector\u2019s edition], you talk about this being a young man\u2019s book. Was this also a book written in the spirit of, \u201cI don\u2019t like the way commercial fantasy looks right now, let me show you how it\u2019s done\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n I mean, not as programmatically as that. That makes it sound like it was a more self-conscious intervention than it was, and it definitely wasn\u2019t that.<\/p>\n What is true is that I always loved the fantastic, but I did not much like a lot of the commercially massive fantasies. And I was never much of a [J.R.R.] Tolkien fan. Most of the very successful fantasies that were obviously highly derived from Tolkien, they did nothing for me.<\/p>\n Whereas that Dying Earth tradition, or that science fantasy tradition, or the tradition out of New Worlds [magazine], the post-[Michael] Moorcock tradition was always much more up my street \u2014 combined, obviously, with people like [Mervyn] Peake and so on.<\/p>\n So it was more a question for me of saying, \u201cI love fantasy, and this<\/em> is the kind of fantasy I love.\u201d I\u2019m not saying I did something new, but for whatever reasons, there\u2019s tides in publishing and taste and so on.<\/p>\n So yes, it was a repudiation of a certain tradition, but not a deliberate act of flag waving in that way, if that makes sense. I always felt myself highly located within a tradition, just a tradition that wasn\u2019t quite getting the attention that the [Tolkien] tradition was getting at the time.<\/p>\n Given the movement of the various weird genres into the mainstream, or this dissolving of the barriers between them, that\u2019s brought some of the writers you care deeply about into the limelight. But have there been any downsides?<\/strong><\/p>\n Sure. This, to me, is what happens with all subcultures. The more high profile it is, the more you\u2019re going to get sort of sub-par stuff coming in, among the other really good stuff. It\u2019s going to become commodified. Not that it was ever not [commodified], but let\u2019s say, even more so. There will be a kind of cheapening. You end up with kind of Cthulhu plushies, all this stuff. And you can drive yourself mad with this.<\/p>\n It happened with drum and bass. It happened with surrealism. It happens with any interesting subculture \u2014 when it reaches a certain critical mass, you end up with the really good side that more people have access to it, more people learn about it, you end up with more people writing in that tradition, some of whom might bring wonderful new things to it. You also end up with the idea that there\u2019s often a banalization. It ends up throwing up its own tropes and clich\u00e9s and becomes very domesticated.\u00a0<\/p>\n And this happened with science fiction. I mean, this is slightly before my time, but when there was one of the first waves of real theoretical interest in science fiction in the late \u201860s or \u201870s, there was a playful, tongue-in-cheek response from fandom that was like, \u201cKeep science fiction in the gutter where it belongs.\u201d And this, to me, is the endless dialectic between subculture and success. You\u2019re never going to solve it.<\/p>\n I remember my high school self and college self, who was clutching \u201cPerdido Street Station\u201dor Philip K. Dick or Ursula Le Guin and saying, \u201cYou guys don\u2019t understand, this is so good.\u201d I had that evangelical fire. And when someone acts like that with science fiction now, I think, \u201cGuys, we won. You don\u2019t need to do that anymore.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n And I also feel something, because I\u2019m awful: Now people are reading those authors, and they don\u2019t deserve them. They don\u2019t get it. They didn\u2019t do the work.<\/p>\n There is an obvious way in which that kind of nerd gatekeeping is just purely toxic, that is absolutely flatly true. I have also had quite interesting conversations with people my age and younger about whether there is anything genuinely culturally positive about when you had to work to be in a subculture. I don\u2019t mean work like, go mining. But you had to travel across town, you had to find out, you had to know who to ask. And I am tentatively of the mind that we have actually lost something by the absolute availability of everything if you can be bothered to click it.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not saying there are no positives. I think there are enormous positives, but I think it would be facile to deny that there are also negatives. I\u2019m tempted by the arguments that the easiness of all cultural availability does lose a certain intensity, at least potentially, to a certain set of subcultures.<\/p>\n I would say that very, very carefully, because I\u2019m trying out ideas. But maybe one could argue that that\u2019s the rational kernel of the appalling nerd police tendency.<\/p>\n That leads to something else I wanted to ask about. Maybe this has always happened, but I\u2019ve noticed more tech industry folks like Elon Musk talking about science fiction and treating Isaac Asimov or Kim Stanley Robinson as sort of a blueprint for the future in ways that I\u2019m not crazy about. Is that something you\u2019ve noticed too?<\/strong><\/p>\n First of all, one should just say, one can only feel deep sorrow for Kim Stanley Robinson \u2014 that is something he doesn\u2019t deserve.<\/p>\n The Silicon Valley ideology has always been a weird, queasy mix of libertarianism, hippieness, granola crunch tech utopianism \u2014 hashtag #NotAllSilicon Valley, but really, actually, quite a f\u2014ing lot of Silicon Valley.<\/p>\n And all ideologies are always weird mixes of different things, often completely contradictory things. And then what is stressed at any moment is a response to political pressures and economic circumstances and so on.<\/p>\n So it\u2019s no secret, and it\u2019s not new, that Silicon Valley has long been interested in science fiction. And to some extent, this is sociological. There\u2019s a crossover of the literary nerd world and the computer world and so on.\u00a0<\/p>\n And I agree with you on several levels. One is, even though some science fiction writers do think in terms of their writing being either a utopian blueprint or a dystopian warning, I don\u2019t think that\u2019s what science fiction ever is. It\u2019s always about now<\/em>. It\u2019s always a reflection. It\u2019s a kind of fever dream, and it\u2019s always about its own sociological context. It\u2019s always an expression of the anxieties of the now. So there\u2019s a category error in treating it as if it is \u201cabout the future.\u201d<\/p>\n And then there\u2019s a whole series of other category errors whereby, because it\u2019s a cultural form that is already always aestheticized, that can lead into a kind of fetishization very, very easily, which is why the slippage between a utopia and a dystopia is very easy to do. You end up with this structural disingenuousness.<\/p>\n Notionally, to say something like \u201cNeuromancer\u201d \u2014 and this is not me dissing \u201cNeuromancer,\u201d which I think is a wonderful book. But when people talk about it as this terrible warning, there\u2019s a part of you \u2014 especially as a teenager, which to some degree or other, all science fiction people are \u2014 you\u2019re like, \u201cOh yeah, it\u2019s a terrible warning that we\u2019re all going to get to wear mirrorshades and be fantastically cool?\u201d So something that purports to be negative and a warning [can actually be] a deeply desirable thing.<\/p>\n But most obviously: What elements of science fiction are these people going to be interested in? They\u2019re not going to be \u201cinspired by,\u201d for their products, the kind of visions of someone like Ursula Le Guin in \u201cAlways Coming Home,\u201d which is precisely about moving out of the dead hand of the commodity. That\u2019s of no use to them.<\/p>\n Now, that does not preclude their nimbleness in maybe being able to find ways to commodify exactly that. But the fact that some of these people are serious that they are more interested in settling Mars than sorting out the world \u2014 this is a very obvious point, but what kind of societal and personal derangement has happened that that actually makes sense?<\/p>\n And I say this as someone who loves Mars-settling novels. I love this stuff. But the idea that you would, rather than say, \u201cThis is a really interesting novel, this provides the following thoughts, maybe this inspires me to do certain kinds of work,\u201d but that you would say, \u201cYes, that\u2019s what we should do,\u201d while around you, the world is spiraling into s\u2014t? It would be terrifying if it wasn\u2019t so risible.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s not blame science fiction for this. It\u2019s not science fiction that\u2019s causing this kind of sociopathy. Sorry to be hack, but it\u2019s capitalism.<\/p>\n A big part of my response when I see something like that is to think, \u201cYou guys are bad readers, and you\u2019re just fixated on the gadgets, as opposed to the more interesting or radical political or social notions.\u201d But on some level, I also think, \u201cAre they just subscribing to this ur-narrative that a lot of science fiction sells: Won\u2019t it be great when we go to Mars? Won\u2019t it be great to expand outward and colonize forever?\u201d And I guess I\u2019m wondering to what extent that should spur science fiction writers to try to tell different kinds of narratives.<\/strong><\/p>\n I mean, I\u2019m not the cop. People can tell any kind of story they want.\u00a0 I reserve the right to criticize them and critique them.\u00a0<\/p>\n I should say, by the way, I completely agree with you about bad reading, but I also just think that writers and critics, no matter how brilliant we may be, we don\u2019t own the books. They are always a collaboration. And all books, particularly the most interesting fiction, [are] always going to have contradictory threads<\/p>\n Where I maybe get a little bit hesitant about the idea \u2014 I\u2019m not saying you\u2019re saying this, but there can be an implicit literary causality model in this whereby, if we tell the right stories, then we will stop these people making these mistakes. And I just don\u2019t think art works that way.<\/p>\n Artists are often very in thrall to a kind of artistic exceptionalism, where they like to justify their work as, on some level, a relatively direct political intervention. Or indeed, sometimes you hear people talk about [art] as activism, and I just don\u2019t think it is.<\/p>\n My feeling is: I don\u2019t think there is a story we can tell which someone who \u2014 because of the structural position they\u2019re in, as well as maybe their psychology, but those two are not unrelated \u2014 I don\u2019t think there\u2019s a story we can tell that they are not going to be able to say, \u201cYes, what this tells me is, I should make loads of money and be fantastically powerful, whatever it takes.\u201d I don\u2019t think we can do that.<\/p>\n None of this means that I\u2019m not interested in books that do tell interesting stories and untold stories and radical stories and so on. I absolutely am, and if people come to them and are radicalized by them, great. But that, I think, is fundamentally not something we can hope for.<\/p>\n I would like us to be writing more interesting stories as a function of the fact that the world was getting better. I do not think that by us writing different stories, we\u2019re going to make the world better. I just don\u2019t think that\u2019s the line of causality. There are simply too many layers of mediation from a book up into the social system.<\/p>\n Getting back to your own writing, I know there have been whispers about a big new book coming from you. It sounds like it\u2019s going to be out next year?<\/strong><\/p>\n Yes, it will be out. I don\u2019t know the exact date, but it will be out before the end of next year. I\u2019m just doing the last bits on it now.<\/p>\n Is there anything you can say about it?<\/strong><\/p>\n I will just say that I\u2019ve been working on it for 20 years, and that\u2019s not an exaggeration. I\u2019ve been working on this book for considerably more than half of my adult life, and it is a very big deal for me, for it to be coming out. I\u2019m very excited for it.<\/p>\n Anything else you want to conclude with?<\/strong><\/p>\n This is for TechCrunch, isn\u2019t it? I think social media is one of the worst things to happen to humanity for a long time, but I\u2019m hardly radical for saying that. I know everyone\u2019s like, \u201cOh ha ha, it\u2019s awful, I\u2019m addicted.\u201d But I really do increasingly feel like, \u201cNo, this is making us sick. This is destroying our brains.\u201d<\/p>\n And I don\u2019t mean this in a kind of pious way, like, \u201cI\u2019m not on social media because I\u2019m better than everyone.\u201d The reason I\u2019m not on social media is because I know what I would be doing, and I thank God that I happened to be old enough that I had sorted out, broadly, who I was before it came along.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"Art](\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/perdido-3.jpeg?w=479\")
![\"Art](\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/perdido-1.jpeg?w=479\")