lot of insight into that "technology" stuff of which we're all so terrified. It was rather like listening to a steam-train driver grudgingly admit that those jet-fighter pilots might be on to something. Neal Stephenson, one of the big names of SF attending this year's festival, has written with some insight about the awkward experience of being patronised at literary events, even when your books engage more readers in serious debate than most of the other attendees put together.

But it was China Miéville who took centre stage at this year's EIBF, first at a sold-out discussion of his young-adult novel Railsea with fellow writer Patrick Ness, then at a barnstorming polemic on the future of the novel. Miéville arrived at the festival at the climax of an amazingfive-year period, during which he has gone from a cult writer of baroque urban fantasy to arguably one of the most influential writers in any genre in the UK. His dual identity as radical Marxist academic and fantasy novelist, his absolute love of geek culture combined with a true respect for literary traditions, his unchallenged status as the writer with "the best guns in literatur" and, of course, a run of superbly idiosyncratic SF masterpieces – including The City and the City and Embassytown – have propelled him to unusual levels of fame.

Queried by Ness on the importance of genre in his writing, Miéville replied that he prefers to think of genre as a literary tradition. It's a minority viewpoint even within SF, where commercial pressures often push