I discovered these quotes by China Miéville from an old interview in one of my journals. I love the idea of a ridiculousness threshold. How high is yours?

“Those of us in the fantastic fields either we don’t listen to our filters, or we have a much higher ridiculousness threshold. end quote.”

China Miéville

A threshold implies that sometimes we are hesitant to step across, or rather, we don’t have to step across all the time, but when we do. Look out!

Keep reading for more context.

“Mr. Miéville says what attracts him to the genre, as a reader and a writer, is the importance of the imagination that sense of the world blown apart, that sense of a crack in reality, that visionary sense, that ecstatic sense’, as he describes it.

‘At a certain stage some people end up not trusting their own imagination,’ Mr. Miéville said. ‘You get this kind of baleful set of voices in your head that tell you, “that’s silly, you’re being silly”.

But I think most people have more ideas in their head than they think they do. It’s just that those of us in the fantastic fields – either we don’t listen to our own filters, or we have a much higher ridiculousness threshold.’ “

Interview with China Miéville, NY Times July 23rd, 2010

Update 2025 – Every time I see this quote, I think, yes, I do have one of those. I also think my threshold fluctuates. You watch an anime with the most bonkers idea – see Train to the End of the World – and you think, wow, who came up with that?

There are certain writers – China Miéville included, Diana Wynne Jones, Frances Hardinge – that have the most lovely, strange worlds. I love diving into them.

I have a story up on Wattpad right now, called Odd Enchantments, and one of the tags is oddball. The story is often ranked #1 among the few oddball stories. Oddball is just another word for unusual, quirky, or ridiculous, right? So, here I am on the threshold and wondering where I go next.