China Miéville’s much-anticipated new book The Rouse is twenty-one years in the making. He was writing it when he wrote The City & The City and Embassytown. He was writing it when he wrote October: The Story of the Russian Revolution and A Spectre Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto. He was writing it when he wrote children’s books, comics and his latest collaborative novel with Keanu Reeves. In other words, this novel is not only itself about epochs, and the end of them, but also itself spans many eras and iterations of China’s own life and writing life. Together we look at his many interests over the past two decades—Marxism and monsters, apophatic theology and the nature of consciousness, the failure of language, the power of it, the eerie and spooky, the terror and the horror of all that goes bump in the night—in relation to The Rouse itself. As part of writing his 1200-page-plus new novel, China read many other big books for inspiration—from Gravity’s Rainbow to Mosquito. For the bonus audio archive China discusses one of his favorite’s: Miss MacIntosh, My Darling by Marguerite Young and reads an excerpt for us. This joins bonus material from many past guests including Ted Chiang, N.K. Jemisin, Carmen Maria Machado, Vajra Chandrasekera, and adrienne maree brown, to name a few. You can find out more about subscribing to the bonus material and about all the other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter, at the show’s Patreon page. Finally, don’t miss the BTC BookShop corresponding to today’s conversation, brimming over with all the books China references and discusses today. And while you are at it, for your general book needs, be sure to browse the Milkweed Bookstore BookShop as well.

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.