The City & The City

Author: China MiÃ©ville

There's a long tradition of science fiction using crime story plots, but this is surely the most startling, the most original and the most satisfying of all.It begins with Inspector Borlu of the BesÃ…Âºel police investigating the murder of a foreign student. There are plenty of buildings around the site where she was found, but nobody there would have seen the murder, because the buildings are in UlQoma. BesÃ…Âºel and UlQoma share the same territory, but they are two separate cities, and by long tradition the inhabitants of one city do not see those in the other. They could be walking down the same street, and to the resident if one city it would appear empty and to the resident of the other city it would be crowded. This unseeing is rigidly enforced, not least by Breach, an extra police force that operates between the two cities and that has the power to make anyone who breaks its rules disappear.This is no problem for Borlu, not seeing UlQoma is second nature to him. Unfortunately, the more he investigates the crime, the more it involves both cities, and it leads Borlu to investigate things that are taken for granted, the underlying assumptions of both cities, the things that are not seen. The City and the City won China MiÃƒÂ©ville's third Arthur C. Clarke Award, along with a Hugo Award, BSFA Award, Locus Award, World Fantasy Award and a Kitschies Red Tentacle. It's an intriguing crime story, and an absolutely fascinating account of an extraordinary place.

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China MiÃ?Â©ville consistently employs multiple genres in his work, which is why his stories are so exciting and so original.

Alternative Choice
Perdido Street Station, which won his first Arthur C. Clarke Award, for instance, is a potent mixture of science fiction, horror, fantasy, steampunk and politics. It is set in the sprawling city of New Crobuzon, where all sorts of alien beings exist side by side. When an eccentric human scientist accidentally unleashes an horrific monster upon the city he has to find a way to stop it. The crowded police state with Victorian-era technology and curious magic is a creation that will hold any reader spellbound.

Anyone fascinated by the combination of crime story and science fiction in The City and the City might also want to look at Jack Glass by Adam Roberts. This is a very knowing combination of golden age science fiction and golden age detective story. Set in a distant future with the criminal and revolutionary Jack Glass as the central figure, the story is told in three parts. In the first he is imprisoned in an escape-proof prison situated within an asteroid, and manages to escape. In the second there is an apparently impossible murder, and he needs to find out how it was done. And the third is a classic locked room mystery relocated to outer space. Jack Glass won both the BSFA Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

Going further back, you might also want to check out The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov, in which a human detective and his robot partner investigate a murder that seems to have been committed by a robot, even though the three laws of robotics mean that that should be impossible.