M. John Harrison
M. John Harrison
Michael John Harrison, known for publication purposes primarily as M. John Harrison, is an English author and literary critic. His work includes the Viriconium sequence of novels and short stories,, Climbers, and the Kefahuchi Tract trilogy which consists of Light, Nova Swingand Empty Space. He is widely considered one of the major stylists of modern fantasy and science fiction, and a "genre contrarian". The Times Literary Supplement described him as 'a singular stylist' and the Literary Review called him 'a...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth26 July 1945
Everyone loves a mysterious country.
I think it's undignified to read for the purposes of escape. After you grow up, you should start reading for other purposes
What is literature, and why do I try to write about it? I don’t know. Likewise, I don’t know why I go on living, most of the time. But this not knowing is precisely what I want to preserve. As readers, the closest way we can engage with a literary work is to protect its indeterminacy; to return ourselves and it to a place that precludes complete recognition. Really, when I’m reading, all I want is to stand amazed in front of an unknown object at odds with the world.
Stories pass the experienced world back and forth between them as a metaphor, until it is worn out. Only then do we realize that meaning is an act. We must repossess it, instant to instant in our lives.
SF is an opportunity to have an intense relationship with your own imagination. It's a kind of drive-by poetry, trashy and addictive; it's fun. After that, for me, it's an opportunity to explore that kind of imaginative artifact from inside, and use a little camped-up contemporary science as a way of generating new metaphors around my typical obsessions.
At Birkin Grif's left, his seat insecure on a scruffy packhorse, Theomeris Glyn, his only armour a steel-stressed leather cap, grumbled at the cold and the earliness of the hour, and cursed the flint hearts of city girls.