_{Portrait of British Sci-fi author, China Mieville from: https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/china-mieville}

What if I told you that inside your home lives someone whom you never met? An individual that shares the same space as you, but also someone you were taught to unsee since birth, for fear of breaching your immediate reality? What if the city you live in, had another city superimposed upon it? Or that only through a careful exercise in ignoring certain details about your daily life, both of these parallel worlds could co-exist? However, if there are two cities having this awkward relationship with one another, then what takes place in the space in-between them? What happens when things (and people) spill over conventional boundaries? This is the fascinating premise of China Mieville‘s 2009 novel ‘The City and the City‘, which I just finished reading and couldn’t wait to write about!

I knew of China’s work from before, when in 2012 in Edinburgh (exactly 11 years ago!) I saw him speak at the Edinburgh Book Festival, after spending a feverish 2 weeks tucked into the world of his Perdido Street Station novel. A man whose writing made me reconsider bugs (in a way in which perhaps only Kafka in his brilliant ‘Metamorphosis’ got closest to). Needless to say, a Virgo Sun.

Happy Virgo season & Mercury retrograde, btw! I guess you noticed who is the Virgoan ‘culprit’ who I shall be analyzing in today’s post. As I was reading ‘The City and the city’ and knowing that he is a Virgo Sun with a peculiar fondness for bizarre settings and crimes (labelled in literature as ‘weird fiction’), I wondered what else in his chart could make a man who penned his author’s name to sound like something soft and precious have such a prolific output and a penchant for sci-fi, neo-noirs? Let’s investigate together by peering into his astrological abyss below:

_{Image of China Mieville born on the 6th of September 1972 in Norwich, UK & his birth chart taken from: https://www.astro-seek.com/birth-chart/china-mieville-horoscope}

Remarkably, the first thing that stands out is that he is in his 50s (!) and that he has a Moon in Leo at the anaretic 29th degree. Could it be a mere coincidence that I felt drawn to finish his book and start writing about his chart at the New Moon in Leo which took place on the 16th of August? Not really, I don’t believe in coincidences anyways. A Moon placed at the final degree makes an individual intimately familiar with their creative urges, as they are very comfortable being emotional and exploring their unconscious fantasies. It is a sign of emotional maturity but it also means that the chaos experienced by an individual in their lives is ruled by their relationships with women, emotions and their unconscious desires. So in a way one is dissolved into that very thing one feels like they control the most, and in China’s case these are his strong emotions and his ripe imagination.

Another aspect that stands out to me – aside from the annoying fact that without his birth-time we can’t see his Ascendant* (some advanced astrologers are able to do this but not me, sadly, at least not yet) – is that he has a Venus in Cancer conjunct his South Node and a North Node in Capricorn. Both of these nodal points are in friendly energy to his Virgo Sun, Mercury and Mars, which means that his goals in life and his identity are supported by the forces of his destiny guiding him towards a rather strict and stoic existence. He has to write in order to earn, and writing takes a long time usually, or at least it takes effort and concentration, and the paycheck comes also with the completion of this slow work, so I assume he needs to learn to save up for a rainy day and be cautious with his spendings. He is meant for a modest existence here on Earth that nonetheless can help him create the kind of work that will outlive him, and that is the gift of a Saturnian North Node. If a North Node in Capricorn could talk, it would say to its astrological native: “struggle now in this embodiment so that people will know your name even after your death”.

A Capricorn destiny is a pressure cooker but one which China can easily live up to considering the Martian qualities of his modest and hard-working Virgo Sun. If as a writer, he looks more like a street-fighter than an Oxford professor, this is due to his natal Mars placement which is perfectly conjunct his Sun in Virgo; this special cosmic blending makes his personality borrow traits from Aries energy. By consequence, he looks like a motorcycle-loving rebel rather than a neat and dutiful Virgo man. Judging by his work, I guess we shouldn’t be fooled by this idiosyncrasy. And personally speaking I think this makes him quite interesting and hot 🙂

I can also see that through writing, he is also healing his identity because he has Chiron (the Wounded Healer Archetype) in the sign of charisma, Aries, which might have been frequently produced wounding in his life related to his identity, his masculinity, a feeling of being misunderstood and not being admired enough or allowed to create. With a shy and family-oriented Venus in Cancer, growing up China might’ve preferred having women as friends and been very close to his mother too. I don’t know the facts of his upbringing but his chart shows me someone that had to work hard to develop healthy relationships with other men his age, and especially to feel loved and admired by his father. These are all symptoms of a SN in Cancer / NN in Capricorn life-path, denoting a person who eventually becomes the respectable and admirable father that they wished they had while growing up. So China was brought into this reality in order to work (NN in Capricorn and Sun in Virgo) and to create (Moon in Leo) in order to heal (Chiron in Aries) and to express his skills by paying careful attention to details (Mercury in Virgo).

He is a prolific author because his Saturn is in the sign of communication, reading, writing and learning: witty Gemini. Furthermore, he feels drawn to future topics and hence sci-fi, because he has a Pluto conjunct Uranus pairing in intelligent Libra. This means that he is attracted to space, the future and to wacky ideas, because he is himself a ‘walking & talking’ revolution. From what I can remember he is charming and quite funny in public conversations which I attribute to his Jupiter in Sagittarius, a domicile position which grants him a lot of good luck, especially in terms of creative and imaginative ideas, as his Jupiter (a point of growth) is natally conjunct dreamy Neptune.

Not only that but China has a Lilith placement in Scorpio, which could get quite dark, making him both irrevocably attracted to mysterious, sexy and cruel women or at least to topics which are taboo and involve life or death scenarios. It seems like I got him quite figured out but not really, since I am surprised to see a lack of Aquarius energy in his chart. I am maybe thinking that his Ascendant is in Aquarius, which would make him look attractive in an unconventional way and it would put his Moon in Leo in the communicative 7th house and his Saturn in Gemini in the 4th house, while his strong Libra duo of Pluto and Uranus would then land in his 9th houses the place of travel and the higher mind, which would be perfect for a sci-fi writer.

But this is only speculation. I do need to mention that in parts, his writing does become quite clunky and confused and often I need to re-read a couple of phrases to understand what he is trying to get his characters to convey. He often has a lot of dialogues when I would’ve also preferred a carefully crafted balance of descriptions and dialogues. But overall his ideas are truly something that linger with you. For example, I’ll never forget the interspecies sex scene with which Perdido Street Station begins or the realization I had that perhaps the City and the City offers an interesting interpretation to that weird sensation we have that some places are haunted: if we are to take the two-city theory to heart, we are not haunted by specters but by people who lead lives superimposed upon ours and which our eyes have trained to ignore each day. Huh…

In a global society in which we are becoming increasingly more tuned out of observing the everyday environment as we become more plugged into our gadgets and interests, this realization sent a chilling sensation down my spine. And this is exactly why during this Virgo season, I would recommend giving China Mieville’s prose a try. Let me know what you discover!

_{My sandals and watermelon smoothie match the cover of China’s book, the City & the City}

With universal love,

Lexi