Miéville on Tolkien – again

Amazon’s book blog Omnivoracious has got China Miéville as a guest blogger this week. He’s got two posts and a podcast up, but the best so far is this article on ‘Five reasons Tolkien rocks’.

It’s not a turn around, but Mieville is pretty famous for ripping into Tolkien, primarily in this 2002 article for the Socialist Review entitled ‘Tolkien – Middle Earth Meets Middle England’ where Mieville says

But if, as radical critics of both bourgeois respectability and Stalinist agitprop, we defend science fiction and fantasy, does that mean we should be rallying under the banner of ‘Socialists for Tolkien’? Hardly.

It’s not that I disagree as such, I just don’t take it so seriously. So it’s nice to see this new article focusing on things like

I mean, say what you like about him, Tolk gives good monster. Shelob, Smaug, the Balrog…in their astounding names, the fearful verve of their descriptions, their various undomesticated malevolence, these creatures are utterly embedded in our world-view. No one can write giant spiders except through Shelob: all dragons are sidekicks now. And so on.

I think he’s mellowing.

Edit: and just after I post this, I read a very interesting and cool Miéville interview done by Jeff VanderMeer. I liked this bit especially:

I’m very aware, by the way, that loads of readers of this may think I’m being a humourless or po-faced dick about it.

Quite possibly China!