Talk:China Miéville

Pronounciation of his name

I for one have no clue as to how his name is supposed to be pronounced. Does anyone have an idea, if so, can we add a phonetic guide? Because I'm sure people (like me!) struggle to ask for this guy's books in libraries. 82.10.111.59 14:18, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

It's "mee-AY-ville". I've always said "May-ville" but I heard an interview with him recently where he cleared that up. Tredanse 04:16, 8 October 2007 (UTC)t̪

It's "mee-AY-ville" but please don't put it in the article- its' against policy to put up pronunciation guides that anyone except a small perecentage of readers can understand. We'd need to get someone who understands the phonetic alphabet to add a guide. Lurker (said · done) 16:32, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Done. --Limetom 10:26, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Are you sure that's correct? From my understanding of the IPA (I'm an English teacher) the symbols you use would be pronounced "chi-anna" and my understanding is that the second syllable of his surname is emphasised, not the first.Mia-etol (talk) 18:20, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Have added a link in External Links, to an audio interview with Rick Kleffel of The Agony Column Podcast, which also has the correct pronunciation of his name. Browndog72 (talk) 13:12, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Name of genre

"belongs to a loose group of writers who consciously attempt to move the fantasy genre away from the realms of Tolkienesque clich?." Is there a name for this group, is there an article that can be linked to? Which writers belong to this group. I detect strong affiliations with Michael Moorcock and Mervyn Peake, should they be mentioned? The Mervyn Peake article calls the genre Fantasist Realist would this be the correct genre to place China Mi?ville? Htaccess 07:56, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

China has repeatedly stated that he considers himself a weird fiction writer, in the tradition of H.P. Lovecraft et al. Of course, that doesn't mean anything, it's up to readers and critics to place his work in one or more genres. --Goblin ^›talk 18:57, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

His writings - well, the ones set in the world of Perdido Street Station - are probably best described as "steampunk". The world is steampunk. - Malimar

Removed entry for "The Tain"

Uh, why? The Tain was published standalone in book form by PS Publishing (ISBNs 1902880641 and 1902880633), so shouldn't it be listed in the bibliography? I'm putting it back in. --Goblin ^›talk 01:01, Jun 18, 2005 (UTC)

I didn't remove the entry - but the orignal hyperlink was incorrect. Pointed towards a band. It seems ok now -- lostsocks

Lenins tomb

I am having a hard time finding any blog posts by China at Lenins tomb, at first I thought he was Lenin but apparently not, is there any way to link to just Chinas posts? Htaccess 04:35, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

I've linked to some of his posts in the article and expl;ained hw to find his posts as opposed to the other participants --Martin Wisse 16:22, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for that, its a pity there is no way to link to all his posts, most blogs with multiple authours (eg Wordpress) have a facility to link to only the posts of one of the authors. The content is worth while though so should probably be kept but its not ideal.

Copyright violation

Two parts of the article are very possibly a copyright violation. They are directly copied from Mieville's introduction from the inside cover of Random House's paperback edition, ISBN 0-345-45940-7. These are the suspected parts:

"When he was eighteen, he lived and taught English in Egypt, where he developed an interest in Arab culture and Middle Eastern politics. Mi?ville has a B.A. in social anthropology from Cambridge and a master's with distinction and PhD from the London School of Economics."

And again, lower in the article:

"His first novel, King Rat, was nominated for both an International Horror Guild and Bram Stoker awards. Perdido Street Station won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and was nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy awards. His third, The Scar, was nominated for the 2003 Hugo, Arthur C. Clarke and World Fantasy awards."

Both are almost verbatim copies. 213.233.160.48 19:57, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Copyright violation in reverse

The edit of 19:55, 11 February 2006 by 83.227.105.101 adds a link to a page that presents an edited version of this Wiki entry with no attribution. Dogville 20:41, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

75.18.206.188

... was me. Kalkin 20:30, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Birthplace

Both from the article:

• "China Tom Miéville (born September 6, 1972, Norwich)"
• "Miéville was born in Willesden, a neighbourhood in northwest London, and has lived in the city since early childhood."

Which one? Norwich to London is a two hour train journey, so this can't be right by any definition. Nphase 09:31, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Kraken

All right, someone listed Kraken as being an upcoming book from Miéville and the only reference is an Amazon UK link http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0333989511/ref=nosim/authordatabase with NO information on it. I was never sure, but I'd heard of Kraken before and had come to the conclusion that it was not a new book but a foreign translation of The Scar. It really seems like there ought to be a better source than a completely blank Amazon entry before something is listed as a new book.71.217.234.70 12:55, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Currently, this amazon.co.uk entry says: paperback publication in 2010 by Tor. "Other Editions" links to an entry for a hardcover "Untitled Novel 1" (also Tor, 2010). As Tor Books is AFAIK solely a publisher of English-language books, this doesn't look like a foreign translation to me. I find no official announcements through Google, but quite a lot of websites/blogs/fora mentioning Kraken as Miéville's possible next book. Some mention "coming out in September 2007" - well, this was obviously not the case. Apart from the Amazon entry, it all looks like rumor, and I'm not sure whether we should mention it in the article yet. Gestumblindi (talk) 02:30, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

El Azogue?

Another of the "is this a foreign translation" questions. Listed on Amazon, it's in Spanish... not having read "Tain", could this be a translation, or is it a new work?

Politics

I removed the word "traditionally" - the constituency he contested is a relatively new one making it rather unlikely to have a "tradition". As a note, it was carved out of two Tory constituencies and was viewed by the local Labour Party (of which I was once a member) as a likely marginal. Bigdaddy1981 04:12, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

"stood for the HoC"?

In the introduction, it says he "stood for the house of commons" - I am not from england so I don't know what this means. Did he represent them? Did he try to get elected? or what? Rebent (talk) 22:20, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Tried to get elected. It's rather standard wording. Skomorokh 22:35, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

filmography?

Don't know where to put this on the page, but I recently found out from a BFI database entry that China was credited as an extra in the 1999 film "Notting Hill". The accent in his name is messed up, which might be effectively hiding it from searches. I have my own suspicion, after watching the DVD, about where he appears, but would be interested in others confirming. Also, would love for a more experienced editor than myself to add this information. The BFI page link is http://www.bfi.org.uk/features/ultimatefilm/chart/details.php?ranking=95&cc=on.

Bgaloot (talk) 16:09, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Needs proper biography

This article is off to a good start, but I'm surprised that it's missing a proper biography section beyond his formative education. Can someone fill this out? WesleyDodds (talk) 21:32, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

This reads like (yet) another attempt at a Wikipedia-as-free-publicity article.

Sad. Very sad.