What's striking to me about this process is that the revelation is a bit deflating. And not only here: again and again in this novel, when you come to a revelatory moment, at which a more traditional fantasy would open outward, into the unreal or the supernatural, you bring things back to the real, in all its harsh particularity. In that sense couldn't this novel be considered an antifantasy?
Mieville: By all means. There's a long and honorable tradition of antifantasies, of which some of the most invigorating, to me, are by M. John Harrison. And yes, I think you're absolutely right that this is part of that lineage. And I don't even mind the term "deflating". I think it's fair and it was, so far as it goes, quite deliberate. Now obviously I know that won't work for all readers, and I know, in fact, that some readers have disliked the book for precisely that point. That's fair enough. But to me, that hankering for the opening-out, the secrets behind the everyday, can sometimes be question-begging. Of course I have it, too - I'm a fantasy reader, I love that uncanny fracture and whatever's behind it - but surely it's legitimate and maybe even interesting not merely to indulge that drive but to investigate it, to prod at it, and yes, maybe precisely as part of that, to frustrate it.
