The City & the City

What do you think tells us about this snooze of an IMF World Bank meeting, but it's really about the global economic cycle and how the economy is doing worldwide?

Well, I'm going to recommend a book called The City and the City by China Melville, who's a very creative British writer.

Not everyone would call this science fiction.

I think the genre term some people prefer is new weird.

But he uses these wild elements to talk about the very real grime of industrial capitalism and authoritarian oppression.

And then we have his other book on the list ranked all the way up at number two, The City and the City, published in 2009.

The source notes that critics and readers often debate which of these two is Miéville's true magnum opus, but The City and the City frequently comes out on top because it is conceptually staggering.

It won almost every major speculative fiction award.

Structurally, it is fascinating.

I don't know.

I don't know if you can classify Gene Wolfe's works in any way at all.

And, uh, just since he was a friend of mine, he really enjoyed the fact that you couldn't do that.

He loved puzzling [laughs] people-

Uh, the critic is looking for taxonomy, and they wanna be able to-

Mm

... talk about the evolution of how space opera works and, you know, uh-

Mm

Yeah.

This is China Miéville's 2009 novel, The City and the City.

It sets up this noir premise with Inspector Tyador Borlu investigating a murder.

Right.

You are hard to break.

Fate number three, Blade Runner, Los Angeles 2049.

This maps well to the moral gray of the city and the city for those who live in moral gray areas.

You read people accurately in a city where humanity is just a legal designation.