China Mieville has written some of the most profound and imaginative dark fantasy since Mervyn Peake and, perhaps more successfully than anyone writing in (or out) of genre, has captured the sheer size and multi-layered complexity of the Big City from London in King Rat to the unforgettable sprawl of New Crobuzon in Perdido Street Station. Successful author and academic, Mieville is also a political activist, member of the British Socialist Workers Party, and occasional contributor to The Socialist Review. In January he contributed a sardonic article called The Struggle for Intergalactic Socialism, a title that encapsulates his political and genre interests - Trotskyism and SF.