In the following audio capture, author China Mieville delivers a keynote address entitled “On Monsters: Or, Nine or More (Monstrous) NOT Cannies.” It was presented at the 33rd Annual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts in Orlando, Florida, in Spring 2012. Mieville performs an entertaining and trenchant re-examination of the term “uncanny” and offers a sly critique of its slippery value as a taxonomic tool.
[audio:Mieville-OnMonsters-ICFA33.mp3]
Download: Mieville-OnMonsters-ICFA33.mp3 (.mp3 format; 88.25mb; 38 mins)
A transcript of the speech is available in the just-released Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, Volume 23, No. 3, 2012. It is posted here with the permission of both China Mieville and the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts…and my deep appreciation.
You should attend the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts.
You should also read more China Mieville, a multi-award-winning author who seamlessly synthesizes theory with genre fiction to explore new imaginative territory. His latest book is Railsea. You can discover his work online via his publisher, his blog, his amazon page in the US. Scholars of the uncanny might want to pursue his excellent article on the hauntology of the “weird” in Concept Horror: Collapse Vol. IV from urbanomic.com.
