China MievilleFrom an interview with Mieville (via Walker of Worlds):

I was left wondering how he finds time to write given the range of references and interests he revealed in his conversation, be that politics, pouring over old horror novels by HP Lovecraft or chaotically catching up with modern writers – Nick Mamatas and Helen Oyeyemi were two he mentioned as well worth a look.

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.

Could a return to Bas-Lag be among them?

“I’m certainly not bored of Bas-Lag or anything like that and it would be easy for me to go back there,” he said. “But the books I wrote about Bas Lag had an arc to them and matter a lot to me.

“I don’t want to undermine that, so my argument would be it would have to be a story that really needed to be in that setting.

“We can all think of franchises that milked themselves dry too and can end up killing the thing you love by doing that. So I will be staying away for a while yet, although I do have a long term idea in mind,” he added, with just the right air of mystery.

Reading China Mieville sometimes makes my brain hurt. Reading Science Fiction sometimes makes my brain hurt. Slap the two of them together and you get the most enjoyable migraine the world’s ever seen. Mieville’s certainly been on a roll of late, having turned in The City & The City (released in 2009) at the same time as the soon-to-be-released Kraken; if the unnamed Science Fiction novel is with his editor, it means whatever he’s working on now (Bas-Lag or not) is his next next novel, and likely won’t be on store shelves until 2012.

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