"I don’t find Mieville more didactic than an awful lot of authors, but other American readers I know often find him so-- largely because, I think, he’s promoting a point of view which jumps out because it’s out of the American mainstream, whereas books which push more US-mainstream values like “normalcy and happiness is one man and one woman getting together” or “social justice is achievable by individual effort” don’t appear didactic because those values are so ingrained into that mainstream that they become invisible as didacticism, no matter how hard the authors push them.*"

Yes, yes, and yes! So tired of readers thinking neoliberal individualism is just the way the world is, instead of being an ideological orientation of its own. At least Mieville *knows* when he's being didactic, as opposed to writing that way and thinking it's just natural.